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View Full Version : Looking for Tut/s on creating a complete list of Texture effect files.

Flybye
06-04-2007, 06:00 AM
Hi,

I'm looking for a complete walkthough on:

1) How to create a Diffuse Color .dds
2) How to create a Specular Color .dds
3) How to create a Specular Level .dds
4) How to create a Self-Illumination .dds
5) How to create a Bump Texture .dds
6) Properly importing them into 3DS to have your final texture.

I have Photoshop CS. Converting them into .dds I believe I could probably find a tool to do so. I need them to be .dds for a game engine I will be using these textures in.

If anyone knows of a tutorial/tutorials that can help me with them, I'd appreciate it :)
Of course, feel free to give me a little write up here if you can ;) :D
EricChadwick
06-05-2007, 06:40 PM
DDS stands for DirectDrawSurface, the Photoshop plugin is here:
http://developer.nvidia.com/object/photoshop_dds_plugins.html

Which DDS formats you use depends on what the game engine supports. Ask the programmers.

If you can pack different effects into different channels of the same bitmap (diffuse in RGB, spec level in Alpha), it's a good thing because it reduces texture memory. Again, depends on if the game lets you do this.

Here we generally use DXT1 for diffuse alone, or DXT5 to put diffuse in RGB and opacity in Alpha. ARGB DDS to put normalmap in RGB and specular level in the Alpha, otherwise just RGB DDS for normalmap alone (many engines support compressed normalmaps, so you could use DXT5 or another format, ask your programmers). DXT1 for specular color, and DXT1 for emissive (same as self-illum).

Importing into Max is like any other texture format, just put them in the right places. Again, depends on the game.
Flybye
06-05-2007, 09:53 PM
Thanks for the link :)

The game I'll be importing models into (X3: Reunion) supports all the channels I mentioned.
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