DayZ Texture Pipeline

Use this skill to design, edit, validate, and package DayZ texture/material work. It covers visual texture maps, .paa conversion, .rvmat authoring, config material wiring, damage materials, emissive/glass variants, penetration materials, and advanced Multi shader masks.

Non-negotiable rules

1. Verify every DayZ path, config property, and material pattern against the current mod or unpacked vanilla data before writing a final answer or diff.
2. Prefer the lowest-risk material route that meets the goal:
   • texture-only skin: hiddenSelectionsTextures[] / _co.paa;
   • changed roughness/specular/normal/emissive behavior: .rvmat;
   • health visual states: damage/destruct .rvmat through healthLevels[];
   • bullet/surface response: collision LOD penetration .rvmat with .bisurf;
   • many tiled materials on one static mesh: Multi shader only after section count and UV requirements justify it;
   • source is an authored metallic/roughness PBR set and damage-overlay/terrain support is not needed: MatPBR .emat route — community-verified, not Bohemia-documented; prefer Super/.rvmat when either is required.
3. Treat _nohq as DirectX/Y- for DayZ. If the source normal is OpenGL/Y+, invert the green channel before final DayZ export. Measure a candidate for the source's convention, then confirm it; do not guess it from where the asset came from (added 2026-10-03). python scripts/normal_convention.py --normal <normal.png> --albedo <albedo.png> takes two independent readings and proposes a convention only when they agree. The albedo reading looks at the albedo's dark grooves: across a hollow, d(nx)/dx and d(ny)/dy have the same sign in DirectX and opposite signs in OpenGL, and the red channel calibrates the sign of the groove signal. The curl reading needs no albedo: the slopes of a height field have no curl, under one convention only; it names a convention only when its two median residuals differ by more than one 8-bit step of the normal (2/255), a heuristic floor: on nearly flat normals rounding to 8 bits alone moves them about that much, and more where the normal tilts. The candidate must also hold across a 6×6 grid of blocks, each block read with the same thresholds: at most 1 block in 10 of those that vote may name the other convention for the curl reading, and 1 in 3 for the albedo reading (added 2026-10-04 after a flat brick decal and a cloth bag read OpenGL on vanilla maps with readings that agreed on the whole map but not block by block). Exit 0 prints a candidate, DirectX or OpenGL (both readings agree, stable across the blocks); exit 2 is INCONCLUSIVE (they disagree, one has no signal, or the blocks disagree); exit 1 is bad input. Convert a .paa to PNG with ImageToPAA first. A candidate is not proof: the cross-family review (2026-10-03) built known-DirectX maps that both readings call OpenGL, a valid tangent-space bake on a sphere patch and undersampled tileable detail; the block check cannot see an error that is the same in every block, such as that tileable detail. Confirm a candidate another way before inverting the green: the baker's export setting, or a render under a raking light in which a known groove reads as a groove. The raking light confirms only if it crosses V (known limit, review round 3): the green changes the shading only through the light's V component, so a light parallel to U renders the map and its inverted-green copy identically, and so does a groove that runs along V under any light. Use a light from the top or the bottom of the texture on a groove that runs along U, and check that the inverted-green copy reads that groove as a ridge; two renders that look the same are inconclusive, not a confirmation (references/map-conventions.md). Measured on LFPowerGrid's heater, a Sketchfab asset: the albedo reading gave red −0.130, green −0.085 over 491,775 pixels (2026-09-21) and the curl reading a median residual of 0.013 under DirectX against 0.024 under OpenGL (2026-10-03), candidate DirectX, not confirmed another way and not checked in game. On 284 vanilla pairs not used to design the block check, it gave 157 DirectX, 119 INCONCLUSIVE and 8 OpenGL, all 8 consistent with OpenGL by their own features (2026-10-04). Known limit, accepted by the Pack owner on 2026-10-04: a map that mixes the two conventions inside every block passes the block check. Vanilla kancel_008_nohq (glass panes DirectX by their own edges; hinge bolts and window frames OpenGL) reads OpenGL with stable blocks. Over the three vanilla samples (848 pairs) that is 1 wrong candidate in 502, 0 in the 165 not used for the design, with no N1 error and about 41 % INCONCLUSIVE. Check features of known relief of more than one kind before inverting a channel. The albedo reading alone is also wrong, with strong correlations, on a flat surface that curves one way along x and the other along y; the curl reading alone has no signal on a surface that is a sum of one function of x and one of y. Inverting the green channel only flips both readings, so it is no control: the controls are the fixtures of known convention in tests/test_normal_convention.py. An OpenGL candidate only says that the green disagrees with the red: a map whose red is inverted against the real relief reads the same, and inverting its green then turns the relief upside down (two vanilla maps, 2026-10-04). Check red on a recessed joint of known relief before choosing the channel (references/map-conventions.md). Packing [MECHANISM VERIFIED] (vanilla hatchback_02/sedan_02 _nohq mip 128 raw, 2026-08-30; same layout on two LFQuad2 maps the same night): shipped _nohq is DXT5nm, not RGB-in-DXT5. Stored (R,G,B,A)=(0,Y,Z,X) with TAGG SWIZ 05 04 02 03; X lives in alpha. ImageToPAA with a _nohq filename deswizzles to RGB (X,Y,Z). Measure amplitude/relief on that PNG, never on the raw DXT block. Do not infer packing from the suffix: read the current file and a vanilla _nohq. Sign if height comes from albedo luminance: dark pixels are valleys. A dark seam that comes out as a ridge is an inverted mold. Confirm with a 1D sweep across a known dark line (entering a horizontal groove: R>128; leaving: R<128; use G for a vertical sweep). Recalibrate Sobel gain per atlas — copying a strength that worked at another resolution or contrast overshoots. An exaggerated normal looks worse than a weak one. Detail: references/map-conventions.md.
