Night Bug

[Tomix]

How do you fix the glowing night bug? It is really bothering me.

[Gumboots]

You fix it by not relying on TrainSkin.exe to do the skins for you, because TrainSkin.exe gives you really crappy skins.

Read this and the following posts: http://www.hawkdawg.com/forums/viewtopi ... =45#p35281

[Tomix]

If I fix all of the grey edges and use TrainSkin.exe, will it still give me the night glow? Also, isn't there a command to fix this problem if you use cmd.exe? I remember seeing something on this forum with that.

[Gumboots]

Yes, it will still give you the night glow. It reduces the A skin to make the others, but it doesn't fix the alpha channel when it does the reduction. That means even if you fix the A skin all the others will still glow. Also, TrainSkin.exe only lets you start with a 512 x 512 A skin, while if you use the actual A skin from the default loco as your starting point it will usually be 1024 x 1024, meaning your pixel density is 4 times as high. That means better skins.

Short version: TrainSkin.exe is handy for generating the other files needed to run a skin, but is effing useless for making the skins themselves.

[Tomix]

Well, I'll use the other .dds files for future reference, however not going to redo my Big Boy which I've already spent hours on. Does the .dds files from the PK4 have this grey issue?

[Gumboots]

You mean the ones extracted directly from 3D\rt3_3DPF? No, they don't have that issue because they already have binary alpha everywhere they need it. However, as soon as you resize one of them you will immediately recreate the problem.

[Tomix]

I found that if you take the alpha and save it as a bmp, and resize it manually in Photoshop, the grey lines don't come back.



Quick test with the engine, and it looks great!

[Gumboots]

Yeah that might work too. I was using png-8 saves to force the binary alpha. You could also use gif. I did mention this in the posts I linked you to but hey, don't feel you have to read advice.

[Tomix]

I tried to save the pngs with binary alphas, however my photoshop didn't seem to have that option. I also found if you change the Bicubic to Nearest neighbor, it won't give you grey edges if you resize the alpha.

[Gumboots]

You can use PNG-8 (not PNG-24) format or GIF. Either will work. They both give binary alpha automatically. Photoshop has both options, and has had for years. They are available under the "Save for Web and Devices" options.

However, if bitmap works for you then that's fine too. Use whatever works.

[Tomix]

Ah, now I see PNG-8. I think I'll continue to use my method for now. As far as the 1024x1024 texture files, I can't seem to find them. I've looked under 3DPF, however all I see are 3dp models. I checked in the other dds pk4 files and all I find are 512x512 files.

[Gumboots]

It depends which models you are looking at. Some locos have 1024 A skins, some don't. Most do. They're in 3D\rt3_3DDSF.PK4. Gave you the wrong filename before.

[Tomix]

Great, got them. It's a shame too, the Big Boy even has a 1024 map. I'll update the 3D model pack with these once I get them all converted to TGA. Thanks a lot for your help.

[Gumboots]

Welcome. More modders is always good.