We can create new unittextures!

[Duke John]

I'm really excited now! I think you can all understand what this image means:

http://chronicles.metw.net/org/omfg.jpg

I will write a tutorial as soon as I can restrain myself from making my own WotR textures.

[Duke John]

I've written a guide: link (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=37203)

Good luck!
Duke John

[Steppe Merc]

All hail the Duke! We're not worthy, we're mpt worthy! ~D

[flip]

Hi people,

good guides DJ, I already tested with a shield change in Greek Militia Hoplites.
I used Photoshop instead. Had someone tryed to open the Gloss correspondent TGA file?In TWcenter some say its needed ,others no.
When I open the gloss it gives a blank image. Instead in Windows explorer the thumbnail is fine.
So in ...Data/models_unit/Textures I have:
UNIT_GREEK_MILITIA_HOPLITE2_GLOSS.TGA.DDS
UNIT_GREEK_MILITIA_HOPLITE2_GREEK.TGA.dds
Must give a diferent name (2) if not RTW will pik default TGA inside th Pack
file.

http://filipeabranches.no.sapo.pt/MTW/RTW/RTW1.jpg

[Steppe Merc]

I tried it but it was all chopped up into little peices. Is it supposed to be like that, all confused and stuff? I though it would just show them standing up, but half a head is there, there sleeves there... any more info on tips would be extremely helpful.
And good job, Flip!
How do you see it in thumbnail? I couldn't figure out the DDS utilities I installed...

[Duke John]

The textures only show half the model. So for example only the left side is skinned, the right side is mirrored. This is probably done to save memory.

The gloss files are for (guess what)... gloss! Metal is more shiny than clothing so the make it reflect surroundings (I think it's an option in visual options) the engine needs to know which parts are reflective. The gloss file does just that.

Steppe Merc
It may look weird to you, but that is just how skins look like. The 2D texture is placed over a 3D model and that means it will look weird.

It's not perfect since I needed to use an existing model, but here's an example of what is possible:

Retinue Longbow for the Wars of the Roses mod
http://chronicles.metw.net/wotr/screens/test_longbows.jpg

Cheers,
Duke John

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

WOW! Excellent work! Did you get my PM DJ?

[Bwian]

Yep...the texture method they are using is pretty usual. Not since the days of Quake I have textures been laid out like a bloke standing up ;)

You only have a small amount of texture area to work with, so they use it as efficintly as possible. Arms, legs, face, all will be mirrored. The uniforms will be designed to be mirrored as well. This limits what can be done, but when you are planning to display thousands of units, available texture memory becomes a very real concern.

The GLOSS files are what is usually known as an environment map :) It's a texture modifier

[Steppe Merc]

For me the gloss is just a blank white thing...

[flip]

I tested it further. No way to make the gloss maps workable, tried all Graphic programs. In the unit folder, where I extracted the unit maps, CA leaved some pure TGAs files, as examples I gess. The gloss ones can be opened in photoshop and shows a sort of a bump image with whites transparencys for glossys.

I believe those files are not important while reworking textures. Black values in TGA/DDS files are the transparency/alpha chanel. So when saving in Photoshop we must chek Alpha option, if not blacks became solid. I'm using a plugin inside Photoshop, very usefull, then follow DJs guide.

with black 0;0;0 as bump transparency and pure brush over the TGA we can do a lot. ~:cheers:

[flip]

Have you found any mass of Pharaos spearman?

I tracked where CA corrected the issue:

in the descr_model_battle.txt file

;These are the new realistic looking ones. The cone heads are reserved for generals
type egyptian_elite_guards_new
skeleton fs_spearman, fs_swordsman
indiv_range 40
texture egypt, data/models_unit/textures/unit_egyption_elite_guard_new.tga

again a lot of possible combinations

[Steppe Merc]

Any chance you could post some piccies of what you mean? A picture is worth a thousand words or something... ~D
It is good that there are more slightly realistic Egyptians... guess it's too much to ask that there are shirted barbarians floating around too... :embarassed:
(I'm realling struggling with posting with all the messed smillies... I miss my favorites, but I'm to lazy to click on More)

[Stormy]

Whoa!! nice stuff guys.
The future of TW looks promising with the new engine. :charge:
good work guys.

