About ofp texture colors

[Max? 0]

Hello, I'm having a problem with some textures for a custom model, I have some 24-bit tga's that I want to convert to .paa or .pac with texView.

But the problem is, when I load one of the 24-bit tga's it looks like a lot of the colors are lost and it looks really bad, like if texView is reducing the number of colors in some way.

I tried reducing the number of colors to 8-bit in photoshop and saving as .gif. but again when loading the file in texView it looks like the number of colors is still being reduced.

I also tried using only 128, 64 and 32 colors but they are still being changed in texView.

Looks like if OFP has a custom 8-bit color pallette. Is this true?

Ok, I have one last question: What's the difference between the .paa and the .pac format?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Max.

[suma 8]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Max? @ July 29 2002,05:45)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">But the problem is, when I load one of the 24-bit tga's it looks like a lot of the colors are lost and it looks really bad, like if texView is reducing the number of colors in some way.<span id='postcolor'>

OFP uses DXT1 compression for opaque textures . If you use alpha channel, only ARGB 4:4:4:4 color resolution is used.

[Max? 0]

Hi, thanks for your reply.

Does it mean that the change I see on the texture is really a compression artifact created by the DXT1 format and is not because of a reduction of colors?

Regards,

Max.

[suma 8]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Max? @ July 29 2002,07:55)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Does it mean that the change I see on the texture is really a compression artifact created by the DXT1 format and is not because of a reduction of colors?<span id='postcolor'>

As I do not know what you see, I cannot tell what it is. I can only tell you what processing TexView does on textures.

[kegetys 2]

About this matter, suma, are there any downsides of using JPG textures instead of PAC? With maximum quality they look better than PAC textures which helps in textures that need alot of detail. At least PAA/PAC's seem to have mipmap levels in them, but as far as I know modern videocards(at least nvidia ones) do mipmap levels automatically to all textures...

[Max? 0]

Ok, here are some pics so you can see what I'm talking about, the original .tga to the left and the .pac to the right:

And a screenshot of bulldozer with the textured model:

I think it looks awful  

Max.

[Doggy 0]

wow, first time i have seen an OFP Maker posting in Addons&Mods, probaly a stupid question, any relation to Marek?

[KTottE 0]

AFAIK, .jpg doesn't support alpha channels. Am I right?

Also, .paa/.pac are much smaller than .jpg.

[deadsoldier 0]

it looks more like a chopper to me..a realy nice one ! :-)

the textures look great anyways, dont worry too much about it. they look realy good.

cheers

[Max? 0]

Yeah it's a chopper, a Puma SA330-L for the Falklands campaign we are working on.

Here are a few screenshots rendered in max:

Actually I'm pretty sartisfied with the results, but looking a the same model inside oxygen (with the pac textures) I'm not so sure if it looks good or not  

Anyway, any comments/suggestions about the model are VERY welcomed!  

Max.

[kegetys 2]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (KTottE @ July 30 2002,00:01)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">AFAIK, .jpg doesn't support alpha channels. Am I right?<span id='postcolor'>

Yes

[kegetys 2]

Max, im sure the textures will look good in OFP even when they are PAA/PAC on the chopper, the difference might be noticeable when placing then next to each other, but the difference isnt that big... Actually the PAC version looks more realistic imo. because its a bit less saturated and isnt as "shiny" which gives the unit a more realistic "worn out" look, choppers you see in the battlefield proparly rarely are brand new with a shiny paint.

[NZXSHADOWS 0]

you gobber

[suma 8]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Kegetys @ July 29 2002,13:32)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">are there any downsides of using JPG textures instead of PAC? With maximum quality they look better than PAC textures which helps in textures that need alot of detail. At least PAA/PAC's seem to have mipmap levels in them,<span id='postcolor'>

There are several downsides:

1) JPG has to be stored uncompressed in the video card memory, as JPG decompression is not supported by the cards

2) JPG decompression uses more CPU resources than simple loading

3) JPG textures do not contain mipmap levels. Automatic mipmap generation is not always available (and it is not always working well).

[suma 8]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Max? @ July 29 2002,22:22)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Ok, here are some pics so you can see what I'm talking about, the original .tga to the left and the .pac to the right:

And a screenshot of bulldozer with the textured model:

I think it looks awful  <span id='postcolor'>

While I can see some difference, I do not think it looks awful.

I miss one information, though. I noticed there are some windows in the textured. Is alpha channel used for the windows? If yes, are values other than 0 and 1 used in the alpha channel?

If answer to both questions is yes, then you are probablyseeing ARGB4444 format limitation.

[Max? 0]

That particular texture does not have an alpha channel because the window is built in the geometry, so it's using 12-bit color.

I think that the effect on the textures is because of the heavy compression of the DXT1 format and that particular green color (you can see the spots of very saturated light green all over the texture after the compression) I will try with other variations of green to see if I can get better results.

Also, is it possible to use DXT3 or DXT5 compression in OFP? I understand that the size of the textures will double, but the quality is much better.

Regards,

Max.