A tool to save your texture maps quicker

FelixSchl

*** Update Quick Save Maps v0.6 released ***

Quick Save Maps v0.6 has just been released. I also made a little video about the new feature set:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVh6glcUTOI"]Quick Save Maps v0.6 - New features[/ame]

To sum up the best new features and improvements:

• Easy installation through Adobe Extension Manager!
• Added compound RGBA maps (ability to replace each individual RGB channel with a layerset)
• Added DDS support
• Added CryTIF support
• Added ability to choose different resampling method per texture (So normal maps can be scaled with Nearest neighbour for example).
• Allow fixed-size rescaling
• UI: Duplicate maps
• UI: Adjust number of maps per page
• UI: Reorder maps
• UI: "Jump to" interface for easier navigation

****

Racer445

sorry to burst your bubble, but the vTools suite of scripts does this for free. it's very interesting to see more people selling scripts, however.

http://home.insightbb.com/~jamestaylor/

Computron

Racer445, i'mma let you finish but vTools and Photoshop CS5 have the worst compatibility of all time. Of all time.

At least, last time I checked which was last month.

elementrix

Computron, also looks like vTools isn't made for photoshop CS5, I only see a CS2 and CS3 version tested and available for download on their website.

so Yeah if your working with CS5 it might be a good idea to look at Felix' script=)

Ben Apuna

There's also Chai's qSave.

FelixSchl

Hi again,

I understand your concerns, but to make it a bit clearer, here are the advantages of Quick Save Maps over the other 2 tools discussed:

- No need to shuffle layers around before saving them, you can virtually hit the "save" button at any time: The tool will detect what map you are working on all by itself, then hide the rest of the document and save the image the way you want it. After it is finished, all original layer visibilities are restored and it will seem like the script never touched the document.
- No need to toggle anything invisible yourself: The tool will hide all other layers but the current layer set
- Very easy interface where you can visually add any amount of new maps with custom naming conventions
- You have a handy tool to export / import your settings in order to share them among team members. Also the configuration file is an easy-to-read XML document if you want to tweak it manually.
- More file formats: PNG, TGA, TIFF, JPEG and even BMP just for the lols
- To batch save all maps no further configuration needs to be done - you can place one hotkey to save your current map and another one to batch save all maps.
- No assumptpions: No need to name the toplayer "uv" or something to hide it because everything but the current texture map / layerset will be hidden anyway.

I carefully designed this tool to be very user friendly, easily understandable and of course very very quick.

Thanks,

Felix

cptSwing

qSave works well with CS5

ENODMI

It doesnt say, but vtools works with CS4 perfect, both 32 and 64. I loves me some vtools.

d1ver

http://wiki.polycount.com/PhotoshopTools?highlight=%28%5CbCategoryTools%5Cb%29#Export_Tools

a whole lot of them on the wiki. I personally like d1vSave, dunno why

Bal

Yeah it looks like a nice complete user-friendly tool, congrats on that.

But yeah you can pretty much do all this with qSave and some fairly simple Photoshop scripting (which is what I've already done personally), mostly using lots of isolate groups etc., the advantage being that you can do some more advanced stuff like moving a map to the alpha channel and such.

Some questions / suggestions about your script :
- You don't talk about paths, can you save files to different paths? Often times in production the PSD files aren't stored in the same folder as the maps. You should be able to define paths relative to the original path (this is something qSave doesn't do very well).
- No mention at all of alpha channels, can you chose if they're saved or not?
- You seem to be missing the DDS format, which is pretty standard in games, even if most companies use an intermediary like TGA or such most of the time.

Wesley

How fast is this? I've been using Texture Exporter 1.5 by Mark Verkerk, and it's a great tool, but when I've had really large Photoshop files (over 1GB) it tends to take longer to save than it does just by saving a TGA copy.

FelixSchl

Bal:

I deliberately chose not to include alpha channel support for this release since we were using separate transparency maps during our last production. I am, however, actively working on implementing that. Subsequent releases will of course be free of any charge.

For the next release I plan to essentially allow the user to choose a file format and configure it with all the options that the file format comes with. The biggest challenge here is to keep the user interface as clean as it is now.

As for the DDS: I would need to look into the possibilities here, since the DDS exporter itself is just a plugin to Photoshop. Again, in our last production we would save our maps out separately which was super quick and easy with this tool and then run it through a converter.

As for the paths: I would love to hear your recommendations and usage examples. It should not at all be hard to add that, but first I need to know how this could be useful in a production environment.

