Dont forget to like and subscribe for more content like this. It still would not necessarily mean youd need two times the space, for the download package normal maps could be stored in 3dc only with the same size as the current dxt5 textures. This rearranging of the normal map axes is called swizzling the green and alpha channels are used because in the dxt format they are. A all items map i created on youtube before it got taken down. But for high quality things like faces and any normal maps, i suggest that you choose none for a nearly lossless file. Nvidia texture tools exporter the nvidia texture tools exporter allows users to create highly compressed texture files that stay small both on disk and in memory directly from image sources using nvidias cudaaccelerated texture tools 3. Ak47 first class with normal maps on l4d2 animations.
Dxt5 is more or less ideal for compressed normal maps that will need to contain a specular map in the alpha channel, dxt5 again. This article discusses how texture compression affects your textures. Christian petry, fliederweg 6, 91094 langensendelbach, germany. For information, do not forget that the 03tc format possesses practically the same characteristics as the dds format. It supports the dxt1 and dxt5 compression and the mipmaps, in short, the essential elements for texture compression.
This tutorials explains the fastest and easiest way to change the intensity of a normal map. This exporter combines four texture tools in a single plugin and standalone application, including flexible and. Some people like to keep the size of a normal texture down like keeping it 2k or below and save at a very low compression rate to prevent loss of quality. Texture compression will reduce visual quality, but. Dds file using dxt1, dxt2, dxt5 or ati 3dc compression schemas. My understanding of dxt5, that it is used for textures with an alpha channel, however my normal maps contains no alpha channels, so i should be able to choose dxt1. I ask because my laymans understanding is that normal maps should not be compressed, i.
I switched in project settings to dxt5 for normal maps, but then it turned out all my and 3rd party texturesmaterials got jacked up and id have to manually switch texture type and sampler in order for dxt5 normal maps render properly. To download the latest version of directx visit microsofts directx site. This exporter combines four texture tools in a single plugin and standalone application, including. Diffuse displacement normal ao specular environment if you like this, please need a texture. Another downside, is that only very few tools support the format, such as the standalone version of nvidias dds compressor or intels texture works plugin for adobe photoshop.
Eye normal map fix sse there is now a version for true eyes 2. This exporter combines four texture tools in a single plugin and standalone application, including flexible and powerful support for cube maps, mipmaps, normal. Because of the additi onal alpha channel, the dxt5 format consumes twice the amount of memory of the dxt1 format. Dxtviewer is a free compressed textures viewer using opengl for accelerated rendering. As it will reduce the filesize of the texture, but keep the alpha channel transparency for various textures that might need it, like fur and hair. Dxt5nm is the same file format as dxt5 except before compression the red channel is moved into the alpha channel, the. For the normals x and y vectors it uses a 4 bitperpixel block compression scheme similar to that of the alpha channel on dxt5, meaning the channels are independent of each other. All of these are block oriented codecs that work on 4x4 blocks of pixels. A good thread explaining texture optimization skyrim. Normal maps compression bc5 vs dxt5 which one to use. However i also find that the nvidia dds plugin for photoshop does a particular craptastic job at generating dds textures, i have always found that it ends up over compressing the image like a really low compression jpeg and generates larger ddss in comparison to other. An example of the compression artifacts you might get from most textures.
Specifically for normal maps here are some images comparing artifacts caused by compression using bc1 and bc3. We can take advantage of this to hijack the dxt5 format and turn it into a normal map compression format. First class dxt5 to dxt1 with normal maps hope you enjo. The increasing popularity of the techniques that automatically generate normal maps from. We can now save the normal map, i save as dxt5 with mip maps, but dxt3 is also a good choice here. This allows us to use the dxt5 compression format with normal maps at a higher quality than before, but it still has problems and is not perfect. If you view this new dds file you will see that it has changed colour from the nice purple colour to a lovely blue, just like the default aircraft bumpnormal maps. Adjustments okay so as i mentioned earlier, we can take an additional step here to boost the depthdetail of our normal map. First we need to rearrange the data in the normal map. Dxt viewer opengl compressed textures viewer dds dxt1. A normal in objectspace can be anywhere on the full unitsphere, and is typically stored as a vector.
Use either the main or optional true eyes version if you are using true. Objectspace normal maps objectspace normal maps store normals relative to the position and orientation of a whole object. Atis 3dc compression algorithm is a modification of dxt5 designed to overcome s3tcs shortcomings with regard to normal maps. Normally though you dont want to use dx compression on normal maps as quality can adversely affect the normal map by a lot. Source 2 normal maps are compressed with dxt5nm dxt5nm is the same file format as dxt5 except before compression the red channel is moved into the alpha channel, the green channel is left asis, and the red and blue channels are blanked with the same solid color. Of course dxt5 needs to be saved with an alpha channel so its not something youd typically save as for colour maps. First class dxt5 to dxt1 with normal maps hope you enjoy this skins.
