Pinstriping is ugly and how do we fix it?

hunterw · Post by **hunterw** » 11 Jul 2007, 09:18

Pinstriping is ugly.

Observe:

At full texture detail, these lines do not show up, however, any and all mipmapped textures have that ugly ass white line every ~32 pixels. I think this is caused by a mothers mapconv bug.

I tried two versions of mothers mapconv to compile tabula, and both ended up with pinstriping from compressions 0.1 to 0.35

Smoth somehow has no pinstripes on his map, which is weird because he says he uses the latest version of mothers mapconv. His compression is extremely low though since the map size is huge (like 40 megs or somethin), so that may be why.

Any further info on this irritating bug?

hunterw · Post by **hunterw** » 11 Jul 2007, 12:19

update: tested compiling with compression set to 0 and stripes are still there

Comp1337 · Post by **Comp1337** » 11 Jul 2007, 13:52

Have you tryed sending someone your compiled version? Seeing as you and smoth compile with the same conv it might be a local problem

Saktoth · Post by **Saktoth** » 11 Jul 2007, 14:33

Totally unrelated, but that is an awesome shot. 'Fire missiles!' 'Wait, thats not a plane...'

AF · Post by AF » 11 Jul 2007, 20:28

The white stripes arent actually white, they're the texture from the top of the hill poking down the sides of the cliffs. The reason ti doesnt happen as much at higher details is because the heightmaps mroe accurate and the texture on the hill remains at the top.

hunterw · Post by **hunterw** » 11 Jul 2007, 23:17

AF wrote:The white stripes arent actually white, they're the texture from the top of the hill poking down the sides of the cliffs. The reason ti doesnt happen as much at higher details is because the heightmaps mroe accurate and the texture on the hill remains at the top.

you are mistaken

they are uniformly on every part of the texture, and their appearance has nothing to do with what the texture looks like or the altitude of it

"higher details" has nothing to do with anything, it is mipmaps that have the stripes on them. mipmaps appearing is dependent on the camera's distance from the terrain. someone here knows what i'm talking about i'm sure...

i'll take another screenshot to better show them

hunterw · Post by **hunterw** » 11 Jul 2007, 23:27

Neddie · Post by **Neddie** » 11 Jul 2007, 23:33

I can't recall what causes it, but I've encountered it from time to time.

hunterw · Post by **hunterw** » 11 Jul 2007, 23:35

it has to be mapconv because that is what generates the tiles as well as the mipmaps for all of the tiles

all the old maps don't have pinstripes, so i'm thinking the best fix is to not use mother's mapconv and to just use the old ass mapconv

hunterw · Post by **hunterw** » 12 Jul 2007, 00:18

update: old versions of mapconv (the non-mothers versions that don't accept feature maps) still produce pinstripes

Comp1337 wrote:Have you tryed sending someone your compiled version? Seeing as you and smoth compile with the same conv it might be a local problem

this is the next step to test out, although it's not just a local problem on my computer...TONS of maps have pinstripes, so it could be something as broad as running windows xp instead of vista, or an AMD instead of an intel CPU...

mufdvr222 · Post by **mufdvr222** » 12 Jul 2007, 01:22

This is an old problem that affects light coloured textures, as far as I know there is no fix.

Dragon45 · Post by **Dragon45** » 12 Jul 2007, 18:47

I always thought it looked good tbh...

hunterw · Post by **hunterw** » 28 Aug 2007, 17:31

bumping cause seriosuly wtf, how can some people compile maps and have no pinstripes with the same mapconv

Neddie · Post by **Neddie** » 28 Aug 2007, 17:32

I wonder if it is the settings we are rendering the map at... I should check that. If the issue is with shadows or smoothing, rather than the map format, we may be barking up the wrong tree.

hunterw · Post by **hunterw** » 28 Aug 2007, 17:39

the problem is certainly mapconv.exe related. when mapconv makes all the tiles, it also makes mipmaps of all the tiles, and the mipmaps are the ones that erroneously get the pinstripes on them.

i've tried it with three different versions of mapconv.exe and with different compression values ranging from 0 thru 0.5 or so. havent seen if the lowpass filter does it...i wouldn't think so, since that only affects the heightmap not the texturemap.

hmm...maybe it depends on the file format the texture map image is, i have never tried altering this. all i know is that smoth rendered a pinstripeless map with the same version of mapconv that gives me pinstripes.

Neddie · Post by **Neddie** » 28 Aug 2007, 17:40

I've done RGB and Indexed, received the same issue. It may be a bit-depth issue, but I have no time to check it now. If you don't get to it first, I'll look at it when I get back from my classes.

hunterw · Post by **hunterw** » 28 Aug 2007, 17:52

try with a jpg too just for the hell of it, or shit, any and all file formats mapconv can read

lets get this solved once and for all so that we may reduce teh ugly!

Tobi · Post by **Tobi** » 28 Aug 2007, 17:53

Can L3DT show the different mipmaps in a map? If so, look in it to see if it is actually wrong in the map file or if Spring makes it look wrong.

Atorpy · Post by **Atorpy** » 28 Aug 2007, 23:54

Hi Tobi,

Sorry, the L3DT/Spring plugin discards the mipmaps when importing SMT. However, I really doubt that this is a problem with Spring's texture rendering, since it renders maps made with the L3DT/Spring plugin correctly:

(click for high-res)

I guess that means it's a problem in MapConv.

One fix would be to import the maps into L3DT, and then re-export. This should re-generate the mipmaps and clean up the pinstripes. Note that this will make the SMT larger, because L3DT doesn't do the tile comparison/reduction step that MapConv does.

Cheerio,
Aaron.

LOrDo · Post by **LOrDo** » 29 Aug 2007, 09:04

Ive seen this bug lots, its very common, and Ive never understood how to fix it.

Spring RTS Engine

Pinstriping is ugly and how do we fix it?

Pinstriping is ugly and how do we fix it?