Driven to drink by Null re-texture angst

[Agnithrax]

First off I need to thank Yokosuka-Ue for very subtly and diplomatically reminding me of rule #4 (3 being if it's your first time at fight club you have to fight, and the first 2 rules we just don't talk about,) that rule #4 being RTFM!

 

 

I've been off again, on again dabbling with re-texturing for FO3 and trying to figure out how the transparencies and how painting parts of textures invisible work in the .dds format. The alpha compressions are a whole new thing to me where I used to think I pretty much had a good handle on it and are offering lots of fun trying to figure them out. I'm new to the Paint.net that I'm using for the .dds too, but it's starting to look to me like a little more than just getting used to new software and finding the applications I want. If anyone knows a resource site that might help me find a magic pink for these raster maps that the geck will like please let me know. I usually don't need to stray far from game modders sites to figure out whats what, but here I think I need something that will give more info on how the compression and mipmapping affect the colors I'm laying down so I can tweak my palette and find where magic invisible 'pink' is lying in the spectrum.

 

Thanks for your help and input, I appreciate it.

Edited November 13, 2012 by Agnithrax

[Ranx31]

I think I can offer you some tips and general info about textures that may help you out... I've been modding textures in games for years and have been doing it in Fallout 3 as well. I've successfully changed things like posters, billboards and armor textures in FO3.

 

Transparency in Fallout 3 (and probably any game nowadays!) is stored in the alpha channel portion of the graphic file. Virtually all textures in the game store info in this channel whether there is any transparency needed or not.

 

Textures that only require the simplest yes/no type transparency use the DXT1 format. This is called 1-bit alpha (0/1)type. I suspect the game uses these types of textures for some game engine compatibility reason. Textures that don't use transparency, but need some alpha channel present, are saved and used in-game in this format.

 

Textures that need actual levels of transparency use the DXT3 or DXT5 format of .dds file. DXT3 is what I usually use when saving for FO3. I think DXT5 is supposed to have finer resolution of alpha info but I personally haven't noticed much difference.

 

As I don't use paint.net to edit graphics I can't give you any specific advice for that program but you can figure it out yourself if you start looking in any of it's help files (or Googling) related to alpha channel loading/saving.

 

I use Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 and am able to load/save .dds files by using an older Photoshop plugin for .dds files. With it, I'm easily able to tell at load time whether the texture has any included mipmaps so that I know when saving if I have to export/generate new ones. I never bother loading in mipmaps and let the plugin generate new ones when I save the file. Loading the mipmaps simply screws up the graphic you're going to be working on! By selecting the option 'Load mask from alpha channel' on the newly-loaded graphic, I'm easily able to tell whether I'll need to save in either DXT1 or DXT3 format. DXT1 types all have pure white alphas with no greyscale i.e. there's only black or white.

 

As for the 'magic pink' you're referring to I think is an older way game engines were able to implement transparency by substituting the pink in the graphic for it. I never had to bother with that sort of graphic since Grand Theft Auto - San Andreas so I'm fuzzy on details. It's an archaic format that's left over from the days when texture size and hardware capabilities were far less than they are today. The pink color was simply an on/off type of transparency anyway and wouldn't cut it these days anyway. If you want the 'magic' number for it just to satisfy your curiosity, it was, in RGB format, FF00FF (hex) or 255-0-255 (decimal).

 

So there you go... I hope this helps and good luck! :)

[Agnithrax]

Thank you lots and lots Ranx31! It's been quite some time since I found a game like FO3 worth learning how to fiddle around with, as you can tell from how out of date and off base my questions were. That null set texture in the geck just terrorized me as, as soon as I was about to give up it would creep back into my stray thoughts nagging at me and making me think 'there's gotta be a way,' and like a junkie I'd come back and pound my head against it looking for a fix of magic pink that wasn't around anymore. The alpha's and compressions are totally new for me and I appreciate your helping me get their applications straight and most of all for helping me let go of trying to short cut things and game the meshes by painting the textures invisible. Sigh, I guess I'll have to invest the time in learning nifscope and do things properly after all. Thanks again, you've helped me out a lot.