Abacus Design Studio V3.5.1 blurred textures

[rogwen 3]

I have made a lot of building models with FSDS, and sometimes (but rarely) had to go back and remedy problems after compiling for FS9 use, when, for example, the roof has somehow decided to be 10 feet higher than the rest of the hangar when it displays in FS9, though it behaves perfectly when viewed in FSDS. I have a simple building now that, for whatever reason, refuses to display the textures correctly and shows them blurred. First time around I couldn't find a problem with the textures, they were made in Photoshop as 32 bit, then formatted DXT3 and mipmaps created, then checked with DXTfixer for an active alpha channel. I made them again from scratch to the same spec, and the same result. Tried them as DXT1, same result. In FSDS I have tried flattening the parts hierarchy, and also sanitize, check for invalid polygons, strip all pre-processes, keyframes, duplicate names, etc etc. All the simplification things that I sometimes had to do to fix a rebellious model in the past. The building textures in FSDS appear ok, but in FS9 they are very blurred when first viewed, then as you get closer they "click" into an improved but still blurry focus, while other new buildings on the airfield (Dillingham in Alaska) behave perfectly. Ideas?

[N60JBravo 27]

Do you have different areas of the building that are 1) mapped to the same texture and 2) use a different scale?

 

By different scale I mean that some parts of the building are 10 pixels per foot and others are 5 pixels per foot.

 

This can confuse FS as it tries to determine which mip to use. A simple test would be to remove the mips from your texture and test, though this is not a guaranteed conclusive test.

 

Another point, if you are not using the Alpha channel for your buildings you are better off using DXT1 w/o Alpha channel.

 

Your textures will be 1/2 the file size, giving much better performance. No sense in having the Alpha if it is not used.

 

regards,

Joe

[rogwen 3]

The building is simple and there is no huge difference in scale of texture use between one part and another. But, it was anyway a good idea to try the texture (there is only one as it is a simple building) without mips; I hadn't done that. In a nutshell, there was no improvement.

 

However, I did take note of where the blurriness is visible once it stabilises at the "partly blurred" stage, and it is at the fairly close distance where the biggest mip would be used. As I retreat the "partly blurred" becomes less obvious. This is completely different to when the building first becomes visible as it is then totally blurred until I get close, when it "clicks" into only "partly blurred". I suspect this will be written off as FS9 gremlin number 374, or whatever number we have reached.

[rogwen 3]

Joe

 

In a nutshell, you were right. As I discovered after some more experimentation. Thanks for that.

[tgibson 11]

Hi,

 

BTW, MDL Tweaker II over at FSDeveloper can usually fix this problem.

 

1.  Start MDL Tweaker

2.  Load MDL file.

3.  Click on the black button with the white T (Display Texture List)

4.  Click on the texture that is blurred.  The Texture Size will often be 1 or close to it.

5.  Click Check Texture Sizes button.  The Texture Size will probably change.

6.  Click Update Texture.

7.  Check the LM night texture too - if it hasn't changed, type in the same Texture Size number as the new one for the day texture.

7.  Click Update Texture.

8.  Close the Textures box with the red X.

9.  File/Save.  It will suggest a file name with _tweaked added.  I change this to the original file name and overwrite the original MDL file (I can always create a new one if I need it).

 

Check out the new MDL file in FS.

 

Hope this helps,