[Myrddraal]

It's not perfect since I needed to use an existing model, but here's an example of what is possible:
If that's not perfect, then you have too high standards!

[reconspy]

This is fantastic, great work Duke John.

Over at twcenter, they were talking about how only the archer auxilia unit had the proper reflection and glint (the ones that actually look shiny).

Don't know if people have already talked about this but after playing around with the textures thanks to Duke John's tutorial I found that in the data/models_unit/textures that there were a few .tga files. One of them was unit_roman_auxillia_archer_gloss.tga.

So I tested it with another unit by just converting the existing unit_roman_light_infantry_gloss.tga.dds file to a .tga file.

Here are the results:

With reflection
http://members.optushome.com.au/reconspy/with_reflection.jpg

Without reflection
http://members.optushome.com.au/reconspy/without_reflection.jpg

Thing is, why did CA leave out these reflections?

[MAsta_KFC]

This is fantastic, great work Duke John.

Over at twcenter, they were talking about how only the archer auxilia unit had the proper reflection and glint (the ones that actually look shiny).

Don't know if people have already talked about this but after playing around with the textures thanks to Duke John's tutorial I found that in the data/models_unit/textures that there were a few .tga files. One of them was unit_roman_auxillia_archer_gloss.tga.

So I tested it with another unit by just converting the existing unit_roman_light_infantry_gloss.tga.dds file to a .tga file.

Thing is, why did CA leave out these reflections?

When I stumbled upon this thread, adding the reflections was the first thing that came to mind. In many of the screenshots provided by CA and Gamespy, many of the units (pretty much all) of them had 'true reflections', yet in the game, they only left it in Archer aux. My theory was that either the true reflections were too much of a system hit, so that's why CA left them out. However, they should've at least given us an option for 'normal reflection' and the higher 'true reflection'.

At least you've proven it is doable for the other units. I'm gonna have a tinker around aswell and see if I can enable them for other units.

Cheers!

[Bwian]

There seems to be a bit of confusion around the texture formats being used in RTW, so hoepfully, this will help some :)

The Microsoft DirectDraw Surface (DDS) file format is used to store textures and cubic environment maps, both with and without mipmap levels. This format can store uncompressed and compressed pixel formats, and is the preferred file format for storing DXTn compressed data. This file format is supported by the Microsoft DirectX Texture tool (DXTex Tool), as well as some third party tools, and by the Direct3D extensions (D3DX) library.

The DDS is the file format, and DXTn is basically the method used to compress the image data insode the DDS. DXT is kind of de facto standard for textures nowdays. All DXT flavour compress the color channels in the same way (DXT1 with 1-bit alpha being an exception because it uses only 3 instead of 4 colors for 4x4 blocks), though some NVidia cards take shortcuts in DXT1 decompression making it poorer quality than DXT3/5, even though the color data is the same. When using DXT for normalmaps, it's not very good quality though (makes normapmaps a bit blocky). DXT1 compression ratio is 4 bits/texel, while DXT3/5 have extra 4 bits/texel for alpha (total 8 bits/texel).

DDS compression dramatically reduces Video RAM (VRAM) usage, it allows the game to run smoothly on older, less powerful computers. It also reduces the hard drive footprint of the game.

On top of the basic texture, some of you have noticed the 'GLOSS' texture. This is a greyscale 'environment' map which can be used to modify the look of the texture. It requires a second pass of the rendering engine to achieve this ( usually ) which will inevitably give a performance hit. No doubt this is why it has been cut from the release code. It basically overlays itself over the texture using the black/white map to reproduce a psuedo reflection. It is not a true dynamic reflection, but this is unlikely to be an important factor ;)

I do not know if all the units are set to look for this e-map or not, but if they are, it should be possible to add it to all units where such effects are appropriate! No-one wants shiny cloth.....

