Textures

 

For textures is here some ways

 

(The assumption is that you know working with 3D modeling program and graphic program)

 

1. Standard texture mapping

2. Keen way

3. My way

 

(but always you must use: Unwrap UVW)

 

1. Standard textures mapping

- after you made model and use Unwrap UVW you get base texture mapping

- if you want do standard way then you get this:

 

and you can do textures with this mapping

- its OK, its standard way and its functional perfectly

 

2. Keen way

- Keen do textures little better, first make high poly and low poly models, then make texture mapping and texture about high poly model and then aplicate on low poly model

- its realy good way for game performance

 

3. My way

- I realy like clean and NO dirty textures, in my way I combine standard texture mapping on base model and my scale trick

- first I made model, then I made texture NO texture mapping, texture like this:

and after this I made texture mapping about this texture, my way is use SCALE function and move all on exactly place in texture where I want

 

- many parts of model have my clean design and if I need in some part warning stripes or something like this then I use standard mapping / no scale and move this part in place in texture where I have warning stripes or something different

- for me its better because:

  1. I like my clean design - NO dirty textures

  2. its realy fast

  3. I can make default template texture which i can use EVERYWHERE

 

 

Now - how make texture?

 

(always you must keep resolution of textures if not then you will have many different errors in mod - best is 2048x2048)

 

Always you must do *.DDS texture. You can download plugin for *.DDS file and for normal texture you can download Nvidia plugin.

In game is still supported DXT5 format. I always do DXT5 texture and then I use texture converter to DX11 from SDK.

 

You can choose which texture you want. NO colorable, COLORABLE or BOTH IN ONE. If you want do like I some your template texture which you can use everywhere then I recommend do BOTH IN ONE.

Before DX11 textures in SE were these formats:

 

1. no colorable *_de.dds and *_ns.dds (test_de.dds, test_ns.dds)

2 colorable *_me.dds and *_ns.dds (test_me.dds, test_ns.dds)

 

I do *_me.dds and *_ns.dds and then I use texture converter.

 

And very important thing is ALPHA LAYER, in alpha layer you can define what all is colorable or not and what glow.

This is for example my texture:

1. *_me.dds

2. alpha layer, under purple color is grey color which told texture that this place will be colorable, this purple color was in old textures, I still use it its good and I know what is colorable, white color told texture which place will be in game glow, other gray told texture which place is no colorable

- copy this into alpha layer in *_me.dds

3. *_ns.dds - from Nvidia plugin and main texture

 

If you have all this then both textures *_me.dds and *_ns.dds copy into SDK folder

for example here:

 

e:\Steam\SteamApps\common\SpaceEngineersModSDK\Tools\Space texture converter\Textures converter\Textures\

 

now in root converter folder

 

e:\Steam\SteamApps\common\SpaceEngineersModSDK\Tools\Space texture converter\Textures converter\

 

you must look on file dx9to11.py and check compression if you have set for DX11 like this:

 

# compression 

COMPRESS = 'Dx11' # None / 'Dx11' / 'Dx9'

 

then run this file (you must have installed - Python 3+ http://www.python.org)

 

after convert textures look on folder

e:\Steam\SteamApps\common\SpaceEngineersModSDK\Tools\Space texture converter\Textures converter\TexturesOut\

 

and here you have DX11 texture which you can use in MOD

 

*_add.dds

*_cm.dds

*_ng.dds

 

More about textures I will add after Keen will have finished special tool for backward convert BC7 textures.