[WIP - Project] An Attempt At HD Textures

[Timbab]

Well I tried, but couldn't get it to work over VMware, both in Debian and Ubuntu, but it was the first time I've used Linux in my life lol. Ran into tons of problems and even the guides didn't work, I don't know why. Unless someone babysits me through it, I'm not gonna bother again, unless I got too much time on my hands.

There is a Windows server guide on ANH though I think, I'll check that out this week if NOVA is not coming up anytime soon.

Edit: Oh my god, I just noticed I somehow changed the brush after my first go, and I was wondering why I had such troubles shading yesterday. It's a breeze now, I'll have an update on other pieces of comp on tuesday probably.

 

[Tonberry]

Looking good. Its about time somebody did hand drawn upscales. I'm a little too lazy. I don't have a lot of time these days anyway so I guess I have an excuse now.

Looks like all it needs is a blending layer thrown over to give it the metallic look and you're sorted.

If you want to get your own server up for testing client-side stuff like this out then go for ANH. It'll be worth the effort. It doesn't take long to setup and it's all pretty simple. Its far easier then getting other OS set up or a VM. If I recall the newbie setup guide for ANH is far better and shorter than anything you'll find for SWGEmu stuff. You'll probably get better help in their IRC than you would at SWGEmu too.

 

[Timbab]

Sorry for the complete lack of updates and everything, with obtaining BF3 4 days before I should have and RL stuff, this got totally side tracked.

I'll do my best to put some hours into this week.

@Ton, you mean a blending layer from a metallic photo/texture? I'll look into it, normally I paint this stuff, but that would speed it up. My previous posts was just some basic anti blurriness reshading, I'm planning on refining it more, especially the black lines, no idea how I'll make the transition yet though.

And yea I know, ANH server seems pretty straight forward and thankfully on Windows. If the EMU servers are down again or that other one, I'll set one up for sure, no mood to keep waiting every time I wan to test something. : >

 

[Tonberry]

@Ton, you mean a blending layer from a metallic photo/texture? I'll look into it, normally I paint this stuff, but that would speed it up. My previous posts was just some basic anti blurriness reshading, I'm planning on refining it more, especially the black lines, no idea how I'll make the transition yet though.

Yeah, a grayscaled texture/photo blended on top should save you time and it'll likely look better than doing everything manually. It looks fine as it is really. Overlaying a texture is just the finishing touch it needs I reckon, other wise it might just look a little too cell shaded.

Overlay or Soft Light should do the trick, then just have a play with the opacity.

 

[Timbab]

Finally found some time, been toying with photo/textures and some metal like look, and thank God, I found a fitting normal map setting I think. Found an okay texture which I have on overlay, paired with the _n it looks pretty solid. Ty for the help. <3

I'm actually pretty pleased with the outcome, the game doesn't do it as high res as I wanted it to be, but it's okay. I'll def post a screenshot update today, just want to finish some dirty errors I've spotted first.

Though, I gotta say, somethings still strange with the right brightness of the texture ingame, it's definitely darker, even with extremely bright normal maps and whatever. I wish I could see it with different colors in game, gotta check if NOVA has the resources to craft one.

Edit:

Alright, update time!

This time I said, screw the original texture, I'll just do it the way I like. I reshaded some parts, especially the big middle plate at the back of the head, the front mouth guard, and the cheek guard just as an example. As I mentioned above, also found a somewhat suitable photo texture of scratched metal, and to correct what I said earlier, it's soft light, not overlay, so it isn't so extreme. One thing that's bugging me out, I can't seem to remove that stupid shadow on the upper middle part, it's there for the antenna on the other side, but it does little on that side and only ruins the other, but I'll keep looking.

There is still some stuff that obviously needs work, but the main stuff is done now I think, just some line corrections, plus the cord thing and antenna. Also the cheek area is kinda bothering me still atm, I'll probably refine it a lot more, so it looks like the ear, in terms of fineness. Another thing that I'll try to make way better is the visor.

