Hi folks, hows things.
I am experimenting with various things in btb, Ive been reading up a little on animated textures or more specificly the limitations of animated textures in BTB. I realise that it can only do 2 frames. So I gave it a go. I created 3 textures flash.dds, flash00.dds and flash01.dds. I used photoshop ndivia plugin to export as dds. I have got experience with exporting bump, spec, add and multiply with this plugin, but am unsure to the export settings when saving a dds needed for a frame of an animated texture. So ill proceed with the default settings for now. My experiment is to make a texture that will flash white then black, simple. So my flash.dds is a 512x512 white image, flash00.dds (same) and the flash01.dds is black. I open up xpacker, and goto materials
, I add in flash.dds, flash00.dds and flash01.dds. I click on flash.dds and select animated and set it to cycle. (is that all I have to do?).. then I export to zip. Open up BTB create a simple wall object apply the texture, (when i open the xpack in btb i select flash.dds even tho flash00.dds and flash01.dds are selectable. So, My wall textured on all sides with flash.dds.
I export to RBR, then load RBR and load the experiment track. However the wall is just white, and it dose not seem to animate at all. I waited a while just to see if I messed up the frame transition timing..etc but it never changes to black. I then went back and repeated the whole process using different settings in the dds export dialogue (photoshop), but im a little clueless as to what settings to use for animated textures. I am also unsure as to the exact file names, and settings within xpacker, and Im also a little in the grey as to what to do when I get into BTB itself. Can somone please give me some help with this if they can?
A few other questions not directly related to animated textures.
1. How do i update xpacks. Example, I made a track with terrain, one texture of the terrain is using sand, I spent days created the track and splitting the terrain into separate texture areas for blending more then one texture), But i then relised at a late stage that all the sand texture was ment to have a gravel physics. So i opened up the xpack in xpacker, and changed the sand texture to gravel3, then xported to zip (after xpacker prompted me to overwright the existing xpack).. I then closed btb, and restarted and loaded my project. My hope here was that all the areas with the sand now will be gravel physics. but no still same default physics. This is only on example.. I have NEVER got btb to update xpacks. This means for textures that I am fine tuning I have to created separate xpacks for each small tiny change. resulting in a btb xpack list of mega proportions because i have so many xpacks with the same texture just slightly edited. How on earth do I update xpacks?? this is a real pain.
2. Is there anyway to unselect nodes and polygons. Many times ive had to spend alot of time selecting either nodes or polygons, if im working on a large enough area this can take some time since the lasso tool seems to miss nodes and especily polygons (when terrain texturing) I tend to use the single (paint) method. The only problem here (as with lasso), is if youve spend alot of time carefully selecting nodes or polygons you accidently select a node or polygon that you didnt mean to, you basically have to start everything from scratch because I cant seem to work out a way to unselect individual or multiple node or polygon selections. Is this possible? perhaps there is a key I must hold down on that ive not discovered.
3. I worked out how to make nice quality 256 color alpha shadows. works great tho I had an idea to create a somwhat emulated light beam, similar to volumetric light. I got the idea to create a normal alpha shadow gradient (works as a normal dark shadow), but making the color gradient white and making the whie multiply or add, resulting in a crude looking light beam. Ive messed about trying various things but was wondering if anyone knew a good trick of doing this?
4. Finaly, is there anyway to not have the camera (point of view) in the 3d view not be effected by the track or ground (terrain).. getting the camera into the right place is often impossible since it seems to have a mind of its own.
regards
pan
I am experimenting with various things in btb, Ive been reading up a little on animated textures or more specificly the limitations of animated textures in BTB. I realise that it can only do 2 frames. So I gave it a go. I created 3 textures flash.dds, flash00.dds and flash01.dds. I used photoshop ndivia plugin to export as dds. I have got experience with exporting bump, spec, add and multiply with this plugin, but am unsure to the export settings when saving a dds needed for a frame of an animated texture. So ill proceed with the default settings for now. My experiment is to make a texture that will flash white then black, simple. So my flash.dds is a 512x512 white image, flash00.dds (same) and the flash01.dds is black. I open up xpacker, and goto materials
, I add in flash.dds, flash00.dds and flash01.dds. I click on flash.dds and select animated and set it to cycle. (is that all I have to do?).. then I export to zip. Open up BTB create a simple wall object apply the texture, (when i open the xpack in btb i select flash.dds even tho flash00.dds and flash01.dds are selectable. So, My wall textured on all sides with flash.dds.
I export to RBR, then load RBR and load the experiment track. However the wall is just white, and it dose not seem to animate at all. I waited a while just to see if I messed up the frame transition timing..etc but it never changes to black. I then went back and repeated the whole process using different settings in the dds export dialogue (photoshop), but im a little clueless as to what settings to use for animated textures. I am also unsure as to the exact file names, and settings within xpacker, and Im also a little in the grey as to what to do when I get into BTB itself. Can somone please give me some help with this if they can?
A few other questions not directly related to animated textures.
1. How do i update xpacks. Example, I made a track with terrain, one texture of the terrain is using sand, I spent days created the track and splitting the terrain into separate texture areas for blending more then one texture), But i then relised at a late stage that all the sand texture was ment to have a gravel physics. So i opened up the xpack in xpacker, and changed the sand texture to gravel3, then xported to zip (after xpacker prompted me to overwright the existing xpack).. I then closed btb, and restarted and loaded my project. My hope here was that all the areas with the sand now will be gravel physics. but no still same default physics. This is only on example.. I have NEVER got btb to update xpacks. This means for textures that I am fine tuning I have to created separate xpacks for each small tiny change. resulting in a btb xpack list of mega proportions because i have so many xpacks with the same texture just slightly edited. How on earth do I update xpacks?? this is a real pain.
2. Is there anyway to unselect nodes and polygons. Many times ive had to spend alot of time selecting either nodes or polygons, if im working on a large enough area this can take some time since the lasso tool seems to miss nodes and especily polygons (when terrain texturing) I tend to use the single (paint) method. The only problem here (as with lasso), is if youve spend alot of time carefully selecting nodes or polygons you accidently select a node or polygon that you didnt mean to, you basically have to start everything from scratch because I cant seem to work out a way to unselect individual or multiple node or polygon selections. Is this possible? perhaps there is a key I must hold down on that ive not discovered.
3. I worked out how to make nice quality 256 color alpha shadows. works great tho I had an idea to create a somwhat emulated light beam, similar to volumetric light. I got the idea to create a normal alpha shadow gradient (works as a normal dark shadow), but making the color gradient white and making the whie multiply or add, resulting in a crude looking light beam. Ive messed about trying various things but was wondering if anyone knew a good trick of doing this?
4. Finaly, is there anyway to not have the camera (point of view) in the 3d view not be effected by the track or ground (terrain).. getting the camera into the right place is often impossible since it seems to have a mind of its own.
regards
pan
and thanks for the help again.