Wesley:

If you are free to do so and interested, you could pass me a copy of that file for benchmarking. The PSD testing-files that I have been working with had little to no overhead using this tool. It would be very interesting to benchmark it against that 1GB monster file of yours.


In danger of repeating myself, I would like to let you guys know that I will in no circumstances charge for this tool twice. All releases from here on are included by buying it once. I will update the information on my website to communicate that more clearly.

Thank you for your interest,

Felix

FelixSchl

I am working hard on QSM v0.5

I decided to post an interface snapshot of the upcoming v0.5 release, just to give you guys a teaser of what QSM v0.5 will be capable of and to give you a chance to give your opinion on it.

Screenshot here

I think the snapshot should speak for itself but I will list the best new features here:

Near-completion Features for v0.5:
- Custom Path
- Resampling techniques
- Customizeable File Formats (JPG, TGA and PNG have been completed so far)
- Any amount of maps, 3 per page to fit any screen.
- Save the alpha channel (when background is checkered in PS)
- Save another map instead as the alpha channel
- Convert to grayscale
- Invert Red / Green (to flip normal maps)
- Save settings to PSD
- Every texture map will store settings for each configured format, even if it is not used. This means you can change between them without loss of data.
- Extended XML configuration possibilities, here is what a texture map looks like in the back-end: QSM xml configuration

Of course all of those options are coupled with the one-key-saving-a-map-sweetness. It only means more options to configure what happens when you hit that special key.

Cheers,

Felix

FelixSchl

Hi,

Just letting you guys know - especially the sceptics - that Quick Save Maps version 0.5 has been released. It is a complete overhaul of v0.4 and incorporates all requested features plus more. For the folks who already bought v0.4, there should be a download link in your inbox for your free copy.

If you are interested, check these locations for more info:
Video overview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ja4bPjBX5PY&feature=youtu.be
You can also check the docs and the Quick Save Maps website.

Cheers,

Felix

claydough

nice response time,
Good luck with all yer hard work.

passerby

vtools works fine with cs5 64bit and 32bit.

@FelixSchl

got a feature you missed that should be there, post export commands with wildcards, would be especially useful when working with a engine like source, since you could export out hte maps, than run a tool on the output to convert to tga to vtf.

or even basic commands like copying the file to a preset location would be nice too.

Wesley

FelixSchl wrote: »

Wesley:

If you are free to do so and interested, you could pass me a copy of that file for benchmarking. The PSD testing-files that I have been working with had little to no overhead using this tool. It would be very interesting to benchmark it against that 1GB monster file of yours.

Sorry I can't pass that on.

But the new updates look awesome. Especially like having the gloss in the alpha of the spec.

FelixSchl

passerby wrote: »

got a feature you missed that should be there, post export commands with wildcards, would be especially useful when working with a engine like source, since you could export out hte maps, than run a tool on the output to convert to tga to vtf.

or even basic commands like copying the file to a preset location would be nice too.

That feature is already there - it is the "post processing" feature I talked about. You have a large number of wildcards available that should mostly cover any situation. I talk about that in part 3 of the intro tour. you can also find a list of available wildcards there (I name them "Tokens").

felipefrango

Cool, I've been using vTools until now, and while it is compatible with CS5 this looks like a pimped up version of it.

FAT_CAP

One question though - it's mentioned in the Youtube video that you can configure the tool to save a layer set into the alpha channel of a texture which is a great feature.

However, most of my textures don't have alpha channels, but the hair diffuse, would always contain the transparency in the alpha. Can the tool be configured to work in such instances? If I didn't want an alpha channel on half my open textures, but did on the other half, does the tool see that there is no layer set named "alpha" or whatever, and just not save an alpha for that texture?

I'm currently using the QSave script which is great, but doesn't cope witht this sort of funcitonality. If this tool does, Im going to have to grab a copy to test tomorrow I think.

FelixSchl

@FAT_CAP

The configurations you make, including those for the alpha channels, are either stored externally in a central configuration file or directly with the PSD itself. This way you can configure the PSD that contains the diffuse map + alpha separately from the ones without the alpha channel.

If both of the textures you are talking about reside in the same document it becomes as easy as adding a new map to your configurations.

I hope that helped,

Felix

FAT_CAP

Oh cool, thanks for that breakdown Felix. Saving the setting per PSD is a great feature, and exactly what I was looking for. I'll be sure to grab a copy to check out tomorrow.