4. Copy the closest vanilla .rvmat category first. Do not invent absolute stage constants when vanilla examples diverge by asset class. The same holds for map levels (added 2026-11-02): before choosing _smdi, _as and _co levels, measure the closest vanilla asset of the same family whose rvmat constants match yours. The generic SMDI table is far brighter than the vanilla motorbike body measured (references/map-conventions.md §Calibrating against a vanilla asset of the same family).
5. Mark templates as [DESIGN] until adapted to the real addon paths, selections, UV sets, and verified vanilla reference.
6. UI textures (loading screens, menu backgrounds, map images): NEVER change the tone curve on the strength of an offline model — the engine's transfer function must be MEASURED from a screenshot first (added 2026-08-21, rewritten same day after the first version shipped a regression).
   • What is measured: a mod running in production carried a full sRGB→linear decode on its source. An offline model built from a vault note ("1.29 washes UI by +35% luma, contrast 76→58", Bohemia T198202) said this was a ~4x overshoot, so it was replaced with a gentle photographic curve. In-game the result was much brighter than before — the user's report, the only real datum in the whole exercise. Working backwards, linear→sRGB on the old texture predicts a render of 132.31 against a source median of 132.51: an exact cancellation. So the engine plausibly treats the UI .paa as LINEAR data and encodes it for display, making sRGB→linear on the source the correct inverse and the note's "+35%" model wrong or measured on something else.
   • Status: HYPOTHESIS. It fits one qualitative report and arithmetic, not a measurement. Do not act on it either. Get a screenshot of the actual UI texture on screen, compare it pixel-wise against the known texture that produced it, and derive the real curve. One screenshot ends the guessing permanently.
   • Second-order trap worth knowing: storing linear data in an 8-bit DXT1 texture starves the shadows, and the engine's gamma expansion then amplifies exactly that quantization. Measured on the production mod: raw DXT1 error averaged 2.64/255, but in DISPLAY space it hit mean 7.46 / max 77 in the darkest 18% of the image — blotchy, banded shadows that read as "the picture looks a bit off" while the overall tone is perfect. If the linear-storage route is correct, the fix for that is precision (uncompressed/higher-bit PAA, or dithering before encode), NOT a tone change.
   • Gate: decode the shipped .paa back and compare its luma median against the source — a build script that "ran fine" proves nothing about the curve it applied. And an offline round-trip never predicts the render: look at it in-game before believing any of this.
   • Power-of-two is an ImageToPAA.exe limit, not an engine limit. The tool rejects 2048×1152 and 1920×1080 with Error (Img is not of power of 2 size), yet non-POT .paa load fine at runtime (the loading-screen mask that ships in these mods is 1920×1080). Consequence: forcing a 16:9 source into 2048×1024 costs ~12.5% vertical stretch — budget a crop or another encoder before promising 16:9.
7. For a UI texture (loading screens, menu backgrounds, map images): use a .paa from ImageToPAA.exe; do not ship a hand-written .edds.
   • What failed: a Python-written .edds did not render — not self-contained LZ4, not a structural clone of a production file with the same tags, not COPY. LoadImageFile returned true in every case, so the log does not catch it. A Python round-trip max_diff=0 does not predict the render; look at it in-game.
   • What worked: a .paa from DayZ Tools ImageToPAA.exe, referenced from script. First try. ~1 MB vs ~14 MB. 2048×1024 accepted; 1536×1024 rejected as not power-of-two.
   • Decoder is for INSPECTING a foreign .edds, not for writing one. Six production files decoded with max_diff=0 on mip 0 vs their source PNG. Runtime layout: 128-byte DDS header (loading-screen backgrounds were BGRA8 uncompressed: pf.flags 0x41, R=0x00FF0000, A=0xFF000000; mips = floor(log2(max(w,h)))+1); from offset 128, 8 bytes per mip = tag(4) + uint32 size, tag 'COPY' (raw) or 'LZ4 ', smallest mip first, then payloads in the same order. DayZ Tools has no CLI writer; production files come from Workbench PNG import (the .meta records it).
   • LZ4 slices are linked blocks. A 'LZ4 ' payload is uint32 uncompressed mip size, then 65536-byte slices each prefixed by compressed size with OR 0x80000000 on the last. Slice 0 decompresses alone; later slices fail with "corrupt input or insufficient space" unless the previous slice is passed as dictionary (lz4.block.decompress(data, uncompressed_size=n, dict=prev)). That error reads as a size bug and is not.