Original, my last update, this update:

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DDS

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If I went in the wrong direction with it, please let me know, otherwise I'll do the rest of the armor the same.

P.S. The frontal view shading is kinda weird on the mouth/nose, the top won't highlight right in game, I don't know why, yet.

Edit: Just noticed I forgot a highlight/scratched edge on the side of the nose/mouth guard.

Edit 2: Got another little update soon, I'll try to get it done tonight (Friday). Need feedback on something too then.

 

[Timbab]

Alright another update.

Worked on it today for a few hours, mainly trying to figure out the retarded stretching of the texture. Seriously, maybe I'm just totally inexperienced with textures, but my god whoever did the mapping should be shot. I mean just look at the cable, like seriously WTF?? I'll attach the original texture and one of mine in hopes to figure it out, tried it with a 2 color too, I'll figure something out, but it's a clusterfuck. Bad enough, the same cable gets used with different stretching and twisting on the bracer, so I'll need to make it work for both at once, rofl. Helmet part is nearly done, some last tweaking of the linework that gets stretched and some touch up here and there. I think I'll be done with it tomorrow, then I can finally speed through the rest of the set, the helmet took so long cause I needed to figure everything out.

Anyway, question time, I changed the ear piece, it's not really refined, I just wanted to know if yay or nay, else I'll go back to the original.

The one from yesterday on the left, new one on the right, as always:

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Also some different angles to show progress on the linework across. Still some fixing to do, but getting there.

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DDS

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And here are the cable DDS just to show you what I mean. (Had to merge them into one pic, damn 10 picture limit.)

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Edit: Rofl, forgot to highlight/scratch something again, this time the cheek, at least the upper part. Also just noticed the bottom middle square thing, wrongly highlighted/shaded compared to the previous one.

 

[Tonberry]

Looks like you were right on track with the texture overlaying, although in my mind composite should be quite gritty and battered up. I think you need to use a much more grungy texture, and perhaps try using overlay or hard light then mess with the transparency if you think it's a little too intense.

I grabbed one of the textures you posted earlier up and rendered this out, hopefully it'll give you a better idea of what I mean. I think I may have taken it a little too extreme though, and it only took 5 minutes so excuse the roughness of it. Oh, I also added a fabric-like texture to the neck area.

The grunge definitely needs to be a bit more faint, just to help hide the join if nothing else. The one problem with adding this kind of look to textures is they are pretty damn obvious on textures which are looped, which in SWG is pretty much everything. :-/

I have to say though, other than the dirtiness being a little too intense and the join being a too visible, overall it looks pretty nice, especially considering this is fairly close up and it'll just look better at a normal distance.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, I'm going to guess you haven't figured out the stretching issues with the cables. Blame SOE and their god awful mapping. Thankfully I was able to fix it in that render, it was pretty messed up though, it stretches the texture by 100% by default.

 

[Timbab]

Alright I'll do a separate version then that's more gritty, I'll whip something tomorrow (Today). I got a bunch of suitable textures to play with for that look I think. The fabric like neck is a good idea, I'll probably do something like that tomorrow then.

You can't fix the mapping of the texture in game, unless you redo the whole remap it, right? Excuse the noobness of my texture knowledge. If you can fix it for in game, please let me know how.

Also, gonna ask again so I know if I should refine the ear or not, make it like the new version I did or the older 'original' style?

But I'm off to bed, 4 am is way too late, ffs.

 

[Tonberry]

Sounds good, and yeah the cables cant be fixed in-game, ideally the helmet needs remapped but the rest of the suit should look fine.

As for refining the ear, entirely up to you.

 

[Timbab]

I'll have another update up tonight. Been toying with the dirty looks, found some things that looked alright, but I'll do it at the end, different kids of dirty and used, it's only really a layer with some touch up, the main thing is the most important one right now.

Decided to stick with the original ear, the new one drew too much attention detail wise, with the extra lines.

