Trouble Loading RXGB DDS Files

[Gildoran]

Hmm... strange. I wonder why my copy D3 is able to load it and yours isn't.

 

Edit: The address is case-senstive:

http://208.49.149.118/TheDarkMod/Textures/...e/brokenmip.tga

[SneaksieDave]

But that's just it - it's not my Doom3 - it's everything. Photoshop plugin, nvidia command line tools, Doom3...

 

Edit: and it's ONLY the normal map. The specular and diffuse open just fine with all three tools.

Edit2: ROFL, technical problems abound! The link above has some kind of modetwo embed in it. hehe

[Gildoran]

Heh... anyway, the reason Photoshop isn't able to read it may be because Doom 3 requires an odd compression method that isn't often used: DXT5 with RxGB twizzling, non-adaptive channel weighting of red=0 and green/blue = 0.5. If you can't save DDS files in that format, there's a good chance you may not be able to read them either.

 

The reason I had thought it was your copy of D3 earlier, was because I had been experiencing similar problems to you, but discovered it was because I was using high-quality texture mode, which prevents D3 from loading DDS files as normalmaps.

[Springheel]

As for compressing normalmaps/speculars, it depends on the kind of compression you use.

 

Why do we need to compress normalmaps and speculars? Neither of those images need to be larger than 512x512--in fact, specs don't need to be larger than 256x256, really.

[SneaksieDave]

I just used the nvidia command line tools to generate a DXT1 version of the normalmap for the wood I have locally, and it works fine in game. Are you perhaps using some cwazy exotic setting?

 

Correction: I had skipbump on for the moment - the DXT1 compression in fact doesn't work from this tool either (even though I'm able to open it back up and see the files properly - unlike the CVS version - two problems?). Could it be a problem with that format?

 

Edit2: I could swear I've just always read doom3 does not like compressed locals.

 

Edit3: Missed the comment about the, erm... RxGB twizzling . If this is the case, surely we have to err on the side of caution and go with what will work for everyone, and not cause technical problems. Unless some kind of factory DDS drivers are going to be installed with TDM, it won't work.

[Gildoran]

@Springheel: Depending on the texture, high res normalmaps can be just as important as highres diffusemaps. Consider that high-quality texture mode uses compressed diffusemaps but uncompressed normalmaps. For specularmaps, compressing them may not be as important, admittedly. However, I'm under the impression that D3 might automatically compress TGAs when in medium quality mode. (and I've noticed that providing my own DDS files improves the graphical quality of normalmaps in medium quality mode)

 

@SneaksieDave: I think it's more that D3 is very finicky about the format if compressed locals.

 

BTW, when you first load the wood texture, does your console say anything about being unable to load the normalmap?

[SneaksieDave]

Okay, good, it sounds like we're getting somewhere then. As I posted in an edit, we'll surely have to figure out what is standard - what will be on everyone's system - or we won't even be able to risk it. Not without some mandatory DDS drivers installation with TDM. So either a baseline format that everyone who can run D3 will already have, a driver installation, or no compression. Doesn't seem like there's much other choice.

[Gildoran]

I was under the impression that you didn't need a special driver to load RxGB DDS files in D3.

 

In any case, I'll temporarily suspend adding textures until we can figure this out.

[OrbWeaver]

@Springheel: Depending on the texture, high res normalmaps can be just as important as highres diffusemaps.

 

For most textures, the resolution of the normal map is more important than that of the diffuse.

[Gildoran]

@Springheel & Orbweaver: Could you two take a look at wood/wall/boards_new_001 and stone/floor/brick_006 please? (make sure your texture quality is medium or low) Do you see anything wrong with the textures? (in particular, does the normalmap work for you?)

[SneaksieDave]

Move a light source around on it and see if there's a big black front that moves. This used to happen all the time with old models, so I'm wondering what the connection is, if there is any. Also, if you have the tools, see if you can open the _locals with Photoshop or a command line tool? I can't even do that here - they are black and corrupted.

[Gildoran]

I have moved a light-source around it numerous times and it looks just fine in my copy of D3. The problem with the big black area occurs when D3 is unable to load a normalmap, due to it being missing or of a wrong format. That's why I asked if the console says it's unable to load the normalmap when you first load the texture; if it can't load it, it'll say:

WARNING: Couldn't load image: textures/darkmod/wood/wall/boards_new_001_local

[SneaksieDave]

Oh, I was saying that to others wanting to test this. I'll check for the warning and edit this post.

 

Edit: there's yer warning...

WARNING: Couldn't load image: textures/darkmod/wood/wall/boards_new_001_local

 

That's from opening my texture test map.

[Gildoran]

Ah, heh, I didn't realize that.

 

Did you say it's able to load the texture in game?

 

Also, where do you have Doom 3 installed? Does the path have any spaces or capital letters in it?

[SneaksieDave]

Ah, no - good that you brought that up. It looked fine in game without BSPing. After the re-BSP, it looks like the render window. Hmm, is that in itself telling? What changed between BSPing and not, versus just loading up a freshly saved map alone? I mean, the saved map contains the texture names - so why did BSPing change anything?

