How to properly import DDS textures?

[Goblinounours]

Hey there!

So, just to clarify, this may very well be my first post on the Hive forums. I used to be a lurker about 10 years ago, when I was working on edits on my own. Used to do some 'meh' edits back then (and 90% of what I did got lost to some hard drive crashes, the screenshots in the folder I linked are all that I've managed to save).
Back then, internet wasn't available on my own computer, so I had to go on my parents' computer do see websites like the HiveWorkshop, and with the 56k connection we had back then, urgh.
All this to say, I'm sorry if this isn't the right place for this thread. I already was a bit too shy to post this before, so I instead went and bothered Veronnis. ^^'

That being said, I'm trying to get right back on the saddle with Warcraft 3 Reforged and eat that horse.
Problem is, things are more complex now, and I'm finding myself having difficulties to import my custom textures. They look... darker than they should.

I'm currently working on a TerrainArt texture of Cityscape Ruins Brick Tiles.
Here's how it looks in the editor with Lights Off (when I press the L key) :

That's pretty much the same king of colors as the regular Cityscape bricks tiles, right?
Wrong, when I press L to put the Lights back on, I get this :

The texture itself looks decent enough on Photoshop :

So I wonder what I'm doing wrong, if it's a setting I'm messing-up in the DDS pop-up :

Does anybody has experience with that?

 

[deepstrasz]

@Veronnis if you will please.

 

[Goblinounours]

Ah, I wasn't aware the @ function worked on this forum. Nice!

 

[deepstrasz]

Yeah, he uploaded two textures:
Reforged Wood Texture
Reforged Street Texture (Request)

 

[Veronnis]

Haha, he and TriggerHappy have already been messaging me. I'll just post some basic knowledge here.

Best Export Settings:
DXT5
(.DDS obviously)
Alpha Map Preserved
MipMap; yes. Style: Mitchell

What is what:
Diffuse: Basic color info, this is what the texture looks like is basically just a blp when not combined with the other 2 file pieces.
Normal: Controls an artificial height map on the texture that applies to how it is lit or shaded (This does not actually change texture height)
ORM: I haven't done too much with this one yet but I believe it changes how a tile interacts with light ie. (Reflectivity, Crispness/Smoothness and such)

 

[Goblinounours]

From what I've gathered, the ORM map contains info for Ambient Occlusion (red canal), Roughness (green canal) and Metallic (blue canal).

I'll see if I can find anything named "Mitchell style".

 

[Veronnis]

My export options appear to be more basic than yours, but I haven't had any problems so far. Unfortunately I just checked the plugin info and all that was there was the version number - they didn't even credit themselves so I cant remember where I got it.

 

[Goblinounours]

Is it a plugin for Photoshop?

 

[Veronnis]

Yes it is a Photoshop Plugin for Photoshop CC 20.0.1

 

[Goblinounours]

Would you by any chance know how to get it?
I'm on PS CC 2017, so maybe I'll try to move to a more recent PS version.
Honestly, if I gotta 'downgrade' from the NVidia plugin to yours, I'm fine with that. XD

 

[Veronnis]

I can no longer recall where I got it :/

I think I was searching through Skyrim Mods/Forums and I think it lead me to a website named Nord something that had the download on it.

 

[Goblinounours]

Out of curiosity, for SCIENCE, what happens when you convert these PSD textures in DDS with your settings?
http://www.goblinounours.fr/WC3R/CityscapeRuinsBrickTiles/DRuins_BrickTiles_Diffuse.psd
http://www.goblinounours.fr/WC3R/CityscapeRuinsBrickTiles/DRuins_BrickTiles_Normal.psd
http://www.goblinounours.fr/WC3R/CityscapeRuinsBrickTiles/DRuins_BrickTiles_ORM.psd
For these, the import path should start with : _HD.w3mod\TerrainArt\DalaranRuins\

I would guess the result would indicate for sure if I'm doing something wrong with my DDS plugin settings.
I'll keep tinkering with the settings, to see if I find something.

 

[Veronnis]

No wonder I couldn't find your exact brick files, you had added those cracks in yourself lol. I was wondering... nice edits.

Anyway here are your files saved through my settings: Your Files | HIVE

 

[Goblinounours]

No wonder I couldn't find your exact brick files, you had added those cracks in yourself lol. I was wondering... nice edits.

Thanks.
I could put out A LOT of edits like this if I could just figure out what's wrong with what I'm doing there.

Anyway here are your files saved through my settings: Your Files | HIVE

The good news is that I now know your DDS export procress does the same thing as mine : nothing changes.

The bad news is, now I have no idea what I'm doing wrong.

 

[Veronnis]

Do your custom tiles experience any issues when zooming out?
Have you checked the ingame lighting to confirm it is actually broken?

