Aces High Bulletin Board
Help and Support Forums => Aces High Bug Reports => Topic started by: oboe on October 05, 2016, 03:39:50 PM
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I've been working nearly every day on a project updating an old P-38J skin of mine, and something has changed recently, maybe with the last patch? The skin is having some weird new artifacts, and I haven't been able to figure out the cause, although it is similiar to problems I was having last Feb when I just started trying to figure out the new files used in AH3 skins. Back then I wasn't making the _N map correctly (using the wrong bit depth) and it was producing a weird harlequin-like effect on the skin. The new problem is similar to that, but I had not made any changes to the _N map.
To rule out anything I may have changed on my skin, I made a new custom skin folder, created a unique p38j.txt file for it and copied the the P38J1.bmp, P38J1_N.bmp, and P38J1_S.bmp files to the folder. (The default P-38J skin does not have _E.bmp or _P.bmp environment and power map files). Anyway, the skins appear differently, when I think they should be identical:
(http://i.imgur.com/M9yIQfS.jpg)
You can also see the difference just viewing in the hangar. I am using 'default' graphic detail options.
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The P-38L shows the problem better:
(http://i.imgur.com/dvFA3ia.jpg)
If I delete the _N.bmp file from my skin folder, the problems go away. But the _N.bmp is the default P-38L _N map, copied directly from the default skin's folder.
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That looks like the normals on the left wing in the _N file are inverted?
HiTech
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I don't think I know enough about Normal maps to say for sure - I thought they just governed perception of surface depth variations on the skins; I don't know why the whole left wing would appear to be in shadow, or what is going on with the patch on top of the boom-mounted radiators.
Here is the same problem occurring on the P-38L skin. All I did was create a custom skin subfolder and copied the P-381.bmp, P381_N.bmp and P381_S.bmp from the default skin subfolder. No changes of any kind were made to the files. Yet the skin looks different under the same lighting conditions.
(http://i.imgur.com/pB4R7Ro.jpg)