Material and atlas preflight (added 2026-08-31)

Before workflow step 2 borrows any vanilla .rvmat, run Ambient-shadow maps and borrowed RVMATs below: measure _as per channel and verify Stage4, Stage5, and every uvSource. Before changing UV orientation or winding, run Atlas identity before mapping diagnosis: decode the selected atlas and overlay the affected faces first.

Workflow

1. Identify the asset type, selections, UV sets, and intended runtime behavior.
2. Read the nearest existing .rvmat, config.cpp, and texture paths from the mod or P:\DZ.
3. Pick the route:
   • simple color/skin: use references/config-and-damage.md;
   • new material response: use references/rvmat-cookbook.md;
   • damage/destruct: use references/config-and-damage.md;
   • glass, emissive, or penetration: use references/rvmat-cookbook.md;
   • Multi material masks: use references/multi-rvmat-section-texturing.md;
   • native PBR source (Substance/Quixel/AI-generated metallic-roughness sets), no damage overlay or terrain needed: use references/matpbr-emat-pipeline.md.
4. Export textures using the map conventions in references/map-conventions.md.
5. Validate with references/validation-checklist.md and, where useful, run:

python .\scripts\rvmat_lint.py path\to\material.rvmat --pdrive-root P:\

6. If creating a new material from a template, start with:

python .\scripts\rvmat_template.py super --prefix "myaddon\data\asset" --output "myaddon\data\asset.rvmat"

Then replace every placeholder with verified real paths.

Reference loading guide

• references/map-conventions.md: texture suffixes, normal map orientation, SMDI packing, metallic→specular (G) conversion, calibration against vanilla, the DXT block staircase of a per-material change, export notes.
• references/rvmat-cookbook.md: Super, flat, emissive, glass, penetration, and common stage patterns.
• references/config-and-damage.md: hiddenSelectionsTextures[], hiddenSelectionsMaterials[], healthLevels[], vehicle light material swaps.
• references/multi-rvmat-section-texturing.md: enriched Multi shader reference with RGB+black mask mapping and UV requirements.
• references/validation-checklist.md: review gates before packaging or handing off.
• references/vehicle-materials-and-color-variants.md: shader choice (Super when faces have a _co vs NormalMapSpecularMap for constant-color/no-_co parts), tiled detail for overlapping/un-baked UVs, _nohq DirectX Y- orientation, and the color-variant subclass pattern (color hidden selection).
• references/matpbr-emat-pipeline.md: native PBR route via the MatPBR shader — .emat/.rvmat pairing, required albedo/normal/roughness/metallic/AO maps, env cubemap prep, Workbench import steps, glass presets, and hard limitations (no damage overlay, no terrain). Community-verified, not officially documented — read the Evidence section before treating any claim as settled.

Stop and ask

Ask for clarification before generating final files when any of these are unknown:

• target addon root and packed path;
• exact selections that will receive texture/material swaps;
• whether the asset has one or two UV sets;
• whether the texture is only cosmetic or must affect surface, damage, glass, light, or penetration behavior;
• whether the output should be a mod diff, standalone reference, or .skill package.

Checklist normal bake high→low (added 2026-06-24)

Empirical pattern verified on LFInfectedBig S5 (5 iterations × 4 distinct gotchas). Any high→low bake destined for DayZ must pass this checklist before the first pass, not iterate against it.

