How can this skin glitch/problem be fixed?

[Indigo]

These are my only 3 meshes (Psylocke, Gambit and Jubilee by Ink) that appears like this when I face 20+ enemies.  Why does it appear like this when I have great numbers of enemies and how can I fix this?

[detourne_me]

hmmn, i think the "easiest" answer would be to convert all skins to .dds   or maybe lower your video settings in the game.
sorry man...  it ticks me off whenever it happens to me too.

[Indigo]

Well, in dxdiag under display, I have all DirectDraw Acceleration, Direct3D Acceleration and AGP Texture acceleration all enabled.  In the game, I have all video settings maxed out except I disabled the shadows.

Other than your suggestion detourne, is there anything I can do in Photoshop or 3ds Max to fix this?  Re-apply the texture or anything else? 

[detourne_me]

no man,  thats the thing i think,  all your settings are maxed out,  so the textures are not loading properly, as your video card is trying to compensate for evertything else.

although i could be way off.
the only other fix i know is converting .tga to .dds

[Lunarman]

What happens is, when FFvTTR uses a lot of memory then skins start showing up pink. DDS uses much less power than .tga so it solves the problem.

[USAgent]

I echo the statents of the others, the .DDS converter is the way to go.  I have the same problem when I have a danger room full of characters, or I'm running a danger room session where enimies spawn one after another and after about 10 spawns I start getting the pink look.   But after using the .DDS converter all is well.
Do a google search for a DDS converter.

[Indigo]

Yes! That did the trick, thanks guys! :thumbup:

But in some cases, the dds converter v21 can't properly read a .tga file so if some .tga files can't be converted, convert it via Photoshop with a .dds plugin.

Ok, I still have another problem...why is it some skins make meshes dissapear when they are defeated?  I know it's a skin problem because when I used a different skin for the same mesh, it doesn't dissapear anymore. 

[AfghanAnt]

I just tried this out and even though it does display the file it really effects the quality of the skin. I haven't had the pink problem much ( a few tv meshes) so tga will still be the regular format for me.

[Indigo]

Yes AA, I agree with you on that one.  It's a good thing I only have to convert the ones with pink.  I left the unaffected textures as it is, especially on their faces, I like to see them in good detailed and not blurred.

[Lunarman]

One of the thigns .dds seems to do is exaggerate the highlights and make the skin more jumpy (ok, not technical vocab, it separates out the gradient). so where once you had nice smooth subtle highlights you now have big white lines. When playing normally I don't notice this but in mod cutscenes it is quite annoying.

Having said that, when distributing a mod you hardly need a 4mb skin for every char, so I feel it's better to cut losses and gain some space.

[tommyboy]

You don't HAVE to have low quality in DDS.
Simply change the settings of any given skin you are converting to a higher colour depth and/or resolution and DDS needn't look any worse than TGA (and yes, I know that some feel that DDS is a more "lossy" compression format, and while they may be right, the difference IN GAME between a high quality TGA and a high quality DDS of near or equal settings is negligible).
The ONLY reason you are losing detail is that you are assuming (incorrectly) that the purpose of converting to DDS is to get a smaller filesize, (and smaller filesize= lower quality in any format).
The game could not give a hoot about filesize. It's as likely to make a small tga file pink as a large one. Dont believe me? Try the following: identify a mesh/skin combo that consistantly goes pink in Ctool2. Now edit the parts that are pink, shrinking them by 50%, and, if you want, save compressed, and in a 16 bit format rather than 24bit (save as .TGA, obviously). The filesize will now be significantly smaller, BUT WILL STILL SHOW AS PINK, even after a restart of ctool2.
I believe its a glitch in the game engine (and ctool2), whereby it simply doesn't load some tga textures, some of the time. But it NEVER fails to load DDS textures, no matter how many there are, or how big they are. Trust me, I've had character tool and FFV3R run with fifty meshes with 4Mb of DDS skins in each without ever seeing pink, so IT'S NOT THE FILESIZE OF THE SKIN, or memory used. It's the fact that the engine intermittantly bugs out on tga, but NEVER bugs out on DDS. Why that is, I don't know, but its not memory usage (sorry IPS, I know you have a different theory, and this isn't an attack on you, just on your theory)