FelixSchl

Sure thing man, no worries

felipefrango

Felix, I've got a question. I often save textures that are composed of separate black and white maps in each RGC channel. For example, A gloss map in the red channel, a reflexion mask in the green channel and an opacity mask in the blue channel. Is there any way I can keep them in separate layers and save them together through your tool? And if not, would please please implement it? :}

FelixSchl

Hi felipefrango,

What you are describing is currently not possible but could surely be implemented. In fact, I will make it an official 0.6 target. I was thinking about it before, when I was adding the alpha channel support.

I am always open for suggestions

felipefrango

Hah, that's awesome, should come in pretty handy! Also, is there anyway so output textures at DDS? AND have separate settings for each (DXT1 for diffuse, DXT5 for normals+spec)? I may have gotten it all wrong but I assume I can at least add the command line DDS converter as a droplet in the post-processing section of each map and set the arguments accordingly?

FelixSchl

I updated my website to make the development of Quick Save Maps a bit more transparent.

I will need to look into the DDS story first since admittedly I have not been working with this format myself yet. However, if the converter has a command line interface, you could definitely use the post-processing tool for that for now. It would probably be easiest to call a custom batch file though to handle the actual argument passing and file referencing. If you need help with that please let me know and I will try to assist where possible

felipefrango

Hmmm, nice, I'll try to make it work. I have no idea how to make a batch file, but I'll try fiddling around with the command line converter. You can check it out in the link below. It would be pretty fucking awesome if DDS conversion was integrated with the tool though, that alone would justify getting a license for everyone here in the office and I'm sure it would become essential in pretty much every studio pipeline. Hell, if you could make it seamlessly export each map to DDS with separate settings for each you could easily double the price tag and it would still be worth it.

http://developer.nvidia.com/content/dds-utilities-83111271645

FelixSchl

Sup,

Just letting you guys know that I just released Quick Save Maps v0.6. I also made a little video about the new feature set:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVh6glcUTOI"]Quick Save Maps v0.6 - New features[/ame]

To sum up the best new features and improvements:

• Easy installation through Adobe Extension Manager!
• Added compound RGBA maps (ability to replace each individual RGB channel with a layerset)
• Added DDS support
• Added CryTIF support
• Added ability to choose different resampling method per texture (So normal maps can be scaled with Nearest neighbour for example).
• Allow fixed-size rescaling
• UI: Duplicate maps
• UI: Adjust number of maps per page
• UI: Reorder maps
• UI: "Jump to" interface for easier navigation

Big thanks to felipefrango for testing and ideas!

LRoy

Great work man. Really saves a lot of time.

felipefrango

Bumping cause this should be seen by everyone. The new features make for such a bit improvement over the last version that everyone should try it out, it's now much more flexible. It's been a huge time saver here at work.

PS.: I'm not getting paid to say this, I just like this tool a lot.

sltrOlsson

I haven't used either vTools or qSave, just hade super easy actions setup for diffuse, specular, normal to tga. You know, pretty much the first step of all these tools.

I've thought about just this, saving out different layers into specific channels, and with different sizes of the files. And now especially on top of that with dds support.

For example, atm i'm doing an arttest for an company with there own engine. The diffuse is straightforward DX5 2^ map, the specular should be a DX1 scaled down to 1^ with the specular in the red channel and the gloss in the green. This script would speed up that process tremendously. Just saying, and no, i'm not paid either.

I say it trumph the other two pretty badly. Except that it's 10$, and that's a bummer. I'm a student and 10$ for a script is not really justifiable for me personally. Not right now anyway. This one is actually a script do consider paying for, for once.

FelixSchl

Thanks for your feedback guys. Yeah it's a shame it's sinking so fast - only 48 views on youtube. My marketing, quite frankly, sucks balls

sltrOlsson wrote: »

I'm a student and 10$ for a script is not really justifiable for me personally. Not right now anyway. This one is actually a script do consider paying for, for once.

I can understand you mate, I am still a student too. And yes, the scenario you described is absolutely possible. I am using this tool in our 5 month student production at school right now for much the same purpose.

That is, I am doing this:
Color (RGB) + Opacity (A) - DXT1/3/5 depending on alpha method
Normal (RGB) + Parallax (A) - DXT3
Specular Color (RGB) + Specular Power (A) - DXT5

Btw, I am using DDS for the first time, if the above is an incorrect approach please let me know. Point is though, that I can do all this with a bit of QSM configuration, then hand the config of to the team and then iterate on my maps like nothing.

