FTEX generator

Hi,

Started playing around with epic a few days ago, and realised that there's still not a tool for generating .ftc/.ftu files.

So i wrote one.

I don't have much expirence with modding eoc, so although i've tried to test using the generated textures, i'm not 100% sure they where being used.

You can grab it here:

pointless.net/eoc/genftex.zip

Feedback definatly solicited - it's possible the textures are upside down and back to front [xx(]

Wow... that's great!

I'll be texturing and moving a model in-game this weekend and would be happy to give it a try.

Totally cool! Second Chance will be dancing for days.

What kind of compression rate do you get?

DXT1 is a fixed rate compressor - it's 6:1, it turns each 4 x 4 block of pixels into 64 bits, 2 16 bit colours (5:6:5 bits for rgb), and a 32 bit lookup table. To decompress it you create 2 new colours by interpolating between the 2 16 bit ones, and then each 2 bit value the lookup table coresponds to one of the 4 colours.

This is why dxt1 can cause artifacts in textures that have sharp colour transitions - if for example you've got a diagonal white line that 1 pixel wide with red on one side and green on the other you'll
lose one of the colours and have it replaced by an intertpolated mess.

The idea is that it's easy to decompress in hardware, so you can send the DXT1 data straight to your video card, saving AGP bandwidth etc.

DXT1 was called S3TC (it was invented by S3, and then licenced to microsoft for use in directX), googling for S3TC will get you more info.

The FTEX format includes mipmaps, so the game dosn't have to generate them at load time which should (in theory) speed up loading a bit more too. plus you can generate the mipmaps using a slower, but hopefully more accurate method for better looking results.

Hi Jasper, we should be getting some feedback to you soon. Testing on the Nebula textures is underway. A 6 to 1 compression would really help our mod size.

Do you work in the graphics industry?

I don't know if you have any spare time, but one item that would be very useful to the community would be a utility to pull the geometry back out of converted.PSO files. It would be especially handy for building modified versions of current ships. And a future feature of Torn Stars will offer real modular stations that are constructed during the game.

It would be really nice to be able to make a few different versions of those station components, without needing someone to remodel them all.

While I don't have the background to judge properly, I don't think it would be a small task.

Hi Jasper,

I tried genftex on several nebula background from TS. Namely 'Far North' and 'Xuxuan'. Far North seemed to display perfectly with only the ftc files. Xuxuan on the other hand, was all white, unless I included the ftu files. Then it appeared normally. strange.