[detourne_me]

Hey Tommy,  could you offer any tips on how to save in a higher quality dds format from photoshop?
When the nvidia dds thing pops up i just blank out and click save... too many options for me :P

[tommyboy]

Hey Tommy,  could you offer any tips on how to save in a higher quality dds format from photoshop?
When the nvidia dds thing pops up i just blank out and click save... too many options for me :P

Well, bear in mind that there are a multitude of ways to convert TGA to DDS.
For instance I use PaintshopPro 5, with the Nvidia DDS plugin V5.19, which has a "3d Preview" button. Looking in this you can see what filesize the various ways of saving are, and see previews of how they look, which you can zoom in on.
I would venture to say that 32bit ARGB or 24bitARGB would give best results.
See below, on the left a zoom in preview in DDS as DXT3, on the right DDS as A8R8G8B8 (ie 32bit):



Below the ACTUAL way the files appear in PSP after "save as", zoomed in 8:1, right to left TGA, DDS A8R8G8B8, DDS dxt3

I cant see any difference, can you?
File sizes?
TGA= 512x512 24bit =  768Kb
DDS(32bit A8R8G8B8)= 512x512 24bit = 1.33Mb
DDS(DXT3)= 512x512  341kb
So DXT3 SEEMS to give equivalent quality for a smaller filesize, but 24 or 32 bits DDS would definitely give pretty much equivalent quality, albeit without the smaller filesize.

[tommyboy]

I think you may be correct about caching.
I used to think the pink problem was pretty much random, but am beginning to revise my opinion, at least when it comes to Ctool2.
Bear with me and forgive the dullness....
I have a Mod directory with hundreds of meshes.
I point ctool2 to the mod dir and begin looking at the meshes (starting at the bottom, with Zuras). The first sixteen meshes never have a problem, then when I get to wonder_woman_tv, her wrist bracers are pink, every time. (And regardless of system restarts or however many other programmes I am running(
If I go straight to her, she appears correctly, but if I view all the others first, I get the pinkness every time.
If I switch from "standard" skin to one of the others, the bracers display correctly, even though they are still using the "standard" skin. When I switcg back to standard, they display correctly. If I change to another mesh then back to wonder_woman_tv, the bracers are pink again.
So this supports the idea that either main memory or video memory (or possibly even Ctool2 itself) are caching the meshes, and that after a certain number there is some sort of "overflow" problem.

And yes, knowledge and curing the problem is the only thing that needs to be concentrated on. and to date, the only cure we know of is convert to DDS.
And I'm not 100% sure that filesize isn't implicated, but I've never seen the problem with a DDS skin (and I have some pretty big ones) so that makes me think the file format is more important than filesize.

[tommyboy]

Yes, I think that there are lots of cases where you don't need very high quality skins, and can happily convert to low quality DDS gaining both the benefits of no Pinkness, and smaller filesize (I'm thinking here about extras such as bootcuffs, gloves, capes even that are basically monochrome or very low detail to start with). Whereas with the main skin itself with lovingly rendered faces and costume detail (not MY skins, obviously, :P)it is probably worth using the higher quality DDS settings, where conversion is needed.
I confess that with Mods I tend to blanket convert every skin, simply because then I know that none will be pink. Given enough time I'd probably only do the ones that show pink bits, but finding those can be time consuming.
It's a similar situation to nifconversion of meshes, you certainly don't NEED to nifconvert every mesh you use in FFV3R, nor do you NEED to convert every TGA skin to DDS in FFV3R. On the other hand, it generally doesn't do any real HARM to convert meshes or skins, either (as long as you dont plan to move them back to FF).
Ive spent some of the last two days looking at meshes and skins that suffer from Pinkness, but have yet to see anything to differentiate them from those that never show Pinkness. It is odd that on a mesh that has a pink cape, say, no other parts go pink. It's also odd that I occasionally get the main male_basic skin pink, but only on some meshes, and never on some others. There must be SOMEthing that determines which parts, or which meshes show as pink, but I havent seen it in NifSkope or in PSP yet.