Moving skins form Bazar\TempTextures into .CDDS, how?

[pappavis]

Hi everyone.

 

I have read some threads about the fact that skins which gets installed into the Bazar\TempTextures is a a major framerate-killer.

The solution is apparenrlty to have all skins and textures be placed into .cdds-files. In loman i saw an option to do it but do not know how to use it.

 

Could someone tell me how to:

1. Put a skins into a CDDS file.

1. Put 1024*1024-skins or, even a 2048*2048 skin into a CDDS file.

2. What is the maximum size of a skin which can be into CDDS?

 

I really LOVE those 2048*2048 skins which are on lomacfiles.com but they really make lo-mac unplayable :(.

 

Any other helpful tips wregarding using skins in lo-mac ill be greatly appreciated.

[Sukhoy27_VFW01]

Hi papavis

 

1)Use cddsbrowser or Lotextures tools V2

2)No you can't do this. Only a 512*512 bmp files can be inserted in cdds files.

When you look in cdds files with cddsbrowser you can see the size of the textures plane are always at 512*512 or lower but never higher. That's why the higher texture are placed in the bazard\temptextures folder.

 

if you really want to play with your skins hi rez skins you can reduce the size of the textures.

try to open the bmp skin with any image editor and resize it to 1024 or 512.

[Alfa]

Hi papavis

 

1)Use cddsbrowser or Lotextures tools V2

2)No you can't do this. Only a 512*512 bmp files can be inserted in cdds files.

When you look in cdds files with cddsbrowser you can see the size of the textures plane are always at 512*512 or lower but never higher. That's why the higher texture are placed in the bazard\temptextures folder.

 

if you really want to play with your skins hi rez skins you can reduce the size of the textures.

try to open the bmp skin with any image editor and resize it to 1024 or 512.

 

Not correct.

 

The textures in the CDDS containers have all sorts of sizes up to 2048 x 2048 pixels - such as the skins for the MiG-29 versions. The problem is that the CDDS have preset sizes for a particular texture slot - so you cannot insert textures into the CDDS that are larger than the original ones for a particular object.

 

Note that with FC there are two new high resolution(2048 x 2048) Su-27 skins available - these can be found in the: "WorldTexturesBMP2.CDDS" container, and can subsequently be replaced with custom skins of the same size.

 

- JJ.

[sunwolf]

It seem that we only can replace the textures in LOCKON's CDDS file,not insert.

[Alfa]

It seem that we only can replace the textures in LOCKON's CDDS file,not insert.

 

Hehe....yes but to replace textures in the CDDS´es, you need to "insert" the replacement textures ;) .

 

But I know what you mean - you cannot add new ones that arent already there :)

 

- JJ.

[Sukhoy27_VFW01]

Thanks Alpha i didn't knew that.

I'll test it for my high-res skins.

[S77th-GOYA]

Is there a way to limit the MiG hi-res skins down to 1024x1024 in CDDS? If I get close to a MiG, my frames go to hell.

[Alfa]

Thanks Alpha i didn't knew that.

I'll test it for my high-res skins.

 

You are welcome :)

 

- JJ.

[Alfa]

Is there a way to limit the MiG hi-res skins down to 1024x1024 in CDDS? If I get close to a MiG, my frames go to hell.

 

Well you could simply lower the setting for texture size in "Options" :) .

 

Anyway, all textures in the CDDS containers are in the .dds format and come with mip-maps - the MiG-29 skin is composed of two main bitmap textures each of 2048 x 2048 pixels in size and have the following 11 mip-maps:

 

1024 x 1024

512 x 512

256 x 256

128 x 128

64 x 64

32 x 32

16 x 16

8 x 8

4 x 4

2 x 2

1 x 1

 

I think you can force what ever size textures you want simply by extracting the mip-maps to bitmap format, and then place e.g. the 512 x 512 sized ones in the TempTextures folder(remember to remove any reference to their size from their names - otherwise they wont be recognised). The sim will always look in the TempTextures folder first and load what ever texture is there before looking in the CDDS containers for them.

 

But I must admit I havent tried this.....normally you go the other way - forcing the sim to load oversized textures which cannot be inserted into the CDDS :)

 

- JJ.

[S77th-GOYA]

If I lower my options to a lower res, it will affect the whole sim won't it?

 

I try to avoid putting things into TempTextures as much as possible as it takes extra resources.