help needed from an experienced 3d model/texture guy

[Webster]

i have a problem and wanted to know if someone could help me with a fix

im doing a ship waterline color mod to get rid of the pink looking waterlines and make them more red.

my problem is the BB kongo waterline is not using the intended block of the dds file to get its color

if you openn the data/sea/NBB_Kongo file then open the NBB_Kongo_T01 and the NBB_Kongo_T01_lr dds files you will see the textures uesd to color the ship.

as with some other ships there is a black hull with a blue stripe and after opening up and seeing dds files for all the ships in the game i recognize this as the waterline texture so it was the intended color of the waterline for this ship.

the problem i am having is the waterline texture is supposed to be copied from the small square to the middle right (black hull with blue pin stripe on top) but instead it is copied from the bottom half of the top image (blueish grey color).

i made the black square with blue stripe (the supposed to be waterline color) bright green to see where it was being used or if it was even being used at all and it wasnt used anywhere on the ship at all.

the big problem lies in the fact that the ship is using the same texture block to color the waterline, the hull plates along the sides behind the fixed guns, most of the deck fixtures and the I-beams for the mast and towers all share the same image color. (see pictures)

this tells me something is screwy with the image mapping or something because all these things should not be sharing the same texture and color as the waterline.

now if just the waterline can be redirected to use the black hull with blue stripe block, then this would fix the problem and allow the waterline to be colored as it was intended to be and also allow it to be modded any color i wish to make it.

i have uploaded some pictures to show you whats going on, find it here: http://gallery.filefront.com/keakar/

if someone could have a look at whats going on there i would be greatfull.

thanks

ps - on a side note, can you explain why there is a "lr" version of all the "T0" files that seems to just be a mini version copy of the actual "T0" file? what is it used for?

when i did my mod i went ahead and changed them too the same way i change the "T0" files, but can i leave them out of my mod to reduce the size of it?

[Webster]

hmmm... no response from anyone?

[Digital_Trucker]

I can't say for certain, but I do know that many of the parts of vessels in this game share areas on the "skin" texture. The way the model was set up to be skinned may be the very reason that there is no waterline color for the ship. My 3D knowledge is very minimal, but I'm guessing it would take a goodly amount of work to retexture the ship so that the waterline is a seperate part of the skin texture. Wish I could tell you something good, but.....

Edit : I gotta learn to quit posting while someone else is or type faster LOL

[Webster]

The "lr" in the filename of ship & subs textures stands for "low resolution".
For me it seems the light blue colour that you replaced with green is the one intended for the lower hull. Now, if you want to use the small dark blue area, you would need to remap the model (be sure that this dark blue isn't used anywhere else, I guess it is).
You could "fold" the lower hull uv maps to fit in that square, OR move all the plates and objects using the light blue colour to another area of the texture.
UV-mapping isn't a big deal if you have a 3D modelling program at hand.

please see my pictures in the link, the small square is black with a blue pin stripe on top. this is a common color and pattern used by many ships in the game so i am certain it was the intended waterline color and i did confirm that the black block is not used anywhere on the ship but thats not really the important issue. the main thing is to seperate the waterline texture square so it is not shared all over the ship.

i think you are right that the lower half of the top image was originally intended to be for the waterline color. my thinking is when they made the textures for the ship they put the waterline color in the wrong square which was supposed to be for the deck fixtures. then instead of correctly switching the color textures to where they should have been, somehow decided to fix it by remapping or redirecting the deck fixtures to use the top image and never fixed or never noticed the waterline color.

i know nothing about texture mapping, 3d modeling, or any of that stuff so i have no idea whats involved in trying to fix this or whats hard or easy so please bare with me.

[Webster]

I can't say for certain, but I do know that many of the parts of vessels in this game share areas on the "skin" texture. The way the model was set up to be skinned may be the very reason that there is no waterline color for the ship. My 3D knowledge is very minimal, but I'm guessing it would take a goodly amount of work to retexture the ship so that the waterline is a seperate part of the skin texture. Wish I could tell you something good, but.....

Edit : I gotta learn to quit posting while someone else is or type faster LOL

well as i understand it the waterline simply copies a duplicated version of a mapped out horizontal and verticle section on the dds file accross the ship model everywhere below a predetermined horizontal line on the ship so i dont think its the way the game generates the image is the problem. i think it is the file that says where to look for the color block. but i am totally guessing about all this here.