metal_teladi_platesJ_light.dds - not self illuminating

[Winter Dragon]

Max Material type: X3 Material

Material name: "SM_9" (#9 of 10 multi sub-object materials)

Diffuse: /dds/metal_teladi_platesj_diff.dds
Specular Level: /dds/metal_teladi_platesj_spec.dds
Self Illumination: /dds/metal_teladi_platesj_light.dds
Bump: /dds/metal_teladi_platesj_bump.dds

Shader: teladi.fx
Technique: 1


This is in a max environment, ie. rendering a scene with F9, other materials with _light in the self illumination slot DO work in my renders, no extra settings needed to be applied so why isn't this working?

Also there was no alpha channel present in platesj_light, I wondered if it could be that as other _light maps have an alpha channel named 'alpha 1'. I copied the blue channel to a new layer and named it 'alpha 1', saved dds as 4bpp + 1bit alpha. In 2d preview it shows up, in max material view the alpha channel is detected and looks right but the material hasn't changed.

It's still rendering the light map like a diffuse; dull and dark. I've tried the reload button (that alone should do it.), unloading and re-doing the whole material, bringing in each map again - no change. I've even unpacked the original platesj_light.dds again in case it was corrupt, still no change.

As I said before, other materials render with self illuminated light textures so why doesn't this?

ADD:

Also tried 8 bit alpha, explicity alpha, alpha/luminance, none of them fix the problem. 8 bit alpha produces a black texture, nothing.

I removed the _diff map and copied the _light map there, - that improved it slightly but using the _light map as diffuse looks ugly. The _diff map looks awesome so this isn't a fix. I'm still lost as to why this won't work.

[Killjaeden]

what DXT type did you use for the light-/diffusemap?

[Winter Dragon]

what DXT type did you use for the light-/diffusemap?

I'm using DXT1 ARGB (1 bit Alpha), which is one of two dozen or so photoshop presets with the nvidia dds plugin.

EDIT: (forgot to mention I'm using nvidia dds plugin and photoshop)

[StarbuckAK]

im also having trouble with dds textures in regards to making a lightmap with photoshops dds plugin. Im using the DXT1 setting as per the following list.

Diffuse Map DXT1 RGB (No Alpha)
Diffuse Map with 1 bit Alpha DXT1 ARGB (1 bit Alpha)
Diffuse Map with 8 bit Alpha 8:8:8:8 ARGB (32 bit)
Bump Map DXT5_NM XYZ (normal map compression)
LOW Bump Map DXT1 RGB (No Alpha)
Specular Map DXT1 RGB (No Alpha)
Light Map DXT1 ARGB (1 bit Alpha)

im not getting anything though. there ARE a lot of different settings dds textures. if someone could give their specific settings and methods of creating textures?

[Killjaeden]

did you have an alphachannel in the _light or did you just save as DXT1 + 1bit alpha?
with DXTbmp (=free) you can put the alpha map seperately into your texture...

[Winter Dragon]

[Epilogue]

The mystery was never solved but the texture does self illuminate in the game. It just didn't want to work in max, other light maps worked but just not that one.

Anyway, it works in the game and that's good enough for me.