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Description The game runs normally until it doesn't - I do absolutely nothing and it crashes out of nowhere. No "specific" steps are made to achieve it, but it appears to happen only in the latest "HD" maps, which in the last saturday (26) I crashed 6 times while just playing C&C_Field_HD. It started happening that exact saturday, and before that, I haven't installed anything in the game over the last 3 or 4 weeks, other than a few different textures I've been creating. Reproduction Steps Join Online matches; Being in a "HD" map; Playing the game till it crashes.

Introduction W3D 5.1 supports Metallic Roughness Physically Based Rendering, or PBR for short. PBR means that the visual properties of a surface are physically plausible, as such that realistic results are possible under all lighting conditions. If this sounds alien to you, then check out this brief introduction to PBR on YouTube, by GarageFarm Academy: (Note: W3D 5.1 does not support Height maps, but future versions may.) For instructions on how to use any of the software mentioned in this guide, please use the documentation provided by these tools, or look up some basic tutorials on how to use them. It shouldn't take anyone long to get a basic understanding of these tools, and most seasoned artists already know how to use them. In order to make PBR look correct in W3D, you will need to configure your project for it and this includes implementing Image Based Lighting, or IBL for short. This guide will cover the basics of how to implement PBR correctly, how to export your texture maps, and how to apply them to your models. >>> Step 1: Configuring Your Project and Using IBL Go to your project INI file directory, and locate RendererFeatures.ini. If this file does not exist, then create it. Add the following parameters and set them as true: SpecularEnabled=true PbrIBLDiffuseEnabled=true PbrIBLSpecularEnabled=true Next, we need to create an IBL file to correctly light the environment. For this, you will need to obtain or create a HDRI skybox file. You may need to invest into licencing some, but I will attach an example for you to work with, here: HDRI-Sky-Example.7z You will need to generate the correct files out of this HDRI skybox texture. We do this using an open source application called IBL Baker. Grab it from their Github page, here (Note: Click the green Code button and select Download ZIP): https://github.com/derkreature/IBLBaker Open the application by running IBLBaker.exe in the bin64 directory. This will load an example scene. Next, click Load Environment and select your HDRI file. Configure the Specular Resolution to 1024, and the Diffuse Resolution to 512. Leave the rest as default. Select Save Environment to export the files we need. Note: There is a slight oddity with the application, it may not export anything unless you pre-select another file (could be anything) within the Export directory. If your Export folder remains empty after saving, try selecting a random file first before pressing Save in the Windows Explorer menu. Now, go into the Export directory, and you should see several files. Some for MDR, and some for HDR. Delete all the files containing MDR, as well as the Brdf file, as we do not use these. What you should be left with is the following 3 files (where xx is the name you gave it): xx DiffuseHDR size: 15 MB xx SpecularHDR size: 64 MB xx EnvHDR size: 256 MB Name these files as such: xx DiffuseHDR -> ibl_diffuse xx SpecularHDR -> ibl_specular xx EnvHDR -> env Additionally, download this ibl_brdf_lut.7z file and alongside the above files, place them inside your .dat file of preference. These files will act as your default IBL. You can also do an IBL environment per level, and to do this you repeat the process of making the above three files, but naming them with your level name as a prefix, for example: TS_TaintedLegacy_ibl_diffuse. Note: The ibl_brdf_lut file only needs to exist in your .dat structure. You can tune the IBL intensity by adjusting your level ambient lighting in Mammoth. Note: Mammoth doesn't understand IBL, so unfortunately you're working blind as of 5.1. That concludes the configuration phase. >>> Step 2: Implementing your PBR Assets You can create new PBR assets, or licence ones in various locations on the Internet. For this guide, lets say you licenced some PBR assets and you now wish to transport them to W3D. For this part I will assume you know how to handle geometry data. Locate the textures of the asset you wish to import. We need to figure out what texture packing format was used. Be on the look-out for these files: Albedo, also called Color Normal Occlusion Roughness Metallic Specularlevel Possible other maps you may encounter that we can use: opacity, emissive Other maps you may encounter, we do not support. Ideally, all these PBR textures are separate, but it is possible that some are pre-packaged, for example, this would often be the case when working with assets made for other game engines. Some packed textures may be named with ORM or ORT as a suffix, in these instanced you're looking at packed