FS Textures (Diffuse/Normal/Specular)

[JDMFarms]

Modders,

What's the best current sources to get a good understanding how FS engine/shaders read these .dds files and how to create these files and/or update these files.

I've studied some of the in game .dds files and the i3d in notepad++ to try and deduce some lessons. I recall having some good tuts back in the FS-UK days but those are out dated for current game engine.

Thanks.

JDM

[TheSuBBie]

Try these topics

viewtopic.php?f=1014&t=186771&p=1463170#p1463170

viewtopic.php?f=895&t=186541#p1461526

and

https://gdn.giants-software.com/documen ... tent.php ---Texturing still relevant now

for PBR

https://farmerboysmodding.com/index.php ... ptextures/

[Dogface]

I miss FS-UK

Nice refences @TheSuBBie

[TheSuBBie]

Now you can reminisce

https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/fs-uk.com

unfortunately there seems to be a lot missing, posts that were there when I first looked a year or so back and bookmarked the pages have now been deleted.

[JDMFarms]

Try these topics

viewtopic.php?f=1014&t=186771&p=1463170#p1463170

viewtopic.php?f=895&t=186541#p1461526

and

https://gdn.giants-software.com/documen ... tent.php ---Texturing still relevant now

for PBR

https://farmerboysmodding.com/index.php ... ptextures/

Thanks for the assist. I see MiyaAutoDesk is still the preferred editor. Ive gotten into Blender at work for 3d printing so am hoping i can use that experience here.

[Dogface]

Now you can reminisce

https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/fs-uk.com

unfortunately there seems to be a lot missing, posts that were there when I first looked a year or so back and bookmarked the pages have now been deleted.

Lol, two of my posts were on the first page I looked at. thnx that is fun

[olahaldor]

As your opening post ask for "the best way to", I can recommend a couple of things, because, in my opinion, it's the best tools to do a multitude of things for farming sim.

- Substance Painter
Hands down the most intuitive, interactive and fun way to texture props, but also design or generate dirt/moss masks for buildings, or dirt/wear for vehicles. You paint directly on the 3D model.

- Substance Designer
The same tool all terrain textures for FS22 was deigned with. It's also an extremely powerful tool to combine different maps such as normal map and height map into a normal map with parallax occlusion for use as ground textures or with the building shader.

I use Designer to convert free or purchased textures into the PBR workflow Giants use. With a template this process is fast and easy. You won't spend much time fiddling with maps and converting and troubleshooting.

Here's a screenshot of the magic trick; input the "raw" texture maps - output what Giants need.


General tip about the Substance tools: get them on Steam to get a perpetual license instead of paying a monthly/yearly subscription.

- Visual Studio Code
It's free! I love the default dark UI. Less strain on the eyes.
You can set up a "workspace" so all folders and files within your map or mod project is available to you in a list.
For instance I have my map projects and the default fs22 data available to me, and it's EXTREMELY fast at searching through the data folder. Searching for something like "foliageType" takes seconds to get me the results I'm after.

There are free addons available. I have set up one of them to highlight words from the game log so "Error", "Warning", "Info" etc color coded. This way it is extremely easy to scroll fast through the log and notice "uh oh, here's something".
I've attached a sample screenshot.



- Giants texture tool
Used to convert from PNG to DDS with the proper compression, channel handling etc.
Can be a little cumbersome to begin with but once you get used to it, it's robust and really helpful.