Bump mapping problems, have tried many things...

dazzajay · Post by **dazzajay** » Tue Feb 21, 2006 10:01 am

ok, ive hunted around the forums here, and have only been able to find bump mapping help for halo 1, wich is of no use to me,
i opend the .dds bump map texture in photoshop, and i noticed that the only layer that wasnt black was the Alpha layer, as it had the texture, so i edited that and made it look like this to mach my 6 spoke alloys.....

then i saved it with the nvidia .dds plugin v7.83 in A8 format, as CH2R said it was A8 when i extracted it, imported and to my amazement the jeeps tyres looked like this....

so i opend the .dds that i saved to see what went wrong and to my amazement it looked like this...

so i opend my backup, and saved it again, the same way as before, and the tyres looked the same, so i had a look at the texture, and its no longer saving the alpha channel, i have tried many different .dds plugins, most just make the .dds 128 x 256, when it should be 256 x 256, the only plugin that has saved at the right sise is this v7.83, so i dont know whats going on, any ideas would be great.

dos mes · Post by **dos mes** » Tue Feb 21, 2006 10:13 am

what did you save it as exactly.

dazzajay · Post by **dazzajay** » Tue Feb 21, 2006 10:50 am

Dos Mes wrote:what did you save it as exactly.

theese are the settings on how i saved it...

---EDIT---
so i went for a reeboot, and now the plugin wont load any orignal .dds bump map texture, i get the "Could not open because of a problem with the file-format module interface.

now im getting angry with this crap, instead of just confused.

dos mes · Post by **dos mes** » Tue Feb 21, 2006 12:24 pm

Try doing Generate MIP maps that might help instead of existing mip maps.

dazzajay · Post by **dazzajay** » Tue Feb 21, 2006 12:48 pm

thats what i did first time around, to the same effect.

Talin64 · Post by **Talin64** » Tue Feb 21, 2006 2:09 pm

I am no expert but here is what is going on.
The bumpmaps use a A8L8 format.
Which is 2 channel of 8bits or 1 byte per texel.
You need 3 channels for a normalmap.
So the 3rd channel is generated at runtime by direct x
They give you x and y and since (x^2 +y^2+z^2)^.5 = 1
they can get Z.

http://download.nvidia.com/developer/Pa ... ession.pdf
look at pg 6 - 9

"If using the NVIDIA Photoshop texture tools, you should unselect the option

dazzajay · Post by **dazzajay** » Tue Feb 21, 2006 2:35 pm

thanks for the realy high tech stuff, most is kinda confusing tho...
do you know why the .dds plugin is now refusing to open fresly extracted orignal bump map textures?
should i re install the plugin? and is there a newer one than 7.83?

ok somthing has defanatly broken, ive reinstalled the .dds plugin and its still the same, .... it was opening the bump map files before, i just dont know why it wont now.

---edit---
i am now saving in A8L8 format instead of just A8, and i have unticked that box in the options...... and still the same, no bump mapping atall.

---edit---

i rolled back to .dds plugin v6.52 and it can open all the bump maps fine, it can save them fine, but they end up being scrambled when in use....

Talin64 · Post by **Talin64** » Tue Feb 21, 2006 3:49 pm

http://developer.nvidia.com/object/phot ... ugins.html
You have to convert
from A8L8 to R8G8B8 then edit and save as R8G8B8.
Then convert to A8L8 by dropping the B8 ie blue channel.
Send me the file in a pm.
I will try to make a converter

Snaku · Post by **Snaku** » Tue Feb 21, 2006 6:23 pm

If you do make a converter, could you post it for others to use, please?

dazzajay · Post by **dazzajay** » Tue Feb 21, 2006 9:28 pm

thanks dude, i have sent the pm with a link to the .zip of the files.

rossgemuend · Post by **rossgemuend** » Wed Feb 22, 2006 9:42 am

i was just gonna suggest copying the alpha channel over the rest of the channels, but I think that Talin64 has the correct method.

dazzajay · Post by **dazzajay** » Wed Feb 22, 2006 11:04 pm

rossgemuend wrote:i was just gonna suggest copying the alpha channel over the rest of the channels, but I think that Talin64 has the correct method.

i tryed that also when i was stuffing around, and it had no effect.

Talin64 · Post by **Talin64** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 7:28 am

Well I spent some time on this last night.
It turns out I was wrong, doh.
The format is a A8 dds, but it is swizzled.
Ch2r unswizzles it and saves it to a regular dds.
What I am not seeing is how your are importing it back in.
Which version of Ch2r are you using?

dazzajay · Post by **dazzajay** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 4:10 pm

just injecting in with CH2R v0.9.3 it injects all other .dds fine, its only having problems with bump maps, do i not have the right plugin or somthing?

Aequitas · Post by **Aequitas** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 4:23 am

Talin64 wrote:(x^2 +y^2+z^2)^.5 = 1

That square root is a bit redundant, 1^2 = 1..

dazzajay · Post by **dazzajay** » Sat Feb 25, 2006 2:10 am

Aequitas wrote:
Talin64 wrote:(x^2 +y^2+z^2)^.5 = 1
That square root is a bit redundant, 1^2 = 1..

um? what? please, try not to be too technical, i failed maths in 4th grade.

Talin64 · Post by **Talin64** » Sun Feb 26, 2006 5:39 pm

ok go here
for bumpmaps
http://files.halomods.com/viewtopic.php?t=48236
Bye Talin64

Jimmy65 · Post by **Jimmy65** » Mon Feb 27, 2006 12:25 pm

dazzajay wrote:
Aequitas wrote:
Talin64 wrote:(x^2 +y^2+z^2)^.5 = 1
That square root is a bit redundant, 1^2 = 1..
um? what? please, try not to be too technical, i failed maths in 4th grade.

He's not being too technical at all... because there is no square root in the problem! lol

dazzajay · Post by **dazzajay** » Wed Mar 01, 2006 11:06 pm

thanks for the plugin, i havent been online the last few days, cos the modem couldent hold sync, i will inject a bumpmap and post a image when done.

---edit--- still looks like the image up a few posts, i will make a completly new bump map and try again, will add another edit when i have done that.

ok, it failed again, so i extracted the .dds that i injected with the new plugin, and photoshop couldent open it, i got the error message "Could Not Open "C:\bumpmaps\tires.dds" Because of a problem with the file-format module interface"

could this be because of the nvidia plugin i have for photoshop? or a different reason?

Talin64 · Post by **Talin64** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 8:29 am

Do this.
Extract the image with the "Bitmap Editor" from chr vs 9.3
That will solve your header issue.
Then inject using "old Bitmap Editor" which is really the new BitmControl.dll that I rewrote. You just have to make sure that you put the new dll in the same directory as "Ch2r.exe", also rename the original as well. So you have a backup of that dll
Also please post a pic and make sure to clear your cache.