Pre-bake (geometry)

• Triangulate low BEFORE bake. Otherwise, bake tangents (computed on quads) ≠ tangents engine uses when rendering (which are on triangles) → misaligned normals at runtime.
• bbox_dims(low_source) == bbox_dims(high_source) (±1 mm). If they differ (typical after re-pose / conform of low), bake in a pose where they match (BakeProxy = topo+UV of final low with positions of low pre-conform or pre-rig). Tangent-space normal map is pose-invariant with same topo+UV. Detail: LL-159 in lessons-learned.md.
• high visible, EVERYTHING else HIDDEN in scene (other passes, internal ChestBones, proxies). Otherwise, AO and normal collect occlusion/surfaces they shouldn't.
• low: customdata_custom_splitnormals_clear + normals_make_consistent(inside=False) + shade_smooth. Without this, normals inherited from retopo/voxel-remesh remain inconsistent → arbitrary dark AO.
• high: do NOT normals_make_consistent. On non-watertight meshes (AI-generated like Rodin/Hunyuan, voxel retopo) flips entire shells inward. Use original normals of high + shade_smooth. They come consistent for render by construction.

Pre-bake (imagen target)

• Pre-fill target image with neutral map value:
  • Normal map (tangent-space): RGB = (128, 128, 255) = decoded vector (0, 0, 1).
  • AO map: white (255, 255, 255) or gray (192, 192, 192) depending on convention.
• use_clear=False in bake settings. Otherwise, bake misses remain black (0, 0, 0) → Normal Map node decodes them as normal (−1, −1, 0) (inward) → renders black under any light.
• Image size according to mod texel target (1024/2048/4096; 2048 for DayZ humanoid characters is standard).

Bake settings

• Cage 0.025 m / max_ray 0.05 m as default for humanoids. Increase if mesh is thick (internal ChestBones to torso, vehicles with separate panels). Decrease if low self-intersections (rare).
• Bake in OGL/Blender (default). Conversion to DirectX for DayZ (Y−) at end with PIL/ImageMagick.
• samples ≥ 16 for AO; 1 for normal (normal does not benefit from samples).

Post-bake (formato DayZ)

• _nohq = normal with inverted green channel (Y−, DirectX convention). Conversion:

  from PIL import Image
  im = Image.open("normal_ogl.png").convert("RGB")
  r, g, b = im.split()
  g = g.point(lambda v: 255 - v)
  Image.merge("RGB", (r, g, b)).save("zombie_body_nohq.png")

• _co = PBR albedo; if only generator placeholder exists (Rodin/Hunyuan), treat it as such and re-texture on new UV.
• _smdi = specular/diffuse mask if applicable to DayZ material.
• Final .paa with TexView / ImageToPAA.

Quick verification (evidence renders)

Before packaging, 3-view comparative render:

• pv_A_normal_* = low + normal map aplicado.
• pv_B_flat_* = low plano (sin normal).
• pv_C_high_* = high original.

Passes if pv_A is clearly closer to pv_C than to pv_B (the normal map adds detail of the high). Fails if there are blemishes, localized rainbows, or normal "is not visible" (incorrect transform).

Origin and cross-refs

LFInfectedBig S5 (autonomous) 2026-06-24, handoff 30_Sessions/2026-06-25-LFInfectedBig-uv-bake.md. Individual gotchas in LL-159 (BakeProxy in pre-conform pose). Reported in CB-5 of 2026-06-24 introspection.

Rules promoted from lessons corpus (added 2026-07-27)

Promoted from AI/20_Knowledge/lessons-learned.md to arrive via trigger instead of depending on someone remembering to look them up. Each rule cites source LL-NNN; complete entry lives there. Do not remove citation: the index detects promotion by it.

• LL-066 — In Blender 5.1 use RENDERED + EEVEE + light for materials and capture VIEW_3D area, not full window. For Multi, keep UV2/tex1 and reproduce blend by mask; on Windows without python-lzo, decode .paa with lzokay and viewer shim.
• LL-368 — DATA maps (normal, AO, curvature, displacement, ID, masks): colorspace_settings.name = 'Non-Color', Standard view / None look / exposure 0 / gamma 1, and then reread written file against intended buffer (max error within quantization step). Without that round-trip defect is delivered.
• LL-570 — After a per-material change on a baked atlas, measure the border ring with each neighbour of the same UV island: a 2-4 texel rim that kept its old value is the DXT block staircase. In the measured case the cause was a logo under clear coat left without the class of the paint around it; that case is historical, the project's account (references/map-conventions.md).
• LL-571 — Choose the Stage7 env map by the specular of the parts that use it: with G raised toward mirror, measure the env's ground half first (env_land_optic_co turned a high-G silver olive in game, env_land_chrome_co kept it neutral, a historical in-game account) (references/rvmat-cookbook.md).
• LL-572 — Procedural wear: prefer 3D value noise in object space and random scratch segments with a fixed seed to sine thresholds; look at the atlas at 1:1 before a run (references/vehicle-materials-and-color-variants.md).

