TheDoctor7560 Posted January 11, 2012 Share Posted January 11, 2012 Hey! I am working on an armor mod and I am using GIMP and what I did was copy and paste a logo, specifically the Penitus Ocul. Logo to another piece of armor and it has lost a lot of its quality when I compare it in-game to the real Penitus armor. I'm am relatively new at doing these mods so please forgive me if this is a stupid question. Thanks ahead of time for any help given! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Perraine Posted January 11, 2012 Share Posted January 11, 2012 Would probably help if you posted a screen shot of what you've done so we can take a look.There are a lot of things that can affect how a texture looks in game, from Alpha mask layers to normal maps to specular maps to what resolution your trying to use ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DefaultKashou Posted January 11, 2012 Share Posted January 11, 2012 Usually .dds files are compressed in either DXT1 or DXT5 format which loses a bit of quality when saved due to the need to compress. Try saving it in the uncompressed 8.8.8 RGB format and quality should be better at the cost of a larger file size. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheDoctor7560 Posted January 11, 2012 Author Share Posted January 11, 2012 Usually .dds files are compressed in either DXT1 or DXT5 format which loses a bit of quality when saved due to the need to compress. Try saving it in the uncompressed 8.8.8 RGB format and quality should be better at the cost of a larger file size. Wow I'm such a newb at this when I didn't compress it it came out great. Is there any benefit from compressing the dds and do either of you know where I can find information on what the example_n.dds type files are and what they do? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DefaultKashou Posted January 12, 2012 Share Posted January 12, 2012 The only benefits you gain from compressing the dds is less usage on your graphics card and faster loading of the texture. Due to the texture being used for a quite rare armor compressing will not gain much of an advantage in terms of performance. The *_n.dds files are normal maps that create a more 3d effect on the texture creating more realism, the alpha channel in *_n.dds files are also the specularity mapping for the texture. Here is an example of the difference between no normal map and having a normal map. Photoshop can create normal map files but it is not that good quality. I use a program called crazy bump which creates good quality normal maps, but does not save an alpha channel to the file so it will be very shiny so I usually paste the new normal over the old one so it retains the specularity. Normal Maps need to be saved in DXT5 or 8.8.8 ARGB formats or else the specularity will not be saved. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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