Banner Vision?

[DarkRider]

I asked this once before in the CS forum on Beth I believe, but never got a satisfying answer. I'm hoping someone here might be able to shed some light on it. I've done a number of banner retexes and I noticed that from a distance (on some just a step back) the image begins to blur like this:

But up close the banner appears properly:

Is the blurring at a distance normal? Or does it mean I've done something wrong in my retexes?

It appears more severe in banners that utilize the red spectrum of colors.  

[Jheuloh]

Does the same effect happen in-game?

I'd look at the texture in-game to see if that's just a strange CS discrepancy first, that looks really bizarre.

[Vince]

DarkRider, how are you creating the mipmaps for your textures?  Have you tried making a texture without mipmaps to see if the effect is still present?

[DarkRider]

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DarkRider, how are you creating the mipmaps for your textures?  Have you tried making a texture without mipmaps to see if the effect is still present?

When I saved the banner texture (I use GIMP) I saved as DXT1 and flagged Generate MipMaps. I havent tried saving without mipmaps.

[EDIT] Dragon, yes, it still occurs ingame, so it doesn't appear isolated to the CS.  

[DarkRider]

Tried removing the mipmaps and the result was a black texture effect (like the missing normal map effect, except I have a normal map).  

[Vince]

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Tried removing the mipmaps and the result was a black texture effect (like the missing normal map effect, except I have a normal map).  

If I remember correctly, the black look (with a normal map but no mipmaps) is only in the CS.  It shouldn't look that way in game.     You might try again and look in game to see if the blurring at a distance is lessened by no mipmap.  Of course, this is just a diagnostic--in general you wouldn't want to texture without mipmaps.

The DXT1 format is highly compressed, using DXT3 or DXT5 (which are not compressed as much) may solve the problem.

[WindmillTilter]

Can you post the NIF/Texture. It sure looks like your mipmaps are misalligned somehow.

WT

[DarkRider]

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Can you post the NIF/Texture. It sure looks like your mipmaps are misalligned somehow.WT

Sure thing: http://www.4shared.c...Mod_Trials.html

[EDIT] Oh, I tried saving to DXT3 it did seem to reduce the blur effect, but did not eliminate it. From a few paces off, the banners still blur.

[Vince]

@WT, what software are you using to view the mip maps?

[WillieSea]

1. How many Mip Maps? You should create 4.

2. If you do not need the Alpha layer, DXT1 is the best to use. it is no more compressed than DXT3

3. If it is bluring with distance, that is normal with mipmaps. They are smaller versions. You can help limit this by making your original texture larger. What size is your texture?

4. You can also eliminate blur by saving the normal maps in 8.8.8 or 8.8.8.8 format. This will really bring out the sharpness of the texture. And you can half the size of the texture before you save in this better format and it will still look better than a DXT5 format in a larger size.

[DarkRider]

Okay, solved it now! WIllieSea mentioned the 4 mipmaps so I checked and found when auto generating mipmaps on save GIMP generates 5 not 4. So I deleted the 5th, and seemingly blank, mipmap and the problem corrected. Thanks for helping me sort this out everyone!  Pints on me!

[WindmillTilter]

@VInce: I just meant based on the screenshot. It looked like as soon as it switched to a mipmap the image shifted radicly sidewase. Makes sense if there were 5 when the Oblivion engine expects 4 I suppose. Having 5 would presumably alter the size and location.

WT