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Another Texture Problem

A

art209

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637
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unitedstates
I'm creating buildings in airport scenery that only use default FSX textures so that new textures don't have to be included with the scenery bgls. For some reason the FSX default BLDV2 and BLDC2 textures are completely transparent on my buildings created with FSDS (maybe other textures, but I have tried these two). The BLD_Tropics_Asian_1 texture is not transparent. All are DDS 1024x1024, and I find no differences when examined with DTXBmp and Paint Shop Pro. I even tried changing the texture to extended bitmap (DTX5) with no change to the result.

Can anyone explain to me what is wrong and what I can do?

Art
 
Hi Art
I am using FSDS3.5.1 compiling with XtoMDL for FSX
I just made a cube and then put the texture BLDC2 on it, compiled and installed it shows ok, so there must be some other problem.
Farfy
 
I agree it can't be the texture. I looked at it and it does not contain an alpha channel. So there is no reason why it should show transparent by just using the texture. I guess there must be something in the model you made that caused this.
 
arno said:
I agree it can't be the texture. I looked at it and it does not contain an alpha channel. So there is no reason why it should show transparent by just using the texture. I guess there must be something in the model you made that caused this.
Click to expand...

Thanks for checking and both replies.

Before posting the thread, I applied the three textures listed in my original post on a cube and compiled it. The result was: the two sides with the BLDV2 and BLDC2 textures were transparent (invisible) and the the sides with no texture and with the BLD_Tropics_Asian_1 were visible. I am using FSDS 3.5.1 and flagged the textures for "night". The result is the same day or night. My textures are the updated version from GEX, so I even restored the original backup textures, but got the same result.

What else can I do to troubleshoot this?
 
Experiments with textured objects have not yet turned up an answer to the problem. I'm thinking that it has to do with how FSDS handles DDS textures.

I have been placing 24 bit BMP conversions of the FSX DDS textures in a separate folder to use in FSDS since it cannot display the DDS version on the object, the compiled object in FSX uses the DDS texture in the FSX texture folder, and this has been working until now. The FSDS instructions indicate that 1024x1024 DDS textures can be used. There is a checkbox in the FSDS preferences (jpg attached) that is not explained in the instructions. Can anyone explain to me what the "Convert BMP references to DDS" means? I have tried FSDS with this checked and unchecked and it has no affect on my texture problem or anything else that I can see.

Art
 

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Hi Art
I just took the two texture that are giving grief and copied them to my working texture folder there I converted them to (24 bit BMP) this is the format I have most of my textures in and FSDS seems to like them, after making my object I would normally copy my textures to my game texture folder and convert them to DXT1 with MipMaps, but here I just used the24 bit to working in FSDS compiled the cube at the default location and did NOT move the texture so that FSX will use the dds ones from the main texture folder and the cube looked great. So perhaps its just that FSDS dosent like working with _dds textures.
Farfy:D
 
Farfy said:
Hi Art
I just took the two texture that are giving grief and copied them to my working texture folder there I converted them to (24 bit BMP) this is the format I have most of my textures in and FSDS seems to like them, after making my object I would normally copy my textures to my game texture folder and convert them to DXT1 with MipMaps, but here I just used the24 bit to working in FSDS compiled the cube at the default location and did NOT move the texture so that FSX will use the dds ones from the main texture folder and the cube looked great. So perhaps its just that FSDS dosent like working with _dds textures.
Farfy:D
Click to expand...

I believe what you describe is the same as what I've been doing, but the results in this particular instance are not the same. To make things stranger, my last attempt resulted in half of the polygon (cube face) getting the visible texture, and the other half is invisible (jpg attached).

This needs further explaination: The texture shown on the lower half of the cube face is the top half of the defined texture, and it is displayed at airport X50 from a mdl file placed with ADE. The same cube displayed at Seattle from a bgl created with FSDS has the complete cube face invisible.

Art
 

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Last edited:
art209 said:
There is a checkbox in the FSDS preferences that is not explained in the instructions. Can anyone explain to me what the "Convert BMP references to DDS" means? I have tried FSDS with this checked and unchecked and it has no affect on my texture problem or anything else that I can see.
Click to expand...

Nobody knows what it means? No wonder they don't mention it in the instructions.

Art
 
Sounds similar to the option there is in GMax when you export. I believe what that option does is to convert the texture files themselves to DDS on export. Although I must say I never use it and do the conversion manually.
 
arno said:
Sounds similar to the option there is in GMax when you export. I believe what that option does is to convert the texture files themselves to DDS on export. Although I must say I never use it and do the conversion manually.
Click to expand...

Thanks Arno. If it does that, I certainly wouldn't want it checked. I don't want FSDS messing with default texture files in FSX.

I keep all of the working textures in a separate folder labeled "FS Textures" under pictures and it is the default texture folder for FSDS. The default FSX DDS textures are converted to bmp and placed in a sub-folder labeled "FSX". I noticed that when I use a texture from the "FSX" folder, FSDS puts a bmp copy in the "FS Texture" folder.

Art
 
Generally, I use the "convert bitmap reference to DDS " option when I KNOW I want to use the DXT5 DDS option in the final model.

What happens exactly, I don't know, because a quick look at the resulting _temp.x file shows the *.bmp reference, but not a *.dds reference. It probably changes some other data that I don't easily recognize.
 
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