TS 7.6 supports BMP and TGA, but not the PIC format native to BZII. Are there any advantages to use TGA over BMP?
Also, other then file size should I use 256 color, 16 bit, or 24 bit format? The reason I ask is that 16 kb is half the file size as 24 bit BMPs and 256 bit half the size of 16 bit. Been working on skinning stuff lately, but still need to figure out how to use layers and understand how to do multiple layer textures. I have been working with Paint.Net as it supports this and deems a bit easier to use then GIMP. Tanks BNG.
.PNG is also supported by BZ2.
If it doesn't support PNG, go with TGA (smaller file size)
Conventionally, BMPs are pure images, and TGAs are used in bz2 because of their ability to have alpha channels. Same with pics, but .pics are smaller format i think.
I use PICs :-p
Doesn't matter once you make them into bz2dxt files though.
BMP doesnt use any compression, so the file sizes are bigger, and it doesnt support transparancy. The only advantage it has is that everything can edit BMP files. That said, I would not recommend this format.
TGA uses lossless compression, but does not use transparency.
Softimage PIC uses lossless compression and supports transparency, but not all image editors can properly open or save it.
PNG has rather good lossless compression, it supports transparency, and is compatible with almost every image editing program -- but models with PNG textures do not work in 1.2 or earlier.
I'd say go with any of the 3 latter choices -- depending on your needs.
Targa (.tga) files definitely do support transparency. That's the standard file format at work for all our game assets. I can't recall if 1.0-1.2 could read targas w/ transparency correctly, but 1.3pb4/4a definitely ought to.
-- GSH
Correction (though I may be totally wrong):
TGA supports Alpha maps, which games use to generate transparency, but when I have transparency in a file that I am saving to TGA, the editor warns that all transparency will be lost.
Transparency *is* an alpha map. If whatever program you are using cannot save the transparency of something like, say, a PNG, then you need a better program...
There are two ways of representing alpha, either as a secondary grayscale texture to another (a mask), or as a 4th byte in the RGB (making it RGBA or ARGB or whatever). They are functionally identical.
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XNview cannot (strangely) open .png files.
It can however open .TGA and .PIC files and output them to another format which is useful. PNG is probably best (smaller file size too), but im using TGA as im more familiar with it... and they do support transparency, as do .pic files.
Ive yet to find an image editor that will edit .pic files properly. i think its a softimage thing...
And i cant be bothered with DXTBZ2 textures. they seem to have caused more problems that solutions to be honest, im not even going to bother including them in my mod... people will jsut have to suffer a larger download size thats all...
Quote from: OvermindDL1 on September 29, 2008, 07:45:41 AM
There are two ways of representing alpha, either as a secondary grayscale texture to another (a mask), or as a 4th byte in the RGB (making it RGBA or ARGB or whatever). They are functionally identical.
PNG can have both of these at the same time, making it rather confusing to work with (I get this often when I use multiple renders that were done as PNGs in a new larger PNG.
XNView can open PNG files just fine. In fact it has one of the best PNG compressors beating out every other known program. I always use it to compress to PNG and it always results in a smaller filesize then other apps I have.
Quote from: Nielk1 on September 29, 2008, 02:04:55 PM
PNG can have both of these at the same time, making it rather confusing to work with (I get this often when I use multiple renders that were done as PNGs in a new larger PNG.
And going through the normal PNG API, you do not see the difference (at least I never have).
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.dxtbz2....
I use .pic and .png to make em.
.pic seems to be better at alpha channels.
.png is better at transparency's.
am i the only person who has a strange loathing for dxtbz2 type?
okay slightly confused, someone explain in laymans terms the difference between alpha and transparency?
Quoteam i the only person who has a strange loathing for dxtbz2 type?
You probably had hardware issues. They have always worked fine for me and are great for automatic in game quality adjustment, just what bz2 needed.
Quoteokay slightly confused, someone explain in laymans terms the difference between alpha and transparency?
Alpha channels are created using a mask, they work on any colour in texture, very useful for putting illuminated areas on unit skins.
Also used in effects such as smoke.tga where black shades need to be shown
use with "srcalpha invsrcalpha modulatealpha" for effects.
Transparencys do not use masks they are usually made by not drawing one colour such as black use with "one one modulate" to hide all the black bits in effects.
PNG's can be made with transparent areas (not a colour at all) most other formats cannot do this.
As Om said technically there is not much difference, but when actually making and applying the textures the two techniques produce different results.
Using photoshop I have noticed that alphachannels(masks) on png's do not always work well once converted to dxtbz2, so I use .pic to make these and convert them to dxtbz2.
Do not use .bmp ingame, they are huge! and will impare game performance if it has to draw allot of them.
i use .tga's in everything, textures for models, effects etc. just be cause it works.
is it worth me swapping them all to .png for a performance difference? or changing effects sprites to dxtbz2?
For note, an "Alpha Channel" is the the Alpha byte in an RGBA/ARGB set. And as stated, a mask is just a black and white image that can be applied to an image to generate the alpha channel. The "Transparency" you talked about is an alpha channel. An alpha channel and a mask are two different things, but function identically. If anything treats them different then they are poor implementations. Since BZ2 uses Freeimage now (I think) then it should handle any and all equally. As for the dxtbz2 converter, it is a very simple program that just does a pretty simple RGBA/ARGB mapping to the dxts format, so yea, it probably ignores 'separate' masks. It should really always be as another channel though.
PNGs are generally better in all cases until you get in game, upon which the dxtbz2 format is best since it is optimized for the engine.
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So TGA seems to be the best overall choice as all of my paint programs: Paint.Net, and GIMP support them both. As well as Truespace and Threed. I still do most of my modeling for BZII 1.2, so PNG is out for that right? Does that also mean that dxtbz2 format is out for 1.2 as well?
