Synide Move UV's

[Snake Man]

Synide Move UV's was posted by Synide into BIS forum topic some time ago. I just recently tried it out and it seems to work nice on the example model. This is basically a texture merging tool/method.

Here is the details:

I should point out as with all these 'tools' I'm releasing they are in no way 'refined'. They are just quick and nasty coding to get something working as fast as possible.

Ok,

Here's a we process + tools to...

1. 'Stitch' or 'Merge' Textures together.

2. 'Shift' the UV's associated with those textures in the model to the appropriate place.


synMoveUV.rar (32 MBytes) Link is not 24x7.Sorry about the size.


Mirrored @ RKSL - synMoveUV.rar (32 MBytes)

Mirrored @ ArmedAssault.info - synMoveUV

Mirrored @ Combat-Prison.net synMoveUV

Mirrored @ Armed-Assault.de - synMovUV

Mirrored @ Armaholic.com - synMoveUV


It includes a small demo video etc... I can't be arsed making proper documentation and also the tool might produce premature balding... so use with caution.


BTW, Yes, that byte you have to edit in the .tga is at offset 17 - And, should be changed from whatever it happens to be to... 28 hex (40 decimal).

Note. Two of the tools included are from Nvidia's developer tools. They can be downloaded with there documentation, eula etc. from Texture_Atlas_Tools_1.0.0826.1700.exe and DDS_Utilities_8.31.1127.1645.exe.

==================================================================

synMoveUV_NoVid.rar (16 MBytes) - No Video...

Usage Details for the version without the Vid...

1. Extract the .rar.
2. Move the synBodies folder to your root folder on your P:\ drive.
3. Goto the SynBodies\tx - Texture folder.
4. Run the dos batch file... MergeTextures.cmd
5. Delete the synSniper0.dds file.
6. Rename the synSniper000.tga to synSniper.tga.
7. Open the tga in a Hex Editor.
8. Change byte 17 from 0x20 to 0x28 and save. (you are now able to open in TexView2 - without this alteration you won't be able too...)
9. Open the synSniper.tai text file in a Text Editor.
10. Make the texture names at the bottom exactly the same as in your model.
11. place a comma between the first (current texture) and the second (new texture) and alter the second texture name to point to the appropriate place. in this example the file would originally look like...

Code Sample

webbings_co.tga synSniper0.dds, 0, 2D, 0.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 0.250000, 1.000000
spec_two_holster_co.tga synSniper0.dds, 0, 2D, 0.500000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 0.500000, 0.500000
hhl_34_co.tga synSniper0.dds, 0, 2D, 0.250000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 0.250000, 0.500000
hat_hands_co.tga synSniper0.dds, 0, 2D, 0.250000, 0.500000, 0.000000, 0.250000, 0.500000


And, you need to change it too... NOTE:- you should'nt need to alter anything else apart from the texture names at the start of the lines and placing a comma between them...

Code Sample

synbodies\tx\webbings_co.tga,synbodies\tx\synSniper.tga, 0, 2D, 0.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 0.250000, 1.000000
synbodies\tx\spec_two_holster_co.tga,synbodies\tx\synSniper.tga, 0, 2D, 0.500000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 0.500000, 0.500000
synbodies\tx\hhl_34_co.tga,synbodies\tx\synSniper.tga, 0, 2D, 0.250000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 0.250000, 0.500000
synbodies\tx\hat_hands_co.tga,synbodies\tx\synSniper.tga, 0, 2D, 0.250000, 0.500000, 0.000000, 0.250000, 0.500000


12. copy/move the synSniper.tai file to synBodies folder... where the model is sitting...
13. run the dos batch file 'MoveUV_1.cmd'.

14. Look at the results in the new synSniper_m.p3d.
15. You will note that in the UV editor the UV's associated with Hat & Hands are in the wrong place... Oh NO !
This is because that's where they are sitting in the original synSniper.p3d... instead of moving them there. We can simply open the synSniper.tai file and change...

Code Sample

synbodies\tx\hat_hands_co.tga,synbodies\tx\synSniper.tga, 0, 2D, 0.250000, 0.500000, 0.000000, 0.250000, 0.500000


to...

Code Sample

synbodies\tx\hat_hands_co.tga,synbodies\tx\synSniper.tga, 0, 2D, 0.000000, 0.500000, 0.000000, 0.250000, 0.500000


Save the text file and re-run the dos command batch file
'MoveUV_1.cmd'...

you should be all good to go... cheers.

PS. have a look at the batch files for how the various programs are run...

Anyone else had a go with this?

Links:
Texture_Atlas_Tools_1.0.0826.1700.exe
DDS_Utilities_8.31.1127.1645.exe

synMoveUV v1.0 including large video tutorial mirrors:
RKSL
armedassault.info
eprison.de
armed-assault.de
armaholic.com

synMoveUV v1.1 mirrors:
Synide (not 24/7)
RKSL

[Synide]

Hi,

Here's version 1.1 of this tool... as you discovered... it was craping it's pants on processing LOD's that had no faces in them... eg. Memory Lod.

synMoveUV_v1.1.rar 7 Kilobytes (Link not 24/7)

synMoveUV_v1.1.rar 7 Kilobytes (from RKSL)

Cheers, Sy.

