Help GRAPHIC ARTIST KNOWLEDGE

[Guppycur]

I don't know crap about alpha mip specular uv map crap, so weird things happen. When I'm swapping images into ta_opaque_o.tga I did discover I needed to also change ta_opaque_n.tga, but the thing is, I don't really know what that file is. It's some weird greyed out file, but I don't know if it's occlusion, specular, blah, blah or blah.

 

At any rate, when I get rid of the actual texture, the ta_opaque_o.tga looks great. Until I or anything else shines a light on it.

 

Then this happens.

 

 

Can one of you 3d artist guru's let me know what this is about? Thanks! It's a shadow box that follows me around, and it's REALLY bad at night with a miners helmet.

 

Same shot at night, with miners helmet on... note that the helmet doesn't light up the right half at all.

 

[JaxTeller718]

son of a bitch, you did it. I've been trying to figure out the textures thing. LOVE the new icons. I know this is off topic but I had to tell you how cool that is.

[Guppycur]

Thanks!

 

...so I've figured out the specular map controls reflections... that's the _s suffixes. In theory black means no reflections, but not in 7days... in 7days it had better be transparent.

 

Occlusions, or the _o suffix, is supposed to affect how much the texture accepts light (miners helmet), but just like the below pic only part of the texture are receiving light. What's weird is on this side of the wall, the top part gets the light. The other side of the wall, only the bottom half does. Very weird.

 

But I did get rid of the weird little box and am playing with CrazyBump settings to make it all happen. Unfortunately the way 7days has its shaders (the code that controls all this crap) there's no clear cut way except by trial and error.

 

 

Also, turning SSAO really really really is a bad idea. No clue which mapping deals with that crap. =)

[Guppycur]

Mystery solved.

 

The normal map needs an alpha channel. And something else, but I can't remember what.

 

I'll post it when I duplicate the correct steps, so others can benefit.

[Crater Creator]

SSAO is screen space ambient occlusion and, unless it’s way more sophisticated than I think it is, it’s inherently based on the geometry rather than the texture maps. In a nutshell, it’s an effect that assumes it’s darker in the corners of a shape. It’s one of the greatest advances in real time CG in my humble opinion - I always turn it on when available.

[Guppycur]

Well I spent the last week figuring out normal, occlusion, specular and diffusion, I'm not going to try and figure out what makes ssao tick (at least not for my purposes).

 

All in all, I learned a lot (begrudgingly) and will share what I learned in a tuturial vid at some point. Now that I know HOW to swap out 7day textures, it's pretty dang easy. It's just a /lot/ of little steps.

 

Hm, I'm not sure I've tested SSAO since I solved my issue though, so it may be resolved. <shrug>

[Guppycur]

So good news for SSAO people, nothing is broken. =)

 

...but honestly, I can't even tell the difference between it being on or off.

 

[Crater Creator]

The simplest way I can put it is that changing the textures shouldn't affect SSAO at all. It's not a texture thing.

[Syphon]

So, I was wondering. I wanted to replace some of the existing textures (for example trap spikes) to see if I can import a seamless texture.

Currently, a lot of objects have visible borders in textures, which makes me wonder, if there are any technical limitations and how can I replace existing object textures.

It doesn't make sense for a simple cylinder to have a non-seamless texture.

[Guppycur]

Things like spikes are a bit different because they use the uv thingie, and I've no clue where to look for that setting. But yeh you could get a seamless texture specifically made for that shape and swap it out.