Texture-specific questions

[Treewyrm]

I have finished modelling a new ship, made uv mapping and now it comes the part where I need to paint textures. I didn't dig much into the way Freelancer works with textures so I have a few FL-specific questions:

1) What texture size do you normally use?
2) Is it possible to use non-1:1 size aspect ratio? For example 2:1, as in 1024x512.
3) I've seen some planets and ships having self-illuminated areas (like lava rivers on planets), is it done by self-illumination map or do I need separate texture just for those areas?
4) I've seen Nomad Lair having variable opacity on "web" surfaces on it's side. Can I combine both opacity and self-illumination maps on a single surface?
5) Again Nomad Lair features panning textures, is it possible to use this effect on ships/stations textures?
6) And again Nomad Lair also have two-sided surfaces, that "web". How do I make two-sided surfaces without cloning and flipping polygons?

[Doom]

1. usually not bigger then 512x512 in dds format...targa may be bigger
2. yes..just not as dds file
3. most of the windows on capital ships are self illuminated...fore some stuff u can use existing ones...
4. try it....possibly
5. look at answer 4
6. i think they used alpha textures (transparent)...if i am thinking of same surface that u are

[Treewyrm]

1. Not sure if Freelancer supports Targa compression, even if it doesn't zip usually works fine compressing those. DDS, If I remember correctly it's DirectDraw Surface, used to work with those on a game powered by Unreal Engine 2.5. There was nvidia plug-in for photoshop to export into DDS I think.
2. Yes, had the same problem in UE when I started making materials first time as I'm used to make skins in 2:1 format.
3. Unfortunately I cannot use existing ones, my ships are... well, they're special so I have to make my own textures. Painting textures is not a problem, I just need to evaluate capabilities of Freelancer engine regarding those.
4-5. Ok, will dig into it to see how it's made.
6. No, alpha textures, aka transparency maps, is a different topic. What I meant is that a single surface can be two-sided, you can see it from both sides of the polygon(s). Asking because my ships will be combining both one-sided and two-sided surfaces, and I plan to use both for certain effects.

Thanks for the answers! I appreciate your help.

One more question: does Freelancer uses specular maps to show which areas of the surface needs to have glossy effect? As far as I've seen the "glossy" effect goes all over the surfaces, though not every surface have the effect.

[mohr]

1) The only way I could get textures to work in game was with TARG, that is why the Kusari Bomber was not in; I was not using TARG for the textures. The tutorial I refer to as a guide states to use TARG when exporting the MAT.
2) I believe you can use different aspect ratios. How are you texture mapping it?
3) That is a good question I would like to know, and I do not beleive if you simply use the existing textures the self-illumination works still.
4) No idea off hand.
5) No idea here either, I think it is supported, I just don't know how to make it work.
6) I have only been able to get the texture to show up on one side of a plane in HardCMP, I believe it would be the same in game.
7) No idea, whenever I try and make an original texture it shows up in game as not glossy, that's why I use textures from the original freelancer.

Hope that helps, and if you know something I don't, I would love to know it too.

Mohr

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[yurineova]

Jusdt patchy, I know, deal with it:)

As far texture sizes, the largest generic size is 512x512. If you need a custom pic (Say a texture that is detailed and stretches the entire hull), then that can be any size.

Safe to say on this matter, the bigger the image, the bigger the MAT and the harder to edit come funture requests.

I just usually will use 256x256 and repeat the texture.


I'll quote this later and add my replies in as Orange

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signature goes here once its done!

[Treewyrm]

I've already noted the vanilla ships and some custom models are skinned in a method similar to how levels in 3D games are textured: a bunch of textures aligned to surfaces with heavy use of tiling and mirroring especially on circular shapes. This restricts actual texture bitmaps to seamless and single type surface. And while it's good for vanilla-like ships I'm afraid it's no use here in my situation, simply because original ships tend to be blocky by design while my ships are smooth, round-shaped. So I have to use classic method of skinning models where I make complete UV mapping to escape texture distortion effect on surfaces, render it to actual bitmap and then paint it. Which is why using 2:1 format is better because it allows me to allocate long elements without shrinking them, and ships tend to have long elements. The only problem here is that such skin is rarely shared by multiple models of the similar design, only if they share elements, but I'm fine with it.

p.s. as for the ship design I'm currently working on and using - it's already approved by Igiss, I think :-)

[RingoW]

You may find some helpful stuff here:

www.lancersreactor.com/t/forum/forum.asp?forum_id=44&forum_title=Freelancer+3D+Modeling+and+Texturing+Forum&cat_title=Freelancer+Editing