A few normal map questions..

[rqe3bc]

First, 3D Coat is a great program - it's so much easier to "paint" on an object than trying to paint a "flat" texture. I've just done a few tests objects with it to try it out (I've only had it since yesterday) and it works great with Lightwave and my game engine.

I need to export normal maps and preferably textures in dds format, but I've found that it exports rather large files - I tried a simple box with just a few paint strokes on it and the normal map dds file was over 5 megs (I try to keep these under one meg.)

So I was wondering if there is a way to cut down the file size (I was using 1024x1024).

Also, is there a way to change the texture size once a model is loaded, or can that only be done during import?

Thanks.

[digman]

Hi ya

Under the main edit menu,top left corner of the program, there are your settings to adjust the amount of polygons and your texture resolution after your model is loaded. I'm not sure about the dds files size but will check it myself. If you have Photoshop CS versions or version 7 you can download this plug-in from Nivida that will enable you to load DDS files in photoshop.Their are many options to adjust when you save your dds files. Also you can make normal maps with the same plug-in. Welcome to the community

http://developer.nvidia.com/object/photosh...ds_plugins.html

[Andrew Shpagin]

You can change texture resolution in Edit->Change mesh and texture resolution

3DC does not exports textures in DXT formats, it is better to use Photoshop or Nvidia tools (like was mentioned) to convert.

DXT1 takes 8 times less space than TGA, but has 16 bits precission. But DXTxx could not be used for normalmaps.

There is special format 3DC ( ) that coluld be used for normalmaps.

[rqe3bc]

Thanks for the fast reply!

Guess I didn't look far enough in the Edit menu, but there it is!

I was hoping to avoid the NVidia Photoshop/Tools because it "stops responding" and sometimes crashes my system (even though I have all the latest drivers), so I'll try a few of the other file formats to see if I can get a smaller file size.

Thanks again!