[James Ross]

 disc, on 11 February 2014 - 04:45 AM, said:

Try to use gimp with dds plugin that doesn't have such problems.

Yeah, nicober found that the Photoshop and Gimp DDS plug-ins worked fine. I might see if I can get the Paint.NET issue fixed but in the mean time there are at least two options known to work.

[nicober]

Hi!

Yes The Gimp seems to work well but I don't make to many tests to confirm is fiability to convert TGA files to DDS format. All my first tests works fine in OR with three engines. And also I think that the plug-in for Photopshop come from NVidia and assume it's a good product who works well.

Also you have XnView can convert TGA files to DDS format but only with DXT-1 No-Alpha compression. You can only use it with textures without transparencie. And you can use Batch Files Conversion for many files to convert.

The problem I see for a whole route is how to determine what textures are opaque and others are transparent rapidly, without to open all textures one by one. Just an exemple, the Marias Pass V5 route in the folder TEXTURES have 969 textures files in 8 sub-folders.

If you want to have the best compression for each texture. You need to determine:
- Some textures need DXT-5 like Acleantrack1 - Atrackunfloor ...
- Some others need DXT-3 like all trees, flags etc ...
- And all others can use DXT-1 for a better display

You must use batch files conversion for a route if you don't take a very long time to convert all textures to DDS format.

Cheers!

[markus_GE]

Maybe there is a method to let a program determine which compression is needed? I´m not i the position to tell, how easy that could be achieved, as I don´t know, how an ACE fie looks "internally" (for the computer). Same goes for TGA. But maybe somebody does have this knowledge.

We could then determine, if something like such a "determiner" program would be feasible, though probably it would not be me who writes it. My programming skills are just very BASIC (pun intended) :negative:

Cheers, markus

[disc]

 nicober, on 11 February 2014 - 08:42 AM, said:

The problem I see for a whole route is how to determine what textures are opaque and others are transparent rapidly, without to open all textures one by one. Just an exemple, the Marias Pass V5 route in the folder TEXTURES have 969 textures files in 8 sub-folders.

No need to be written again...

Here, the last reply: http://www.elvastowe...texture-loader/

It checks 14000 ace files in a minute.(depending on HDD speed)
The problem is how to convert with the list made by that tool, from ace to DDS or at least from ace to tga/png.

PS: It's modified now to show simple DXT1 textures, and DXT1 with 1 bit alpha, as DXT1+Trans.

[Csantucci]

So Gimp seems to work better than Paint.net in generating .dds textures ... and I chose Paint.net, although usually using Gimp, because on the Internet I found comments stating that Gimp worked poorly, while Paint.net worked well with .dds files... :D

[disc]

I wonder how routeriter can extract ace files to tga... for me it seems that AceIt is doing that but i don't know how. I can't get any command line parameters from that.

[JohnnyS]

 disc, on 14 February 2014 - 01:54 PM, said:

I wonder how routeriter can extract ace files to tga... for me it seems that AceIt is doing that but i don't know how. I can't get any command line parameters from that.

Under the graphics tab is an ace to tga button.

http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2875/12534592683_9583f1d194_o.jpg

[disc]

 JohnnyS, on 14 February 2014 - 11:06 PM, said:

Under the graphics tab is an ace to tga button.

http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2875/12534592683_9583f1d194_o.jpg

Not works for me(actually this application is a total mess), that's why i want the conversion without routeriter.

[JohnnyS]

 disc, on 15 February 2014 - 01:13 AM, said:

Not works for me(actually this application is a total mess), that's why i want the conversion without routeriter.

Have just tested routeriter ace to tga routine on the default acela textures, works fine for me.

[Eldorado.Railroad]

DXTBmp reads all current .ace file types and you can convert to DXT and other formats right in the same program. I have used this for some years now.....works.

You will not be able to batch/script this program, but there are other ways around that with other programs from nVidia that do allow for command line scripting.