More texture and surface problems

[scotg 204]

I have some textures with supershaders for a helicopter (seems like everyone is making choppers). There is some kind of funky artifact going on, and I suspect it's in the _smdi or _as map. None of my maps have any mipmaps, yet, but the textures look like over-compressed images - very "blocky".

I'm also experiencing problems with surfaces. Baked normal maps come out too well done, causing flat surfaces with soft edges to look caved in a little.

Here's an image that depicts both issues. Note the red buttons on the dash, and the boxy texture reflecting. This type of thing is happening all over the vehicle.

http://www.scotgilmore.com/wip/a3/2015-03-19_00017.jpg (462 kB)

Here are links to the actual files, pre-conversion to .paa (converted from tga to jpg for web viewing):

_ca

_as

_smdi

_nohq

Edited March 20, 2015 by ScotG
include pics

[warlord554 2065]

Pictures help us help you

[scotg 204]

OF course. pics added to first post.

Also note the missing ocean in the window. I didn't realize that until now.

Edited March 20, 2015 by ScotG

[warlord554 2065]

The artifacts (blocky) is most likely the program your using to convert to .paa. i use imagetopaa inside a3 tools. Even texview2 was producong artifacts like that on my images.

Not much ingame you can do with your normals (they depend on the bake), but, anything that doesnt have high poly detail being "faked", you could try simulating your normals for those particular pieces (their own rvmat), with this value.....

#(argb,8,8,3)color(0.5,0.5,1,1,NOHQ)

It will simply simulate a nice flat normal (like glass) and will follow the curves of your mesh. It may help if the mesh doesnt have high poly detail

[scotg 204]

Thanks for your help! I gave imagetopaa a try just now. I really like that it converts en masse, but the results came out the same. Looking at the .paa files in TexView, they don't seem blocky. Could it be the engine blockifying the textures? I'm clueless about this.

After messing around with textures for the exterior and the interior of my heli, I've discovered a few helpful things:

1. Lightening up the diffuse image helps cut down on some blockiness, and so does adding a layer of colorized noise - just enough opacity to force like-colors to not get blocked together, but not enough to harm the over all color.

2. The specular textures are definitely turning blocky in game. I've even tried the noise layer technique prior to converting, but it seems to always block up anyway. It's most noticeable when the sun is at a really obtuse angle from the surface I'm looking at. In my rvmat, the specular slider is cranked up to 130 (30 beyond the actual slider if using material editor - I learned this setting from the in-game assets).

3. I may not be creating a proper smdi.tga file in the first place. I'm sticking to unsaturated pixels for creating specular, but I've noticed a slight bit of yellow in the game asset smdi.paa files. My paa's come out just red-monochromatic. Should I be creating specular and ambient shadow images with other colors?

I'm afraid you lost me with the bit about making an rvmat just for the texture baked pieces. For a second there, I thought you were implying to re-UV map the whole thing... And would adding that value require not using the normal map in the NOHQ slot? Or... can I have two slots for NOHQ?

EDIT/UPDATE: Here's something weird: I get error messages if I pack the mod with incorrect texture directories, but if I don't mount the P: drive before starting up the game then the mod will start without textures. My .pbo file is in the E: drive. The model shows up, and it all works, but the textures aren't getting packed. If I DO mount my P: drive prior to playing the game I can see the textures... but I wonder if they are appearing blocky because of reading it from a different directory?

EDIT 2: Since last edit, I've set the options in O2/Object Builder for the texture path to "P:". This didn't help the blockiness of the _smdi texture at all, but it did help with some other issues I was having. I was previously getting error messages that textures were missing, but they would load anyway as long as P: drive was mounted. Adding that option, and omitting "\P:\" from file paths in the config.cpp allows the addon to load textures from within the PBO, thus eliminating the dependency of P: for playing the mod.

I'm still uncertain about the NOHQ stuff warlord mentioned.

Edited March 24, 2015 by ScotG