wtp problem

[PogS]

Hi all,

I've made a reskin of the fc among others. I made a rsh file with spec map and wtp file with the following layers:
force_commander_tgd_unit_default.tga (10247x1024, 32 bits/p)
force_commander_tgd_unit_default_Dirt.tga (10247x1024, greyscale, all black cause I don't like dirt areas)
force_commander_tgd_unit_default_Primary.tga (10247x1024, greyscale)
force_commander_tgd_unit_default_Secondary.tga (10247x1024, greyscale)
force_commander_tgd_unit_default_Trim.tga (10247x1024, greyscale)
force_commander_tgd_unit_default_Weapon.tga (10247x1024, greyscale)

I thought that areas that were not on any dirt, primary, secondary, trim and weapon were used by the engine on the default.tga file and were thus non colourable. But it seems it does not work cause these areas show black
Does anyone have a idea what I did wrong.

Is the dirt layer really necessary for the engine ? If not, would it be possible to modify your Texture tool to remove this obligation ?
Thanks beforehand for your help.

[Seaglen]

im not the best person to ask, but i have a feeling you need dirt layers on areas that you want to be coloured by primary, weapon, trim etc.

i think the engine uses dirt like a canvas for other colours. with no dirt, the base layer of default should show through, providing there asre no other layers on top of these.

hope this helps (like i say, i kinda just experimented untill i got it right!)

[PogS]

Ha yes you're right. I've figured it out myself. I made the non tc areas white and tc areas black and it works now Thks

[IBBoard]

Yes, as Seaglen said, "dirt" actually controls where the team colourable areas are visible and to what degree. The dirt layer is the inverse of the other layers in that if you don't want it then you make it white, not black.

Dirt is probably a bad name for the layer, though. Its main purpose is to represent scratches. Paint the area on the primary/secondary/trim/etc layer as if there weren't any marks and a quick grey patch on the dirt layer gives you scratches in a way that's better than doing it via the colourable layers (since they control intensity of colour)

You can think of it a bit like an alpha channel for the colour layers, if it helps My Modifying Patterns article gives a bit more information about the different parts of images.

My only other comment is this: beware the size of your texture. While the game will handle 1024x1024 textures, it is heavily optimised for 512x512 as the engine of DoW is quite old (IIRC it's a modified version of Impossible Creatures). That means that the occasional 1024x1024 texture shouldn't have too much effect (e.g. a Force Commander) but larger textures on more common units (e.g. normal Marines) is a very bad idea and may lag a lot of rigs quite quickly.