textures for Occlusion - Roughness - Metallic, or Occlusion - Roughness - Translucency, respectively. Naturally most of these pre-packed textures we cannot use, so you will need to use an image manipulation software such as Photoshop or GIMP to Decompose the RGB channels into separately exportable layers. Now that you have your individual texture files, it is time to package them. You can once again use image manipulation software such as Photoshop or GIMP to pack the textures, or you can use Adobe Substance Sampler to import them as a material, and then export them using Adobe Substance Painter. I would recommend the latter because it allows you to more easily iterate on the texture. Note: If you obtained assets using a Specular-Glossiness PBR workflow as opposed to the Metallic-Roughness one W3D uses, then I strongly recommend the Adobe Substance route as it will automatically convert texture maps to whatever the output requires. As an example, here is what your output template should look like in Adobe Substance Painter: (Note: If you wish to include alpha, then simply create an additional template with alpha in the A channel of the base color map.) Re-pack your textures as follows: Color map: YourTextureName - export as BC1 DDS. In case your texture contains alpha, use BC3 instead. Normal map: YourTextureName_nrm - export as BC5n. Please make sure you use a DirectX Normal map. PBR map: YourTextureName_spc - export as BC7. Ensure the following: Red channel: Metallic Green channel: Roughness Blue channel: Occlusion Alpha channel: Specular Level Emissive (if present): YourTextureName_emissive - export as BC1. Ensure you export using the highest DDS compression quality, or you will get very pixelated results. I also recommend exporting using Kaiser mipmaps for a bit better looking textures at distance. Note: Using GIMP? Please use the Nvidia Texture Tools instead, as GIMP exports with very poor DDS compression, and doesn't support some of the formats we use. Once the textures are ready in DDS format, open 3DS Max and create a new W3D material. Leave everything default except for: Shader -> Sec Gradient -> Enabled Textures -> Publish & Alpha Bitmap enabled. On the model itself, go to W3D Properties and: Enable Tangents Enable Always Dyn Light (note: If this is a dynamic object like a character or vehicle, you can skip this) Export your W3D file as you wish it, but make sure you enable Export MikkTSpace-compliant Tangents in the export menu. This is important, otherwise your assets will have various errors. Now simply load your asset into a level with the correct configurations, and... it just works. Good luck!

Feature Overview The new updated weather system operates differently in two primary ways; by introducing more customization capabilities on a per-map basis, and by introducing the capability of rendering surface level weather VFX. The primary means of assigning a weather type to a level (rain, snow, ash) remains unchanged, via Mammoth. New Per-Map Options Your map-specific INI files (the same file containing skybox information and a couple of other things), now also contain new parameters for weather related settings, as well as a few additional skybox settings. All the new settings, including their default values, are seen here in this example: [SkyTextures] MoonTexture1=FullMoon.dds MoonTexture2=PartMoon.dds EarthTexture1=FullEarth.dds EarthTexture2=PartEarth.dds SunTexture=Sun.dds SunHaloTexture=SunHalo.dds MoonHaloTexture=MoonHalo.dds CloudTexture=CloudLayer.dds StarTexture=Star.dds LightningTexture=LightningBolt.tga LightningSource=LightningSource.dds [WeatherTextures] WeatherTexture=weatherparticles.dds ; Sounds look for presets by name, not audio files. [ThunderSounds] ThunderSound1=Thunder01 ThunderSound2=Thunder02 ThunderSound3=Thunder03 ThunderSound4=Thunder04 ThunderSound5=Thunder05 ThunderSound6=Thunder06 WarBlitzSound=SFX.Ambient_Explosion_01 [WeatherSounds] WindSound=Wind01 RainSound=Rainfall01 [WeatherEffects] ; When a weather particle hits the ground, it will generate a random ; number between 0 and 1000 and if that number is less than ; WeatherEffectChance, it will trigger the "weather effect". ; See surfaceeffects.ini for weather hitter type data. ; Value from 0 to 1000. WeatherEffectChance=750 ; Area size around the camera to render weather in. RainSize=20.0 SnowSize=40.0 AshSize=40.0 New Surface Effects In order to generate the new client-side localized weather VFX, you need to update your surfaceeffects.ini with additional hitter type entries for each weather type (rain, snow, ash). Once you have listed your weather hitter types, you can then assign VFX to them like you would any other hitter type. Below is an example for the Rain hitter type: ; Weather Effects ; RAIN [Light Metal_Rain] Emitter0=e_rainspla Emitter1=e_rainsplb [Heavy Metal_Rain] Emitter0=e_rainspla Emitter1=e_rainsplb You can do the same for the other weather hitter types. Bonus tip: If your project has an unused weather type (most likely Ash), you can remove the ash texture from weatherparticles.dds and then use that weather to, for example, create wind effects in a sandy map.