Edit: Good luck with your arttest by the way!!

felipefrango

Felix, i think you would do better using DXT5 or, even better DXTnm for your normal maps, though you probably wouldnt be able to plug in stuff in the alpha channel. DXTnm, as far as i know, ditches the blue and alpha channels and duplicates the R and G channels into three for buffeted compression. Either way, i think no one uses DXT3 really, I just don't remember why exactly. I think it's as expensive as DXT5 but with shittier compression, or something.

FelixSchl

Thanks that was a good pointer. Going for DXT5 looks like only a minimal overhead too. Cannot use DXTnm though because the shader looks for parallax info in alpha channel.

felipefrango

hm, what we use at work is is a script that swaps the red and alpha channels of the texture so you can have alpha and even plug something else in the blue channel and leave the two less compressed channels to the normal map cordinates so in the end it looks just as good as DXTnm but you still get to use the two extra channels.

FelixSchl

How do you mean, script? Could you elaborate on that? So you would store the parallax info in the blue channel? What happens to the R and A channels? In my tests the R and A channels just stay swapped. So the shader needs to swizzle them at render time?

Going way off topic here but interesting none the less.

Eric Chadwick

Felix, I added your tool to the wiki. And thanks so much for your work!
http://wiki.polycount.com/PhotoshopTools#Export_Tools

FelixSchl

Thanks Eric!

csprance

Hey.

I love QuickSaveMaps and I use it constantly. The speed I can iterate at now without having to do stupid things like saving is awesome!! File dialogues are annoying.

Thanks for your hard work.

One thing I'm having issues with is the CryTif format saving out. CryTif is installed and set up correctly ( i use it every day) however QSM gives me errors saying it's not installed. Not sure if it's a bug or I'm doing something incorrectly. Thank you again for the awesome tool!

FelixSchl

Hi csprance, I just browsed my code to see what might be the cause and turns out I had to resort to a rather primitive way of detecting a valid cryTIF install. Because there is no function in Photoshop allowing me to test the presence or fire up the dialog (please correct me if I am wrong), I recorded an action, translated the action to js and then just executed it and if any exception is thrown it just gets caught and it is assumed that the plugin is missing.

Long story short, it might be related to either a change in the Photoshop version of cryTIF version that breaks this method. I can look into it tomorrow morning.

Edit:
Where can I grab a copy of the relevant plugin files? Was not planning on downloading the whole sdk if I don't have to.

dailything

GOOD

csprance

Excellent thank you very much!

http://csprance.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/cryTiff.7z

There is the CryTiff plugin not sure if there is a difference between the 3.4 and 3.5 versions so I included them both.

Revel

Yeah, I got the same issue as well regarding the Crytif format, it didn't save it cus log said I don't have it installed which is clear that I got it installed (save as dialog box as Crytiff, no problem). Would love to have this function as expected since saving manually choose Crytif is abit troublesome sometimes.

Any update on this plugin?

FelixSchl

I have been a bit slack on the matter, mostly because I am not working in a games studio anymore and have no need for this tool myself, nor for my team.

However, csprance already helped me a good bit diagnosing the issue. I just started downloading the massive crySDK - so I will have it fixed by the weekend I hope, given csprance or another volunteer with access to both cs5 and cs6 and maybe cc is willing to help out - I need someone to run tests because I only have access to cs6 at this present moment and am unlikely to get my hands on other versions.

FelixSchl

I uploaded fix that works for me on cs6 and should in theory still work for cs5. Could anybody test this, please? https://github.com/felixSchl/quick-save-maps/releases

Revel

Hey thanks! I can confirm as well that the Crytif is now working on CS6.
It's definitely will speed things up! Again, thank you.

thegreyman1

Felix, does this have Super PNG support? Or would you consider implementing it? Thanks

FelixSchl

Super PNG is not supported and there are currently no plans to add such a feature. Development is pretty much on ice - just fixing stuff if there is stuff that need fixing...

Revel

Hi Felix, do you know why whenever we generate the crytif texture it's always generate additional map called "qsm-compose-temp.dds"? the thumbnail on the explorer said "Resource Compiler Error" though

But so far it didn't give any error whatsoever, maybe we can safely ignored it? Or can we make it auto delete that particular temp .dds file?

FelixSchl

I have no idea what crytiff is doing, I really just hand over to the plugin and then expect a "qsm-compose-temp.tif" to be written, which I then rename to the desired output. I would not know why it also creates a .dds with the same name. I could auto-delete it if that's desired.