Could somebody help: Textures not showing up on mod.

[zkahana]

After saving it with generated mip maps it shows on the model like this:

 

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4064/4702284718_e926a4e12b.jpg

 

It is saved as DXT5 ARGB 8 bpp | interpolated alpha

Image Option: Color map

Generated mip maps.

 

 

Erm, what am I doing wrong?

[nezroy]

After saving it with generated mip maps it shows on the model like this:

 

..snip..

 

It is saved as DXT5 ARGB 8 bpp | interpolated alpha

Image Option: Color map

Generated mip maps.

 

 

Erm, what am I doing wrong?

 

Try saving the diffuse textures as DXT1. I don't know of any armor diffuse maps that require the alpha channel and it may be causing weirdness. Only the tint/specular maps require DXT3/5.

 

The GDAs look fine, as long as you don't have any other mods that are also trying to use ID 17 for light armor variants that would conflict.

 

It is typical for a mod to not get the high/medium directories created initially. I always have to make them myself.

 

It kinda/sorta looks like it may be trying to use a different mesh (medium/heavy armor?) in your last screenshot, which is definitely odd. Are you sure the mmh/phy files for your variant are pointing at the correct meshes? Were you trying to make any mesh changes? Is that screenshot from DATool or from the toolset?

 

As an aside, I tend to avoid the DDS plugins for photoshop/gimp. I much preferred to save to TGA and then use the command line nvdxt.exe tool to create the DDS maps. I typically got much better looking textures as a result, and it's easier to communicate the necessary options. The toolset comes with nvdxt.exe located in dragon age origins\tools\ResourceBuild\Processors\. For diffuse maps you run "nvdxt.exe -quality_highest -dxt1 -file input.tga -output output.dds". You can also use the "-prescale x y" option to automatically resize the output down to the smaller LOD versions from a single large TGA source. Tint/specular maps use -dxt5 typically instead of -dxt1, and icons require "-u8888 -nomipmap" instead of -dxt1. Ultimately I bundle all this away in a .BAT file, but anyway, total digression there.

[zkahana]

Thanks for helping nezroy.

 

The phy and mmh files are correct (I checked twice). I was not trying to make a new mesh, and the screenshot was taken on DA Tool.

 

I tried saving it as DXT1 and it came out about the same. I just want to know is it necessary to edit the tint and specular maps as well? As I thought only the 0d had to be edited to change the texture? Otherwise that must have been my main mistake as I only renamed the 0t and 0s (did not editing).

 

I am getting quite frustrated and will opt to go along the route you suggest (saving as TGA and then using the nvdia tool to create the dds map). Not sure if it will be harder but I have been trying to work around this for ages and don't have the energy to deal with it anymore lol. Is there a tutorial anywhere as to how to use+save format the nvdiaexe tool? I don't want to bug you again once I run into errors (which according to Murphys Law, will ultimately happen).

[nezroy]

Thanks for helping nezroy.

 

The phy and mmh files are correct (I checked twice). I was not trying to make a new mesh, and the screenshot was taken on DA Tool.

 

I tried saving it as DXT1 and it came out about the same. I just want to know is it necessary to edit the tint and specular maps as well? As I thought only the 0d had to be edited to change the texture? Otherwise that must have been my main mistake as I only renamed the 0t and 0s (did not editing).

 

I am getting quite frustrated and will opt to go along the route you suggest (saving as TGA and then using the nvdia tool to create the dds map). Not sure if it will be harder but I have been trying to work around this for ages and don't have the energy to deal with it anymore lol. Is there a tutorial anywhere as to how to use+save format the nvdiaexe tool? I don't want to bug you again once I run into errors (which according to Murphys Law, will ultimately happen).

 

Can you post the contents of the MAO files for your variants (all 3 LODs) and also could you upload the DDS' somewhere to check out? From what I see so far I can't think of anything else that would be causing issues. DATool doesn't show specular, tint, or normal maps as far as I recall so those shouldn't have any impact to how it looks in DATool. Those things can alter the toolset/game look so a good troubleshooting option for that is to create a blank 256x256 DDS texture that is 50% gray with 50% alpha, save it as something like "flat_normals.dds" (using DXT5). Then create another 256x256 DDS texture that is all black with 0% alpha (fully transparent) and save it as "blank.dds" (using DXT5). You can then set the specular and tint maps to use the blank.dds and the normal map to use the flat_normals.dds in the MAO files for all 3 LODs. That can be a good troubleshooting thing to start with as then you are seeing only the diffuse map in the toolset/in-game without any normal mapping, specular highlights, or skin/material tinting.

 

As for nvdxt.exe, I added some info about using the nvdxt.exe tool to the wiki. It's definitely a bit more complicated (requires using the windows command prompt, which may be new territory) and it's a long shot that it would even help at all. The photoshop plugin should be able to generate correct DDS textures for this (people use it all the time) so I doubt it would really help for this specific problem. Plus if I can get a look at your DDS files I should be able to determine pretty quickly if there is something funky going on with the DDS files or if it is something else entirely.

[zkahana]

Hi Nezroy, I was hoping you would ask for that (since that would really help in identify my problems.) I didn't want to ask outright because I didn't want to inconvenience anyone. I will try to refer to the wiki but I am hoping you can point out where I went wrong with my mod. Also I will try out this troubleshooting (although I am trying to wrap my head around your instructions lol, super noob here).

 

Thank you so much for helping me out, its been a frustrating week. I bet my mistake will be something super basic and I will be kicking myself, as according to the answers I've gotten these problems shouldn't be occurring, basically I must have gone wrong somewhere.