 

[Goblinounours]

In-game, I get the same thing.

From a process of elimination, it has to be related to the export process.
I've taken the 3 textures of the original Cityscape BrickTiles, opened them on Photoshop and I re-exported them with the DDS plugin, then imported them in the editor instead of another tile.
I changed nothing to the textures themselves.

 

[Goblinounours]

So, I've spent the past 5 hours trying all sorts of things.
I've figured the the Mitchell style wasn't the MIP setting that gave me the best result. The default setting style was "Triangle", and I was noticing clearly better MIP maps when zooming out with this one.
I've tried to save the ORM and Normal maps in DXT1 because I read online that the DXT5 was only mandatory for textures with an alpha channel. The results were worse.
I've tried using the "existing MIP maps" and no MIP maps at all. Bad idea.
I've tried increasing the gamma value of the MIP maps... again, nothing of value.

So, I'm tired, I'm out of ideas, so I decided to say "F-CK IT" and I simply increased the brightness of the diffuse map by 125%.
This gets me something that I like with the Lights On :

But it's absolutely not satisfying as the result with Lights Off is really not what it should be :

If anyone cares to make tests, the files are still right there :
Index of /WC3R/CityscapeRuinsBrickTiles

 

[Razorclaw_X]

I've read this discussion with interest since it also affects me.

I THINK I've narrowed down the problem to actually being the effect of the Normal layer. I'd been getting the 'dark patch of ground' effect you'd been seeing for a while by using a personally-generated Normal made by hand, but I think the effect from that turned out that the facing layer of the top ended up on the bottom instead.

I took my texture and generated an actual Normal layer using the official Nvidia Photoshop plugin, but apparently I wasn't able to save that in .dds format straight up for some reason. Instead I saved it as .tga, and converted it to .dds using BLPlab and imported it that way instead. That turned out ot fix my problem (note: I have NO idea what settings BLPlab uses for .dds, but whatever it is it appears to be the correct settings).

I haven't tried it with your texture yet, but I'll see if I can replicate my results when I get a bit more time.

 

[Veronnis]

I have been modifying and using existing normals since they already look good, but the couples times I messed with making one there was a checkbox for: "Flip Normal Y" based on the above comments it wouldn't surprise me if checking or unchecking that box helped you.

 

[C.B.King]

I wouldnt mind figuring out, how to import, DSS files, so i can use custom terrain on Reforge, as importing as BLP doesnt work, never used DSS exporter, so aint sure what am doing, this is how settings currently are, but didnt work when imported.

 

[Goblinounours]

Gotta say, I'm still in the same pickle as you, right now.

 

[Antinous]

For people having the same issue as the OP, it's indeed an issue with the normal map that he used. By inverting only one color channel, the color scheme of his normal map got messed up.

On the left, a default-looking normal map (color-wise). On the right, same thing, but inverted. Normal maps used in Reforged are all "inverted" as far as I saw, so that's what you should provide by default.
The main blue's hexacode value of the normal map on the left is #8080ff
The main yellow-brownish's value of the normal map on the right is #7f7f00
Those two values will help you spot a "right" normal map from a "wrong" one. Those two values are interpreted by post-processing effects as the parts of the texture that are flat. So in most of your normal maps, the main color should be one of those two.

The OP's normal map had the wrong color scheme, but the dark render probably comes from the fact it did not follow the same swizzle coordinates standard used by the original normal map (=it looked more like the blue-ish image on the left of my example, instead of the yellow-brownish one on the right)
Photoshop CC comes with a default plugin to generate normal maps from regular images. But it's far from being accurate to what it should look like (but are still technically correct, so it helps)
Although it's possible to make/edit details of a normal map by hand, you'll likely make mistakes, because of the weird color scheme to follow, inherent of normal mapping's purpose.


When it comes to exporting in the DDS format using Photoshop, I use Intel® Texture Works Plugin with the following settings :
Texture type : « Color » or « Color + Alpha » (even for normal maps. Using the "Normal Map" option lead my WE to crash)
Compression : I didn't have any issue with any of these. Although I didn't try the BC4 Greyscale option nor the uncompressed one.
Pre-compress Normal Map Operations : You can check « Flip Red (X) » and « Flip Green (Y) »
Mip Maps : « Auto Generate » or « From Layers »

 

[Goblinounours]

Oh, thanks for these explanations! I'll look into all of that!

 

[Daniel Kopp]

I have another question about importing DDS-textures.

