fM Texturing Woes

[benpark]

I'm not going to get any further with the trees until I figure this out.

This is how I am getting textures into fM. The textures show up in the fM program, but not in the SE. I have just made this model to illustrate the problem. I have triple checked my testing .xml for errors, so I'm pretty certain it's something I am getting wrong in the way I am dealing with the textures in fM itself. Textures work from MS3D fine with the same model name and texture set.

Step 1: I select "Texture:New Texture"

2. I select the texture I want to use from "Open:Texture"

3.I select the "New:Material", from there I select the sub menu "Material: New Texture Layer:Color Map"

4. I select the sub menu (below Materials/Materials) "Texture:Select Texture" I then select the texture name that I had imported earlier and press "OK".

5. I now select the model part that I want textured (by selecting it's faces or clicking on it's name in the side menu). I now go to "Material/Materials" and select "Assign to selection"

I now see the textures on my model. If they aren't where I want them to be, I remap with the "Map UV cords".

I then export with the settings Stridor gave us as an .x file, and then add the model to my testing folder. I start the SE, but the textures are not showing.

I've tried setting the texture path to multiple locations (ie. PzC/Media/mods/Benpark/Trees), still nothing.

What am I missing? There are so many extra steps over MS3D for texturing!

[benpark]

re-running the MM fixes this problem with MS3D, but not fM.

Here are the files to see what is happening. I have included the "Trees" folder with the graphics files and .xml, the .ugh file and a placeholder "tree1.bmp" to drop in the map maker trees folder so that it can easily be tested on a map.

Thanks for looking. This is really getting frustrating!

[Stridor]

Are these the trees you are looking for?

(Direct from fM)

[Stridor]

Ok there were several problems with the test tree you attached, I will go through each one.

1. The animation matrix from treeD was still to be found in the X file. This needs to go (unless PC3 will support tree sway in the future - it should)

to do this:

[Stridor]

2. Your texture sizes seem a wee bit extravagent for this tree

512x512 for the branches *and* 512x512 for the bark??

Better to have just one 512x512 texture which contains both the branch and the bark and then use the UV mapper appropriately. Those with limited VRAM will thank you not to memory page them.

Rememeber video memory gets filled in n^2 blocks (depending on the video card - true for earlier hardware which PCK aims to work with)

Eg one 512x512 texture and one 64x64 texture will likely consume 1024x1024. So choose sizes carefully. The bark is simply not going to be seen up close anyway so it doesn't need 512x512 and could easily share the texture memory with the branch without loss of video quality.

[Stridor]

3. Any changes you make to the model textures or to the resource defines requires another build of the map (using the new tree), so that a new media.xml can be built. If you don't do this the map will be using old resource.xml data.

[Stridor]

4. Now go to the model tab and select each texture. You need to change the name of the path to be just the file name (eg branch04.dds) and not the whole path.

[Stridor]

5. Now select the Materials in turn and name them correctly.

Watch out for the material defines (see my early post).

Now just export X in the standard manner and it will all work AOK (at least it did for me).

I hope that helped you ben.

Keep up the good work - some of those test trees look real nice.

Regards

S.

[benpark]

Stridor, you are one smart guy. Thanks very much. This has been a crash course in 3D modeling, and you have been helping me the whole way.

The textures are just so I can see that something will show up for now. I've got to do most from scratch, or remap some from the tree[d] program (which I've been using for now). It wont be so realistic as to have every leaf be the actual one that's on the tree, but I want the trees to have the correct shape and color. Fall ones as well.

I hope to repay your problem solving with new trees soon.