Unreal Texture UT site and S3TC releases

[GreatEmerald]

I was talking about UnrealShare.Skins.JWoodenBox1 texture.

 

[Diehard]

I was talking about UnrealShare.Skins.JWoodenBox1 texture

That oné would be super easy to make, but it would be pointless cause the Mergertool cant handle such packages........... But if at some point in time the mergertool is being changed, than theres alot in UnrealShare that will be updated. But for now, its a no go i am afraid.
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[GreatEmerald]

What does the MergerTool do anyway?

 

[IronMonkey]

What does the MergerTool do anyway?

I asked almost that question a long time ago in this thread and didn't get an answer.

There is a UCC mergeDXT command which does merge DDS textures into base packages: http://wiki.beyondunreal.com/Legacy:S3TC

Diehard rather confused me because he spoke of the "mergertool" being updated and since UCC is not going to be updated any time soon, I'm at a loss to know which tool it is that he is using.

If we knew which tool he was using then we could perhaps arrange for updates to be made on his behalf...

 

[Diehard]

I asked almost that question a long time ago in this thread and didn't get an answer.

I am sure you must have overlooked it, because i always reply to questions.





But the Mergertool doesnt have anything to do with ucc, though it does function in a kinda similar way.


The S3TC textures needs to be saved in the dds format (DXT1, DXT3 or DXT5). Those files needs to be stored in a folderstructure that resembles the original package, so the wall textures go into the Wall folder, the floor textures go into the Floor folder, etc, etc.


The Mergertool is sitting outside that folderstructure along with the original .utx file. By double clicking on the Mergertool it starts to read the package and compares it with the folderstructure, if it encounters a bmp or pcx file in the original file it will check if theres a dds(S3TC) counterpart. If it finds one it will switch out the bmp/pcx files in favor of the dds file.


Most importantly the tool does this without altering the unique GUID from the original package, and thereby the newly created package will maintain netcompatibility. Because you can create altered netcompatible packages the tool never was released to the public.


Backthan Kerilk from Old Unreal created the tool specifically for me and my project. And he did a great job with it. But the tool lacks support for packages other than utx packages, and it has problems with procedural textures. At random an newly created S3TC package can fail if theres a procedural texture in it. The tool also has a huge memory leak, which means i have to reboot my computer each so many times i use it.


Apart from the problems the toll works flawless for Unreal and luckelly for UT as well, although it never was ment for UT. But yeah, an update from the tool would be awsome, but theres only so much people that are capable of doing so, not to mention its not a public tool and sourcecodes wont be given out easelly.........
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[GreatEmerald]

Hmmm... That means that if there were some nice updates, it would be possible to create UE2 S3TC textures. Hmm, but actually, why can't you make UE2 S3TC textures with it right now? The problem I can see could be that the textures are already in DDS. However, they can be converted to BMP easily, although no idea about the checksum then. Another issue could be Shaders - well, the answer would be, just ignore them, as they work without any need of visual data.

 

[Diehard]

Aside the lack of time, to deal with "other" games the tool works fine on UT2004, but it has another problem. UT2003 and above dont have the DrawScale function in the way Unreal and UT uses them.


Regardless what size i add the dds file (256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096) the Mergertool calculates the correct DrawScale for the texture. For UT2003 and above this doesnt work, and the texture will be scaled accordingly ingame.


Which means an S3TC 2048 texture that is being added instead of a 256 texture than that texture will be superemposed like 2048 ingame.
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[GreatEmerald]

Hmm... "UT2003 and above" means UE2 and UE3, right? And what changed so it doesn't work?

 

[Diehard]

Hmm... "UT2003 and above" means UE2 and UE3, right? And what changed so it doesn't work?

Yeah i believe thats UE2 and UE3.


Ill try explain lol. And this applies to Unreal and UT, and were damn lucky they made it that way.


If a texture is added to a package in the size 256 x 256 than normally the DrawScale is also 256. But in Unreal and UT the DrawScale is independent from the actual size. An 128 x 128 pixel texture can still have a DrawScale from 256, or vice versa a texture being 1024 x 1024 could have a DrawScale from 128, or 256 or whatever scale you want.