I'm just mainly working on fixing the stretching, especially of the black lines, nearly done, but it's taking forever, correct and recorrect, cause it's mainly working in the blind lol. Seriously, whoever mapped this shit texture needs to be out of work and hanged. Doing my best to get the main thing besides some little crap and the fat cord done by tonight so I can finally move on to the rest, which shouldn't take as long, less stretching, way less, only the boots/legs perhaps.

The cord, I just have it in dark grayish/near black atm, until I have the mood to attempt to make some funky texture that looks decent with the stretching lol.

 

[Tonberry]

The cord, I just have it in dark grayish/near black atm, until I have the mood to attempt to make some funky texture that looks decent with the stretching lol.

Don't bother, it needs remapped. When I made the render above the cord texture was stretched 100%. The original texture is only 16x16 so nobody's ever going to see its stretched at that low of a resolution, but no matter how funky or high res you go at 100% its always going to look wrong.

Best off just trying to make something with no details at all so it looks alright/not noticeable when stretched.

 

[Timbab]

Yea, I was thinking along those lines.

Question, I looked at your Weapon mod, maybe I'm wrong, but it seems you have edited the shaders amongst other stuff. Is it possible to edit out that retarded side shadow on the helmet for example? It's obviously not in the DDS, so I'm kind of at loss, haven't modded in ages, especially not SWG.

Also been reading the wiki and some other stuff, is it possible to add effects, like Glow, beeping lights, etc, to existing models?

Edit:

Update time

Man, the stretching along the top/middle lines are a bitch to control, spent an hour on one refining step, thought I had it, only to be slapped in the face again, lol. Oh well, I'll get there soon, at least it was progress. I'm seriously glad when I got the helm done and I don't have to deal with so many lines again, especially ones that stretch like crazy. I'll probably redo the highlights differently, with a round brush or something else I'll think of, the brush I'm using looks shit in game, on some parts at least, mainly due to stretching.

I'll just post the new screenshots, compare them with the posts above.

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Some other Angles:

Angled & Back View

1, 2, 3​

Upper View
4, 5, 6,​

DDS

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[Timbab]

Double post to show some ingame shots.

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P.S. Antenna is still in terrible quality.

 

[Tonberry]

Looking good in-game, other than it looking too clean and cel shaedy.

I did the weapons mod ages ago so I'm not certain exactly what it covers anymore. I'm not really sure what you mean by side shadow either, but yeah you can add effects to a shader such as glow but a lot of effects need bloom turned on to show up properly. If you look at shaders on the wiki I'm sure you'll be able to figure out things for what you want to do in terms of effects.

 

[Timbab]

I mean this shadow:

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It's not on the DDS, so it must be somewhere else, there is another one on the back, it stays but gets darker if you move it into a certain angle, obviously a shader of some kind. The one I circled is originally meant as shadow for the antenna on the other side, but it looks retarded when it's on both and it's actually darker on the side with out the antenna, lol.

But yea yea, I know! Don't worry about the cell shaded look, damn it! I'll texture it up in a few different ways at the end, want the core finished first, then I can toy with the extra eye candy.

I've skimmed over the Wiki, I'll read it again tomorrow or something if I have time, I'll spam questions if I can't figure it out.

 

[Tonberry]

Well spotted I didn't see that. It'll be because of the way the model is shaded yeah. If you go into the shader file for the helmet and change the effect filepath to something else it should go.

Might be worth taking the oppertunity to add an alpha channel to the texture and then change the effect in the shader to a bump effect . I believe the bump effect file is called a_alpha_bump. I'm guessing the shader will have the a_simple effect by default.

To replace the effects just copy the name of the one you want to use, and highlight the "a.simple.eft" or whatever it is leaving the additional . at the end alone, then paste to overwrite, and save. If that last null disappears (the last .) your client will probably freak out, so doing it by hand without knowing what everything means will just give you problems. Thankfully copy and paste exists to make everything easier.

