Sorry I didn't get to reply to this earlier. I spend a couple days working on target rings and posted here:
http://www.eq2interface.com/forums/s...ead.php?t=8337
and asked a question in the eq2 forums here:
http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/p...opic_id=361173
I may not be able to say exactly how to use the Photoshop plugin since I don't have Photoshop but I've been reading up on how the DirectX texture compression formats work.
The tools I use are:
GIMP DDS plugin
NVIDIA thumbnail viewer
Microsoft DirectX texture editor (from the DirectX SDK)
ATI Compressonator
Err, so it's kind of a mish mash of a lot of things.
Your problems are probably a result of the different way mipmaps and textures can be handled. Here's the general
wikipedia entry for mipmaps and texture filtering. The default target ring textures have 3 mipmaps (512x512, 256x256, and 128x128) Most mipmap programs generate all of them down to the smallest size. So one of the strange things you saw was probably caused by it only loading three mipmaps but then saving 10 mipmaps. I think the rotating beacon effect is caused by colored texels on the edge of the texture and the texture is applied to the surface with
clamp mode. Here's another
illustration of clamp mode.
I haven't gotten to do much testing since then but have you tried checking the box that says "Alpha Zero Border"? That may force the texture to have a one texel wide transparent border.
So generally, any texture that will be seen in 3D should have mipmaps to avoid aliasing and shimmering effects. UI graphics don't need them of course. With my settings at Balanced, the target rings only appear at the 2nd or 3rd mipmap anyway-- I never get to see the highest resolution version.
After generating mipmaps we get to decide what kind of compression to use. Compression should be the last step since it's a lossy process and it introduces artifacts. DXT compression is a good idea though, since it saves drive space, system RAM, and video RAM.
Here are some good references:
UnrealWiki (general overview)
Wikipedia (more technical)
MSDN (most technical)
The quick guide is:
DXT1 (called BC1 in DirectX10): 8:1 compression, use if you don't need an alpha channel or a 1 bit (on or off) alpha channel.
DXT3 (called BC2 in DirectX10): 4:1 compression, same type of color compression as DXT1 and best for sharp, hard-edged alpha transitions.
DXT5 (called BC3 in DirectX10): 4:1 compression, same type of color compression as DXT1 and best for smooth, more gradual alpha transitions.
Anyway, I'll have to do some more testing with some target rings when I have time.