texture.tga flat to 3d viewer/help?

[baluga101]

Im not sure how to search or look for info for this, or if I am even able to explain this properly/adequately.

 

So here goes.

 

The textures Ive dumped come in a *.tga file format. However, they come in a flattened 2D plane and make it hard to determine where the edges and what not are. For example, let's say that I dumped a texture of a helmet. The helmet.tga file will be flattened out and I cannot tell where the visor is, where the top and bottom is and what the edges of the helmet are.

 

Something like this

 

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-biXy0gXVb08/T5RvyIEYgvI/AAAAAAAAAew/vtkN17KHL0M/s320/front_head_template_pete.jpg

 

but the files I get have the parts and what not placed within the panel randomly so it is hard to determine where edges, tops bottoms are.

 

So I was wondering how I could get the texture to show it in its original 3D so I know where the edges are and what and where I can edit it.

 

I hope that makes sense.

 

I tried using irFan View to load up the textures but it doesn't give me a 3D view option.. and I do have access to my Sisters Photoshop so if that has any options that would be cool too.

Edited September 13, 2015 by baluga101

[DrakeTheDragon]

The textures are not responsible to hold any 3D information about where on the actual shape which part of them is used. This information is stored inside the 3D objects found somewhere else, which only use the textures, more or less just like a layer of paint.

 

The technique is called UV Unwrapping, sometimes it's also UVW, and those letters mean like a different kind of coordinate system, like the one we know as XYZ.

 

In a nutshell the 3D geometry, so-called mesh, consists of points in the 3D space, so-called vertices, and planes span open between them, so-called polygons, in most cases only triangular ones even, connecting 3 vertices to form a plane.

The vertices contain the information about where in the 3D space the point is (XYZ), and information about where inside the 2D texture file the vertex is located (UV). (They also contain other information as well, but that's unrelated to this.)

 

UV Unwrapping now does just this. It takes the 3D geometry, breaks it apart, sometimes also cut into different sections first, and then flattens the polygons of each so all vertices end up on the same 2D plane, which the 2D texture is then projected onto.

 

What you're missing in the TGA files, as it is simply not meant to be stored inside a proprietary image file format, is the unwrapped UV grids mentioned. According to the game we're talking of these are either inside the NIF or an OBJ or whatever else file format the game uses to store its 3D objects in. They can usually be extracted with the proper editing tools and just layered over the actual texture file to show what's seen in the one picture with the distorted warped body and the blue grids layered over on the page you linked to.

 

In Blender and 3DS Max or the like, and mostly just every modeling app out there, there's also means to access, view and edit these inbuilt already. But without these, unless the structure of the unwrapped geometry is obviously deducible from the texture alone, you won't be able to know which part of the texture is to go onto which part of the mesh.

[Deleted1205226User]

To complement Drake's explanation with some illustrations:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UV_mapping

[baluga101]

Ahh that makes sense. I figured I was missing a file that had the 3D info. Ill take a look into Blender and see what I can gather from there. Thank you both for the info it helps quite a bit. If worse comes to worse, I can always take a few pics ingame of the items I want to MOD and just what is what ^_^.