Graphics formats in TM

Author : The Doctor
Translations : Lord M'zn
Questions & Discussion : Discussion thread	Last updated : February 06 2010

Table of contents

Section 1: Painting your own things Section 2: Format JPEG Section 3: Format TGA Section 4: Format DDS Section 5: Format DDS in details Diffuse / Normal / Specular maps Mip maps Cube maps Section 6: Software support for DDS Reading DDS files Saving DDS with Adobe Plugin Saving DDS with DDS Converter Saving DDS with command line client Section 7: Format BIK

Introduction

Trackmania deals with 4 different graphic formats, used in different places and on different occasions: JPEG, TGA, DDS & BIK.

We'll give you an overview what they're good for and how they're created.

Be sure to read all things carefully, they will enable to you gain major control over the graphical outlook of your Trackmania game...

Section 1: Painting your own things

If you feel the need to create your own graphics for your Trackmania Game, you'll need a good graphics program. There is costly software like Adobe Phoshop™ or Corel Photopaint™, but there are some good free alternatives as well....

PaintDotNet (Freeware) Graphic editing & painting program (includes .dds support). A great and pretty simple program if you want to get started with creating own graphics. GIMP (Freeware) Graphic editing & painting program ( .dds plugin) GIMP has lots of options and can be extended easily, therefor it's a bit complex to use.

We've posted links to good tutorial pages in our forum.

In our own tutorials we won't be able to show how to do certain things with every single one of these graphic programs, so we trust in you that, you will find the corresponding options/actions in the program that you use.

For a quick workflow when handling graphics, you can install this program:

Section 2: Format JPEG/JPG

In this example you can see "artifacts" in the image where the image has been clumped into bigger blocks thus reducing the number of necessary pieces if information to needed display the image. When viewed at its regular resolution the bigger blocks aren’t visible our eye has been fooled and the compression is successful.   JPEG compression is also scalable. When saving a JPEG file there is usually an opportunity to set the scale of compression. The more the image is compressed the worse it looks. It is a trade off that is up to you.

Section 3: Format TGA

This example is a set of buttons used within the Track editor. The grey background represents the transparency around the actual objects.

Section 4: Format DDS

DDS stands for "Direct draw surface", a lossy compression format. Usually, these are texture graphics, applied on the surface of a 3D model in order to give the surface some "material like" quality, but DDS files can also be used to display simple 2D pictures...

Section 5: Format DDS in Details

Depending on what the DDS file is used for, the demands on the stored information are different. The anatomy a DDS file is as follows. A Red, Blue and Green channel and usually an Alpha channel. Alpha channels were originally designed for transparency/opacity.

These are examples how Trackmania uses DDS texture graphics:

D/N/S Maps

For practical examples on how to create every single one of these maps, read here.

Example: When doing environment modifications, you can change the surface of the road completely.
Diffuse Map The normal "picture" of the road surface.   This is what you see in every case.	Specular Map Determines in what color th e road parts shine. The alpha channels determines HOW MUCH parts shine 0% transparency=shiny 100% transparent=matte	Normal Map The different Cyan/Blue shades represent the "height" of the road parts.   Nadeo special: All red pixel values are put into the Alpha channel...
PC0/1 graphic settings	PC2 graphic settings	PC3 graphic settings

MIP Maps

"Mip maps" are progressively smaller and smaller versions of the original image that are tacked on to the original image.

This technique takes work off the GPU when rendering the image at varying distances and yields superior results and better frame rates.

When opening a file to edit however, open it without the mipmaps visible to make things easier on yourself.

And don't be afraid, it's not YOU who will have to paint every single mip map, the DDS plugin/software will automatically create + save these mip maps for you, if you want it.

Cube maps

A "Cube map" is a texture, to be layed upon a .. cube object ^^ It will determine the looks of all sides of the cube... Trackmania uses this type of map on exactly 1 occasion, when dealing with environment modification.

Section 6: Software support for DDS

Due to the rather complicated structure of DDS files, you will need some software support to be able to work with them in a proper manner.

Not all graphic editing softwares offer -full- support of DDS (if they do at all), so you're well advised to get these tools for best possible work results...

