black figure

I've been creating a mesh in milkshape and all of a sudden my model has decided to go black and white on me, in that ,in the game the front of the warrior is very dark, almost black while the back of the model is bright !??

I don't know what casued this, it use to work. i 've noticed that if I create a transparent normal file (no glass), i get the black/white figure but if I create a standard normal file, the figure is ok although very glossy.

i loaded some old, saved texture files to see fi that was the problem and it worked!! .. so somehow I must have screwed either texture DDS file or NORMAL DDS file when converting to Texture files (I use grumpy old mans converter)

Anyone else had a similar problem?

R

Moved to modding questons.

The _normal file uses the alpha channel to indicate shininess of the figure.

If you want to have a very shiny metal surface, make the alpha channel 'whiter'. The darker the colour on the alpha channel of the normal texture, the less shiny it should be. Never make th ealpha channel completely black ( 0,0,0 colour ) or it tends to remove it. I usually make it completely dark grey, and then lighten up areas of shiny metal. Make it completely white all over, and you get highly reflective results! Reverting to a stock _normal file would mean the thing ewas mostly dark. When you create a new texture file, the alpha channel is all white by default.

Thanks Bwain but I've found the cause of the problem.

Either GIMP or GrumpyOldMans DSS2Texture converter sometimes corrupted the normal TEXTURE file, making it smaller than normal (half size) so when the game tried to gloss the mesh, half the data was garbage, high / low numbers giving very bright and very dark areas.

just have to be careful when creating textures and converting them.

R