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Textures displaying black ingame


dmw88

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I have some textures that are working perfectly fine in DarkRadiant, but when I load the map up ingame I end up with black textures. As far as I can tell I have all the files where they belong - the dds in the appropriate dds folder and the _ed.jpg and _local.tga files where they belong. I see them as I'd expect in the material browser and the camera view in the editor, yet when I start playing they all appear as solid black, like the 'shader not found' DR default material. Does anyone have any idea why this would occur?

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That sounds like a problem with normalmaps, which DR doesn't display. Try commenting them out and see if it works.

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To clarify, DR does not display normal maps in the default (full bright) textured view, but it does display them in the lighting view.

 

Do you see any noticeable difference between the texture rendering in DR's textured view versus lighting view? This might cast more light (lol) on Sprinheel's suggestion that it is a problem with normal maps.

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You could also call up the console and see if there are any warnings about missing textures.

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If it's a missing texture issue, there should be a "Warning: X texture not found" warning. If there's not, then I'm not sure what the problem might be.

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Yeah, I'm not getting a missing texture. This is very disheartening. Is it maybe a problem with the DDS encoding? That's about all I can think of. I saved it with the Photoshop nvidia dds plugin, using the encoding listed on the wiki, so it seems unlikely. I don't know at this point. Very disheartening.

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Additionally, I am having this problem in a few spots on my map, with random holes in some of my structures. They are all triangular in shape. Any ideas on what would be causing this?

 

Edit: for some reason the image didn't attach.

 

post-38382-0-78165500-1549436149_thumb.jpg

Edited by dmw88
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Yeah, I'm not getting a missing texture. This is very disheartening. Is it maybe a problem with the DDS encoding? That's about all I can think of. I saved it with the Photoshop nvidia dds plugin, using the encoding listed on the wiki, so it seems unlikely. I don't know at this point. Very disheartening.

 

You can always use .tga and start converting to .dds once you're done with the map.

 

 

Additionally, I am having this problem in a few spots on my map, with random holes in some of my structures. They are all triangular in shape. Any ideas on what would be causing this?

 

That looks like the engine precision problem with BSP, but that should be fixed in 2.07.

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You can always use .tga and start converting to .dds once you're done with the map.

 

That's what I would do too. DDS is for reducing the size of your final mission package, but there is not much benefit in using it while you are still developing the map and its textures. I would stick to TGA and then do the conversion to DDS once you are ready to start distributing the package.

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If I were to use .tga files, where do I put those (as opposed to the corresponding .dds)? Do I need to make changes to the .mtr file to let the game know to look for the .tga?

 

Edit: regarding the holes in the surfaces, I will updare to 2.07 tonight and see if that helps.

Edited by dmw88
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If I were to use .tga files, where do I put those (as opposed to the corresponding .dds)? Do I need to make changes to the .mtr file to let the game know to look for the .tga?

 

Tga textures go to yourmissionfolder/textures/.../ while dds textures go to yourmissionfolder/dds/textures/.../. You have to maintain the same folder structure in both to make it work. Materials need to have paths starting from textures/.../, not dds/textures/.../. If you did everything correctly, the engine will prioritize dds textures over tgas anyway (you don't have to delete tgas to see dds in effect). You can check it by looking at memory use with r_showprimitives command.

 

Do update to 2.07 or install it from scratch, if you encounter problems. 2.07 has many important fixes to bugs introduced with 2.06, there's no reason not to update :)

Edited by Judith
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If I were to use .tga files, where do I put those (as opposed to the corresponding .dds)? Do I need to make changes to the .mtr file to let the game know to look for the .tga?

 

 

If you omit the extension from the textures path in the material the engine will still look in the textures folder for the correct texture, if i'm not mistaken the priority is, first search for a .dds file in the dds folder, if none exist search in the textures folder for TGA, if none exist search for JPG (never but never use jpg for normal textures only for editor textures), if no texture found show a black default texture.

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You can simplify that to "never use .jpg at all". With even a slightly older hardware being so much more powerful than the PCs used for Doom 3 editing back in the day, you can save tons of time by just using the diffuse texture in qer_editorimage slot.

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You can simplify that to "never use .jpg at all". With even a slightly older hardware being so much more powerful than the PCs used for Doom 3 editing back in the day, you can save tons of time by just using the diffuse texture in qer_editorimage slot.

 

Yes is true you save time by just using the .tga but is good to know that the jpg textures were not used on the editor, by idSoftware only to save performance, at least I don't think that was the primary reason, they were also used by them because, one the textures are smaller so the editor opens them faster, other the editor textures or qer_editorimages they used for the most part are really a representation of the diffuse texture, mixed with the normal map, this was made to represent more or less, what the texture looked like with the normal map on when looking at it on the Media browser, is done really because the Doom 3 diffuse textures are just flat colors with the detail coming through only from the normal map. Unlike TDM where many diffuse textures have detail even with a flat normal.

 

Btw forgot to say, my warning about not using jpegs was also because one they don't support alpha and second they can sometimes crash the engine, when used as diffuse textures, I had idtech 4 crash on me sometimes because of that, why that happens with some jpegs and not others I don't know.

Edited by HMart
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Do update to 2.07 or install it from scratch, if you encounter problems. 2.07 has many important fixes to bugs introduced with 2.06, there's no reason not to update :)

No reason except my horrible connection speed and desire to play and map rather than do something else while it updates :)

 

Edit: if I were to zip my fm folder would anyone be willing to test my textures and look at my .mtr to see if they spot an issue?

 

Also, is it nornal for my textures to continue to show up in the DR material list browser when I am working on other FMs (but with DR not being able to find the images)?

Edited by dmw88
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Okay, with Gimp you need to have the Generate mipmaps option enabled, always. You can use default values everywhere else, but mipmaps generation has to be on.

