Custom Texture Tool PS v50.1

[djneo]

Thanks mate,
I made it work by installing the TexConv, as you suggested.

Unfortunately, my issue with these lines around textures still exists, even after installing your latest version.
I can "fix" this by using png or ARGB8, but they are very huge for the 4K textures I made.

Any idea why that happening with DDS?
Thanks again!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzI1iJNxLyQ

[Bighead]

RGBA8/ARGB8 DDS are uncompressed formats and should only be used for UI textures, or anywhere quality is of the utmost importance over size/performance. While they consume the same amount of VRAM as PNG and are much larger on disk, the GPU can decode them really fast which prevents (or at least lessens) the "stutter" that happens with PNG images. A full texture pack using ARGB8 would be really fast, but it would also be really huge.

I wonder if this is similar to, or the same issue as the one General_Han_Solo was having in one of the Rogue Squadron games. It did not matter which program was used to create BC7.

Spoiler: (Show Spoiler)

This happened to "some" textures that have transparency along all four edges of the image. I never did find a fix, but I did find a workaround. Placing a pixel in the top left corner of the image (any color) with 1% alpha (to make it nearly invisible) before converting to DDS gets rid of the square when loaded in-game. If this workaround works in this game, I imagine it would be painful to do for every single texture as it looks like you have a lot of them. Plus, IMO this "pollutes" the texture with garbage data, even if completely unnoticeable. But do keep in mind, this may be the only "fix" possible.

I wouldn't mind revisiting this issue to see if I can figure out anything else. Can you send me at least a single PNG image that has this issue when converted to DDS? The "4" on that jersey may be a good example. Maybe I can figure out something new that I couldn't back then.

The last thing I can think of for now: a while back I suggested to General_Han_Solo that I could add a feature to automatically add the workaround of adding a pixel to textures when converting to BC7. In the end, we just assumed it was something specific to Rogue Leader and that it wasn't worth the hassle. If it turns out the above workaround is the only known solution, I'll see if I can automate it when converting. It would of course be optional and increase the conversion time.

[djneo]

great!
I will send you the texture. What is really weird that this issue is presented even without any custom texture.

So if I have this texture as PNG there are no lines, if as DDS lines appear as with default textures.

http://www.mediafire.com/view/mfpod7lz2wqfsns/tex1_1024x1024_m_e96aa72b1a32f7f3_14.png

[Bighead]

This is definitely not the same issue as I was thinking, this is something else. I have no idea what causes it, nor if it has an official name, but it happens in every single Gamecube and Wii game in Dolphin when textures are stacked on top of each other. It is far more noticeable in some games than others, and it's easier to see when using free look to zoom in on things. There are little tweaks that can be done to improve the situation in some cases, but in this case.. I have no idea.

So without any custom textures loaded, I still see lines, even with default textures. I can't seem to find a setting that gets rid of lines to begin with, let alone with custom textures. In any case, considering BC7 takes a hit to quality over PNG/ARGB8 (lossy compression), it's not surprising the situation may be slightly worse. But that might not be related at all, its just at this moment I have zero ideas, especially since I always see lines no matter what.

No custom textures loaded. Lines are visible.: (Show Spoiler)

[djneo]

Great to see you have a hockey game!

Yeah, so the only solution we have now is use to use PNG/ARGB8 for the texture I posted link, I guess? Which one would you recommend?

[Bighead]

Definitely ARGB over PNG as the quality of ARGB=PNG and its faster. You don't need to create the entire texture pack with this format, just the affected textures. My tool can selectively pick which formats to use with certain textures using "flags". You can just create a folder named "_ARGB8" and drop the textures or folders of textures you want to convert there, or even add it to the folder name like (FolderName_ARGB8). You can read more about flags here:

https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-custom-texture-tool-ps-v44-0?pid=454462#pid454462

This is the quick version, and the post above really gets into the nitty gritty.

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I'm Not Reading All This (so Teach Me QUICK!)



The quick and dirty explanation is to set the DDS Format to *Search Flags*, DDS Fallback compression to BC7 (or DXT1/DXT5 for legacy packs), set Flag Removal to New & Base, create a folder in the pack named _ARGB8, and drop in all texture folders you want to create as high quality uncompressed ARGB8. Everything else will be created as BC7, and all flags are automatically removed. And that's all you have to know!

