About mat files and making new textures...

[frozen]

Files you will need can be found in this rar file-

http://www.mediafire.com/?k2d5t2o3duw

Get the NVIDIA photoshop plugin from here:
http://developer.nvidia.com/object/photosh...ds_plugins.html

There have been a few instances in the past where both other people and I have made mistakes when creating textures for freelancer. Ideally, while freelancer has no problems using TGA texture formats for models etc; for discovery (and for any freelancer related texture work, to be honest) people should try to optimize their textures as best as possible.

If you open up a vanilla mat file in UTF editor, you’ll see how the textures are in a specific format- .DDS extensions. There is a simple way to save any textures you create in such a format. Now, i know many people have Photoshop, so this is somewhat directed toward them. To ensure you save your textures in the correct .DDS format, you need to Google and download the “NVIDIA Photoshop plug-in”. This will allow you to save your textures in the required format.

Remember, your textures should ideally be square pieces, in the format of 64x64, or 128x128, or 256x256, or 512x512, etc. Considering freelancer’s age, and the player base which plays the game, making a texture the size of say... 4096x4096, is probably going to be overkill for a lot of people’s computers (im not saying its not possible, it definitely is, just suggesting to keep the texture size somewhat within normal sizes). Stick to around 1024x1024 pixels ideally, perhaps 2048x2048 pixels at most.

Freelancer textures are not made specifically for each ship. Instead, they are made as SEAMLESS TILES (This is important if you want to make textures for freelancer in the same way DA etc make em). If you were to open say.. a model from UT 3 like Malcolm, you’d notice the textures are designed specifically for him, and thus cannot really be used for any other model that would be made. Freelancer textures differ on the other hand- they can be re-used multiple times in many different situations, can be recolored etc.

As a quick example, i will show you how to save your .DDS textures using the NVIDIA plugin, and then how to assemble them into a working mat file. Say you made a new texture on a square canvas the size of 512x512 pixels, and you wish to use it for texturing a ship model you made.

http://i84.photobucket.com/albums/k13/gurj...in/matfile1.png

The image above shows a vanilla texture opened in photoshop, untouched, not modified in any way. This is the bw_panel_256.dds texture extracted from the borderworlds mat file.

http://i84.photobucket.com/albums/k13/gurj...in/matfile2.png

The image above shows the texture heavily modified in photoshop to your desire (not in this case, i kept it relatively simple but different to prove a point).

http://i84.photobucket.com/albums/k13/gurj...in/matfile3.png
http://i84.photobucket.com/albums/k13/gurj...in/matfile4.png

As you can see above, these are the steps on how to save an image in the correct DXT1 NO ALPHA settings for .DDS textures, using the NVIDIA plugin for photoshop.

http://i84.photobucket.com/albums/k13/gurj...in/matfile5.png

Above is just an image showing you how the texture looks in an image viewing program (i use xnview cuz its awesome:P) Right. We’ve got one texture, but the model you made requires some more. So using those same steps to save the textures, you can create multiple textures as shown below:

http://i84.photobucket.com/albums/k13/gurj...in/matfile6.png

After you save each and every one in the correct format, you are now free to use them to texture your models. However, don’t delete these files, you need them to make your mat file (if you made custom textures).
This is something i personally do to make 1 mat file for multiple ships using the same textures (another optimization method- use 1 mat file containing all the textures for multiple models).

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