First off, this isn't the same problem as *]SAS[*Foamy's two topics...

Basically if I don't use a normal map, I'm able to get my texture to show up fine in both radiant and in game.
However, when I use a normal map (created in photoshop using Nvidia's normal map filter) my texture comes out tinted white in both radiant and in game...

I noticed next to the colour map in assman that there is a tint box which is currently white - but this is how it defaulted so I left it alone. Is the problem to do with this tint?

I'm probably just missing something simple

I use CrazyBump to generate normal maps and sometimes modify them in Photoshop and they work fine in-game and Radiant ( I also have 'tint' blank ).

What does your normal map look like?

How about a screenshot ?
Do you save your normal map as TGA ?

Couldn't put up the screens before as I was at work:

In game (and colour and normal maps in the lower right)


Assman

The only things different than my settings are the case checkbox (don't really know why you checked it), and the location of the textures (I use raw/textures/ as my folder).

Other than that, it doesn't seem to be anything wrong.
And it's not a white tint, it's a whole different color.

How do you save your normal map ? You open the colormap, save as DDS and select the normal map settings, then open the DDS and save it as TGA 24 bit ?

cskiller86 writes...

Just an advice on saving custom textures, i always go for TGA then the following:

- TGA 24bits : if the texture is has no alpha channel (i.e not transparent)
- TGA 32bits with RLE Compression: if the texture as an alpha channel

If you must save as DDS i use this:

- DDS DTX1 No Alpha: if no alpha channel present
- DDS DTX5 Interpolated alpha: if alpha channel present

It saves in space as well as preserving the alpha channels where required.

cskiller86 - only ticked case to make it easier to find in radiant (though it's probably not the most appropriate category!)
I'm making my normal map, by opening my colormap .dds in photoshop (without the mipmaps) and then running the nvidia normal map filter across it and saving as a 24bit .tga

Thanks for the tip zeroy, what's the benifit of dds then? tga is smaller file size Vs mipmaps from the dds? (galactic warfare is awesome btw )

How many .iwds am I supposed to be getting from this, just hedge.iwd?

Beej writes...

If you have multiple custom textures just put your images folder in an .iwd and call it "custom_textures" or something.
.dds is a must have for color maps because of the mipmaps, you can test this yourself by using no mipmaps and you will find that on large distances the textures start to flicker which ugly (this is because the quality of the texture is unaffected) mipmaps are smaller less detailed versions of your texture that will be displayed when you're viewing it over a long distance.

In Photoshop when opening a .dds you can tell it to display the mipmaps aswell - you will see what I mean.

I worked out the problem, I was using hedge.dds and hedge.tga which was giving me hedge.iwd and that odd off-white colour.

So I changed the filenames of the source files so that I was using hedge.dds and hedge_n.tga and now I get two .iwds from it - hedge.iwd and hedge_n.iwd and my texture appears properly in game (although alot brighter and more saturated than it looked in photoshop! But easily fixed)

But whatever brush I texture with my new hedge texture I can run straight through it... Probably just a setting in assman, anyone know which? I want nice solid hedges!

edited on Jan. 21, 2010 06:30 pm by Beej

Recompiled and everything is solid and working, thx for the help guys

One last question though, if I use a higher res .dds (say 1024x1024) will the texture look better (less blocky) in game?

IDK how I missed the name thing :P

Yes, the higher the resolution the better the texture will look, but it will also increase the memory usage.

Right now, you could select all the faces (with Ctrl-Shift-LMB), press S and reduce the scale (stretching) of the texture. This will make it look more tiled but a little bit better.

Also, instead of using a normal brush, you could use terrain for your hedge, and move some of the vertexes to make it look wavy and irregular.