GIANTS Software - Forum

I've been working on some custom ground textures (paintable) for an FS19 mod map. While the textures themselves look great, I believe I'm doing something wrong. I notice that the default game texture files (both diffuse and normal) look almost 50% transparent and mine do not. Based on this alone I feel like I'm doing something wrong. I'm using Nvidia texture tools to save as BC3 (DXT5). In GE everything looks fine aside from an unwanted glossy effect on the texture. In game they are so glossy and reflective that they almost look solid white. Including an Alpha channel seems to help, but only just a little. What is the proper process for creating and saving paintable ground textures? I'm surely missing a step somewhere and any help would be greatly appreciated!

I figure I will try one more time to see if anyone knows how to get rid of the glossy appearance on custom ground textures. I tried everything that I can think of but perhaps Giants does something a bit differently? Or perhaps some textures are just not usable in-game? I've managed to create some very nice textures and it's frustrating to be stuck where I am.

My typical workflow is to first resize the texture to 512x512. Then I copy the image and convert it to black and white and start manually hi-lighting areas that I want to stand out in preparation for the normal map, I feel like I get a cleaner map this way. I have 3 different ways to create the normal maps but 95% of the time I just use the Photoshop 3D filter. Once the map is generated I save the image as DDS BC3 (DXT5) using Nvidia texture tools.

I notice that most texture files have a faded or transparent look to them and since the files are being saved as BC3 I assume there is some sort of transparency involved. I tried just adding a normal Alpha channel with not much luck. I also added the Alpha channel via a layer mask with slightly better results. I tried to adjust the transparency of the mask as well as adjusting the curve and brightness values. I manage to get some textures to look really decent but nothing that I would consider a finished product. Most times the best results I get are with an untouched diffuse image and normal map (no layer masks or anything fancy).

I feel like I am close but not quite there. Any ideas on where I am going wrong? Does anyone know the correct procedure that Giants uses to generate their ground textures?

If you open both the Giants ground textures diffuse and normal maps in photoshop and look at the Alpha channels in the layers tab you will see how Giants create the ground textures.

Thanks. It turns out that what I was missing is that when I open a Giants texture file, Nvidia texture tools was set to open WITH the transparency instead of loading the transparency into a channel. I also had to turn on the option for opening mip maps if I wanted to see them for any reason. This is why there was so much confusion, for as many times as I looked at the texture files there was no Alpha channel loaded to look at. I must of disabled the Nvidia pop-up long ago and never gave it a second thought.

Thing are definitely a bit more clear now ... transparent even

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.