dds textures for fsx

[creator2003]

Can anyone enlighten me about dds textures and what ill have to do and what tools are best to use ,,i was just going to build all my scenery in dx5 /dx3 but it is just blurry in FSX so i guess i have to convert them to dds to fix this problem ..
any help is greatly appreciated ...
mike

[toprob]

Use Imagetool from the FSX SDK.

[creator2003]

Thanks rob do i have to save them out in fsx gamx gamepack any certain way?, as they have all been made with the 2004 gamepack export so far .

[toprob]

No, just load them into GMAX, replace the FS2004 materials with FSX materials, and export with the default options.
Your mapping will stay the same, so no further texturing should be required.

[creator2003]

Yup thank you ,just converting them now to see the difference ,cheers for the help

[creator2003]

just wondering now how ones end up doing this "pic below "

i dont really known how this has happen to do this but i can tell you one thing its amazed me so far ,,
first of all this is not the map for the model at all , it is another one in the textures ,so how does it pick up a map like this ,im thinking i have to go back and fix something in the mapping in gmax and change the texture map ,
but how werid anyway ..
all the others models are showing up fine and as im writing this im starting to understand abit more about the problem ...lol

[creator2003]

What is up with this ,ive mapped all the textures they way ive always done and wham im getting weird stuff happening ,why would it put a totally different map all together on a model when it was not the one ive mapped to it





thats the only building that look ok from the front ,but there are cr@p textures on the backside of it from a map i never mapped to it ??

this is it in gmax


i really dont know how this is done ive just worked of a 24 bitmap in max then mips /format dx1 ,i had the same problems with nznp with just the building above in last post..
i fix it by just exporting out of fs9 max with standard textures
plz help
mike

edit :so ive then just exported them out of fs9 gmax and compiled with the old bgl comp and look all shows up apart from the chain fence..




i know its something im doing when im exporting out from the X gamepack ,well i think so ,what is it ?

[toprob]

I know that the FSX gamepack is a bit flaky with naming FSX materials, I wonder if this might be caused by materials with the same name within GMAX.
Incidentally, it has been a long time since I've built more than one model in a single GMAX file. There is just too much that can go wrong as it gets more complex. Nowadays I build each building as a separate GMAX file. It may help if you separate out each building (merge it into a new project) so that only the required textures are referenced in the model.

[creator2003]

Oh ok thanks robin ,ive only just changed to making them all together as one because ive always had problems keeping scale when i have no measurements ,and i have to say it was getting easier looking for one guid number than 10 of them ,ill try what you have suggested and merge them together and see if that helps this weird compile of multi objects , if not its back to one at a time compile mdl and then pain staking looking for guid numbers

cheers for you advise

[toprob]

Some random thoughts...
Do you 'name' your materials? If not it is very possible to end up with multiple materials with the same name using the FSX gamepack. I've never had a problem with this, but the more materials you have the more likely it seems that you'll have problems.
Hmm, sizing the buildings can be a problem, but only if they don't show up in Google Earth. GE has a measuring tool which has revolutionised scenery design:) Anyway, you can always build them in one file and 'save selected' to a new file, then move the building to the 'centre' of the world. If you do it this way, though, I'd be very sure that I backed up the 'big' file often!
Some users rely on setting their sim to make objects disappear below a certain pixel threshold -- putting all the airport in one file will keep it from being removed from rendering until you are miles away, which works against the new FSX optimisation techniques. It also makes it tricky to create LODs.
How do you make your library, and place the scenery? I normally don't have trouble finding GUIDs. My work-flow looks like this:
Export from GMAX;
Use LibraryCreatorXML to add to my library;
In LibraryCreator I can view the GUID by expanding the object entry;
I write down the first 4 digits of the GUID;
I then compile and save the library;
Fire up FSX, and start OPT;
I can then just scroll through the GUIDs in OPT, which are in alpha-numeric order, looking for my 4 digits preceded by a zero.
If it is an object I will want to place again, I can always reopen LibraryCreator to reread the GUID.

