WHAT is this? (Weapon semi-invisible)

[Phantomangel042]

Hi guys,

I seem to have run into a small (weird) issue. I've implemented magician shield and 1h combos, and everything's run smoothly... except for this weapon:



Here's another angle, just for fun:

 Spoiler

Here's some background info:

• This was working at one point, several patches ago, and unfortunately I'm not sure which patch caused it. Worst case, I guess I can go back and reverse-patch until I find the problem. >.>
  
• This is a 2h axe (type 4) DDS converted into a 1h axe (type 3). The DDS and 3DO files, however, are completely fine as far as I can tell, and it renders in ShStudio perfectly.
  
• Yes, my animation files for slapping a 1h weapon onto a caster are correct- as I said before, at one point this weapon showed up perfectly, and all other caster 1h axes show fine as well.
  
• Whatever else is going on, the weird outline *seems* to be the actual outline of the weapon it's supposed to be... but it's about 3x its normal size, and obviously most of it is... missing.

Has anyone run into anything like this before? It's not exactly an end-of-the-world bug, but it's been perplexing me for days. Any clue you guys could give me would be greatly appreciated. And hey, if there's a post on this same topic that I missed (I tried to search, but... what exactly am I searching for? "Ghost weapon"? "Invisible axe"? "DDS's gone wild"? lol), please point me in the right direction.

Thanks guys!

[castor4878]

<<This is a 2h axe (type 4) DDS converted into a 1h axe (type 3). The DDS and 3DO files, however, are completely fine as far as I can tell, and it renders in ShStudio perfectly.>>

shStudio does not grant that the textures are valid, because it does not use the alpha channel of dds files to compute the transparency.

Actually the tool does use transparency with alpha channel to draw some of weapons (bow, Xbow); some are drawn more or less correctly (eg bows with model 4, 32, 102, ...), others are poorly designed (models 14, 62, 68, 74, ...).

OOH, the DirectX rendering used by Sonov does use the alpha channel to generate shining for (all) gears and to delimit / draw limits of (all) weapons.

The first information to explain this visual bug is an incorrect alpha channel is your dds file, you didn't provide it.

<<This was working at one point, several patches ago, and unfortunately I'm not sure which patch caused it>>

Without wanting to be spiteful (but instead eliminate an easy reason): was that before or after a recording with DXT1 format ?
The 'color' field of the model (from the relevant .itm file) used to draw the weapon can also introduce errors and be the reason of this visual bug.

<<I've implemented magician shield and 1h combos>>

does it also mean that visual rendering is perfect for another (warrior) class with all exact same settings ?

Edit:
<<but it's about 3x its normal size>>
that is harder to explain and has no reason to be linked to an alpha channel issue

<<This is a 2h axe (type 4) DDS converted into a 1h axe (type 3)>>

which one ???
04.itm is supposed to contain axe but the outlines there look like sword (may be due to over-magnificence)

all details of the ITM record are needed to go further.

[ShaiyaHaven]

Hm... I ran into something similar before, but I ended up just switching out the weapon for another less cranky one. Castor, what "color" is it supposed to be? Maybe I can fix mine too and get the weapon I want back.

Good luck figuring it out, guys!

[DotG]

okay, new update, i got it working

well, im using gimp, so idk if you can solve it like it did, but thats what i did:
convert the .dds into .psd
delete the alpha layer
save as .psd
covert with the coverter into .dds, no alpha save, 8 mipmaps, DXT3
import into the client

tadaaa, you got it working

okay, seems like the alpha shine is on it, but okay, looks just better, like polished steel