Yes, for TGA textures, just flip them vertically. If you have Photoshop, though... I strongly suggest that you use DDS textures- get the DDS plugins for Photoshop from nVidia's website (www.nvidia.com). DDS is much more flexible for FL texturing, supports mipmaps and compression (which makes a BIG difference in the memory needed for the textures)... and doesn't need to be flipped.

Argh the Nvidia DDS tools work with paintshop pro too! there is a directory you need to create under psp called plugins or something..Instructions and utilities are available here

I may have another question in a bit, I just have to update the cmp file first.

Okay, new problem: I converted a file to dds, it shows up fine in milkshape, but is just a solid color in freelancer. I used the one from a texture pack, brass-2c.tga, and saved it as a dds file. The mat exported compiled it into the file properly too.

Here's a pic of the ship in game:
Image Link, Click Here

Here's the texture in question (note it's been saved as a gif so I can upload it):


So how come the texture isn't showing up properly??

BTW the texture has been assinged on the dark grey part of the wings. The wings go green, white, then greyish.


Linked to image - Para

Edited by - AluminumHaste on 4/28/2005 7:39:25 PM

Edited by - parabolix on 4/29/2005 5:53:32 PM

Read Kasdian's Texture Overhaul Guide for the basics on working with DDS- it'll tell you how to set up your textures using fool-proof settings.

What I can tell you right now, though, is that I've been experimenting, and I've found that the FL engine supports a lot of the weirder DDS modes. You can get TGA quality without TGA size, I've found... in the case of my H-Fuel Tanker, I made a 2048X texture that's about 1MB in size... try doing that with TGA

Sigghhhh, I was just hoping it wouldn't be this annoying to get textures working right.
That's interesting about the dds thing though.
What I wanted to do was UV map the ship, and create a giant texture (or two) to wrap around the ship.

Okay, it's still not working. I followed the tutorial and even redid the texture and even recreated the mat file. Still not working.

Can someone try and get it to work?? I can give you all the relevant files to.
Just email me at: [email protected]

I'm at my wits end here. According to all the help I've gotten it should be working.

Um... is the image a multiple of 2? I mean is it 128x128, 256x256, or 512x512 etc? That can cause some goofy problems too...

JohnHawke
C-in-C Wing Commander-->Freelancer Project
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: here

Well, I'm not that dumb. It is 512x512.
Anyways I noticed something interesting when viewing the mat file in the utf editor.
Here's a pic of the mat file:


Now look at the hex string: the second last number is 07.

In the cv_ships.mat file, all the dds files have 06 as the second last number, no matter what size the texture is, pixel or bits.

Could this be a problem??

It could be. Set your mipmap levels to 0 and re-export your DDS textures. Really, I'm rather surprised this is giving you so much trouble- feel free to email the MS3D and DDS files if you're still confused- I'll take a look

Okay, I redid every texture for the ship as dds files, no mipmaps, and the DX1 algorithm.

It sorta worked. The texture on top circled in red and the other part circled in red are all the same texture, but for some reason it's not applying it correctly.
Should I apply the texurtes in milkshape before or after I scale the ship??

The wings one is 1024x1024. It's not showing up at all.

Image link - Click Here

edit: linked to the image, large image distorted the dimensions of the page - para

Edited by - parabolix on 4/29/2005 5:51:41 PM

have you smoothed all faces? just throwing that out there.

I decided to help Aluminum get it fixed. Here is the resulting model- I did the texturemap as a single uvmap, instead of using the original tiles, which hopefully Aluminum will agree looks spiffy when he wakes up and finds it in his email You can't see it yet, because I haven't put it into the game engine, but the green areas (and there are some pink areas at the rear) are glowmapped, and will be looking super-spiffy in the game engine. I'm planning to put this puppy into my mod release- I've decided that the Farmer's Alliance needs a new ride, and this looks vaguely Kusari-ish... sort've...

Please don't deluge me with "fix this model" requests, just because I did it this once- AluminumHaste took a lot've time trying to fix the errors with the model (there were a number of serious issues with the model's UVs and Groups) before I decided to take this on, and the raw geometry was too nice to go to waste.




Edited by - Argh on 5/1/2005 1:30:12 AM

And here's the final version. Aren't glow-maps cool?

Nice ship.

Hmmm, I've got another idea for a new ship. Should be ready to be textured in a few hours. I'll get it started tonight and see where it goes. Her Argh, when you said I'd have to convert it to meshes or something like that, if I were to create my next project with boolean's from the box (like in the ship creating tutorial), how would I convert it so that I wouldn't have this problem??

And what would your suggestion be for modeler?? I know you said Rhino, but is there anything else??

Edited by - AluminumHaste on 5/1/2005 9:17:34 PM