Menu Images and Icons Posturized.

[glowplug]

I've had a couple of people say that my menu icons are just random pixels.
I use GIMP export on BC2/DXT3, No mipmaps as stated by a tutorial I can not find now - it said DXT3, no mipmpas or CTD.
This has worked fine on my last 3 NVIDIA 670, 980 and 1080 GTX.

I create icons from screen shots from NifSkope then apply the following in GIMP...

* Crop to nearest square with appropriate margin.
* Select the background, invert and feather by 5-10 pixels pending size.
* Clear the background.
* Create 2 transparent layers below.
* Put 2% by alpha menu color in the second layer.
* Merge the 2nd layer down to create 100% RGBA with 'actual' 2% menu color.
* Merge the icon layer down to create 100% Icon RGB merging through - in all 100% RGBA.

To clarify, there are no incomplete pixels using this technique - all 100% RGBA.

Each of these people are using NVIDIA cards from around 2010 and have problems icons from mods other than just mine.

[Striker879]

Do you have menu icons in just one of the menu folders or in all three (i.e. in just Textures\Menus or in Textures\Menus50 and Textures\Menus80 as well)?

 

Sounds to me like your users who are having trouble are using a texture size setting that you aren't currently supporting.

[glowplug]

Thanks for your support Striker879.

 

The latest user messaged 1900x1080 with 2010 nvidia - I'm guessing 1920x1080.

I supplied all icons in Menus, Menus50 and Menus80 for the particular mods in question.

[Striker879]

Well then so much for my idea. The texture size setting I was referring to is the one in-game, small, medium and large, but if you have an icon resource in all three folders then I don't see that having anything to do with the problem.

 

The only thing I can't say anything about is does there need to be anything different for the icons in each of the different folders ... textures stuff is the same as scripting stuff for me, way above my pay grade.

[glowplug]

Thanks for your time though. If somebody misses the Menu80 + Menu50 requirement for lower resolutions hopefully they'll find it here. For a long time I thought they were only for machines that wouldn't at least run 1024x768. I also didn't realize there would still be people trying to player Oblivion on lower.

 

The only requirement I have found is must be exported using DXT3 compression and no mipmaps or will cause CTD.

 

DirectDraw Surface was extended around Vista so at least 6 months after Oblivion was released.

The more I think about it I had a problem with a 2010 card which was the only thing new in the machine.

I vaguely remember something about a change to GIMP dds plugin and having to reinstall or update the video card driver.

 

Whether DXT3 is to avoid the later dds or another reason I have no idea.

 

One thing I have found is that 640x480 and 800x600 can have problems with the later dds.

 

Maybe somebody reading this can fill in the gaps.

[Striker879]

Drake ... where are you when we need you buddy??

 

I'm an nVidia guy myself, but retirement has put a damper on my "new hardware ways" so I make do with some pretty antiquated stuff (current card is a GTX 275 with only 896 MB VRAM running an old 270.61 version driver). I learned of the various menu folders while researching a problem with a mod that was exactly as you describe. Could have been in a tutorial on TES Alliance that the whole icon menus thing was described. I'm pretty sure in that instance simply moving copies of the icon resource that was included in the mod to the other folders was all that was required to fix things (though we're going back more than a few years here, and the old memory chips in my head will sometimes get a read error).

[DrakeTheDragon]

I haven't yet chimed in so far, because I didn't really have an idea what else could be going on here. I still have not really, mind you, but I found some more things that definitely need checking.

 

According to this CS Wiki article all icons must always be 64x64 pixels only, nothing else. I don't know what the game will do, if they are not, but chances as usual are for some it'll work while for some it won't.

Even the Menus80, Menus75 (you guys missed that it seems) and Menus50 lower size versions must still be 64x64, they say, but those just have the excess whitespace cut and made transparent or so I read.

 

They also say that MipMaps actually do not cause CTD, but you can in fact use these for automatic down-scaling and thus save the 80, 75, 50 folder versions, if it's not a replacer mod and the settings are correct.

 

The do not, however, at any point talk of issues like are reported to you.

 

You don't by chance have a screenshot or two showing the exact pixel pattern those users get? Maybe it's something else completely unrelated as well. For example who would've actually thought that random-colored pixel maps of Cyrodiil on your terrains at times would mean your shader files got messed up?

Edited December 28, 2016 by DrakeTheDragon
Missed including the link cO

[glowplug]

Thanks for the support DrakeTheDragon.

I did not know about Menus75 and I was doing Menus50 as 32x32, so there are 2 problems.

 

There has also been a problem with my worldspace maps.

I searched of 'crash' and 'ctd' but not on that page.

This makes me think that I've read or misread a post somewhere.

I only started doing maps on DXT3 no mipmaps this year, I will go back to DXT1 with mipmaps to see if this fixes the problem.

[The_Vyper]

The method you're using for creating the icons different from the method I use, and I use the same tools. Here's what I do:

 

1. Open the mesh in NifSkope and position the object the way I want it to look in the Icon.

 

2. Press PrintScreen on the keyboard.

 

3. Open GIMP and select New from the File menu.

 

4. Select an image that's the size the same as my screen resolution. (In my case, it's 1440x900)

 

5. Once the blank file opens, press Ctrl+V to paste your screenshot. (this is why you press PrintScreen in step 2)

 

6. Click on the Rectangle Select Tool and click outside the highlighted image. (If I don't do this, GIMP will move my whole image instead of opening a selection box when I try the next step. Weird, but oh well.)

 

7. Now select the part of your image you want to use as the icon. Make sure the selection box is perfectly square (you can do this by pressing & holding the Shift key while selecting the desired image portion. You can also manually set the selection box dimensions in the related section of the Toolbox.)

 

8. Click on Image and select Crop To Selection.

 

9. Go to Layer, Highlight Transparency, and select Add Alpha Channel.

 

10. Click Select By Color and click on the background color you want to get rid of.

 

11. Click on Edit and select Cut.

 

12. Now scale the image to 64x64 and save the result in DTX3 with no mipmaps.

 

That's the process I use and I haven't run into any problems (yet).

[wizardmirth]

Is there a way to get textures to show up in nifskope when those textures are in a BSA, like all vanilla textures? My objects always appear gray unless they are using loose files.

 

So I just do this in the CS. Just go to a gray area in your own dummy/hidden cell and print-scrn capture the object there...