Here are some questions that I don't see answers for (or have been confused by):
1. I tried putting old texture files into my UnitTextures folder in a mod, from units that I'd made some custom GAFs for ages ago. I converted all GAFs to BMP, etc.... and tried them out... and they didn't work. What directory do I really have to stick textures into, to make them work, and do I need to add anything to the FBI to make this work? I vaguely remember reading somewhere that this was the case.
2. I read on the Wiki that Spring has an upper limitation on the total size of all textures of 2048/2048. Does this apply to S3O models, or just to 3DO???
So... if I uvmap and skin things, does that mean that I could only have 16 things with maps that were 256/256? That's a really, really horrible limitation, if that's the case! Please let me know if this is really the upper limit, as this is going to be awfully hard to work around.
3. Glowmaps use a color channel??? Erm... why... that means that anything I want to glow will be red... please tell me I'm just mis-reading that...
4. Reflectivity uses a color channel too? Soo... I can either have pure reflectivity, or none, because anything in-between will just be green?
On all of the above... if I'm wrong, please forgive me- I haven't even built a S3O yet, installed UpSpring, or anything yet. I just want to know what I'm dealing with, and the limitations I'm going to have to work around. The upper limit on textures really is a killer... I do not want to use tiles, I want to use modern DDS with mipmaps, so that performance is high but details are really nice up close. Which leads me to my last question...
5. DDS is supported by S3O. How are mipmap distances determined? I don't want large things to be blurry because they're mipped by distance from the camera. Any chance I could get a developer to add an FBI tag that would let me define this... or would I have to do it with LODs that called different texture files?
Some basic questions before I start.
Moderators: MR.D, Moderators
Some answers:
2: The limit only applies to 3DO
3: Glowing (or self-illumination) is read from a second s3o texture, not from the first which contains the color info.
4: See 3
5: mipmapping is purely determined by the graphics hardware, it uses a lower level as soon as 1 texel covers less than 1 pixel I guess.
Also I should tell you, upspring has issues with black models on some PCs, which I still have to fix sometime. Look at the example model to see if it works on your PC, before you spend time figuring out why your own model is black.
2: The limit only applies to 3DO
3: Glowing (or self-illumination) is read from a second s3o texture, not from the first which contains the color info.
4: See 3
5: mipmapping is purely determined by the graphics hardware, it uses a lower level as soon as 1 texel covers less than 1 pixel I guess.
Also I should tell you, upspring has issues with black models on some PCs, which I still have to fix sometime. Look at the example model to see if it works on your PC, before you spend time figuring out why your own model is black.
Thanks very much for those answers 
And the answer for No. 1 is... after re-reading the Wiki <laughs at nubbish self>
And the answer for No. 1 is... after re-reading the Wiki <laughs at nubbish self>
First, Spring doesn't read .gaf files. So:
All /Textures/*.gaf must be transformed into /UnitTextures/tatex/*.bmp
To unpack a bunch of *.gaf into *.bmp, the easiest way is to get GAF Dump (http://www.fileuniverse.com/ta/utils/units/GAFDump.zip) and to run GAFDump.exe -b (use a batch file, a modified shortcut, a dos console, or whatever else to add the -b parameter and run it where you *.gaf are).