Creating S3TC Textures

[Creavion]

No. At least I didn't see difference. But if you export 24bit textures from UTX, they'll be saved as 8bit pcx .

yearh, I noticed that.. well whatever.. thank you very much for this guide..

still a question... I thought my testmap would look without s3tc like this at the end...

AS-Mazon
http://www.abload.de/image.php?img=mazon6tw.jpg

ok.. I made an other test.. The point is moot

[Diehard]

Havnt tested it, but this sounds like a very cool tool, one that should have been made years ago.


Nice work Raven
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[Raven]

Tnx. New version has help file included, which explains how to import S3TC textures. I put there also sample setup (with remark that you're the author):

2 - normal, 256 - S3TC
4 - normal, 256 - S3TC
8 - normal, 256 - S3TC
16 - normal, 256 - S3TC
32 - normal, 256/512 - S3TC
64 - normal, 512 - S3TC
128 - normal, 1024 - S3TC
256 - normal, 2048/4096 - S3TC
512 - normal, 4096 - S3TC

Hope you don't mind.

[Diehard]

Lol, was thinking what the hell is he talking about ? ? ? , i aint made anything, but you refered to the calculation between normal and S3TC

Yeah its fine with me


Though you might wanna use only the Low End specifications. The reason is that the High End really is super high end and stresses almost any videocard to the very limit.

The Low End specification makes it possible to run it with the bigger part of all videocards without any real problems. And since people using this tool only can make oné package that fits all, you might concider the Low End specs.


After all, if people create too large textures than they might render themselves useless due to the incredible high videocard specifications. And keep in mind that the Low End specifications still offer super cool high resolution !

If i were you keep it on the safe side.........


And on a third note, i think its still under debate if the UT merger really makes S3TC textures to begin with. It adds the 24 bit textures alright, but to me its still unclear if those really are DXT compressed. If it adds them uncompressed than the quality is higher than true S3TC but i wil lack the compression which is what it makes possible to add large textures with less drain on the videocard.


In all case you might wanna stick to the safe sided Low End.
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[Raven]

low-end specs are half of high-end ?? Ok added to the help file.

[Creavion]

Ok, I noticed some differences between the 24 bit imports and the originals, most larger textures have less colors. There seems to be a absolute color-limit for the ued with 24 bit textures.

[Diehard]

low-end specs are half of high-end ?? Ok added to the help file.

No its more they are cut on areas where they would go cause videolag. Most textures are limited to 1024 instead 2048 But 1024 x 2048 remains while 2048 x 2048 only should be used by textures that realy, really need it.

Same goes for animation, they never exceed 512 while High End its 1024, which means Low End in this case is a quarter from High End versions.
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[Creavion]

Uhm what, does it mean, it depends from my videocard or what?

[Az]

If the video card can't render s3tc textures they'll look like that in game, corrupted black and white. It seems that instead of displaying the proper texture the render tries to display the binary code of the texture file, funny I once got that as a result of forcing s3tc textures in software mode, or was it glide?

It's possible to force s3tc by making a package with 24bits textures but without 8bits counterparts. That'll make map incompatible with old video cards and/or players with UseS3tc=false.

The weirdest thing about s3tc is this: you make custom compressed textures by using that UCC mergedxt command, but the ED itself doesn't support compressed textures for mapping...

UED has a slight bug: it cannot import more than 1 - 20 textures at once, for some reason if you try to import a long list of textures in one click it'll end up importing none.

I think 4096 x 4096 textures should be avoided, many 64mb - 128mb video cards are capped at 2048 x 2048.

[Diehard]

Sorry Creavion, i didnt see you posted in between my post and Ravens post, my above post was a reaction to Ravens post and not to yours, i did edit my post and added a quote from Raven to it(which is what one always should do , my bad.
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[Creavion]

I converted ArboreaArchi




not that much differences

[Diehard]

not that much differences

You should also post the original picture as reference, eg the picture in the last screenshot.
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[Creavion]

not that much differences

You should also post the original picture as reference, eg the picture in the last screenshot.
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Not really necessary, I know the reason, I mean, most textures of that package have only a resolution of 512 x 512 pixel, so I dont wonder about that small difference. But I did set in both versions the original detail textures and all highres textures got macros as well...
Whatever...



btw, the DL Link
http://files.filefront.com/Arborearar/; ... einfo.html

[Darkon]

Sorry, but I just like the first pic better.. looks smoother..

[Creavion]

Sorry, but I just like the first pic better.. looks smoother..

hmm I dont know, but this with the detail and macro textures doesnt seem to work...