Engine Limits and HD Art

[Fila]

Feel free to ask me any questions. I will probably do a better job making a brief summary of what the limits are in the coming days but for now, you can use these .pdfs to get an idea. Also, Traxx is updated with the latest limits.

Updated 8/21/26

https://www.mtm2.com/~mtmg/misc/ENGINE_LIMITS.pdf
https://www.mtm2.com/~mtmg/misc/AUTHORING_HD_ART.pdf
https://www.mtm2.com/~mtmg/misc/GLTF_EXTRAS_SPEC.pdf
https://www.mtm2.com/~mtmg/misc/MATERIAL_GUIDE.pdf
https://www.mtm2.com/~mtmg/misc/MONVERT_HANDOVER.pdf
https://www.mtm2.com/~mtmg/misc/TERRAIN_DETAIL_MASK.pdf

[Kmaster]

.md versions please!! basically i need to update everything, even KPodman with the new 499 pod limit

and this needs to be complemented with these:

Ok I've updated the following:

https://www.mtm2.com/~mtmg/misc/MONVERT_HANDOVER.pdf
https://www.mtm2.com/~mtmg/misc/GLTF_EXTRAS_SPEC.pdf

And for kmaster.

https://www.mtm2.com/~mtmg/misc/MONVERT_HANDOVER.md
https://www.mtm2.com/~mtmg/misc/GLTF_EXTRAS_SPEC.md

[Fila]

Told you to read the pod limit off monster.ini but nooooo :p

https://www.mtm2.com/~mtmg/misc/ENGINE_LIMITS.md
https://www.mtm2.com/~mtmg/misc/AUTHORING_HD_ART.md

[Kmaster]

Told you to read the pod limit off monster.ini but nooooo :p

it does for detection limit but I still have to manually update the presets the user can choose in the Preferences dialog. I'm going to need another preset button, one for CommPatch 1&2 (199) another for CommPatch 3 (499)

[OG_RuDeE]

On the authoring art doc, what does each of the channels in the _N normal map do? Red and green seem like the usual x and y light directions. So, what are blue and alpha?

I'm also a bit confused on the glass material type. I would expect it to work like the tranparent face type, where transparent areas of the texture are shiny and clear, while non-transparent areas are shiny only. In my testing so far though, everything becomes transparent and non-see-through areas of the texture become a tint. It also seems a bit broken at the moment where it looks like things outside the truck are now inside. This is different behavior than the transparent face type which works as expected.

I'll update with screenies in a minute.

Notice the bed and the mirror appearing strangely.

Screenshot 2026-08-21 125543.jpg

Screenshot 2026-08-21 125518.jpg

Screenshot 2026-08-21 125332.jpg

Screenshot 2026-08-21 125314.jpg

[OG_RuDeE]

Separate question:

Can we have 0x18 face type show normal mapping? Tire tread would look great with normals, and the bed cover of this truck has normals which don't show on 0x18. Maybe this needs a different material type, but I don't see why 0x18 shouldn't have normals anyway.

[Fila]

Not entirely sure what to look at.

Glass material makes everything transparent, regardless of what the texture is. It makes it glass. So for every face that you apply it to, it becomes transparent and with reflections.

[Fila]

Separate question:

Can we have 0x18 face type show normal mapping? Tire tread would look great with normals, and the bed cover of this truck has normals which don't show on 0x18. Maybe this needs a different material type, but I don't see why 0x18 shouldn't have normals anyway.

It doesn't? Normal Mapping should work on every .raw/.act/.png/.tga file except for terrain .raw/.act

[Fila]

Not sure if normals work with glass material, that's a different question i have to look at.

[Fila]

Oh i see what you mean now but it looking inside of the truck. That's for the same reason as above, everything you apply glass material turns it into a glass with reflections. so reflections layer has to be on the outside of the face, hence giving the look that is inside the truck. You can probably get rid of this if you remove the reflections.

[OG_RuDeE]

Not sure you see it yet. The mirror shows through the texture as if there's nothing in between at all. I'm attaching two pods, one with transparent windows and 0x18 bed. The other with glass material type and 0x29 bed. In the latter you can see the bump well on the bed cover, and look how the mirrors and bed show through the windows very unnaturally.

[Fila]

Found the issue with your truck. It's the normal mapping fighting the glass. this is something i haven't tested so i have to see how to deal with it.

[Fila]

Huh... so apparently original textures need to be at least 128x128 in order to get normal map working. Converting GD-W1 to a 128x128.png and adding a 256x256 normal equivalent made the tires work.

Also what you cannot see in a picture, the effect looks really good when the tires are moving.

[OG_RuDeE]

My textures are 512x512!

Are you saying that it didn't work for the tires until you made the tire texture big enough?

[Fila]

Yes, tire textures need to be at least 128x128. Just throwing a .png in there is enough as the game loads .png first before a .raw file.

[Fila]

The .pdfs have been updated with the latest info. Roughness cannot be read the way it is set up right now.

What the channels mean - this bites people from other engines
channel this engine reads it as
R tangent X - tilt across the texture
G bitangent Y - tilt down the texture
B surface Z, taken literally
channel this engine reads it as
A nothing. It is never read.
Every shader samples .rgb and computes tex * 2 - 1. That is the whole decode.
If you have worked somewhere that packs roughness into blue, specular into alpha, or that uses a DXT5nm-style
layout (X moved to alpha, Z reconstructed rather than stored) - none of it applies. Blue is Z here. A map exported to
any of those conventions will not read correctly.
There is no roughness in this engine at all, and specular is a per-material number, not a texture, so a packed channel
would have no consumer even if your map carried one.
Export green-down (DirectX), not green-up (OpenGL)
This engine reads the DirectX / green-down convention: green is high at the bottom of a bump. Your tool almost certainly
has this as a checkbox - "invert green", or a DirectX/OpenGL dropdown.
Nothing warns you if it is wrong, because both are perfectly valid maps. The relief just comes out inverted - rivets become
dimples, planking becomes grooves. It is a common mistake and a genuinely hard one to spot, so set it once in your export
preset and forget it.

[OG_RuDeE]

So, I wasn't believing that the bump map was working on the tires. I tried a flat black texture with normal (both below) and here's the result. NB. The blue channel may not be the best in this normal texture. From the back you have to look very closely at the bottom of the tire (in the shadow) to see some bump and from the front the bump is only visible on the front half of the tire (also in shadow).

Screenshot 2026-08-21 165409.jpg

Screenshot 2026-08-21 165347.jpg

GD-W1.PNG

GD-W1_N.png

[Fila]

I think black tires are not the best to test with due to having the hardcoded legacy alpha transparency, some of the dark textures might fall off the cliff.

[OG_RuDeE]

Similar output in your pic. Probably why I can't see any normal when I make the bed 0x18. The full light on the bed kills all shadow in the bump.

[OG_RuDeE]

Separate issue (can't attach photos in the BinEdit forum):

It looks like my truck model has been shifted about half a foot forward compared to what I see in the patched 2.3.0 BinEdit truck editor.

Screenshot 2026-08-21 184308.png

Screenshot 2026-08-21 184126.jpg