Reading DDS files

Although many graphic editing programs have plugins (or genuine support) for DDS files, most of them will not show you some important piece of information:

If you intend to replace a default texture with one you made, you should save the new dds file with the same settings as the old one. A good tool to get this important information are either the "NVidia Windows Texture Viewer", or "XnView". Both can show you the properties of the viewed DDS file.

These will show you the x/y dimensions of the texture, the compression format and if mipmaps are used or not...

Saving DDS with NVidia Plugin in Photoshop™

Let’s look at the Nvidia DDS Plugin you installed for Photoshop™. When saving in DDS format you get this dialog box.

You can see how versatile DDS files are. For the tutorial I’ll just go into the main options, which are important for Trackmania. Luckily these are only a few...   First choose the type of Texture, either 2D or Cubemap. As we know, there is only 1 type of Cubemap within Trackmania, so for all other textures, chose 2D. Now choose the compression format:   For most textures, Trackmania uses DXT1 (with/without alpha/transparency) DXT3 (with alpha/transparency channel) DXT5 (with alpha/transparency channel)   Chose the same compression as the original file was compressed with...   (There are very few occasions when you have to use either 8:8:8:8 ARGB for two dimensional textures or DXT5_NM for "normal maps"...) In the main menu, activate the "Generate MIP maps" option....   That's pretty much it, now you can save your .dds texture and test, if Trackmania accepts it and if it looks good.

Saving DDS with DDS Converter 2.1

If your graphic program doesn't support saving DDS files with the necessary options, you might want to use the "DDS Converter"..

First of all, in your graphic program, save your picture as TGA or PNG file to your harddisk. Both of these formats use high quality picture quality and can store alpha/transparency information. This will be a good basis for further encoding with the DDS Converter.

You can browse your harddisk for picture files you want to convert to DDS files.   In the screen you can see the "avatar.tga" file chosen and the DDS Converter shows some data in the upper right corner, such as x/y pixels and if the picture contains an alpha/transparency channel... The important options are in the red circles. As you can see, this is a very simplified version of the dialogue in Adobe Photoshop (basically this tool uses the same encoding mechanism as the Adobe plugin). Sidenotes DXT1C = no alpha channel DXT1A = alpha channel NEVER use "Fast compress"=Bad quality All the explanations for the different settings from the Adobe plugin dialogue are valid for this dialogue as well, except that this dialogue actually offers much less options.. but that's ok, it's still enough for 99,9% of all textures you would ever make for Trackmania. If you changed your settings, press "OK" and then "Convert" in the main menu, that's it...

Saving DDS with "NVidia Texture Tools 2" or "NVidia DDS Legacy"

However, as a last resort or for purism, you can still use the command line clients from these 2 packages...

Needless to say, these methods are powerful and give you more control over the output than the rather simple GUIs, but on the other side it takes lots of time and is actually not required to get good results within Trackmania....

Section 7: Format BIK

Bink is a video file format (extension .bik) developed by RAD Game Tools and used primarily in computer games, over all platforms, from PC to XBOX or PS3... All animations/videos in Trackmania are encoded in this video format, no matter if animated signs, animated avatars or the moving background on the Trackmania main menu...

To convert your video (GIF,QT,AVI whatever) to .BIK you'll need the "Rad Video Tools" package. The file dialogue looks like this...

As soon as you chose your video file which should be converted, press the "BINK IT!" button... this will take you to the compression menu. The "compression settings" offer you to get near a particular desired filesize. Of course this affects the output quality of the video.   The "scaling compression" can manipulate x/y dimensions on order to manipulate output file size.   If the video file has an alpha/transparency plane (for example a GIF animation with transparency which you want to convert to an avatar), check this "Include input video's alpha plane" option. "Compress Audio" is useless, you can deactivate it, because Trackmania won't read any audio data from the .BIK files...   That's it, now you can press the "Bink!" Button to convert your movie to .BIK format.

That is about it. If you want a more detailed explanation into certain areas of file formats for Trackmania or have suggestions or corrections let me know and I’ll update this post.