Ambient-shadow maps and borrowed RVMATs (added 2026-08-31)

Audit _as files per channel, never as grayscale. In the measured vanilla pile_of_planks_as.paa, the AO signal is in G (min 0, mean 53.1; 74% of pixels below 48) while R, B, and A are constant 255. A luminance conversion reports a bright image around 185 and hides the very shadows the shader consumes.

_as encoding and gate criterion (added 2026-09-14, LFQuad3). [EXACT] The native ImageToPAA route encodes _as by filename: the *_as.* pattern compresses DXT1 with channelSwizzleR="1", channelSwizzleG="G", channelSwizzleB="1", channelSwizzleA="1" and dynRange=0, so the AO stays in G while R, B and A sit at 255 (confirmed decoding five vanilla vehicle _as.paa: civiliansedan, hatchback_02_body, sedan_02_body, truck_01_cab, offroad_02_wheel). [DESIGN] Gate a produced _as by decoding the PAA and requiring max G error <= 8/255 against the source, with R, B and A at 255. Never require per-channel RGB error against a gray PNG: that criterion pushed a worker to bypass the swizzle through an intermediate _dxt1 suffix and ship gray _as maps (R=G=B). Keep the _as source name plain, with no intermediate suffixes.

Borrowing a vanilla .rvmat also borrows mesh-specific baked data. Its Stage4 _as can paint dark patches from the donor mesh onto a custom model and look like broken lighting or normals; Stage5 _smdi carries the same reuse risk. Check the coordinate source too: the measured Stage4 uses uvSource="tex1", a second UV set that many custom MLODs do not have. Measuring the map over the model's UV0 window does not prove what the shader samples. Engine behavior when UV1 is absent remains unverified.

To remove donor AO, use the vanilla-proven neutral stage:

texture="#(argb,8,8,3)color(1,1,1,1,AS)";

The source census found that form 4,262 times. If depth is wanted, bake an _as for the actual mesh and route it through uvSource="tex". An offline renderer that omits Stage4 is structurally unable to detect this defect. Before trusting a visual bench, prove that the known-bad material makes it red. The adjudicating control was an in-game, one-variable A/B: donor _as, neutral _as, and self-shadow disabled.

Atlas identity before mapping diagnosis (added 2026-08-31)

Before blaming mirrored UVs, winding, or the V convention:

1. Decode the atlas to PNG and look at it. Pillow opens DXT1/DXT5 DDS inputs directly.
2. Overlay the affected faces' UV polygons on that image with image_y = (1 - v) * H.
3. Only then investigate mapping conventions or geometry.

This two-minute preflight catches the expensive case where the selected atlas belongs to a different asset. It also prevents a source-game material resolver from inventing color data: materials named *_[PRIMARY] or *_[SECONDARY] intentionally have no diffuse atlas because their color comes from the source game's paint palette. Use a flat paint texture or author a _co; never bind “the largest atlas available”. Aircraft atlases can also contain a pre-mirrored copy of one side so markings read correctly on both sides. Mirrored text on both sides does not by itself justify a global U flip.

healthLevels[] is a NATIVE material writer on clothing (added 2026-08-31)

Measured with actual client on 2026-08-31. Matters to any mod painting clothing: thermal vision, dynamic camouflage, team marking, target highlighting.

The fact. DamageSystem.GlobalHealth.Health.healthLevels[] maps health thresholds to rvmat — in DZ\characters\tops\config.cpp:2276-2333, 1.0/0.7 → tshirt.rvmat, 0.5/0.3 → tshirt_damage.rvmat, 0 → tshirt_destruct.rvmat. Engine applies it: GetHealthLevel is proto native (P:/scripts/3_game/entities/object.c:1167) and no script in P:/scripts reads healthLevels to call SetObjectMaterial. A static audit of vanilla scripts with zero hits does NOT rule out this writer, because it is not in the scripts.

Consequence: crossing a health threshold wipes out any material override on the following frame. There is no hook to intercept it.

Wetness, on the other hand, does NOT repaint clothing. Having crossed the four EWetnessLevel thresholds (P:/scripts/3_game/constants.c:875-878), override remains intact. In vanilla sole material swap by wetness is in GardenBase (P:/scripts/4_world/entities/gardenbase.c:605,610) and is script-side. Under DZ\characters\ there are 0 *wet* assets versus 349 *damage*.rvmat with same search: absence is verified, not assumed.

SetObjectMaterial on worn clothing is RE-ASSERTED, not called once (added 2026-08-31)

PARTIALLY DISPUTED same afternoon — read "Writing MORE does not make material stick" below first. Data in this table holds, but the cause suggested (frequency) is false: 6,648 continuous writes on clothing without health level changes render nothing. Applying only this section's recipe wastes runs.