Now lets asume a texture in 256 x 256 pixels with a DrawScale from 256 was added to a package. If i switch out the texture for a 2048 x 2048 S3TC texture, the Mergertool notices that the DrawScale from the original texture is 256. The Mergertool makes sure it keeps the 256 DrawScale even though the texture should have a 2048 DrawScale.


This ensures that the texture physically being 2048 x 2048 is being projected ingame as 256. And if that texture is a 256 high wall, and added to the map 1:1 than the texture will be seen from top to bottom ingame. If the DrawScale wouldnt be there it would be projected on that wall in 2048 x 2048 which means you could only see a super enlarged wall while only 1:8 of the texture being visible. Needles to say the whole project would be gone down the drain, if Epic would have had the UT2003 DrawScale from start. As said were damn lucky as it is lol.


UT2003 and above still have a DrawScale function, but its NOT independend from the size. And the Mergertool seems to be able to switch out textures just fine, but it would be limited to the same size. Which than means, i could update packages, but only with a new texture in the exact same size as the original, unlike what i do for Unreal and UT.

A 256 x 256 pixel texture can only be switched by another 256 x 256 pixel texture, and that applies to any other given size.............


Lol, i hope this explains it.
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[Zur]

I should make a bit more effort to either do them myself and/or ask someone i know to do them for me.

I'll see if I can dig up that tutorial.

 

[Diehard]

In the meantime here is an update on oné of the new textures:



The texture involved was already made as S3TC by Epic, but i had to discard it, to make sure alll textures would match with eachother.
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[Hermskii]

Azura Avatar

Hey Azura, what is that cat in your avatar looking at? Is it KKK member or a fire?

 

[brdempsey69]

EDIT: Just found a killer earth texture I will use to make my own package.

Thanks Diehard for the explanation about how draw scale works with the Unreal 1 engine and the tutorials. I guess that does make it unique from the other Unreal engines that followed.

 

[Diehard]

EDIT: Just found a killer earth texture I will use to make my own package.

Lol i was gonna tell give me couple a hours and ill upload them to the site. I moved the PSD files to a new location on the site to be able to merge the downloads for Unreal and UT instead having them seperate. This reduces the amount of work and used disk space by half.

Regardless i am uploading them.

For the Earth texture i got a 4096 x 4096 pixel high resolution photo from NASA. And if correct i also have 4 new photos from mars in the same size with 4 different angles. Those last will go in a future update from that package to raise those 4 textures from a combined 2048 x 2048 to 4096 x 4096 texture. Lol, just need to find them back.



But give me a couple of hours(4-6 hours) and ill also upload all originals(read base files).
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[brdempsey69]

Thanks Diehard, I will download and use your files, if you are going to take the time to upload them, certainly. They're super-high res.

If you would, please post the link here, when the upload is finished.

Thanks again.

 

[IronMonkey]

Just an observation regarding using textures in UT2004 directly from a UT texture package.

I've found that UT2004 can read the textures (for import into MyLevel) but that sooner or later the texture becomes corrupted. The only reliable mechanism that I've found is to export the texture from UT to a standard file format and then import back into UT2004.

I'd strongly advise against using a UT texture directly in UT2004.

 

[Zur]

Hey Azura, what is that cat in your avatar looking at? Is it KKK member or a fire?

A rabbit.

 

[Diehard]

If you would, please post the link here, when the upload is finished.

Will do Theres 4 hours of upload remaining (entire PSD database is close to 2 gig)

I'd strongly advise against using a UT texture directly in UT2004.

I would agree on that, you never know where it can go wrong down the pipeline. Not to mention you dont wanna see your project go down the drain after release, to find out something isnt working properly. And its always a smart thing to rename the package as well, its likelly someone before you choose to port that package already. And porting between games, this is always were mismatches occur.
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[Diehard]

I dont have time to connect it to the texture Database so ill just provide the raw downloadlinks:

XbpFX NonGroup S3TC


I also uploaded the full PSD files from Mars and Earth to a temporary location, be warned, those are large files:

Earth01.rar 280 Mb 4096 x 4096 pixels

Mars01.rar 67 Mb 2048 x 2048 pixels


For the other people, if you dont have use for this, please dont go download it !
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[Raynor.Z]

But they look soooo goooood