The optional file is the dx11 bc7 compression for those who think it makes a difference. Use dxt5 in all cases its an improved format over the older dxt3, the quality is. Eye normal map fix sse at skyrim special edition nexus. Normal maps are used for realtime 3d rendering mostly in games to. Then click save a little window should pop up called save as dds be sure to change compression to bc3 dxt5 and be sure to make sure generate mipmaps is ticked. In the advanced texture settings for a normal map, there is no dxt1 compression available for normal maps, instead you must use dxt5. Then you can create the dxt5 version of it upon installation, half the values you can put in the dxt5 alpha channel without any recompression, the other half.
In that case, the normal could be compressed as dxt1 to halve its memory size. Setting the compression to high quality on both color textures and normal maps will use a bc7 texture, which is much better than dxt1 for pretty much every situation, but takes a lot longer to compress. Intel texture works plugin for photoshop intel software. Dxt5nm is the same file format as dxt5 except before compression the red channel is moved into the alpha channel, the green channel is left asis, and the red and blue channels are blanked with the same solid color. Useful for color maps with full alpha, packing color and mono maps together. Useful for color maps or normal maps if memory is tight. Dxt5 format the dxt5 format compresses an rgba image by a factor of 4. If you have a normal map without an alpha it doesnt necessarily make it darker, in fact in my experience it makes it looks like this just for kicks, i took a bc7 normal map and make the blue channel totally black like bc5 and this is the result. This is because dds compression changes color information in a way thats acceptable when youre looking at a color map but potentially distorting for normals, since the colors on a normal map arent processed as. Its a royal pita so, can i use bc5 normal maps on mobile devices and consoles. What is texture compression all images that are used for 3d modeling in xplane become textures on the video card. The good thing is that the dxt5 format provides a special alpha channel with. Textures for mobile platforms unreal engine documentation. Using regular dxt1dxt5 compression for normal maps also makes it possible to use the bluealpha channel for storing an additional greyscale texture, e.
O3tc ozone3d texture compression with dxt1, dxt5 compression. Texture compression settings unreal engine documentation. This modification is not mine and i will not be able to help with it. On mobile afaik it will be forced to use the texture compression for that specific platform, regardless of what you set so pvrtc on ios and i think metal devices have the new pvrtc3 or something like that, not sure about android but thats another format as well.
It is thus possible to use dxt5 to store normal maps with higher quality by moving the x. Tut normal map plugin for beginners gimp the nexus. Steam community guide using dds textures in gimp 2. A compressed texture is a texture that has been specially encoded to reduce the amount of vram it requires. On the plus side, astc tools are 420x faster than its closest competitor, etc2, for production output. This rearranging of the normal map axes is called swizzling the green and alpha channels are used because in the dxt format they are compressed using. This gives a much less blocky result with the same memory footprint as dxt5.
Using astc texture compression for game assets nvidia. The normals outside ue look fine but, as soon as they get imported via. Udk normalmapformats unreal engine 4 documentation. Dxt5 will cause some compression artifacts at times that can make your normal maps look a bit spotychy. Normal map compression is one of the few exceptions where palettisation can still give higher quality than dxt compression. Normal maps use the rgb color space to store the data needed for the effect the 24 bits for each pixel are used to encode the pixels vector. For diffuse maps with the need of alpha transparency maps. Its a bit confusing as normal maps are usually bluepurple and specular maps are usually grayscale. Normal maps for morrowind at morrowind nexus mods and. But defaults to using a swizzled dxt5bc3 for textures marked as a normal map.
Realtime normal map dxt compression 5 february 2008 2. This is mostly for making maps for servers in the multiplayer mod called san andreas multiplayer. The advantage of dxt5 over dxt1 is that it supports an alpha channel. The normalmap dxt5, bc5 on dx11 texture compression format is used to compress normal maps. For reference this is a bc7 normal with the blue channel and correct z info. Download and play the latest weapons skins and mods for left 4 dead 2. Download the adobe photoshop normal map plugin and install it. Im not sure if its an issue with the process of importing or with the actual substance published by substance designer again, the original. Normalmapcompressor a tool to automatically compress normal. As you can see, for most diffuse and specular textures we can compress to bc1. Which are the minimum requisites to execute the application. The main true eyes file is the standard dxt5 compression. The dxt5 format can be used in many ways for different purposes. Artifacts in normal map with unity only unity forum.
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