Problema VC Antares D3D9

About DXT1 and DXT3:
They are both .dds compression methods, but you can save .dds files without compression if you want. Naturally the texture will then take up a lot more space. Save it as a 8:8:8 24bit RGB .dds in that case(unless you need an explicit alpha).
DXT1 does not have an explicit alpha channel, whereas DXT3 does. The alpha channel in DXT3 is used to control what parts of the texture are supposed to be transparent ingame.
In Thief: DS and DX:IW however, some of the DXT1 textures also have transparent details, and they have done that by simply telling the game to make everything which is black in the DXT1 texture become transparent.

DXT3 also handles colors better than DXT1, which is why it will sometimes be the best looking format of the two. For instance I used DXT3 to save my wood textures, because DXT1 would 'miss' a lot of details in the wood, and just look bad. In some textures there won't be any visible difference though - it depends on what's in the texture.

As I mentioned earlier, you can alter the normal map by altering the color channels. One other way, other than the one I mentioned above, is to play with contrast and levels on the Red, Green and Blue channels. Increasing the contrast will make the normalmap stronger. It works differently than altering the contrast of the whole RGB channel. By altering the contrast of just one channel, you can strengthen just that property(depth for instance).

All the above is for altering already existing normal maps though, which is mostly what I have done. The best way to make them would be to have access to the models.

When saving the textures/normals, I have used mainly the default .dds settings, only changing mipmaps to about 8 or 9 levels. I have usually looked at what DXTool told me the original texture used, and followed that.
I save them as a "2D Texture".


I guess that's pretty much what I know about DXT1 and 3 and .dds and normal maps; just enough to enable me to make my own. I probably know a little bit more though - some "secrets" and some things i have plain forgot to mention.