Sneaky Upgrade Editor Edition: Unofficial patches for T3Ed and friends - by snobel
snobel on 28/12/2014 at 12:57
Yes, one could even add an Alt function for the final preparation - CBT conversion and 7zip etc. (Not being a mapper myself, any suggestions as to the contents of the ExportMap.bat file are welcome...)
Judith on 28/12/2014 at 14:31
I don't have any suggestions right now, since I mostly make models and movies. I guess the greatest boost for T3FM authors would be a standalone .mlb material reader/creator/editor, preferably with a preview window. Still, I understand it's too much to ask, since it will require use of buggy Directx 8.1 libraries (otherwise the mlbs won't work ingame). Anyway, this plus some kind of .tim file converter/exporter (+ HKConvex collision function) finally would make 3dsmax 5.1 redundant. And the workflow will be much closer to something relatively simple ;)
snobel on 28/12/2014 at 17:47
Yeah, I wish I could help with those things but I would hardly know where to begin - I'm not familiar with any of the formats involved... :(
Judith on 29/12/2014 at 07:59
I can help with my user experience, file examples and testing, i.e. I believe I know most things you can do with Ion Shader in Max 5.1 (I wanted to write that I know how it works, but that's not exactly true ;) ). I can import/export material libraries, models etc. I can't do much on the programming side of things :(
snobel on 29/12/2014 at 09:18
You're welcome to give me something to think about. :p What's the simplest possible tool (as a starting point) that would be useful? Would file conversion be enough to allow you to skip the Max 5.1 step? Where does the DX8 bugginess come in?
Is there any information to be found about the .mlb and .tim file formats? I tried searching briefly but didn't find much (except there's apparently an attorney named Tim Mesh :)).
Judith on 29/12/2014 at 11:58
I'll be glad to help, give me a day or two to answer your questions thoroughly, and prepare what I know about all this stuff ;)
Also, one other thing crossed my mind: is it possible to add more texture (image) formats that would be recognized by T3ED and Flesh engine? DDS format isn't exactly wonderful to work with, first of all its compression is image-destructive. It would be great to have .png alternative for example: compression is lossless, more efficient, also allows transparency, etc.
snobel on 29/12/2014 at 16:49
Without source code it's not realistic - sorry...
Judith on 29/12/2014 at 22:18
I suspected as much, no worries. If what I do is playable someday (I'm prototyping in UDK for speed and ease of use), I'll just convert png files to dds. I've heard XnView is pretty good with that.
bikerdude on 29/12/2014 at 23:40
Quote Posted by Judith
DDS format isn't exactly wonderful to work with, first of all its compression is image-destructive.
What apps are you using to create the .DDS files and what compression levels are you using.
In TDM we pack most textures @DXT1 and almost all of the textures and DXT3 on some decals. All of the testures in TDM are of far higher res and quality than that used in T3 or T1/2 for that matter. The crucial thing is we don't pack the normals these we leave as uncompressed .TGA files.
Fyi. I use GIMP to create the .DDS files and NJOB to create the normals.
Quote Posted by Judith
I'll just convert png files to dds. I've heard XnView is pretty good with that.
Don't! XnView the qaulity is poor and will butcher your image files half the time, use Gimp instead. And when exporting to .DDS make sure 'GeneratMipMaps' is ticked.
Judith on 30/12/2014 at 00:24
Typically I use Gimp and the DDS plugin, DXT1 compression for opaque textures and DXT3 for anything that uses alpha channel. I don't compress normals (and they're huge) since every compression type messess them up. I use Gimp setting to generate mipmaps, because T3ED natively uses really low-quality mipmapping, especially for BSP. There's big difference between mipmapping on BSP and static meshes, I wonder if there's a way to even things out here. Anyway, I use Bicubic mipmap filter in Gimp, for Lanczos filter is very slow with big textures.
The thing is, everything I do now is mostly hand painted and carefully controlled in terms of color, pattern etc. I don't use stock textures or photos at all, or only to get some basic (desaturated) structure of a surface. Every texture is 2048, every object is properly unwrapped, has its medium or high-poly detail mesh, baked AOs etc. This is equivalent of Ultra insane setting ;) I will surely scale the whole thing down to 1024 or even 512 for lower-end systems, but doing it manually for several dozens of textures will be a nightmare I'd prefer to avoid ;)
Thanks for the heads-up on the NJOB, I'll try it out while tweaking normals.