I've been working with layers in Paint.net and sort of found out how to work with them by adding new ones as well as duplicating layers as well. I guess that it'll just take some time to figure something workable out. Also figured out that setting the transparency for each layer is required to actually blend the different layers in the paint workspace. I've got a lot of work ahead to make sense of it all.
TGA due to alpha channels. And the smaller file size.
Though if on 1.3 use PNG
dxtbz2 is not supported on bzII 1.2 BNG, that was an added implementation from pb3 and upwards i think...
1.3 also supports .jpeg should you wanna use it lol. i dont like that format though, it seems to cause problems...
JPEGS suck - artifacts are a major problem and the rest. If you want it to look decent the file size can be pretty bad compared to PNG etc.
PNGs seriously rule - and if you do it right they're the same size as .jpg if not smaller as well as the alpha transparency.
Of course IE fails hard with them the last time I bothered checking - not that it doesn't fail at most things - so there is an issue with using them on websites (rounded corners etc) but you can get CSS that does that.
Man I'm good at bending the topic
*shuts up*
Actually the two latest version of IE (7 and 8beta) handle PNG's far better now (finally, only ten+ years out of date).
For rounded corners, CSS is still the 'correct' way to go though, much less bandwidth required.
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Oh so they finally support PNG properly? Took them long enough...
Does it still crash all the time? IE7 does at school...
IE7 never crashes here unless something goes runaway; in which case its the site doing something wrong.
QuoteDoes it still crash all the time? IE7 does at school...
Schools can't afford system administrators, nobody updates the systems...nobody who knew how to would want to do it without the pay cheque... nobody's gonna let the pupils do it...
Quote from: mrtwosheds on October 04, 2008, 05:27:16 AM
Schools can't afford system administrators, nobody updates the systems...nobody who knew how to would want to do it without the pay cheque... nobody's gonna let the pupils do it...
not at all. my old school had a system administrator (a tema of infact). and they upgraded to XP as soon as it came out.
My old high school from years past had students run the IT section, as such the computers actually ran quite well. Of course this was back when Quake was the 'new game' with its own hidden section on the network. :P
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Yeah we have an IT 'team' too and they seem quite competent. Most of them want to sort things out but they're told not to. For example the poor ass login system that I get admit rights through every day... If I want it I have access to anything. I never DO anything as I actually like the school but they really should do something about it... A very easy way to get suedo-admin is to pull the ethernet cable out as you click login. It logs you into the user of that single machine - not a networked user. So it basically behaves as though its your PC.
Although I had to teach the teachers how to use Flash so that they could teach it. I should have asked to get payed! I gotta say only 1 IT teacher in the school knows vaguely what they are talking about.
If I ever have children and if any of their teachers are as inept as many of mine were, I am going to be very noisy to the school about fixing things. Will also be noisy if they try to teach my children at a lower level then what they are capable of (no, I do not mean press them hard, but like when I was in grade school I was always bored out of my mind because the teachers were always teaching stupidity, repeating a thousand times, etc... not actually teaching anything, they just wanted to get through the day, or the other kids were mentally retarded, or something). I am certain I would be a great teacher if I ever taught (and much of my family has encouraged that I do, most of them are teachers too), and homeschooling would definitely be a lot better for their knowledge (although that hits their social skills then, a fine balance it seems) if I taught them.
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Put it this way - I'm doing a post 16 course on ICT. We are making websites. Ok.
However, we have been told to do it in microsoft word as dreamweaver is 'too hard'
I wrote it in notepad and added any tweaks in dreamweaver.
16 years old. And we are told to do it in WORD?! EH?! Have you SEEN that source code?! Not to mention it looks like a dog vomited it up. My god... How can it be a qualification (A level, age 16-18) if you're making websites in bloody word.
And yes, in GCSE (age 14-16) we basically made very crap spreadsheets (joy) and then we had to screenshot EVERYTHING and wrote about it all. I mean we had to screenshot ourselves SAVING the document and explaining the saving process. That is just so patronizing I nearly cried.
But is it just me? Only 2 other people have similar abilities as me. I mean, its that bad people don't even know any keyboard shortcuts and are dumbfounded with ctrl+s, alt-f4, the windows key and arrow keys. Any 3d models and they go all glassy eyed, any flash interfaces or animations and their jaws just drop. Mention a proxy server and they zone out, try to explain hardware and they may as well faint. Come ON guys this is simple stuff.
Try showing them some c++!
I've never looked at that and wouldn't claim to know it :P
But considering they gasp, open-mouthed at basic HTML I think C++ would have the desired effect...*just*
Well if you need some sample code, just ask; perhaps some complex meta-template crap that even I hate? :P
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I'll bare that in mind when the occasion arises! :P
Can several different TGA's be applied to the model at the same time?
When I save an X model file now I export it directly to my BNG Assets folder under the addon folder in BZII along with the texture files, and as a result my models have a texture on them already when I convert them using Threed to make the XSI.
Before, I used to have to copy the textures to my addon folder otherwise my models always appeared bright white and untextured. I use the old Truespace X exporter to export the textures along with the model geometry from Truespace 7.6, and it seems to work very well. There's also an export setting to convert the textures from one format to another and another setting to resize it to the next closest 2^size which BZII requires.
I believe I heard it has to render once per texture so you are increasing teh render time when using more than one texture. No issue on modern computers.
Actually texture rendering is still the slowest of the rending parts of the computer due to the large amount of data that needs to be transferred. It is *much* better to have a single larger texture that multiple unit types use then multiple smaller textures that each use or even each using more then one is just horrible (although a single large texture is still wasted if the units that use parts of it are never on screen at the same time...).
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I guess I need to get off my tail and learn how to unwrap properly so I can get away from using multiple texture files.