Help Installing Texture Mods

[Mdp11]

Hello everyone, I'm new here so don't be too hard on me if I ask stupid questions

My first problem is installi texture mods. I read that I can either just place the extracted files in the override folder, or I have to use XNView otherwise the textures will be flipped.

How do I know which method to use? Or maybe I could just install all textures with XNView?

Thanks for your attention!

[high5]

It should tell you in the files description and/or in the readme, if not just place in the override folder. as far as i know its only Jorak Uln's texture packs that require this. I wouldn't use the program for other textures as it seems to flip over how textures are read, so they will display back to front.

[Kexikus]

Most textures are simply placed into the Override folder and only some exceptions require the use of XnView. I know only of Jorak Ulns texture packs and Xediis older packs.

 

But in general, read the readme / description and do whatever it says and if there's no readme just copy them to the Override and everything should be fine.

[Salk]

I have downloaded Circa's Higher Quality Bastila and I noticed the two .tga texture files are both flipped.

 

Should they both go to the Override the way they are anyway?

[DarthParametric]

Yes, both the face and clothes textures appear to be flipped vertically. They'll need to be flipped back to work properly.

 

I'm not sure why this happens. An artefact of whatever tools they are using I guess. I know Jorak at least uses Gimp, could be related to that perhaps.

[Salk]

Is there an easy way to fix that?

 

Nevermind, I noticed XnView does it easily...

 

Another question is: does the image display correctly for the original author(s) instead? Because it seems strange to think they do not notice this kind of issue.

[Sith Holocron]

I have PM'd Circa and linked to your post so he can answer the question directly.

[DarthParametric]

So it looks like it's the format they are saved in. Those are Type 10 (run-length encoded true-color image), whereas in Photoshop you'd save those out as Type 2 (uncompressed true-color image). It seems like they actually do show up the right way in-game though if kept as Type 10. According to the specification there is a field for specifying the X and Y origin, thus determining which way is up, so I imagine that Gimp or whatever is spitting these out just flips it upside down for some reason. Odd though that PS doesn't seem to detect that and display it the right way.

 

So long story short, they appear to actually be OK as-is for game use, but you may have to flip them if you are modifying them for your own use.

[Salk]

Thanks for the detailed explanation.

 

I have no intention to modify the texture itself but just to be on the safe side, I flipped them.

[DarthParametric]

I'm still scratching my head over it. From what I can see, bytes 9 to 12 of a TGA header should contain the X and Y co-ords which determine which corner to use as the origin, but both Circa's original files and ones exported from PS just have zero values for those bytes. Maybe there is something else somewhere in the file that tells the game - or more probably the video card - to flip the texture the right way.

[Salk]

What would happen if the game does not flip the texture the way it is supposed to be?

I am completely ignorant about how textures, models and everything that has to do with graphic works so please forgive the probably dumb question.

[DarthParametric]

What would happen if the game does not flip the texture the way it is supposed to be?

Horrors beyond human comprehension.

 

[Sith Holocron]

Horror

 

Horrors beyond human comprehension.

 

 

::slow clap::

 

And I know horror.  Trust me . . . I'm a Sith Holocron!

[Salk]

She does look considerably less charming...

Thanks for a good laugh on top of everything else, DarthParametric.

[DarthParametric]

Interestingly, if you convert them to Bioware's DDS format things take a decidedly psychedelic turn:

 

 

Gimp (?) is certainly doing something non-standard.

[Malkior]

This is disturbingly intriguing.. ': /

[Circa]

I flipped them to avoid the above result. I wasn't sure why it was the case but I had recalled other mods that had flipped textures and that seemed to be the fix in this case. Should work fine out of the box, but if you edit them you may need to flip depending on the format, as explained above.

[LiliArch]

Interestingly, if you convert them to Bioware's DDS format things take a decidedly psychedelic turn:

Converting textures to Bioware DDS seem to do that on completely radomly chosen textures, or at least seemingly randomly. I can't relly track why it's so.

[DarthParametric]

I've never had it happen to any files I have converted. Based on hex comparisons, Gimp does something non-standard with its TGA exports that not everything likes.

[LiliArch]

I don't know about Gimp, I've put all of the textures through Corel Photo-Paint and saved them with perfectly same settings, and after converting them to DDS, some randomly-picked ones have exactly that issue, while others do not. It is quite weird, and the only thing I can do to not have that happen, is use that specific texture as tga, not dds.