So yeah if you change that to the bump effect and add an alpha then it should use that to bump things out. I don't believe I've messed with bumping stuff much in SWG so I may be wrong, but it's worth a try.

Another effect which you might want to use instead is a_envmask_specmap which is basically reflection and it'll help give things a more metallic feel. You'll notice stuff like lightsabers have this effect tied to them. It uses an alpha in the texture. White is like 100% reflectivity so pretty much like chrome and black is like 0%, in this case you'd want it to be a fairly dark gray mostly and black on the clothy type parts.

There are plenty effects to be honest but not a lot of them have a lot of use for this type of thing. Personally I'd see how the bump looks, if that isn't good enough then check out the reflections, if you still aren't happy just throw random effects on and experiment.

 

[Timbab]

Brilliant, ty for that reply. I'll dig into it and experiment in the next few days when I got more time. Spent all day trying to get Skyrim to work, could have been doing this instead, damn it.

Edit:

Okay, bare with me, barely hex edited in my life, let alone SWG.

I've played around with the effect file a bit (Standard one is "h_color2_specmap_bump.eft" that other armors use too), changing it to a_simple.eft, etc, but that's not it. It's not the DDS and the texture itself or the specular, so wtf!

Do you have any idea what else it could be? Otherwise I'll have to look harder into it later on.

I'll play more with other eft files this week for bump and stuff though.

The a_envmask_specmap made the helmet all black, is it cause I'm still using the normal alpha on the texture? Not talking about the _n one, I edited that, obviously. The stock alpha map has white and black parts, so in game it should be reflecting 100% in some areas at least. Also, for the bump, you mean change the alpha in the normal texture dds?

 

[Tonberry]

I'm exhausted whilst reading this, hence a little lost.. But I think you should just mess with different effects more. If that still doesn't seem to sort out your shadowing problem then that is odd. It's probably something completely obvious that I've forgotten about, but you never know lol...

And yes I mean the alpha in the standard texture for the helmet, armor_composite_helm.dds or whatever it is. The effects will use that alpha by default.

 

[Timbab]

Yea I've been planning to dig deeper into the the shader and effect files, just go research on my own a bit, just haven't had time to do it, nor finish the helmet. But I got some stuff out of my way now, so I'll most likely be able to spend more time on this now.

It's all pretty weird though, with the files regarding the helmet, but we'll see.

Edit: The linework and core is pretty much done now, didn't manage to work on it much today though, running on barely any sleep. I did play around with the dirty used look, you might like it Ton, I'll post some stuff once I refine it, after a good night sleep lol.

 

[Timbab]

Alright, update time.

Is this dirty and used enough for you? Experimented a lot, with stock textures and self made, this looked the best imo, not too much, not too little, but makes a clear difference between the cell shaded look and actual metal. The only problem right now is, if I change the color of the comp, the damn color obviously gets painted over all of the details. I can keep the white/sliver edges by removing them from the alpha in the main comp .dds, but if it's any other color than black, it pretty much gets nuked. Which reminds me, I haven't played with the effects yet, but if I make the alpha in the main one overall gray so the bump would in theory work, the whole helmet is going to be red, if I'm not mistaken, but I'll play with that at the end, once the set is done.

I think this is pretty much done for the most part, still the main cable has to be done and the tiny 'stick' lights, and the front ribbed neck needs to be warped correctly. Also note that the visor is still fugly, I just couldn't stand the original anymore. Obviously some small kinks are left, but had no mood to iron everything out, later maybe, some of the stretching is extremely annoying to deal with.

I've already started the groundwork for the rest of the set, which should go fast, since I know what I'm going for now, no more experimenting, figured out a faster redrawing technique too.

Thought, comments, critique?

Compare with my last update:

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Some other Angles:

Angled & Back View
1, 2, 3



Upper View
4, 5, 6
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DDS

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[hr]
In game:

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