[creator2003]

hhmm yeah makes sence what you say about GE , i have used it acouple of times before maybe i need to get into the habit more

each map/material i make always has a new name ,in this job its
taupo2008_1
taupo2008_2
taupo_fences
the guid thing comes across differently for me , make a object asign a lod guid name then export out ,then i make another ,and do it the same way as before but it attaches a different guid number then i export out etc till i have about 20 objects "this is not over the same day or the same day i mite have gmax running ,then i do the same as you from there on in ,i also look back at the guid numbers but they all start with different guid numbers ,this why i was saying they are hard to find sometimes as the mite be 10 objects down from another one ive complied at the same time ,in the same bgl
i know ezyscen used to put them one after the other in guid numbers so they where all together like your librarys are ..
i suppose it just a learning curve ill have to get use to ,we all find our different ways of doing things ,i was just trying one out that doesnt work to well
ive got a meeting down the road so will have to go for now but will try out the things youve said with this airport and see if i can come up with a nice and reliable way of doing this ..
thanks again for your input

[creator2003]

So ive got back into doing this morning and saved out all the single objects from X gamepack ,this lost its mapping right away ,so i opened them up in fs9 gamepack and save them out as single objects again then opened them in X gamepack ,assigned a new guid and saved and then begin to export each one out as single models "mdl" then complied with XML creator etc...
this is what my guid looks like now ,see what i mean about random guid numbers
ACD9E9FC4E1C74DE7FDBB89BB1623F34 red_garage
AC2C58DA42B08641A07EB09A8917A95B shed_funnel_1
9C2C3F5449B6EB5CE29800A9DFDBAB84 term1
A90E82D3472CA2699CC13FB1F9DEB97F term_fence
D44C24D14EA857EE50FFA2BB13B2B3D6 white_house
E361902E4C55D8D9E6434195F02890B6 wood_fence
A8A81BE14C061ADA7512F3998A1746DE yellow_house
6050EC3A42FC29B6B46790B5FC5B5814 shed_funnel_2

they are all random as and this makes a job finding the all between all your librarys and my own ,specially when you hit those objects that seem to bugger with the all the other objects and then they all disapeer and ya gotta start the search again
i just dont really get how to keep the guid numbers in order one after the other instead of random like my own ones above

a real pain
this fsx gamepack is starting to pee me off a bit , but its proberly just me not knowing enough
i suppose the good thing is they all showed up right ..

[HardCorePawn]

Unless you figure out how to manually insert your own guids into the models, they will not end up in a sequence, as the way the system calculates guids means they will not generate them in a sequential order. The idea is that the probability you will generate a number that someone else does is very very very very small...

ie. total number of unique keys = 2^128 or 3.4x10^38... which is huge when you consider that the total number of stars in the observable universe is 5 x 10^22.

or:

Keys: 3,400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
Stars: 500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

If you started creating sequential blocks (and everyone else was creating guids using the distributed method), the chances are higher that someone would also create a key in your block...

[toprob]

QUOTE (HardCorePawn @ Feb 21 2008, 02:58 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Unless you figure out how to manually insert your own guids into the models, they will not end up in a sequence, as the way the system calculates guids means they will not generate them in a sequential order. The idea is that the probability you will generate a number that someone else does is very very very very small...

ie. total number of unique keys = 2^128 or 3.4x10^38... which is huge when you consider that the total number of stars in the observable universe is 5 x 10^22.

or:

Keys: 3,400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
Stars: 500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

If you started creating sequential blocks (and everyone else was creating guids using the distributed method), the chances are higher that someone would also create a key in your block...

Yes, although you can set your own GUID (it is just added to the Properties of your GMAX file, so you can change it to anything you want) the EZ-Scenery style of using consecutive GUIDs caused more than its fair share of duplicate GUIDs. The official GUID generator is designed to minimise duplicates.

QUOTE

they are all random as and this makes a job finding the all between all your librarys and my own ,specially when you hit those objects that seem to bugger with the all the other objects and then they all disapeer and ya gotta start the search again
i just dont really get how to keep the guid numbers in order one after the other instead of random like my own ones above[/quote]

You can only select the GUID you are after if you wish, you don't need to scroll through and select everything in between. Just drop down the list and use the scroll bar.
(Oops, I'm assuming you are using OPT here.)

Last edited by toprob on Thu Feb 21, 2008 2:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[creator2003]

QUOTE

Oops, I'm assuming you are using OPT here[/quote]
yeah i am ,i think its just me now getting out of old habits and making new ones , after doing that test today and finding them ,it wasnt to bad and ill get use to it over time im sure ,i hope this post will help others anyway so it not a waste of time ,the texture thing is a weird but workable problem i can get around just a pain ,it will become a real hassle if this happens with that ship im building ..
thanks hcp and robin for your advice ,its alot clearer now what i have to do ,so cheers

Last edited by creator2003 on Thu Feb 21, 2008 3:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.