Help needed loading textures of 3DS model when in BTB

[Pangaea]

Hello and happy new year all.

Ive been working on a track for 2 weeks, I have spent the time first making track, then terrain etc.. ... a part of the track as a tunnel, ( i used btb wall tool for this) ... but its akward making an enterence gate thing for the tunnel in btb, so i made the object in 3ds max... I made sure to add a texture, and made sure the texture name was no spaces..etc .. i made sure the texture was aspect legal, in my case its a 1024x1024 jpg .. i map the texture in 3dsmax, export to 3ds, open btb xpacker .... goto make new xpack, then clickd the "object" tab.. i added the 3ds file i just created in max. btb xpacker seems to import no problem along with the texture file, so no errors in xpacker.. i then zip save the xpack,. open up btb .. create a simple staight road, i load the xpack i just made, i then go to objects.. and choose the object, I then drag onto the 3d view.. the object comes tru just fine, but it looks like there is no texture, just white/grey .... what the hell did i do wrong?? ... i have already tryed making objects in max and then into btb with textures before , and they worked, but for some odd reason beyond my understanding i just cant get it to work anymore.

some questions
I am farily familier with 3dsmax .. and know fine well there are so many ways, options, and settings for appliing textures... what texture appliing method will btb work with? .. for my object that isnt working im using facemap texturing.. just diffuse.. as said above the texture looks fine in max, and xpacker imports the texture.. but btb itself is not showing texture.
what EXACT texture settings/methods must be used in 3dsmax???

in btb xpacker, im a little confused as to what settings i must apply there??

i just dont understand why i was able to do this before and now i cant

there is nothing wrong with my object
there is nothing wrong with my texture file
there is nothing wrong with the aspect ratio and size of texture
there is nothing wrong with the file formates (jpg, 3ds)
there is nothing wrong with the names of files
there is nothing wrong with my texture on the object (in max)
there is nothing wrong in btb xpacker (no errors, and texture was imported and showing)
there is nothing wrong with my project file
but as soon as i get to the last step (being btb).. no textures are shown

WHY???

sorry to be a little frustrated, ive just wasted the past 24hrs trying to fix this, and read up on 3ds and btb.... etc tho it seems im doing everyting correctly. I need some serious help with this as ive come to the end of what I can do.

I need this object as the tunnel enterence has loads of gaps in the terrain witch no amount of editing in btb will fix (due to the nature of the tunnel).. help somone

H A P P Y - N E W - Y E A R
to all at racedept

regards pan

 

[Eric Tozer]

Check this thread Pangea
http://www.racedepartment.com/bobs-track-builder/17210-3dsmax-btb-question.html
Maybe it will help?

If you want me to look at your object you can send it to me
ennisfargis (at) gmail (dot) com
& I can look over it for you.

Cheers

 

[Pangaea]

Hey folks.
Thanks for the replies. Well although ive not found a sufficient solution for my problem I do however think ive narrowed the issue down to a texture coords setting within max itself. The object in question is a bunch of objects (elements) attached together (actual attach (weld)), but each elements faces are oblique to each other hence i cant use normal texture coords when all attached together. So i used a full face map over the whole object. I found that btb will import attached element objects with normal regular text coords, and also will import single objects (single mesh elements) with regular and face map texture coords, However the problem seems to be with attached objects and facemaping.
Your probably asking "why attach (weld) the elements together in the first place", well Ide like not to have to but it seems btb imports 3ds files with multiple (unattached) elements rather oddly. I know i could probably import the elements individually and group them in btb, but for the purposes of this project doing that would be really time consuming.

Anyway, ive improvised with a few things and am going to muddle on with this project as best I can using BTB walls as my modling tool for the tunnel enterence, I can bandaid anything up that isnt working with single 3ds imported object elements, rather then build the whole structure in max.

While im posting, ide like to ask a few texture/material related questions specifily in context to BTB and RBR.

The fence wall texture (btb default pack texture).. its a wire mesh texture.. is this objects texture a png containing alpha values? or is it an acctual object. Can rbr use pngs?

While texturing terrain surfaces and painting a section up so for example its running from grass (with grass physics) gradudualy into rock (with tarmac physics) with the blend tool, at what point dose btb/rbr change the road physics. Dose it (and i assume), say "ok you are driving on +50% rock material/texture so i will now switch to tarmac physics", and vise versa, or dose the physics fade in somehow, its hard to tell while testing this.

Finally, i realise btb has lots of options for bump and spec settings, ive tried a few experiments to see of RBR reads these values, but again like above its really hard to tell if these options are acctuly working in RBR beacuse of the flat and not very well defined lighting system. It could be a case that there are bumpmaps and specs showing but the light scattering is so sparse Im just not noticing it. Am i wasting my time with bump and spec settings for RBR?


Welcome to 2011, hope you all have a productive year
Regards
pan

 

[Paul Minnaar]

so much reading, so if I'm repeating, please forgive me.

Try swopping your normals around if your textures are not showing.

 

[martinez]

Hi Pangea, maybe this can help you on specular (color) and bump and specular textures:
http://www.racedepartment.com/bobs-track-builder/32621-problem-bump-specular-etc.html
There are also links from Eric to get his tutorials on them.

About RBR and png transparency - I think they doesn't like each other. I suggest you use DDS format (DTX 3 for just transparency (expilicit), or DTX 5 for interpolated - if you want to have gradiented or percentage transparency).