Please has anyone had issues with mipmapping? During a port from cscript to clite the mipmapping stopped working. So, I made a very basic project, simply loading a hmp with a basic cut down shader of mine and still no mipmapping. The hmp uses a dds file (that has mipmaps according dxtex tool). I had this problem once before and unchecking the extern in med skin dialog stopped it. Not this time. Anyone have any ideas? I can post code if needed...

Lim3y

Here is the source to the level with simple test shader.

Shader Test

I included the dds file also. You will notice how grainy and shimmering the terrain is. If anyone has a solution to either the simple shader code or the dds mipmap problem, which ever it is, it would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Loco

Have you got a pic of how it should look..

There just was a big german thread about it. It turned out to be that the engine does only support up to 4 mipmaps even if there are more in a dds file.
I think that this is meant to be fixed in the latest beta.

I tried it with the beta and set mip_levels to 10 and it looks perfectly right now.

Hi guys, I guarantee the mipmapping used to work fine under wdl land. It's only since the port that this has happened. If anyone has the time I'd really appreciate the testlevel being downloaded and run just to see if it's my machine or not.

Thx for the responses, I'm not sure its 3dgs at this point or me?!?!

Bit frustrated at this point.


Lim3y

Didn´t I write that?^^
It is a problem with the engine as only the first four mipmaps are used. The latest beta allows up to ten mip maps, I tried it and it works fine now (with your example!).

Slin, u star!!! I didn't read correctly that you had tested the level with the new beta, sorry dude. Ok, how do I get the beta then ? I haven't finished that Earth Sculptor tool yet and it seems as though Conitec want to see something like that before they put a user onto the beta program...

Do you know if there is a work around? I cannot use uncompressed textures as it is just way too slow.


Justin aka Lim3y

o.O shouldn´t the compressed textures be the slow ones?^^
I would try to leave out a few mipmap steps like taking the lowest one as fourth and the fourth as third and the second as second or something like that... so that in the end you´ve got only four steps in your dds-file.

Slin. I found that the memory bandwidth when using 4 textures + blend texture + normal maps on a multitex terrain to be just a bit too much (with texs @ 1024x1024). DDS files reduce the memory requirements by 60%+ and therefore better cache performance on the textures.

Just in case you were interested, I use 7 textures total:
1 x 1024x1024 for blendmap with static shadowmap in alpha channel.
3 x 1024x1024 ground textures, the fourth ground tex is in the alpha channel of the other 3 ground textures eg. the other 3 textures hold 4th r,g,b channels in their alpha channel.
3 X 1024x1024 Normal maps, again, 4th texmap rgb channels are held in the alpha channel of the other 3 normal maps.

It seems to work O.K, I get around 100fps with ~60k polys although I think when I convert to shader asm it will be a tad more optimized.

This mip mapping has really bugged me though, will try ur solution right now whilst I await the beta confirmation.

Thx again, much appreciated.


Justin

With the new beta testers beta and mip_levels = 10 it seems to work fine now, thanks Slin.