[Snake Man]

Thanks Sy. I'm looking forward of testing this util further, somehow I like the nvidia atlas tools texture merging method more than PanTools because there is no puzzle creating task and resizing my puny 1024x768 desktop resolution when making higher than 1024x1024 merged textures.

Will get back to you with feedback.

[Snake Man]

v1.1 worked fine for me. Now I'm planning on doing few texture merges with this and who knows, maybe I'll prefer this way over the PanTool/OFP O2 ptm merge method. At least right now (without doing more extensive testing) this synMoveUV method seems more efficient/quicker.

More feedback coming as I get some hands on experience on merging with this tool

[Snake Man]

Okay so now I had some hands on experience with the v1.1 of this tool. It works great, I had no problems creating merged textures with it so far. I did one unit for VTE and had no problems.

I prefer this method over the pantool texture puzzle creation, O2PE export for model, OFP O2 ptm texture merge and so on. Its much nicer to work in O2PE environment without going back to the OFP version.

One thing I discovered from AtlasCreation tool from nvidia, you have to be careful with it as I had different sizes of textures, it cut off one texture which was different size from the others. I believe the texture size was 512 x 256 while others were pretty much the same size or other way around like 256 x 512 (actually I'd have to check the scenario again to be sure). When I placed this texture on the end of the merge list, then it worked okay. So be sure to carefully check the outputted texture before proceeding

So thanks again Synide for another excellent tool/method. Without guys like you modding would be much much harder

I'll try to write PMC Editing Wiki tutorial out of this tool/method.

[Synide]

cool banana's... well at least someone is getting some use out of it...

the AtlasCreationTool actually comes complete with source code if one has the time and inclination to play...

Tonight, I got so pissed of with the BIS Visitor 3 method of having to import a frik'n 'terrain layer mask' image everytime you wanna change the bloody terrain that I've started another programming project...

[Snake Man]

Do any ArmA technical gurus or texture wizards have any idea if the texture created by the atlas tool be efficient... I mean it seems to place the textures in a long wide strech, I guess thats one of the downsides of automatic command line texture merging, the tool decides how it places the textures.

Or was it somehow related to the resolution, in the default example cmd file its 4096 (which is too big texture for ArmA btw), so if using 2048 it would fit the pieces into only max of 2048 wide image. But still, if we have gazillion 128 textures it wont create nice and small lets say 1024 image, but 2048 very wide and long image where everything is one after another (if you know what I mean here).

Or how does it work or does it even matter in ArmA engine?

[Synide]

You should probably do some pre-processing of texture images to get them sorta the same sizes etc. before process.

The point with this process is not so much that it sticks textures images together. The main thing is the .tai file that's produced.

Because if you don't get an ideal sorta result. You can always open the produced .tga in Photoshop and move the bits of the texture around how you like... With certain situations this maybe a good thing to do 'cause you might want a certain part of the merged image to take up more space than AtlasTool gave it.
Then you just alter the .tai file to make sure it's 'says' the same thing that your merge image represents... and then pass both to synMoveUV.exe.

There is much flexibility in how you can do it... the same thing is done with .ptm's in TextureMerge in O2PE.
The only difference between the .ptm process and synMoveUV's is the AtlasTool 'can' merge .tga's together. Sometimes not always as you'd exactly like...

Maybe one day I'll get around to making a proper graphical interface for merging textures & UV's in ArmA models... it is on my mental list... it's just right down the bottom... with the other 50 or so items that probably will never get done...

[Snake Man]

You can always open the produced .tga in Photoshop and move the bits of the texture around how you like...
Then you just alter the .tai file to make sure it's 'says' the same thing that your merge image represents...

Well if you manually edit the merged tga and then update the tai file, isnt that really messy to try to track down the coordinates for the images, kind of messing up whole point of "easy" texture merging, then we could rather use pantool to create that puzzle as we want and go through the OFP O2 ptm cycle.

[Synide]

Well if you manually edit the merged tga and then update the tai file, isnt that really messy to try to track down the coordinates for the images, kind of messing up whole point of "easy" texture merging, then we could rather use pantool to create that puzzle as we want and go through the OFP O2 ptm cycle.

it's not tooooo bad to do... just more manual labour as you say...
just pointing out if AtlasCreationTool.exe doesn't do a good enough job of deciding on how to merge the .tga's you could always fall back on modifying the merged image a little bit yourself.
But, as you say... it's extra work...

Maybe what it needs is some sort of 'guidance' rules feature... dunno.
But, It'll have to do for that tool for the meantime... I can't spare the time to play with the AtlasCreationTool.exe source code...
Maybe if you use both methods... depending on how well AtlasTool.exe produces what you want...