Measured in same run, and is the actionable part:

Mechanism is NOT established. "The write remains latent until engine rebuilds visual" fits all four observations and is not proven.

How to apply it: re-assert override when activating effect and after every event repainting clothing (health level change, equipment change), or maintain per tick while effect is active. Do not call it once and assume it applied.

And leave personality selection out of lease: vanilla already writes there (P:/scripts/4_world/entities/itembase/clothing_base.c:154), and stomping it turns normal repainting into a false positive of "it was stolen from me".

How it was measured, in case it needs repeating

Override with dz\data\data\mirror.rvmat (specular black, PixelShaderID="Super", diffuse 0.097 / specular 2) on camo selections: binary to the naked eye and removes judgment on JPEG. PASS is not given by frame where override remains: it is given by the pair — health step clears same override, same entity, and same camera. Without that control, "still there" is indistinguishable from a blind instrument.

Writing MORE does not make material stick: visual rebuild is needed (added 2026-08-31, evening)

Measured correction to the two previous sections. That table describes well what was seen, but suggests wrong cause —frequency—, and the next project reading it will try to write faster. Does not work, and takes two runs to find out.

The designed negative. On a NEW garment on each arm (reset via CreateAttachment, so no previous render contaminates next: override, once it sticks, is sticky) and without a single health level change:

Intermediate bursts (0.5 / 1 / 2 s) do not need a frame: they are strict subsets of continuous pattern on identical subjects, so failure of maximum treatment covers them by monotonicity.

Resetting with a new garment is not convenience, it is NECESSARY, and if you skip it the sweep measures its own history. Override is sticky: once it takes it survives ≥97 s without a single write and across a health step. Without virgin subject, each arm starts contaminated by previous one — in previous run positive control sat in middle of schedule and poisoned all subsequent arms. And inter-run persistence bites equally: a baseline can arrive with wetlevel=4 hplevel=2 from previous session and make pass for "control does not fire" what in reality is a dirty subject. Normalize subject at start and verify in log, not by word.

What DOES make it stick is an occurring health threshold crossing: the same continuous write, in a run where server stepped health, did render. Meaning healthLevels[] from previous section is not only what CLEARS override — it is the only thing seen to INSTALL IT.

Wetness does not work as a trigger, and was tested intentionally: with continuous writer active rain was injected and wetlevel crossed 0→1. Engine repainted for real —pants change visibly when wet— and clothing still did not take override. Consistent with previous section, and rules out obvious candidate.

Design consequence: worn clothing cannot be painted ON DEMAND by writing material. If effect must appear when player activates it, reconstruction must be forced through another route.

SwitchItemSelectionTextureEx is NOT that route, and was published here for a few hours as if it were. It is a bodyless declaration (P:/scripts/3_game/entities/entityai.c:1170): script hook, not proto native, so calling it rebuilds nothing — only runs whatever overrides exist, and the one in Clothing_Base exits via early return if par is null. What is misleading is who calls it: vanilla invokes it from EEItemAttached (P:/scripts/4_world/entities/manbase/playerbase.c:1469-1471), meaning rebuild is the attach and it rides along. It is recorded as ruled out with the reason, not as pending: a pending item is inherited by someone in a month and wastes their afternoon.

Neither is SetSimpleHiddenSelectionState, and for a reason worth knowing before calling it: they are TWO distinct index spaces, and mixing them crashes the client.

GetHiddenSelectionIndex (entityai.c:2792) returns an index of the first array — its own comment says so: "index of the string found in cfg array hiddenSelections". Passing it to the simple API indexes another array. Measured: native client crash with minidump, no trace beneath script.

That they are distinct arrays is not inference: weapon_base.c:62 declares m_weaponHideBarrelIdx with comment "index in simpleHiddenSelections cfg array", and in 30 vanilla call-sites of the simple API, ZERO use GetHiddenSelectionIndex — they use fixed ordinals (SIMPLE_SELECTION_MELEE_RIFLE = 0 … SHOULDER_MELEE = 3, dayzplayer.c:1160-1163), member indices (weapon_base.c:391,2133,2141), or dedicated getters (GetHairIndex(), GetBeardIndex(), playerbase.c:9055-9057).

And there is indeed a correct way to get simple index: Bohemia wrote it. The equivalent of GetHiddenSelectionIndex for this space is not a function, it is reading array and searching within. weapon_base.c:94-105 does both things —guard and resolution— in the same block:

if ( ConfigIsExisting("simpleHiddenSelections") )              // 1. the guard: without array, no indices
{
    TStringArray selectionNames = new TStringArray;
    ConfigGetTextArray("simpleHiddenSelections", selectionNames);   // 2. array for THIS space
    m_weaponHideBarrelIdx        = selectionNames.Find("hide_barrel");  // 3. the index, by name
    m_magazineSimpleSelectionIndex = selectionNames.Find("magazine");
}

Same pattern in bodyparts/head.c:20, and guard alone appears twice in actionviewbinoculars.c:35 and :56. Practical rule: GetHiddenSelectionIndex for texture and material; ConfigGetTextArray("simpleHiddenSelections", …) + Find() for simple visibility. Never the first feeding the second.

