Quake Textures

[Spike]

dds files, while not the best format possible, do support s3tc compression (lower vram usage) and do contain every mip level (faster load times).
If anyone really cared about users, engines would all support+favour dds format, and texture packages would provide them.
However, s3tc is patented, which makes it really hard to seriously promote. Still, where supported its generally a better choice than just tga, and certainly better than jpeg.

[Seven]

Still, where supported its generally a better choice than just tga, and certainly better than jpeg.

Hello Spike,

Thank you for your detailed explanation.
In the end, I guess your last sentence (quoted above) is self explaining:
There are many replacement Quake engines existing today, but only a very few of them support .dds. If a texture creator like Moon[Drunk] wants to support as many people as possible (which is a good thing), he has no other choice than using .tga format for his textures.

It is worse than .dds (as you described), but it is supported by all replacement engines (as far as I know).

Converting his .tga�s into .dds via multi-batch file, can be done by the individual if he wants to.

Another reason why I am happy (even though I am a DP user) that his textures are .tga is, because all picture editors support this format out of the box. While .dds is still a not so widely supported format.
A plugin for .dds is available for almost all editors, yes.
But still, handling .tga is a little bit easier.

We will see what time will bring...

[bluntz]

I am replacing some textures with my own and am having some issues getting them to load in DP.
From what I remember I make a folder named the maps name and add the custom textures to it and place the folder in the textures folder,they are loaded but not the norms seem flat.
I just added _norm to the texture name. maybe I need to invert the z or something in gimp.Anyone know of a tut for normals in gimp for Q1?

[Seven]

Hello bluntz,

I am not a paint artist (Moon[Drunk] or My-Key could help you much better), but I will try to forward what My-Key taught me several years ago. As you know, Mey-Key is the normal map maker from Quake Retexturing project. He really did magic with Moon[Drunk] diffuse textures.

I hope that it is OK to post his email content here....
Here are his wise words:

Creating normals is quite easy. Only thing you must know is how to use any graphic application (Photoshop, Gimp etc.).
Step 1: Open diffuse texture in any graphic app (I use Paintshop Pro 9 'cause I like it) and make from it bumpmap texture (this is the hardest step, 'cause You have to guess whitch parts are lower, whitch are higher etc.)
Step 2: Open bumpmap texture in Crazy Bump (imo the best app for normals), correct if nessesary with slide bars and save as normalmap (if engine supports texture from alpha channel for parralaxmapping you need to enable option whitch saves in alpha channel extra texture). For Quake you have to change "Normal map y-axis" to UP, and "Normal map x-axis" to RIGHT.
Step 3: If your normalmap have texture in alpha channel I suggest to replace it with blurred bumpmap
Step 4: Enjoy new normalmap

From your above post, I understand (but my bad english can fool me here), that you only added "_norm" to your diffuse texture ? If this is the case, it will not work this way. The normal texture (created from the diffuse) must use this extension.
But I saw many screenshots from you in the past, that tells me, that you already use normal textures in your Quake.

Here is another Gimp tutorial, that google found for you: click
There are many others (just use google)

I personally use the shareware version from crazybump (as suggested by My-Key). I use it on the diffuse texture directly. This gives a slightly worse result (My-Key told me that) compared to My-Keys way of doing it, but I am happy with it. It produces normal textures like popcorns...
(the default settings are already very good)
Just dont foget to:
change "Normal map y-axis" to UP, and "Normal map x-axis" to RIGHT

A long time ago, I made some comparism screenshots that shows the offsetmapping effect. You might want to take a peak.

In the end, there is only one more thing to say:
Be sure that you enabled the offsetmapping feature in DP (it is disabled by default).
r_glsl_offsetmapping 1


Oh, and before I forget it:
The latest stable version of DarkPlaces (from 20110628 ) does NOT support offsetmapping ! Lordhavoc enabled it in the next autobuild again (which was released 6 hours later). What a pity...
You might want to use this version instead: click me softly

Have fun,
Seven

[golden_boy]

Off topic, but regarding Crazy Bump: It is a horrible way to make normal maps, especially if the diffuse maps already *have* light/shadows drawn on / baked in.

Recommending to simply run existing textures (that include lighting) through Crazy Bump to generate normals automatically is a bit problematic. It is not really very good advice.

One should *at least* remove the light/shadows from the diffuse maps as much as possible before generating normals. The entire point of a normal map is to provide this depth information for the lighting system in a separate package. A diffuse map for use with a normal map should contain *just colour information*, but that's not what the QRP textures do.

Hence you get the craggy, glossy grand canyon look with the existing QRP normals.