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Template Projects - Map Saving

Tarot_RedhandTarot_Redhand
edited May 2021 in ShaderMap 4

OK, I am a total newbie where ShaderMap Pro Personal 4.3.6 (and I mostly love it) is concerned. I only bought a licence a few days (less than a week) ago. That may explain why I am having some (hopefully) teething problems with it. So I don't know if I have stumbled on a bug or even two, I just haven't found the right settings or it's working as intended.

I work with Neverwinter Nights Enhanced Edition purely as an amateur. As such there are six texture maps that I may need to create - Diffuse (the input colour image), Normal, Specularity, Roughness, Height (Displacement) and (occasionally) Self Illumination as shown on this wiki page. As I need both specularity and roughness maps I created a custom template derived from the PBR template. I derived the specular map from the metallic and albedo maps. All works fine in the program except when I come to save the image files using the save all button, when three annoyances (not problems, annoyances I can work around but shouldn't really have to) -

I work with TGA images but the displacement and normal maps insist on saving as PNG files. The other map files that save when pressing the save all button all save as TGA. I have not changed anything via the settings.

Save all doesn't save the specularity map. I have to save it separately.

As I have image files that are in various places on my 3 drives, I tend to work in various folders. Annoyingly it seems that the template file has a save location baked in from its creation and save all places the maps it saves into that location instead of deriving the save location from the input colour image like programs I have previously used. Is there no way to set the save all function to use the location where the input colour image is located instead?

Thanks for any help.

TR

Comments

  • RSIRSI
    edited May 2021

    Hi Tarot,

    "I work with TGA images but the displacement and normal maps insist on saving as PNG files. The other map files that save when pressing the save all button all save as TGA. I have not changed anything via the settings.

    Save all doesn't save the specularity map. I have to save it separately."

    Before you save the Template Project file, make sure to assign a file format and file path for each map. When adding a map after a default project has been created, as you did with the specular map, you need to assign a filename and format (press the disk icon next to the map to bring up the save file dialog). Once this has been done for all maps, save the template to file. Maps without save file locations set are not saved with the "Save All" feature.

    "Annoyingly it seems that the template file has a save location baked in from its creation and save all places the maps it saves into that location instead of deriving the save location from the input colour image like programs I have previously used. Is there no way to set the save all function to use the location where the input colour image is located instead?"

    The template project you are creating has only one source input, however template projects can be very complex with many source inputs. It is because of this complexity that I haven't yet programmed a way to auto assign filenames based on source nodes. I will be attempting to solve this in version 5 of ShaderMap by adding a Template dialog step when saving a Template file. This will allow you to assign a source node to auto generate filenames from.

    In the meantime, you could try the following:

    1. Create a project, assign save locations and filenames for all maps to auto save. Save all maps to a common folder used for template projects. Ex: "C:\Users\username\Desktop\Template_Saves".
    2. Save the template project to file.
    3. Right click the .SMPT file to open it in your favorite Text Editor. I use Sublime Text or Visual Studio Code.
    4. The SMPT file is just XML. For every map node that has an assigned output file path you will see something like this, output_file_path v="C:\Users\username\Desktop\Template_Saves\sourcename_DISP".
    5. You can then do a Find and Replace of the "sourcename_" section with your new source filename
    6. Save the template file and run in ShaderMap.

    Some people automate this process using a scripting language such as python.

    This will be much faster than renaming each file after they have been saved. Once maps are saved to the default folder location you can copy them to their destination directories.

    I can understand that this is an annoyance and it does need to be addressed. It is on the list to be added in version 5. I am currently finishing up the final release of version 4. Thanks for your patience in this.

    All the best,
    Neil

  • Tarot_RedhandTarot_Redhand

    Thanks, will try that.

    TR

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