I want to change the color of "Chain Lightning", so I found the texture and exported it from my Casc Viewer:

Spoiler: Picture

Used the Intel® Texture Works Plugin to open it in photoshop and did my recolor:

Spoiler: Picture

Saved it out with thies settings:

Spoiler: Picture

Imported it to the editor and gave it the correct path:

Spoiler: Picture

But when I jump in game I get this:

Spoiler: Picture

I tried alot of diffrent settings, all with the same resault.
I tried to use the original .DDS straight from Casc Viewer without opening it in PS, just to see if the problem was something in my path. But when I import that it works fine and looks like OG Chain Lightning, so it must be something in the recolor prosess?
There is no alpha in the original .DDS but I tried adding an alpha and that did not work.

If anyone has any idea on how to get this working I would deeply appreciate it!

 

[Veronnis]

Not sure what I did different from you but mine worked. Here is the paste if u want it.

Lightning | HIVE (Accessible until 2/12/2020)

 

[Daniel Kopp]

So good to get confirmation that it works!
So I tried to export with this .DDS exporter:
.dds Plugin for Photoshop CC*

And now everything works like a charm, thanks!
I will prob make some sort of tutorial for ppl who want's to recolor stuff like this ^^

 

[ALADEEN]

Is there any other tool for .dds?

 

[Daniel Kopp]

Is there any other tool for .dds?

What do you want the tool to do?
I use Nvidia's plugin for photoshop and it's working like a charm!

 

[ALADEEN]

What do you want the tool to do?
I use Nvidia's plugin for photoshop and it's working like a charm!

Just asking.

 

[Macadamia]

So good to get confirmation that it works!
So I tried to export with this .DDS exporter:
.dds Plugin for Photoshop CC*

And now everything works like a charm, thanks!
I will prob make some sort of tutorial for ppl who want's to recolor stuff like this ^^

Not asking this for myself, but please, when providing links for resources, could you avoid links that require an account creation ?
Thanks.

---

Ok I am not 100% certain my problem is not related to the exporting from Photoshop, but from something else.

I wanted to edit the reforged's infernal model's emissive texture to be able to recolor the infernal flames with vertex coloring.
So i grabbed the texture from CascView.
Then (I tried with GiMP first btw) I open the texture with Photoshop
Go to Hue/Saturation to put saturation to -100 to get rid of the green coloring.
Increase contrast a bit with legacy contrast.
Save the texture with Intel or NVidia plubins. I chose color+alpha and autogenerate mipmaps.
Then import the texture in my map, give it the appropriate path :

units\demon\infernal\infernal_main_emissive.dds

... and nothing happens at all.

The infernal flames are still the same stupid green.

My first attempts failed. I though it was because I reduced the texture size from 2048x2048 to 256x256 (not going to use a 5mb texture just for the sake of changing these flames colors) but I was wrong, this time I only reduced the saturation to the minimum.

These new texture rules seem to really make every non-texture expert's lives a nightmare...

 

[Razorclaw_X]

For models like the Infernal the color of the fire is dictated by the model's particle information and not the texture.

 

[Daniel Kopp]

The flames comming out of the Infernal is a is not based on the emissive texture, it's a few diffrent attatched VFX's.

 

[Macadamia]

Thank you guys, this totally explains my utter failures.

Now I can't find the emitter itself with Retera's Model Studio, can anyone confirm it is indeed in the infernal model and not any specific sfx model ?

If it is indeed in the infernal, I might as well give up and find other ways. I see no point importing a slightly modified 2+mb model just to get the proper color for fire / frost towers.

I still have my classic "neutral" infernal back from 2004, but it really looks awful among reforged models.

 

[SebioL]

Is there any other tool for .dds?

Friend, I just used Paint.Net.
It easily handles and saves any texture in .DDS format, you may need to configure the save modes better.
Most of the textures that I modified, worked perfectly, the ones that I had a problem with, maybe because of some banal flaw in ORM or Normal.

 

[Dr Super Good]

GIMP can be used with the default plugin it has for DDS. Not all the encoding modes work and some can appear hilariously corrupt. This is likely because WC3 assumes all DDS are in a specific encoding.

 

[SebioL]

GIMP can be used with the default plugin it has for DDS. Not all the encoding modes work and some can appear hilariously corrupt. This is likely because WC3 assumes all DDS are in a specific encoding.

Or .... Perhaps the shape of all texture streams (diffuse/normal/orm) that need to be in the same type of configuration to work in sync.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Or .... Perhaps the shape of all texture streams (diffuse/normal/orm) that need to be in the same type of configuration to work in sync.

Classic models only have diffuse textures since they use per vertex normals. I tested on classic models.

 

[pyf]

Is there any other tool for .dds?

microsoft/DirectXTex

Courtesy of Microsoft. Not for the faint of heart.

 

[SebioL]

Friend, using the simplified "Paint.Net", I have always just checked these 6 options and everything works normally for textures Reforged.