[Spoon]

Guys I'm completely puzzled here.
I have animated glow maps working on a fighter but now that i'm trying to apply it through the same method to a cap ship it absolutely refused to be animated.
I rechecked the file names, the .eff file. changed the file types around and reduced the image size all in an attempt to get it to animate. No luck. The animated glow map will not show up but a none animated one Will show up.  

This is how i've set it up for the fighter:
Fighter IV white.dds
Fighter IV white-normal.dds
Fighter IV white-glow.eff
Fighter IV white-glow_0000.dds
till 0023
The .eff file content:
$Type: DDS
$Frames: 24
$FPS: 30

This works just fine.

For the capship I have it set up like this:
skirmisherAlternate.dds
skirmisherAlternate-glow.eff
skirmisherAlternate-glow_0000.dds
till 0018
The .eff file content:
$Type: DDS
$Frames: 19
$FPS: 12

For mysterious reasons unknown to me, the glowmap will not show up like this.
When I remove the glow_0000 files and replace it with skirmisherAlternate-glow.dds the glow map Will show up.

This doesn't make sense to me whatsoever. At first I figured that it was perhaps because I used 2048x2048 glow maps and the 50mb of file sizes would be too big for the memory to handle. Changing them to .jpg didn't do it either. Reducing the .dds files to 512x512 didn't do it either.
Derp

Anyone have a clue?

[Cobra]

Okay first of all, why the hell do you need 2048x2048 glowmaps? Damn, son.

As for your glow issue, I'm probably totally wrong here but try renaming skirmisherAlternate-glow_0000 to skirmisherAlternate-glow0000. It could be the underscore that's causing the problem.

[Spoon]

Okay first of all, why the hell do you need 2048x2048 glowmaps? Damn, son.

As for your glow issue, I'm probably totally wrong here but try renaming skirmisherAlternate-glow_0000 to skirmisherAlternate-glow0000. It could be the underscore that's causing the problem.

I don't, nobody needs 2048 glow maps 
It just took me a moment to realize that resizing glow maps will not cause problems with the placement on the model. 

As for the underscore, i'm doing the exact same thing with the fighter maps and that works just fine. The wiki also tells me to use an underscore

Freespace 2 SCP also supports two kinds of animated file format. The first is the standard .ANI extension as used by Freespace Retail, you can convert these using the AniBuilder program from the Descent Tools package. The Second format is the new .EFF file. This allows multiple single images to be chained together into an animated texture. All .EFF image files must be in the same format, but can be in any format Freespace SCP supports, and must have an underscore and their Frame number added onto their name as a 4-digit number starting at 0000, for example RunningLights_0000.DDS, RunningLights_0001.DDS etc. Now simply create a new text file for your animated texture with the same Base name as your texture and a .EFF extension (in this case, RunningLights.EFF) and simply enter the following text.

[Cobra]

Your post says Fighter IV white-glow.0000, not Fighter IV white-glow_0000.

[Spoon]

Your post says Fighter IV white-glow.0000, not Fighter IV white-glow_0000.

ah, made a typo when posting. fixed.
Issue is still not resolved though.

[Spoon]

AAAaaaaargggghhh
I'm getting a headache of this. No matter What I try, it absolutely refuses to work with a -glow_0000 type of file! Ditch the 4 digits and it shows up.
crapspitkill
There is no reason why it shouldn't work!

[Vasudan Admiral]

I bet you it will be your total filename length - including the extension it's 33 characters. The max is 32, so replace 'Alternate' with 'Alt' or something shorter (remember to rename ALL appropriate textures including diffuse, shine, normal and in the POF itself) and it should work.

[Spoon]

I bet you it will be your total filename length - including the extension it's 33 characters. The max is 32, so replace 'Alternate' with 'Alt' or something shorter (remember to rename ALL appropriate textures including diffuse, shine, normal and in the POF itself) and it should work.

 
Vasudan Admiral I wub you so much right now.
The idea of a long file name causing trouble did cross my mind but then I looked at some other file names in the same map (shockwave3d-glow_0000.dds for example) and disregarded it. Little did I know about the 32 limit.

Thanks! Now I can finally sleep at ease!

[Getter Robo G]

Oh ok glad you resolved it.

Otherwise I was going to upload the ani.bussad texture Omni made for animated Trek ships just to see if it shows up on your model. Thus if it worked it would show you ani.textures do work.

I have never used eff's, that's why I had nothing to add before.