Frictional Game Wiki

<h1>DDS Texture Export</h1> <div class="level1"> </div> <h2>Overview</h2> <div class="level2"> <p> This tutorial will go through how to export a normalmap in the 3Dc format using the <a href="http://code.google.com/p/nvidia-texture-tools/" class="urlextern" title="http://code.google.com/p/nvidia-texture-tools/" rel="nofollow">NVidia Texture Tools</a>. </p> <p> The pretty much the same pattern can be used to export a diffuse, specular, etc texture, but normal map has some extra stuff so using this in this tutorial. </p> </div> <h2>Steps</h2> <div class="level2"> <p> <b>1) You texture</b><br/> Here is the texture that we want to export as a DDS. </p> <p> <a href="/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=hpl3:tutorials:texture_export01.jpg" class="media" title="hpl3:tutorials:texture_export01.jpg"><img src="/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=hpl3:tutorials:texture_export01.jpg" class="mediacenter" alt="" /></a> </p> <p> <b>2) Save as DSS</b><br/> Choose DDS as the format you want to save in. </p> <p> <a href="/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=hpl3:tutorials:texture_export02.jpg" class="media" title="hpl3:tutorials:texture_export02.jpg"><img src="/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=hpl3:tutorials:texture_export02.jpg" class="mediacenter" alt="" /></a> </p> <p> <b>3) The Save dialog</b><br/> Choose the format at the upper left of the dialog. Here we will choose 3Dc, which is the normalmap format the engine uses. For a color texture this would be DXT1 or DXT5.<br/> <em>Always</em> make sure to generate the mipmaps when saving. </p> <p> <a href="/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=hpl3:tutorials:texture_export03.jpg" class="media" title="hpl3:tutorials:texture_export03.jpg"><img src="/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=hpl3:tutorials:texture_export03.jpg" class="mediacenter" alt="" /></a> </p> <p> <b>4) Mip map filers</b><br/> The default box filter often gives subpar quality and the mipmaps, so good to choose something else to use for all images. "Catrom" is used here but there are others that work fine too. If the image has a lot of finer details it is worth to try a bit if it looks strange in-game. </p> <p> <a href="/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=hpl3:tutorials:texture_export04.jpg" class="media" title="hpl3:tutorials:texture_export04.jpg"><img src="/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=hpl3:tutorials:texture_export04.jpg" class="mediacenter" alt="" /></a> </p> <p> <b>5) Normalmap settings</b><br/> This is specific for normal maps. Simply make sure that all boxes are unchecked. </p> <p> <a href="/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=hpl3:tutorials:texture_export05.jpg" class="media" title="hpl3:tutorials:texture_export05.jpg"><img src="/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=hpl3:tutorials:texture_export05.jpg" class="mediacenter" alt="" /></a> </p> <p> <b>6) Check in the modelviewer</b><br/> Once saved and exported, check so everything looks okay in the modelviewer. Having "keylight on camera checked" makes it easier to see the normals and turning of shadows can remove some jitter that the shadowing algorithm might produce.<br/> Also make sure to turn off all texture except specular and normalmap to makes sure the normalmap looks okay. </p> <p> <a href="/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=hpl3:tutorials:texture_export06.jpg" class="media" title="hpl3:tutorials:texture_export06.jpg"><img src="/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=hpl3:tutorials:texture_export06.jpg" class="mediacenter" alt="" /></a> </p> <p> <b>7) Loading normal map</b><br/> This step and the next one is not really needed but might be good just to see it is generated properly!<br/> First, when loading the texture make sure that you load the mipmaps aswell! </p> <p> <a href="/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=hpl3:tutorials:texture_export07.jpg" class="media" title="hpl3:tutorials:texture_export07.jpg"><img src="/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=hpl3:tutorials:texture_export07.jpg" class="mediacenter" alt="" /></a> </p> <p> <b>8) The loaded image</b><br/> <em>DO NOT SAVE THIS IMAGE!</em><br/> Especially for normalmaps, the image you just loaded cannot be save.<br/> You can see in the image that all mipmaps have been generated and you can also see that the Blue channel contains (almost) no information (what is there is due to the compression technique used)! </p> <p> <a href="/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=hpl3:tutorials:texture_export08.jpg" class="media" title="hpl3:tutorials:texture_export08.jpg"><img src="/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=hpl3:tutorials:texture_export08.jpg" class="mediacenter" alt="" /></a> </p> </div>