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Hi been going through some of the textures and have a couple of questions.

Q.
Why do a lot of the Colourmaps _c have so much detail, isn't it just supposed to have the colour in the colour maps and the detail in the detail _de map. Having detail in the colour and detail they add a a multiplier for the colour.

With the Detailmap _de shouldn't that be greyscale to reduce file size. Yes I know you can have a an RGB but they are bigger.

Just seems that if you have colour with the detail and the detail with colour your increasing the file size for no reason.

Q.
Detail maps _de why are some of them normalized. So are purple( magenta ) so when you add them they come out purple. Am i missing something?


cheers just a couple of thoughts.

smee wrote:Hi been going through some of the textures and have a couple of questions.

Q.
Why do a lot of the Colourmaps _c have so much detail, isn't it just supposed to have the colour in the colour maps and the detail in the detail _de map. Having detail in the colour and detail they add a a multiplier for the colour.

Are you looking at the PR Textures? Many of the PR Colour Textures Matt.b and others have made are meant to be both colour and detail textures, based on a similar system to what HL2 uses. Its much easier to UV map them etc. Then just use a "null_de.dds" in the detail if you use one of these

smee wrote:With the Detailmap _de shouldn't that be greyscale to reduce file size. Yes I know you can have a an RGB but they are bigger.

Some have colour to add colour ontop of the colour layer. A good example is if you have a concrete wall, and on the texture is a cable, you dont want that cable gray otherwise it will be the same as the colour layer behind it, you want that cable red or black in the texture, so it uses its own colour

smee wrote:Q.
Detail maps _de why are some of them normalized. So are purple( magenta ) so when you add them they come out purple. Am i missing something?

are you sure your not looking at a "_deb" texture? That would be a normal texture designed to go in the NDetail Channel

smee wrote:
Q.
Detail maps _de why are some of them normalized. So are purple( magenta ) so when you add them they come out purple. Am i missing something?

_de Files have an alpha channel which controls specularity(How reflective of the bf2 sunlight.)
If you veiw the image with the alpha channel visable, it looks purple.

[R-CON]GhostDance101 wrote:_de Files have an alpha channel which controls specularity(How reflective of the bf2 sunlight.)
If you veiw the image with the alpha channel visable, it looks purple.

ahhh ye that's probably it.

If your using WTV which I think you are, Alpha is shown as default with RGB like so:



Note in the very top left it has "A R G B"

If you look under Options, you will see there is a little tick next to "Show Alpha Channel (A)", click that to turn it off / on, or press "A" on your k/b to turn off alpha and then it will look like so:



And note, in the top left it only has "R G B" now


You can also turn off RGB and turn on just A to view the alpha channel

You save bump maps and color maps as DXT1 right? for weapons

that very much depends on what shaders etc your using.

Its best to let the exporter handle the DDS formats and just make each channels, diffuse, normal, spec, transparency etc layers all as separate .PNG or .TGA etc (at least a format that keeps all the quality, not anything like .jpg) files then the exporter can put them in the right order as you can have the transparency layer in the alpha of the diffuse and spec in the alpha of the bump for example.