Embedded Files
// TYPES OF TEXTURES AND PBR:
// TYPES OF TEXTURES AND PBR:
ALL IMAGES IN THIS SECTION ARE MODIFIED FROM MARMOSET LLC
X-Plane supports several textures types (but is compiled into two image files): Albedo, Night, Normal, Roughness, and Metalness.
The maps are contained within the following files:
NAME.PNG
Albedo: defines the colour of diffused light. There are no directional light:
NAME_LIT.PNG
Night textures: The albedo, darkened as if the texture was a "night" version, mostly done by "baking" light onto the texture through a 3d modelling program. This is usually a FPS-saving solution if volumetric light isn't necessary.
// NORMAL MAPPING AND PHYSICALLY BASED RENDERING:
// NORMAL MAPPING AND PHYSICALLY BASED RENDERING:
NAME_NML.PNG
X-Plane normal map combines normal mapping, PBR, and specular into one texture file:
NORMAL: defines finer details by faking lighting, bumps and dents
ROUGHNESS: A greyscale map that defines which part of the texture is rough. On the map, white represents the lease roughness, enabling a mirror-like finish, with sharp and clear reflections. Black is the most rough, where light is bounced off everywhere- giving a matte-like finish. The Roughness Map lies on the Alpha Channel:
METALNESS: A greyscale map that defines which part of the texture is metallic: full metallic is white, no metallic is black. On the map, the least metallic material is black, the most metallic material is white. The Metalness map is situated on the Blue Channel:
SUPPORTED TEXTURE FILE TYPES:
SUPPORTED TEXTURE FILE TYPES:
X-Plane uses .png normally for textures that is uncompressed, and .dds for compresssed textures. Prior to X-Plane 9, .bmp is used as the primary file type for textures.
USING DDS:
USING DDS:
When packaging your scenery or aircraft for release, it is useful to reduce your file size by compressing your PNG textures to DDS. DDS (DirectDraw Surface) is Microsoft's compressed image file format using their proprietary algorithm.
COMPRESSION:
COMPRESSION:
There are three types of DDS compression:
- DTX1: which has the smallest file size, does not support alpha/transparency:
- DTX3: which is used when there is transparency in the image, but does not support smooth transitioning between opaqueness and full transparency, called "explicit alpha":
- DTX5: is similar to DTX3 but supports smooth alpha, or "interpolated alpha", and has the biggest file size.
MIPMAPPING
MIPMAPPING
In addition, DDS supports Mipmapping, in which the DDS file contains the same texture in different resolutions. So saving a 4K texture (4096x4096) texture with mipmapping would contain 2048x2048, 1024x1024, 512x512 texture resolutions. The result would be a significantly larger file size (even more than the a PNG), but is less resource heavy as is pre-calculated, optimised sequences of images.
IMPORTANT NOTES FOR FSX/P3D DEVELOPERS:
IMPORTANT NOTES FOR FSX/P3D DEVELOPERS:
- Unlike development on the MSFS and P3D platforms, one texture type is allocated per model/polygon/line etc. So one object will use one albedo map and one normal map.
- X-Plane's normal map files are different to FSX in which the shaders coded in FSX necessitate the developer to swap RGB channels around.
- Do not convert your DDS files back to PNG, as the DDS compression would compromise image quality.
- Some colour adjustments *may* be needed to "liven up" your scenery/aircraft textures if you convert your products to X-Plane, most unaltered textures look bland and washed out.
- Do not use your DDS textures from MSFS, recompress your PNG textures to DDS again; many MSFS Developers noted that using your DDS textures makes object fade away while moving away (scenery developers)
REFERENCES:
REFERENCES:
Joe “EarthQuake” Wilson, Marmoset LLC. 2015. PHYSICALLY-BASED RENDERING, AND YOU CAN TOO!. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.marmoset.co/posts/physically-based-rendering-and-you-can-too/. [Accessed 7 November 2017].
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