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DarkBASIC Professional Discussion / Apply Texture by Texture Name

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punkyb
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Playing: PC and Android Games
Posted: 14th Nov 2016 17:11
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While checking out Advanced Lighting, I was surprised to see it could apply texture based on material name. I just found out that you can read material names like this

limb texture name (objectNum,limbNumb)

What I can't still figure out is how does DBPro and AL does this. I'm still not that familiar on how texturing works and AL code is kind of confusing so I was wondering if someone already has an idea on how to do this.

My setup would be having models with a single limb but with different textures.
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Ortu
DBPro Master
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Posted: 14th Nov 2016 20:04
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The .X file format can store material data such as texture file names. It is likely reading this similarly to reading limb/bone names.

Be aware though that if a margaritas texture is referenced in the object file, dbpro will automatically load a new copy of that image when the object loads.

This can affect load times and memory usage, particularly if you are just going to apply a different texture anyway.

I generally export objects without texture info to avoid reloading the same image, or unnecessary images again and again


A single player RPG featuring a branching, player driven storyline of meaningful choices and multiple endings alongside challenging active combat and intelligent AI.
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punkyb
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Posted: 15th Nov 2016 00:37 Edited at: 15th Nov 2016 00:43
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Thanks Ortu. Actually my problem here is related with Advanced Lighting and ImageBlocks, like WickedX suggested. Using imageblocks you save your images like a regular path and open it at the start of the program.

The problem here is when using Material Load in AL, only materials with a single limb is read properly and it's kind of confusing. I did test my imageblock with a reiteration loop like..



Only works if the model is single limb, it does not get applied on multitexture model using imageblock :/ but it works if I don't use it.

I was hoping and appreciate your response as I know you are also an AL user. Maybe you could shed some light as to what is going on..
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WickedX
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Posted: 15th Nov 2016 01:23 Edited at: 15th Nov 2016 01:29
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In Advanced Lighting a material file is a set of shaders with textures to apply to texture stages of the objects or limbs. For an object that may have a single limb using multiple texture stages, you need to use the texture stage parameter of the function - Limb Texture Name(Object Number, Limb Number, Texture Stage).

Hope this makes sense.
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punkyb
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Posted: 15th Nov 2016 01:54 Edited at: 15th Nov 2016 01:58
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Quote: "In Advanced Lighting a material file is a set of shaders with textures to apply to texture stages of the objects or limbs. For an object that may have a single limb using multiple texture stages, you need to use the texture stage parameter of the function - Limb Texture Name(Object Number, Limb Number, Texture Stage).

Hope this makes sense."


Thanks WickedX for the info. Apparently as I have mentioned, it works with the textures normally in the right path extracted but with using imageblocks, it looks like it does not recognize the path in the imageblock as a regular path as I would have expected.

Loading the image inside the imageblock without using AL, it seems to work..



Anyway, it's not that a big of an issue but if you guys have some workaround I'd appreciate it. I'll just have to worry about this next time.

Thanks guys.
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WickedX
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Posted: 15th Nov 2016 02:07
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If AL needs to access image files the imageblock should be opened and left open until the program exits. File paths should work fine using imageblocks.
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punkyb
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Posted: 15th Nov 2016 02:56 Edited at: 15th Nov 2016 03:01
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That's technically what I did but a bit short. I'm closing it after I loaded all assets and before my main loop. The weird thing as I was reporting here is it only works with models with single limb or texture material models.

Anyway I'll do more test on this, thanks again.
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Ortu
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Posted: 15th Nov 2016 17:04
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I haven't taken the time to dig into the AL material system to be honest. I just rely on a file naming structure to apply maps to the proper texture stages based on a specified base name.

I'll tell my framework to apply texture "brick01" using a given shader, say normalmap_clip, and it will append "_d.dds" etc and load "brick01_d.dds" to stage 0, "brick01_n.dds" to stage 1, "brick01_s.dds" to stage 2 via texture object.

This also lets me easily inject minor variations of diffuse textures (alternate colors etc) while reusing the base normal and specular files. "brick01_a_d.dds" "brick01_b_d.dds" a significant variation would require a different spec and normal and become "brick02", and when needed, I can parse the file name down to extract info from it. This becomes important for how I manage character and equipment assets.

I also haven't really done much with multi textured limbs, I guess I usually just break different materials into separate objects. Maybe I ran into similar issues with multi texture limbs initially and this was a work around, can't say that I recall exactly why I went with this approach.


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punkyb
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Posted: 17th Nov 2016 04:21
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Quote: "I'll tell my framework to apply texture "brick01" using a given shader, say normalmap_clip, and it will append "_d.dds" etc and load "brick01_d.dds" to stage 0, "brick01_n.dds" to stage 1, "brick01_s.dds" to stage 2 via texture object. "


Thanks Ortu. Actually, I did the same thing and got this also working as it is much easier and it seems the standard on most game dev workflow today.
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