A question for expert repainters....

[kelticheart]

.........if you could only forgive my ignorance.....

I was just trying to repaint insiginas and personal codes on Merlin66's YAS Spitfire MkIA v.2, in the intent of reproducing the livery of one of my favourite BoB aces, that is Kiwi F.O. Alan Deere, when I came up with a discovery.

Just for the hell of it after reading an old thread, I decided to save the texture without the mipmaps. When I looked at it in CFS2 I noticed that I had obtained a better definition of the aircraft paneling, an overall better detail.

Now the dumb question is: what are these mipmaps anyway?

Thank you kindly.

Cheers!
KH :ernae:

[Captain Kurt]

A MIP map is a collection of bitmap images of the original image but at a reduced level of detail. The idea is that when you zoom in close enough to see the detail, the 3d display image will show you the original image but as you zoom out it shows the reduced detail collection of MIP maps (which reduce in size as you move out - kind of like LOD works). The Tri Linear filtering function tries to interpolate between the MIP maps which are fixed distance images, decreasing in size. In use, it seems to keep trying to interpolate the close up full image with the next MIP map instead of just switching to the bitmap only and the image you see is blurry. It was a useful technique for 2001 vintage computers with limited graphics capability to increase frame rates, but not useful with today's more powerful graphics cards.

In other words just don't use it to make your skins

[Seagull V]

Depending on what colours you use and how you save the images with DXT-Bmp you can also get bleeding of your images - so do a few trial runs until you get something that works if you are having troubles with your end result bleeding rather than being a clear image. Nothing worse than spending a heap of time on finer details just to see them go fuzzy on the aircraft model when in flight. Have Good fun painting !!!!!

[kelticheart]

Thank you both Captain Kurt and Seagull V!

I read the help file in Martin Wright's DXTBmp, he states mipmaps should not be left out, but his explanation is not as complete and detailed as yours, Captain Kurt. It's also ten years old.

I tested the very same aircraft in Quick Combat with both versions of the repaint. I did not notice any sizable drop in FPS with the texture without mipmaps, even if my pc is almost nine years old. I'd say my ATI Radeon graphic card is still performing very well.

Now I know something more about CFS2.......:jump:

Cheers!
KH :ernae: