Q: Fixing a missing/invisible SoB model texture?

[Captain Sparky]

I'd just like to ask a question, being a complete newcomer to modelling and texturing work.

In DoW Soulstorm v1.2, the Battle Sister Squad Veteran Superior only is missing the waist chain to her holy icon.

[img]http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d96/TurboWombat/DoW/chain.jpg[/img]

I've extracted the .TGA's and am viewing them in GIMP 2, but have no clue how to start. It shows up on normal battle sisters but presumably its a texture mapping error?

The Tutorials here and on Relicnews leave me just as lost as before, so a few pointers would be appreciated and hopefully help me get started cleaning up Soulstorms SoB and DE errors.

Thank you.

[IBBoard]

You can do it for your own education anyway, but hasn't Hangar-8 or someone already fixed it in one of their texture packs?

As for the general fix, there are one of two ways to fix it, depending on how it is hidden:

1) There is part of the alpha channel on the _default layer of the texture that is making it transparent
2) There is part of the alpha channel in the DDS (within the RSH file) that is making it transparent. DDS is a Microsoft "Direct Draw Surface" image, but there is a free Gimp DDS plugin available.

Whichever one it is, the fact that it is showing on the normal Sisters but not on the Veteran Superior implies that the model is using a slightly different texture to the main Sisters, so presumably there is some overlap between the textures.

I hope that helps.

[Captain Sparky]

Thank you.

I'm doing it for my own education yes, but its going to be a long haul to understand how clean up a graphical errors!

I have no idea if the textures differ - it looks like the texture includes Battle Sisters and Veteran Superiors, as bare faced and helmeted texture are in it (the default .TGA or .DDS). The chain has a grey background like a lot of the details, I'm trying to figure out how the colour layering works.

[IBBoard]

Colour layering won't affect visibility, that would definitely be in either the _default layer of the .wtp (in which case it would only be invisible in team coloured games) or in the .dds file within the .rsh (at which point it would be invisible in campaign games as well).

The _dirt layer affects how much of the colour layers are visible and how much of the underlying texture is visible (white means all underlying, black means all colour layers). The _primary/_secondary/etc layers affect how strong each of those colours is (black means no colour, mid-grey means 100% of the colour and white gets a very vibrant version of the colour).

If I remember Hangar-8's texture fix correctly, those studs on the cloth are black because they're on the _dirt layer but there aren't matching studs on the _primary/_secondary layers. Your options there are to team colour them (add them to one of the colour layers) or make them the base texture (paint over them with white on the _dirt layer).

You might want to check Sandwichwarrior's Skinning 4 Dummies tutorial that he wrote after first learning to texture, or my Making Non-TC areas TCable and Making TCable areas non-TCable tutorials for more detailed examples of altering the team colourable areas of a texture and the WTP files in general.