Shared normal maps

[tungol]

According to the CS Wiki, it should be possible to get multiple textures to use the same normal map. I've seen other modders do this. I've got a little retex job of the SI tunics that I wanted to share, but with a n-map for all it comes to 104M!. I can just about cut that in half if I can share the n-maps.

 

Say I've got this: SIMshirtRdBuGd, SIMshirtRdBuGd_n. That works fine, of course.

So I tried: SIMshirt_RdBuGd, SIMshirt_n. I get a hollow man.

Likewise with SIMshirt_01, SIMshirt_n.

 

I KNOW this can be done; I've seen it! What's the trick?

Is there a conflict with other file names in the directory? Because there's lots of names like SIMshirtYwWt in there, but the normal maps are all in the format SIMShirtYwWt_n.

 

Thanks very much for the help!

[Vagrant0]

The trick comes from file naming. Some of the normal SI clothes make use of this. Take for example the Dementia Finery. There is a standard set of textures, finery.dds and finery_n.dds. Then there are two more texture files for the other two colors finery_red.dds and finery_purple.dds. It works because the engine only reads the part before the underscore for determining what the normal/glow maps are for that mesh, while the actual mesh can use the whole name for the actual texturing. I don't even think you need an isolated name for this to work. For instance you could have just armor_n.dds, armor_black.dds, armor_white.dds, armor_gold.dds, and it would work fine. Doing this not only reduces the upload size, but also reduces the strain on a videocard because the _n map is only being loaded once for all variations of that object.

 

You may also want to considder making the normal or glow maps smaller than the texture, 512x512 normal map for a 1024x1024 texture. Often you don't need that fine of detail for normal and glow maps, and doing this can save some significant file size and videocard load.

[tungol]

Thanks Vagrant0.

Don't know what I was doing wrong. I've been more methodical this time, and its working just as it ought. (Maybe I was more careful in the naming, too).

Well, if I can finish up the pants, maybe I can have this uploaded before bedtime.

Thanks again!