You just solved my problem without even trying! It was the mipmaps! You have no idea how happy this makes me, it took me more than a week to resolve this. Thank you so much.

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Yes is true you save time by just using the .tga but is good to know that the jpg textures were not used on the editor, by idSoftware only to save performance, at least I don't think that was the primary reason, they were also used by them because, one the textures are smaller so the editor opens them faster, other the editor textures or qer_editorimages they used for the most part are really a representation of the diffuse texture, mixed with the normal map, this was made to represent more or less, what the texture looked like with the normal map on when looking at it on the Media browser, is done really because the Doom 3 diffuse textures are just flat colors with the detail coming through only from the normal map. Unlike TDM where many diffuse textures have detail even with a flat normal.

 

Btw forgot to say, my warning about not using jpegs was also because one they don't support alpha and second they can sometimes crash the engine, when used as diffuse textures, I had idtech 4 crash on me sometimes because of that, why that happens with some jpegs and not others I don't know.

 

It does take longer to open a mission with 2k tga qer_editorimage textures, but in my case it's like 6-8 seconds. It's much faster with dds, like 2 seconds, but in both cases it's practically negligible. Maybe id used jpgs as some sort of final preview thumbnails, as there's no material preview in browser (only in perspective lit mode), but it's way too time consuming to do that. Maybe id used some normalmap effects separately for Doom 3 sci-fi environments, but it's rarely the case with TDM assets. At least my diffuse textures usually have both colors and some surface texture, baked AO details, etc. All the stuff that is proved to work well with non-PBR engines, and supports the lighting and shading.

 

 

You just solved my problem without even trying! It was the mipmaps! You have no idea how happy this makes me, it took me more than a week to resolve this. Thank you so much.

 

Glad you solved the problem. I also tried the Compressonator for saving dds, but I think it's better to stay away from it, as it's super slow. Gimp saves dds files with mipmaps generated with highest quality filter (Kaiser) twice as fast than The Compressonator using the lowest quality filter (Box).

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Now that we have the engine source, I wonder if it would be more friendly to mappers if the game could simply load DDS textures from the textures directory, rather than having to have a mirrored directory structure in the dds/textures directory? Of course the option to have a mirrored dds directory should still exist in case mappers want to distribute both uncompressed and compressed textures, but I guess most people are just using DDS files by themselves, in which case having the two directories doesn't really add much value.

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That would be great. Btw. that already works for cubemaps, you don't have to store them in env folder in main directory, you might as well use something like textures/cubemaps/ etc.

 

Btw forgot to say, my warning about not using jpegs was also because one they don't support alpha and second they can sometimes crash the engine, when used as diffuse textures, I had idtech 4 crash on me sometimes because of that, why that happens with some jpegs and not others I don't know.

 

In general you should never ever use jpegs, pngs and such with game engines, as their compression algorithms are not compatible. Tgas are good because they work well with texture memory, dds is good because it's how video cards read images and textures, it's a native format to them. And by generating mip maps in dds you're increasing performance and optimise vram use.

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Now that we have the engine source, I wonder if it would be more friendly to mappers if the game could simply load DDS textures from the textures directory, rather than having to have a mirrored directory structure in the dds/textures directory? Of course the option to have a mirrored dds directory should still exist in case mappers want to distribute both uncompressed and compressed textures, but I guess most people are just using DDS files by themselves, in which case having the two directories doesn't really add much value.

If this is potentially going to be looked into, maybe this limit (assuming it still exists) can be lifted...? --> http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/8747-tweaks-to-frob-highlight/page-8?do=findComment&comment=185663

 

 

You cannot have DDS files more than 5 folders deep (you're having 6 levels) - D3 just doesn't want that, only the id people know why this unfortunate limit is there in the first place.

Some things I'm repeatedly thinking about...

 

- louder scream when you're dying

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  • 1 year later...

I'm also having the problem of textures not being found. I've been reading and messing with this for a week before bothering the community, but I'm stumped.

I have what I believe to be the correct file structure, the materials file looks correct, but whether I use TGA or DDS images, I have either a black brush or a blue 'no shader', respectively. The only thing visible is `oh_ed.jpg' in DarkRadiant.

My images are being processed through Gimp. I am using mipmaps, I've tried dxt1 and dxt3, no RLE, origin is bottom left, they are  to the power of 2, etc.

The normalmap is visible if I use the DDS (but there's no diffuse image), and if I uncomment the DDS in order to force TGA, then the brush shows up flat-black in the game and DR's full-light view.

There is always a warning or two about missing images no matter what I try when I run dmap, eg: WARNING:Couldn't load image: textures/darkmod/map_specific/oh/oh
On a sidenote: When it's said to put a copy of the textures in the main Darkmod folder, I've tried putting the textures in as a PK4. 'tdm_textures_oh.pk4' contains:

 darkmod
    └── map_specific
        └── oh
            ├── oh_ed.jpg
            └── oh_local.tga

-or, another attempt-

├── dds
│   └── darkmod
│       └── map_specific
│           └── textures
│               └── oh
│                   └── oh.dds
└── textures
    └── darkmod
        └── map_specific
            └── oh
                ├── oh_ed.jpg
                └── oh_local.tga

I even tried a PK4 that included the materials file.

What is wrong and what is correct?

 

Linux Mint 4.15.0-99 x86_64
DarkRadiant 2.5.0 X64
Darkmod 2.07/32

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFYJkBssMbM

Check if this helps first^, but I believe you might have some problems with folder structure. For .tga textures it's yourfmroot/textures/etc. while for dds files it's yourfmroot/dds/textures/etc. So basically you put your textures folder structure in dds folder (which is placed in your fm root folder)

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