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Just a side note: you may want to set flag removal to "New Pack" if you plan on generating multiple packs down the line. Flag removal removes all flags from textures and folders, and removes folders that only use a flag for the name (like a folder named "_ARGB8"). I'm still going to try to get to the bottom of this. I'm not sure why I can't find a setting that eliminates the lines like in your video. And it still doesn't make sense to me that BC7 is causing such a higher level of distortion as the quality is not that far off from uncompressed variants.

[djneo]

your work is truly awesome and much appreciated!
Thanks again

Actually one more question.

I think I remember when I tried to make the ARBG texture (from the one that I had posted a link early) and it had something about 18 MB, where the original png has barely 1 MB. Is that normal?

[Bighead]

Yes, they can get very large which is why I don't suggest creating entire packs with them. Pixels for PNG textures must still be decoded by the GPU, so that same 1MB image on disk, will still be 18MB in VRAM. This process can be slow, which is why PNG more commonly stutters when loading many textures. Prefetching textures does this ahead of time and greatly improves stutter: it decodes all textures and stores them in RAM, so when they are needed in VRAM they are ready to go. Uncompressed DDS textures are similar in that they are already "decoded" and ready to go. And just an FYI, compressed DDS textures must be decoded (DXT1, DXT5, BC7, etc), but the GPU specializes in these block compressed formats which is why DDS is so fast compared to other formats.

You can calculate the size of uncompressed DDS (or the PNG size in VRAM):
channels = RGB-3, RGBA-4, ARGB-4
(width * height * channels) + 128 = image size in Bytes
Bytes / 1024 = image size in KB
KB / 1024 = image size in MB

example:
image = 1024x1024 + alpha
bytes = 1024 * 1024 * 4 + 128 = 4194432 B
kilobytes = 4096 KB
megabytes = 4 MB

[Ridiculous_Death]

Hello. Thank you for this great tool! Can you add support for tga of tiff files or guide me how I can add it myself in the script?Especially DDS converting with compressonator(best quality) and ESRGAN upscaling. As 32bit transparency mask is damaged on converting/upscaling with PNG and textures becoming unusable with missing parts. Im working on big texture upscale projects and your tool is godsend (especially with preserving folder structure capability), but it does not support tga\tiff and I can't find commands in compressonator documentation to replicate your tool (convert with preserving folder structure).

[Bighead]

(11-06-2019, 12:22 AM)Ridiculous_Death Wrote: Hello. Thank you for this great tool! Can you add support for tga of tiff files or guide me how I can add it myself in the script?Especially DDS converting with compressonator(best quality) and ESRGAN upscaling. As 32bit transparency mask is damaged on converting/upscaling with PNG and textures becoming unusable with missing parts. Im working on big texture upscale projects and your tool is godsend (especially with preserving folder structure capability), but it does not support tga\tiff and I can't find commands in compressonator documentation to replicate your tool (convert with preserving folder structure).

I can most likely hack something in. I have toyed with the notion of supporting more image formats. It may take me a bit but I'll let you know.

Edit: Just wanted to elaborate a bit since I gave such a short response yesterday (I was tired ). It's not so easy to just add image formats by plugging in extensions (well it might be, but read on), as I have very specific functions for both PNG and DDS textures. I'll probably have to write new ones for more image formats. It's kind of a mess, but a necessary mess as very different things go into handling each image format: different programs, command line parameters, edge cases, and so on. PNG/JPG share the same functions as the script uses ImageMagick for both, the same parameters for both, with the only difference being the extension. It may be possible to just plug TGA/TIFF into this function and it will function as intended, but this still requires work to add everything to the GUI, test that the functionality is as expected, and make sure there are no other conflicts.

Edit2: So I noticed tagged images come in two flavors: tif and tiff. What is the expected output? I have never worked with these images so I don't know much about them, but I'm going to do some research on them later. I can support both extensions for input, but it would be much easier to implement only outputting one of the two (image.tif or image.tiff).