Is there any way to make lossless VTFs? - Developers

Whenever I make VTFs they turn out shitty and artifact ridden. Here is an example of a menu I was making: [media] [IMG]http://i54.tinypic.com/110wt90.png[/IMG] [/media] There is NOT supposed to be white bordering those pointer icons, but the alpha is blurred causing it to show. Close up of the artifacty horror: [media] [IMG]http://i55.tinypic.com/elejjn.png[/IMG] [/media] OH GOD MY EYES! What it should look like: [media] [IMG]http://i54.tinypic.com/negju1.jpg[/IMG] [/media] My question is, is there any way that you can get fully preserved vtf files? Now, being primarily a lua coder, I'm no expert on modeling and texture stuff, so feel free to beat me senseless if I am being stupid right now. Thanks!

There's different levels of quality that you can save a VTF as. The plug-in for Photoshop has a multitude of options to select from. I believe BGRA8888 is the least amount of compression.

I tried bgra8888 and the quality problem persists :(

You try making the icon bigger? It's probably artifacting so much due to how small it is. Even with minimal compression, it'll probably make small images look like junk.

What the image's resolution? Also, I'd go through the export options and make sure that mipmap generation is disabled and no other options that could cause the artifacts are enabled.

The size is 64 x 64, so that may be it. I'll try making it much higher then sizing it down in-game.

Yeah that's your problem there.

Also another intriguing thing is that the VTFs look completely fine when I view them in VTFEdit, but viewing them in game in the exact same state they were in when I was using VTFEdit they look bad. Strange...

As tschumann suggested, make sure mipmaps are disabled. And while you're ingame, use the console command "mat_picmip -1"

I posted this in the Lua section when you posted there, perhaps you missed it? It will solve your outlining issue. The artifacting is just Mipmap compression. [QUOTE=FluxMage;28083081]When you save the texture as a vtf you need to disable mip maps. This prevents the texture from generating lower quality iterations as you get further away from it, preventing artifacts and bleeding effects. But this wont completely fix the issue. Let me guess, your texture looks like so: [img_thumb]http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/2083/arrowderp.png[/img_thumb] This is a common mistake way too many people make when making transparent textures. Its why like, 90% of the transparent textures you see have stupid light outlines. Its because compression is never 100% perfect, there's always a bit of bleeding. But, if all the other white is supposed to be transparent, why are you making it white? Just do this: [img_thumb]http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/4017/arrowaha.png[/img_thumb] By having the color you want to end the texture outline with take up all the negative space, theres no chance for bleeding. Even if you keep mipmaps on, this would look fine.[/QUOTE] Yeah even with mipmaps off, things still tend to get blurry. You can make the sprite larger as much as that sucks, but it'll work. But there should be a compression type that will alow it to remain sharp and vivid. Make sure that you not only uncheck the "mipmaps" box, but also check off the "no mipmaps" and "no level of detail" boxes. On top of that, it may help to set the sharpen filter to none, and even though mipmaps are off, changing the mipmap filter may help

[QUOTE=FluxMage;28084627]I posted this in the Lua section when you posted there, perhaps you missed it? It will solve your outlining issue. The artifacting is just Mipmap compression. Yeah even with mipmaps off, things still tend to get blurry. You can make the sprite larger as much as that sucks, but it'll work. But there should be a compression type that will alow it to remain sharp and vivid. Make sure that you not only uncheck the "mipmaps" box, but also check off the "no mipmaps" and "no level of detail" boxes. On top of that, it may help to set the sharpen filter to none, and even though mipmaps are off, changing the mipmap filter may help[/QUOTE] Thanks FluxMage! Yeah I ended up -snip- ing it and putting it here because I thought it was a more appropriate place for it.