And for body clothing route dies in config, not in call. Census of simpleHiddenSelections under DZ\characters, one config.cpp per category: heads 3, headgear 2, data 2, glasses 1 — and tops, pants, vests, gloves, shoes, belts, backpacks, and masks: ZERO. On a t-shirt there is no array to index, so no index is valid. Still available for headgear and glasses, with guard upfront: not working for a t-shirt is not same as not working.

And there is no fourth route: a sweep of proto native on entityai.c and object.c returns only those four. No UpdateVisuals exists — if you look for a generic refresh call, there is none, and that saves the search.

When measuring it, separate two failures giving same vanilla frame: "there was no refresh" and "there was refresh and shutdown wiped out override". Distinguished by re-stamping after cycle and reading getter at all three moments — for that question getter does work, because slot witness and render oracle are distinct things and only second is discredited.

And it disputes row "1, right after health level change → renders" of previous table: today, a write on first tick after observed change did NOT render, with frame and log confirming write was made with valid indices. Both observations are from one sample and both are left recorded. What does not depend on sample size is the negative of 6648 writes.

The hook that seems the solution and is not: EEHealthLevelChanged DOES run on client (measured; vanilla body of clothing_base.c:111-125 is guarded by !IsDedicatedServer and only does client work), but the engine writes AFTER the hook — inside hook read already returns your material, and on next tick it is empty. Re-asserting in there is lost by order.

GetObjectMaterial is NOT an oracle of what renders (added 2026-08-31, evening)

Falsified in BOTH directions within a single run. It is most expensive trap of this skill, because it turns log into false green evidence:

Rule: to prove a material applied, the instrument is the frame. GetObjectMaterial only reports script slot, which is a different thing from render. A gate reading getter can sign PASS on clothing looking vanilla, and FAIL on clothing looking painted.

Scope, so this does not over-propagate: what is invalidated is the GETTER as instrument, not verdicts backed by pixels. The G10 PASS of LFThermalCore did not use any getter — relied on eight frames with visually binary rvmat and control pair (same entity, same camera: wetness leaves override, health step wipes it), and still stands. Complete rule is the getter does not serve as oracle and pixels do, which is the instrument used by both runs.

Two minor facts about same getter, useful for reading a log: returns empty string when engine holds material (not a normalized vanilla path, which was expected), and on server always returns empty — clothing material is purely client-side.

A selection the log calls painted can be hidden by config (SP-445, added 2026-09-28)

[EXACT] hiddenSelectionsTextures[] = {""} in config HIDES the selection — the script-side material/texture apply then succeeds and still nothing renders. Vanilla precedent: XmasLights.HideOnItem clears selection textures and materials with "" (xmaslights.c:94-103), and Blowtorch hides its flame with SetObjectTexture(0, "") (blowtorch.c:48-51) (DayZ 1.30.164014 Exp). A selection whose material is swapped from script must declare its REAL texture in config, like BatteryCharger (gear_camping/DZ/gear/camping/config.cpp:6975-6977). [DESIGN] If the emissive must stay visible over a dark _co region, also switch that selection to a bright procedural colour texture (#(argb,8,8,3)color(r,g,b,1,CO)); not yet verified in game on its own.

From baked PNG to .paa and atlas rvmat (added 2026-09-02)

Measured taking custom per-model atlas from Blender to mod (LFQuad, 4096^2, _nohq + _smdi, 13 rewritten materials). Four things bit, and none gives a guiding error.

ImageToPAA rejects PNG written by Blender

Error (Loading of img failed) and nothing else. Blender PNG carries EXIF, gamma, and chromaticity; same pixels resaved with PIL (Image.open(src).convert("RGB") .save(dst)) succeeds on first try. Measured: 23.95 MB from Blender fails, 6.96 MB resaved converts to a 7.39 MB .paa. An _smdi written by PIL from start never failed.

Skill already includes generic remedy ("re-save as a 32-bit PNG and re-import") for Workbench import; here cause is identified and applies equally to CLI.

