Bad looking textures in .dts models

#1 Jinda,

1. What tool are you using for creating your shapes (.dts)?
2. When you export, try disabling the mipmapping feature.
3. Try using .PNG files instead. You're going to get bluring and artifacts from JPG. I'm sure you're aware of this, but it is worth trying.

If #2 works, please note that in any response you give.

Hall Of Worlds - For Gamers
EdM|GPGT

#2 Thanks for the reply Ed.
I changed the file to a .png and it did indeed help it a bit.
I was unable to find the mipmapping feature in the .dts exporter utility. (Im building this stuff in Max 7)
where is that feature? (sorry to be such a noob)
Let me know,
Jinda

Ps - I saw your scripting book on Amazon - I am working strictly as a Max/Torque artist - would your book be good for someone like me or does it focus mainly on the scripting aspects of working with Torque.
(note here: I spell Kalculus with a K!)

#3 James, what you are seeing is called "mipping" or "mip mapping" this is done for a number of reasons, but essentially it is generating a lower resolution for the texture, dependent on how far it is from the camera.

Do a forums search for mipping or mip mapping and you will find plenty of info on the subject.

#4 Does torque also do bilinear filtering? mip-mapping by itself would just make the texture more pixelated, filtering each mip map level would make the textures look blurry as well. I'm not sure if torque does filtering, just something I read about somewhere.

#5 Sean - mipmapping is pretty standard stuff,
and torque does the standard things,
such as bilinear filtering.

James - you might be running into torque's "small textures" feature,
which i recommend disabling.
As near as i can tell, it's a sort of homegrown mipmapping which operates *in addition* to mipmapping, and doesn't really get you anything except blurry textures. (We've done tests with none, "some" and 100% small textures and see no difference in framerate.)

Unfortunately disabling it requires a small change to the engine, so you'll need the source code and the ability to recompile. But if you have those, look for "areSmallTexturesActive()" and make it return false.

#6 What file would this be in areSmallTexturesActive(). Thank you.

#7 GTexManager.cc or .h

- if you want more details, post in the Private SDK-Owners forum and i can help ya out there.

#8

Quote:I was unable to find the mipmapping feature in the .dts exporter utility

IN your your user properties add one of the following lines.
MIPMAP::NO_MIPMAP -- for regular shapes
MIPMAP::NO_MIPMAP_TRANSLUCENT -- for transperant shapes
MIPMAP::BLACK_BORDER ? not sure what this does

Matt

#9 Here's a thread I started with a solution for adjusting the smallTexture value ...

www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=33400