Hope this helps :)

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

Finally got these to work - my first effort at editing textures! My Gaestae, similar to those seen on Time Commanders - black trousers though. ~D

http://www.totalwar.org/patrons/story/bkbGaestae.jpg

[hoggy]

A post DJ put on the Colloseum gave me a sinking feeling and made me root around in some files. Looks like each 3D unit model has at least three levels of detail (except the odd exception like the warpigs) and a sprite level similar to the old MTW BIFs for extreme range or weaker processors! Sprites located here: Rome - Total War\Data\packs\DATA\SPRITES\ (after using Vercingetorix's unpakker)

[Spino]

A post DJ put on the Colloseum gave me a sinking feeling and made me root around in some files. Looks like each 3D unit model has at least three levels of detail (except the odd exception like the warpigs) and a sprite level similar to the old MTW BIFs for extreme range or weaker processors! Sprites located here: Rome - Total War\Data\packs\DATA\SPRITES\ (after using Vercingetorix's unpakker)
Well JeromeGrasdyke did have this to say about it...


Not to worry, for a solution is close at hand... our artists would also have complained at doing two sets of artwork ;) The 'imposters' in Rome (which is really just a fancy way of saying "a sprite which is pretending to be a 3d object") are all auto-generated from the 3d models. The auto-generator is built into the main Rome exe but is not exposed in the current build; I'll see if we can make it available in a patch. But be warned it does take a while to run.

[Duke John]

That is simply great news if done. Now I wonder what is also put into the EXE. I read somewhere that the battlemap editor was there but wasn't "unlocked".

[tombom]

Are there any free tools that will work with DDS files?

[Duke John]

Did you read my guide? If not do so, if you did, do it again. :wink: Really the answer is there.

[tombom]

I've just realised how you can do it now. I'd even worked it out before. Sorry.

EDIT: No, I can't work out how to do it. I don't have Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro and I don't want to buy them, and as the demo is a trial which is time-limited, I dont want that either. And xnview and InfraView can't save dds files.

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

Tombom I'm using PSP trial (60 days). I'd get it for the time being if I were you (with the DDS plug-in of course). Trouble is, looks like I'm going to have to buy it at the end of the trial. ~:eek:

[laikr]

I got a problem of editing the TGA.DDS file, I opened the UNIT_GREEK_ELITE_HOPLITE_CARTHAGE.TGA.DDS file with psp 8.1 then edited and saved it. So I started the game and checked out the changes, but changes didn't happen. So I checked the UNIT_GREEK_ELITE_HOPLITE_CARTHAGE.TGA.DDS file and it was edited as I did. Why changes do not happen in the game? ~:confused: Thx!

[reconspy]

1) Did you use the corresponding model in the game? Check the descr_model_battle.txt and make sure the unit and texture matches.

2) Did you read Duke John's tutorial and download the necessary plugins?

[Duke John]

One thing to remember at all time:
R:TW first looks in the PAKs. If it cannot find the file there then it looks in a normal directory.

Assuming that UNIT_GREEK_ELITE_HOPLITE_CARTHAGE.TGA.DDS is an existing skin, R:TW will look for it and will find it in the PAK. It doesn't care that you have made a new one in a normal directory. So you need to save it differently and then assign it (Step 6). Now R:TW cannot find the file in the PAK so it looks outside and tadaa!

I will update my guide.

[laikr]

Thanks for ur anwsers, reconspy and Duke John. I'll try to look into pak file to see what it likes.

[Duke Malcolm]

I'm using Paint Shop Pro 7, I installed the plug-in, but can't find the 'and these DLLs' it says are on the website, anyone know where I can get them?