[EXACT][CLAIM-TEX-IMAGETOPAA-RLE-16BIT] Same error, two more causes (offline-tested 2026-10-07, DayZ Tools ImageToPAA CLI, 256² fixtures):

• RLE-compressed TGA (header image type 10; per Strykar, Photopea offers no uncompressed TGA): fails; the same pixels as uncompressed TGA (type 2) convert. Fix: re-save uncompressed (PIL save() without compression, tested; [DESIGN] magick in.tga -compress none out.tga, not run here).
• 16-bit-per-channel PNG (greyscale tested; 16-bit RGB not tested): fails. Export 8-bit ([DESIGN] ImageMagick: the Q8 build, as the community advises, or -depth 8; not run here).

The reverse direction works from the CLI: ImageToPAA in.paa out.png and ImageToPAA in.paa out.tga both exit 0 (the TGA comes out uncompressed, type 2).

[EXACT][CLAIM-TEX-PAA-REG-WRAPPERS] Strykar's Explorer context-menu .reg files (DayZ Modders Discord, 2026-10-07) were read, not installed. The two PAA entries run cmd /c "for %%i in ("%1") do ImageToPAA ...": a doubled %%i is batch-file syntax, and given to cmd /c it stops before ImageToPAA runs ("%%i was unexpected at this time", No se esperaba %%i en este momento. on a Spanish system, rc 1; the same loop with a single %i runs). Whether Explorer's verb substitution turns %% into % before cmd sees it is not verified, so do not count on those two entries until one is tried. The TGA decompressor entry (magick "%1" -compress none "%1") rewrites the file in place with no backup.

Source filename decides treatment: ImageToPAA applies normal-map handling by suffix, so source must be named *_nohq.png. A *_nohq_DX.png is converted like any regular texture.

dir[] of uvTransform does NOT have canonical identity

Census over all .rvmat in vanilla tree, 2026-09-02:

aside (and up) have clear identity and their other values are tiling factor; dir has none. Bohemia writes {0,0,0} in DZ\vehicles\parts\data\aircraft_battery.rvmat:17 and {0,0,1} in DZ\vehicles\wheeled\van_01\data\van_01_wheel.rvmat:17, both under PixelShaderID="Super".

Consequence for any gate checking "this texture samples 1:1": look at aside, up, and pos, and not dir. A gate requiring dir[]={0,0,1} rejected 26 stages copied verbatim from Bohemia's file.

7-stage Super template, and where to get it

Copy DZ\vehicles\parts\data\aircraft_battery.rvmat entirely and replace. Stage1 _nohq, Stage2 #(argb,8,8,3)color(0.5,0.5,0.5,1,DT) with uvTransform at zeroes (that is how vanilla writes it, not an oversight), Stage3 ...(0,0,0,0,MC), Stage4 ...(1,1,1,1,AS), Stage5 _smdi, Stage6 #(ai,64,64,1)fresnel(0.4,0.4), Stage7 environment.

When migrating existing materials to Super, preserve ambient[]/diffuse[] if model does not yet have _co: vanilla writes {1,1,1,1} because color comes in texture, and copying it leaves object white. Also preserve specular[]/specularPower in the first pass — _smdi already modulates them per texel, and changing map and constants simultaneously makes any in-game regression unattributable.

For Stage7 DayZ ships dedicated environment maps in DZ\data\data\: env_land_chrome_co.paa and env_chrome_co.paa for chrome, env_land_co.paa for metal, plus env_mirror_co.paa, env_land_plastic_co.paa, and some twenty more. Flat black #(argb,8,8,3)color(0,0,0,1,CO) is vanilla default, meaning without reflection.

Blender Image.save() with relative path writes elsewhere, without warning

img.filepath_raw = "folder\file.png" resolves against open .blend, not against working directory, and save() does not throw. An entire bake was assumed written and was nowhere to be found. Use absolute path, and check os.path.isfile() before logging "written" — saying it without checking is how it gets lost.

SP-376 — Vehicle alpha decal: Super + renderFlags[]={"nozwrite"}

PixelShaderID="Super" alone IGNORES the alpha channel of section's _ca. Refuted in-game: SUB_BRZ labels with real alpha rendered opaque. The fix is not changing shader, it is completing the render state.

Vanilla pattern for an alpha decal on a vehicle is Super/Super + renderFlags[]={"nozwrite"}, verified in Offroad stickers (DZ\vehicles\wheeled\offroad_02\data\offroad_02_decals.rvmat:7-12).

What the flag does NOT cover, and must be declared in in-game gate: alpha sorting against other transparencies, z-fighting if decal is almost coplanar, and that without emmisive symbol does not self-illuminate at night. DXT5 preserves alpha but softens edges.

Recomposition from a DECAL source (icon in alpha channel): RGB = swatch color per pixel, ALPHA = actual alpha. Never flatten alpha onto RGB — white-on-black bake was precisely that error, producing the opaque decal looking like a shader issue.