 

I have hosted my files here Link

 

Thank you again! You're a legend Nezroy.

[nezroy]

Hi Nezroy, I was hoping you would ask for that (since that would really help in identify my problems.) I didn't want to ask outright because I didn't want to inconvenience anyone. I will try to refer to the wiki but I am hoping you can point out where I went wrong with my mod. Also I will try out this troubleshooting (although I am trying to wrap my head around your instructions lol, super noob here).

 

Thank you so much for helping me out, its been a frustrating week. I bet my mistake will be something super basic and I will be kicking myself, as according to the answers I've gotten these problems shouldn't be occurring, basically I must have gone wrong somewhere.

 

I have hosted my files here Link

 

Thank you again! You're a legend Nezroy.

 

OK, there's definitely an issue with the way the DDS files are being generated. Because I'm not too familiar with Photoshop and its DDS plugin, I can't tell you exactly what to do to fix it for your specific case. However I will explain the issue as best I can and then hopefully you can figure out what you need to do with your textures to fix it.

 

First I have to explain a bit about what the "mipmaps" are because the problem revolves around that. In a DDS texture, the full-size texture is not always the only thing stored in the file. The DDS file can also contain a bunch of mipmaps which are just reduced scale versions of the original texture. So if you have a 512x512 square texture, then the full 512x512 version will be stored in mipmap 1. Mipmap 2 will have a 256x256 version. Mipmap 3 will have a 128x128 version. And so on, cutting the size in half until the last mipmap which just has a 1x1 version. Normally you never see these mipmaps. When you save a DDS file and tell it to automatically generate the mipmaps, it is creating all of those smaller scale versions for you automatically based on the full size texture.

 

The best way to see what I'm talking about is to grab the Windows Texture Viewer tool from NVidia. This tool will let you load and view the DDS files as close to the way the game and DATool sees them as possible. It will tell you what format it is in, how many mipmaps there are, and lets you view each mipmap separately. When you open a DDS in this tool, the status bar along the bottom will show you something like "MipMap: 1/8", which means it is displaying the first of 8 mipmaps in the DDS. You can use the left and right arrow keys to change which mipmap you are looking at within the DDS. (And you can use the up and down arrow keys to go to the previous/next DDS file in the directory).

 

If you use this tool to open your diffuse textures you will see that they are very different. It looks like Photoshop has actually composited the original mipmaps from the DDS into the texture. Probably when you opened the DDS there was an option to "load mipmaps", which typically stores the additional mipmaps as separate layers (at least that's how it works with the GIMP). When you saved this, it looks like Photoshop merged all the layers together into one very wide texture. So instead of a square with just the largest texture, the texture is a big rectangle with progressively smaller versions of itself all laid out side by side (and in this case, the smaller versions are still showing the OLD textures). Further, the big custom texture is getting squished horizontally, which is part of why it shows up incorrectly. Then it's taking that huge rectangular texture and generating mipmaps out of it. It looks like this has happened at least once with the boot and glove diffuse texture and multiple times with the chest armor texture.

 

If that's still confusing, I suggest opening up some of the original diffuse textures with that WTV tool and comparing them to the ones that Photoshop is generating in your case. It should be pretty obvious what is expected and what is going wrong.

 

Now like I said I unfortunately can't say exactly how to fix it in Photoshop. Hopefully you can just get rid of all the extra layer data/loaded mipmaps, since you don't need any of that. And change the default not to load mipmaps when you load the DDS because you never really need them; all you ever want is the largest mipmap/texture to work on/look at, and then the DDS plugin always automatically re-generates the scaled down mipmaps when you save.

 

One other thing I noticed is that the pf_arm_lgtv_0dl2.dds and pf_arm_lgtv_0dl3.dds textures don't actually have your new texture in them. So once you get the issues with the mipmaps etc. figured out for the pf_arm_lgtv_0d.dds texture, then you'll want to scale it down by 1/2 and save it to the _0dl2.dds, and then down by 1/2 again and save it to the _0dl3.dds (and you want the plugin to auto-generate the mipmaps for all of these). The MAO files for the l2 and l3 levels are pointing at the full size texture (pf_arm_lgtv_0d.dds), and you'll want to change these to point at the _0dl2.dds and _0dl3.dds versions.

 

Hopefully that makes sense. If anything is unclear just let me know or PM me and I will try to explain it better.

[zkahana]

I understand where the problem started now (the loading of the image with the mip maps started the chain of mip map spawning) and I didn't create my own LOD (very smart of me). I used the texture viewer (which I have, but oddly have never used, not quite understanding its functions lol) so I can see the problems quite clearly. You have been an absolute gem, hopefully this thread will help people who have fallen into this terrible abyss of mipmap horror. I searched for days on google and couldn't find the answer to my troubles, so its bound to help someone out there. I expect to be running back at some point with some "durrr" question, but I will try my best to implement all your suggestions, I think I will be able to pull this off at some point. Its been like pulling teeth.

 

Nezroy is a champ, nuff said. Thanks!!

[nezroy]

Heh, just glad I could help sort it out. Also, I meant to say this earlier, but your custom texture looks pretty sweet so far; can't wait to see the final version of your armor!

[zkahana]

Ahhhh you are the best! It works now!

 

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4060/4706127829_be403b77d7.jpg

 

Too shiny for public consumption at the moment, but the important thing is that it works! Thank you thank you.

 

(Btw, I just noticed that you are the author of the Leliana Item Set which is my main gear for my rogue PCs, I love it so.)