 

I'm installed to d:\games\doom3

(I checked with and without caps, both operate the same)

 

Edit: I think I know why - the old pre-BSP CM probably pointed to my local copies of the textures.

[OrbWeaver]

I'm fairly sure Doom 3 reads the texture names from the post-BSP processed map, not the original .map. This is because is needs the texture info per-triangle (in the .proc) not per-brush (in the .map).

 

I'll check how these textures look on my rig when I get home.

[Gildoran]

There's no chance I could talk you into switching to low quality mode (as opposed to medium quality) and restarting D3 just to see what happens, is there?

[SneaksieDave]

Same, no difference. Oh dear lord is low quality ugly!

[OrbWeaver]

SneaksieDave - how did you create the normal map DDS? You say it appears corrupt and is missing mipmaps, are you sure that there wasn't some error in creating it?

[Gildoran]

Yes it is.

 

Could you type "listcvars image" at the editor console, and post the output?

 

@OrbWeaver: I had created it, but I don't have any problem loading it in D3. I've made sure the associated TGAs have been removed from my darkmod repository, so I don't think it's falling back on the source TGAs.

[SneaksieDave]

Let me do a complete breakdown of the situation on this system to make sure it's all out there:

 

D3 - medium, low - both tested

GF4 Ti4600, recent drivers (I didn't take the release from a few days ago)

 

With regard to boards_new_001:

DDS from CVS:

Doom 3 can't open it (warnings in console)

Photoshop with Nvidia PS plugin open _local as black/undefined/corrupt

Nvidia command line DDS tools open _local as black/undefined/corrupt

Both Nvidia tools open the specular and diffuse successfully

 

The DDS I created here with Nvidia command line tools, using DXT1:

Doom 3 can't open it (i.e., same result)

Photoshop Nvidia plugin opens it fine

Nvidia command line DDS tools open it fine

 

how did you create the normal map DDS? You say it appears corrupt and is missing mipmaps, are you sure that there wasn't some error in creating it?

 

The one I made locally to test with? I used these:

http://developer.nvidia.com/object/dds_utilities.html

with a command line of:

nvdxt -file whatever.tga -dxtc1

(straight from the examples in help)

 

No error reported, and when I open the file back up using the same tools, all images are restored. When opening the CVS copy of the DDS, I get a bunch of black corrupted mips.

 

Is it possible this Compressionator or whatever is installing some new driver to your system, so you can read and write these, but those who don't have it, can't? In that case I really won't t install it, as we need this test base - people will not be installing that with TDM, surely.

 

Is there anything vital I missed here?

 

Edit: here's the other stuff (with a few warnings thrown in for measure ):

 

WARNING: Couldn't load image: textures/darkmod/wood/wall/boards_new_001_local

WARNING: idChoiceWindow:: gui 'guis/mpmain.gui' window 'EAXPrimary' has value count unequal to choices count

WARNING: idChoiceWindow:: gui 'guis/mpmain.gui' window 'OS6Primary' has value count unequal to choices count

WARNING: idChoiceWindow::InitVars: gui 'guis/mpmain.gui' window 'SNDBPrimary' references undefined cvar 's_driver'

7 warnings

]listcvars image

image_anisotropy "1"

image_cacheMegs "20"

image_cacheMinK "200"

image_colorMipLevels "0"

image_downSize "0"

image_downSizeBump "0"

image_downSizeBumpLimit "256"

image_downSizeLimit "256"

image_downSizeSpecular "0"

image_downSizeSpecularLimit "64"

image_filter "GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_LINEAR"

image_forceDownSize "0"

image_ignoreHighQuality "1"

image_lodbias "0"

image_preload "1"

image_roundDown "1"

image_showBackgroundLoads "0"

image_useAllFormats "1"

image_useCache "0"

image_useCompression "1"

image_useNormalCompression "1"

image_useOfflineCompression "0"

image_usePrecompressedTextures "1"

image_writeNormalTGA "0"

image_writeNormalTGAPalletized "0"

image_writePrecompressedTextures "0"

image_writeTGA "0"

 

 

Note this is back at medium quality, as I assume we've ruled out the quality as the deciding problem.

[OrbWeaver]

You're using DXT1 for the normal map - is Doom 3 even supposed to support this?

 

I thought it only supported RxGB, or 256-colour compression (whatever that is) - at least this is what the Cvar suggests.

[Gildoran]

The fact that D3 isn't able to open the DDS files made by your plugin makes sense, since I've heard it can only open DDS files of the format I described above.

 

As for compressonator installing drivers that D3 uses... that's an interesting idea, but unfortunately, I'm not sure how to test for it.

 

Could you try typing "seta image_useNormalCompression 2", then restarting D3? (it looks like you currently have RxGB compression turned off for some reason)

[Springheel]

Could you two take a look at wood/wall/boards_new_001 and

 

When I looked at it at High quality, there was no editor image and weird shadow problems (as if something was blocking the light on one side).

 

When I switched to Medium quality, I could see an editor image and there was no apparent shadow problem. The normalmap was also clearly visible.

[Gildoran]

@Springheel: Ok, that's how it should be behaving.