Textures - Which compression format to choose?

[jtbo]

Has this been posted up yet?
http://justice8.comxa.com/rFactor/do...0tutorial.html

It had few pointers that eventually helped me around with alpha and gimp enough to actually have some effect, but my lowly skills are perhaps not enough to get most out from it, also I think that version used in page had many things rather different that what I have in my gimp version.

I have GIMP 2.7.1, I can't remember what reason it was, but I had to install dev version as 2.6 had something that made something impossible that I needed to do, it is so long ago that I really don't remember now was it even related to alpha channels, but it had something to do with either astro imagery handling or textures of rfactor, sorry that my memory is so poor these days.

There is now 2.7.4 already available, so I might upgrade to that.

I can't afford Photoshop either and ultimately I would love to use Blender for my 3D needs too, but at the moment it is quite distant dream, maybe some day.


My method to do Alpha in Gimp might be wrong one, but feel free to say if it is bad way, I try to describe it here as well as I can, it is very difficult for me however, so bare with me.

First I remove any existing alpha layer from image, I do it from layers tab, right click small image of layer and choose delete alpha channel. It must be done as if I edit existing alpha it just adds it to existing alpha and I get wrong results when alphas are piled up over each other.

Second I add layer mask by right clicking layer choosing layer mask, then choosing alpha channel.

Third I right click added layer mask and choose show mask, then I do my edits to that layer mask.

Fourth I right click layer mask from layers tab and choose apply layer mask, this creates the alpha channel to image.

I never directly edit alpha channel as I have not found it to work, or I lack skills of making that work.

Every time when I want to edit alpha channel I must redo that.

It surely is possible to hide other channels and to have only alpha channel and edit it directly, but it seem to make different results.

As I'm not graphic artist, all terms, ways, methods are unknown to me, so that makes it quite difficult to describe what I do, also it can be very wrong what I do.

One annoying effect of this edit of mine is that texture is almost invisible after applying layer mask, but it works fine in game, if I manage to make it to right level of course.

Oh and I hate alpha, but that is probably because I don't understand and I am not able, anyway maybe this gives some ideas to test and maybe you can find path that leads to desired results, if so I would love to read from it so I could learn more

[MaXyM]

I suggest to use nVidia tools to compress into DDS. There are a lot pros to do it:
- it uses CUDA, so it is faster
- has 64bit version
- it generates a lot less compression artefacts (at least comparing to photoshop plugin)
- since it is command line program, I mapped it into TotalCommander and have one click generation. Without going through additional windows.
- it converts directly from various formats (even PSD, but don't know if gimp is supported)

link

[D.Painter]

Something that will help GIMP users.
This one will give you advice on how to get and use a DDS converter for GIMP.
http://www.ehow.com/how_7343632_edit...iles-gimp.html

This one will explain use you can make and edit a Alpha channel in GIMP.
http://www.ehow.com/how_8546652_make...nels-gimp.html

Some of the ISI templates have a unsupported layer in them so GIMP nor Paintshop will open them making them useless unless you have $1500.00 for photoshop.

I plain to have them edited and uploaded for you latter. Sometime after the GT World Endurance Championship is released. One of the Nissan templates is one the isn't very user friendly but I want to check the alpha first.

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Quote from thread ( http://isiforums.net/f/showthread.ph...0488#post50488 )

i tryed DXT3 but i have the same problem.....

anyone has made ​​a working livery with Paint.net?!?

I've had a look at the 60s cars. I'm not having any issues with them.

Going on the quote above might I suggest you get GIMP. It's free and the links in post 7 on this page will help you with creating and saving a alpha channel.

I use Jasc Paintshop Pro 8 but I do have Photoshop 7. PS7 is mostly used as a DDS converter more then a painting program.

With Paintshop I've been playing around with layer Masks. I now know how to create a new alpha layer (Something that not new to me) and now add it to the Alpha channel. It's really quite simple!

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Setting files up for Build 60 new Alt skins.

rFactor2/Userdata/Player/Settings/HistoricOpenWheels/MS7_22ALT.dds
rFactor2/Userdata/Player/Settings/Meganes2009/M2009_01ALT.dds
rFactor2/Userdata/Player/Settings/FormulaRenault35s/FR35_27ALT.dds

There's no need to add the 1.0 file name in the pathway. If you do the skins want show. Why? No idea, It's the way it is.

It MUST have ALT added to the skins name. Some cars already have ALT skins. You can add other skins to the same car by adding ALT1 or ALT2 and so on.

[jtbo]

Here I did found nicest explanation of different DXT formats and why to use DDS instead of tga etc, maybe can be some use for someone in here, even it is for another game it is not difficult to think equivalent features in rFactor, modding of graphics itself is not that much different between direct-x based games at least what I have found.

http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index...uring_tutorial

[taufikp]

Here I did found nicest explanation of different DXT formats and why to use DDS instead of tga etc, maybe can be some use for someone in here, even it is for another game it is not difficult to think equivalent features in rFactor, modding of graphics itself is not that much different between direct-x based games at least what I have found.

http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index...uring_tutorial

Indeed, a very nice article, thanks a lot!