Hi all

I am screwing around with some textures in game. Does anyone know what causes a texture to be overly reflective? It almost looks as if it has been rained on and light is gleaming off of it.

I could be wrong because I haven't played with it myself, but I believe shininess is added by using compression that enables a specular map (DXT3 or DXT5) on a normal map, where the whiter parts of the alpha channel translate to shininess.

I've now checked 1.0 as well as 1.3 (I have both here, luckily). They are 1.7GB+, each. A fair bit more, unpacked.

And, well, I'd check again if I were you. Seems at least one other poster agrees, so far.

Not meaning to be argumentative - I really have just looked at the files themselves, so I feel pretty confident. Or, perhaps, extremely confused, should I somehow be getting this wrong...

My archive is 1.7 and unpacked it's 2.7

Going through these I think it's hard to say it's mostly 1024 or 2048, there's really a mix, just from skimming through randomly. You could get the impression that it's "mostly" one or the other, unless I just haven't gone through them thoroughly enough.

Also this is surely a dumb question but I'm wondering what the alpha channel is used for in these textures that I wouldn't expect to have transparency, like a rock texture that looks to be set at 50% opacity.

The alpha channels are used for the parallax data. Supposed to make the 3D appearance of anything using it stand out more, but that's also why you need the meshes to go along with it because you have to turn that flag on in the mesh.

There may be some other use for it if the mesh isn't set to use parallax though. Probably specular reflection?

Ah, thanks. And I thought it could be something like specular shine, but from what I've http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/DDS_Files that's what the alpha channel is used for in normal maps. Just getting everything straight since I want to work on some textures myself, time to find out more about the simultaneously wonderful and useless parallax stuff.

But add me to the chorus of people who think, should massive LOD textures work, the performance hit would far outweigh the increase in visual quality. When I finally found a nice 4096x4096 set I was pretty happy and haven't really been dissatisfied with the quality since.

Oh right, that's it. Alpha on the normal maps is for specular. Alpha in the color map is for transparency, and when that's not in use, parallax data.

OK, now I've gone through them a bit more - they are definitely majority 1024 and below.

Aaaanyway...

Something even vaguely constructive - or more on topic at least! - I don't see any need for 8192 textures, or even 4096. It will kill any GPU out there, if enough of them were used.

Adding lots of 1024, some 2048, and things like 4096 for skin and LOD... is pretty demanding, as it is! Going for 100% 2048 (both textures and normals), with better meshes too, 4096 LOD, RAEVWD (or an equivalent), and so on - I think that would fill up even the most monstrous GPU. Switching to 4096 textures, let alone 8192 - I just don't think we (as in, consumers) have that kind of tech available, regardless of income.

At least do the mipmap experiment I mentioned, so you know what is getting thrown on screen and at what distance from the camera. You don't even KNOW if a 8192 is even fully going to get rendered, and at what point. Once that is done and the data on the experiment is presented, then take it from there. First thing is first. all it takes is someone with a little better pc than mine to make the experiment texture, do the mipmap trick, and take some screens to lay it to rest.