Terrain color problem

[primem0ver]

Anyone know what the DETAILS dds' are for? Anyone know why when I change the color of a terrain texture it causes a black square to be drawn around the plot where I am placing it?

 

[AIAndy]

Anyone know what the DETAILS dds' are for? Anyone know why when I change the color of a terrain texture it causes a black square to be drawn around the plot where I am placing it?

Any change of the alpha channel?

 

[primem0ver]

I don't know. Maybe. I have never really messed with terrain graphics so I am not really aware of all the things that go into them. I simply thought that changing the color would be harmless. I did not intentionally change the alpha channel. Here is what I did: I exported the graphic to a png. Loaded it into a graphics program (CorelDraw), altered the brightness, contrast, saturation, and intensity. Then I saved, converted back to a dds.

Now it doesn't work right (and the file is 10000 kb larger...)

 

[AIAndy]

I don't know. Maybe. I have never really messed with terrain graphics so I am not really aware of all the things that go into them. I simply thought that changing the color would be harmless. I did not intentionally change the alpha channel. Here is what I did: I exported the graphic to a png. Loaded it into a graphics program (CorelDraw), altered the brightness, contrast, saturation, and intensity. Then I saved, converted back to a dds.

Now it doesn't work right (and the file is 10000 kb larger...)

CorelDraw is a program for vector graphics, not bitmaps. So it likely did not even preserve the size nor the alpha channel information.

 

[primem0ver]

It is possible, but I did not use a vector based format. I will toy with it some more when I have the time.

 

[primem0ver]

Is the alpha channel color or selection (shape) based? In the dds program I didn't see an alpha channel (all white).

 

[AIAndy]

It is possible, but I did not use a vector based format. I will toy with it some more when I have the time.

It will still depend on the internal representation that CorelDraw uses.
But I have to say that I know little about the graphics format aspects in Civ4.

 

[primem0ver]

You were right for the most part. The alpha channel was causing the problem. But there is another problem as well. It seems the tools we have to use suck. Neither DXTBmp nor Infraview (or whatever the second one is called) convert the alpha channel inherent in the dds format to one in png. Which seems a little silly since they both can handle pixels. They only do a color mask. So I have to recreate the alpha channel manually which doesn't do the best job.

I either need DDS graphics program that will alter the color channels/characteristics individually or I need one that will export the alpha channel to the png file without having to rely on color. Any ideas?

 

[Thunderbrd]

The tutorials section would refer you to GIMP (free download) which does do fairly nicely with alpha channel layers.