User model texture issues

Try using GIMP (its free and well respected amoungst users) and also has a DDS plugin, I gave up on PaintShopPro for the alpha channel stuff and DDS plugins it just didn't seem to work correctly for me.

Your ships are showing up in game as completely team colored.  This is happening either because the alpha channel in your -cl.dds is either filled in completely white or it is missing (and being filled in/seen as completely white at some point in the process).

I am unfamiliar with using Paint Shop Pro these days so I can't really tell you exactly what you need to do.  I have found that I must put at least one non-black pixel in the -cl.dds (not necessarily something that even shows on the texture) before I save it in order for it to work properly.

My experience is with the plugin for Photoshop though.

-dolynick

 TFL BigBANGtheory I will get gimp and try it out

Dolynick the alpha channel is missing.

I have a few questions for you , in the cl dds is the alpha a transperant layer?  Its the black one with hollow spots showing the areas that show the team color right?

Is any of it have to do with layers the da dds also? 

The nm it is just a bump map if the orignal texture isnt it nothing else in that dds?

If the cl and da is a rgb split then i take it you dont merge them back to 1 texture you export the 4 maps it produces after edit? 

How would you do it in photoshop i might be able to figure it out in psp, if you have time to explain?

Can more than one ship share the same textures? In theory say all tech frigets use 1 dds cl da nm texture set? I have tryed it in game one time and one ship showed up normal while the others did the team color thing. I didnt know if it was an error or not.

I have not been able to properly view the construction of the dds files yet. When psp8 imports one it sometimes will show a alpha but i cant edit it ,only delete it and i have no idea on how to create one. I also have no idea what to click on the dds exporter plugin in psp8 if the thing works at all.  I have been converting jpeg and bmp maps through the standalone invidia dds converter. 

No, it's just black, though it might be rendered as transparent depending on the program used.

No. Only channels.

Correct, just RGB bump map.

Correct.

In theory, yes. In practice, they would have to be the same model or uvmapped identically or else it wouldn't show up properly fitted to the model.

Carbon already answered your questions but I'll give it a go as well.  I'm not a graphic artist so I don't know the the intricacies and specific technical details so much but I can give you a run through of how I go about things in Photoshop.

The cl and da textures are both single layers in Photoshop (PS from here on out).  They must be a single layer in order to save as a dds using the NVidia plugins.  They are, however, RGB format so they do contain R, G and B channels when you switch to the channel view in PS.  To add the Alpha you add in the channel view/setup, not in the layers for the file.  It does not effect the actual complete visual sum of the texture and seems to be used purely for data in SoaSE.  The Alpha channel is not added by default in PS and you have to manually create it on a new texture (right click in channel view and add a new channel, Alpha is the default result).  As I mentioned previously, leaving it completely black/blank does not produce the desired effect.  I have found it necessary to adjust at least one pixel in it for it to work properly, although that pixel doesn't even have to be inside the UVMap section of the texture.  This may be a PS/Nvidia plugin thing and may or may not be the case in Paint Shop Pro or GIMP.

When you save the texture as a .dds using the NVidia plugins, the alpha channel is treated as transparency.  I'm not sure what the proper format is, but I use DTX 5 format with 8 bpp transparency when I save to .dds for Sins.

For the color map (cl) texture, the RGB channels are used as a standard image.  By that I mean they are summed to create the end visual result as they would be in a normal image.  The alpha channel is used for team color.  It is in grayscale and the white level determines the amount of team color applied to the underlying section of the texture.  Black is no effect, white is complete override with team color and varying levels of gray can be used linearly as desired.

For the data map (da) texture, the image is not treated as a sum of the RGB channels.  Instead each channel is treated discretely for a desired effect.  R is specular, meaning metal "shiny-ness".  G is light emitting and any data on this channel will result in the relevant sections of the ship giving off light in game.  B is reflectiveness and gives the relevant sections of the texture mirror like qualities.  Alpha is used for bloom and should therefore typically be used in conjuction with the G layer (since you'd normally only want bloom on something that gives off light).  Once again, they are linear values and you can use the desired amount between 0 and 255.  Don't worry about what the combined RGB output is since it really doesn't matter.  Most often my da textures end up looking purplish with green highlights and not anything like my cl map aside from some general shapes.

I can't speak to much about the normal map (nm) texture.  It's bump mapping but I haven't done much playing around with it.  The guide I used while learning advised just using the PS filter that Nvidia plugins add to create the nm from the cl texture and so far that's all I've really done.  I suspect that this is not really the correct way to handle it in Sins as my understanding is that Sins doesn't use the normal map in the traditional sense.  For now though, it seems to be working adequately enough for me.

If Carbon's responses didn't clear up all the questions, hopefully this fills in any of the remaining blanks.

-dolynick