[WIP - Project] An Attempt At HD Textures

Timbab

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Really? I'll have to try setting it back to 8bit the first thing tomorrow then, would be amazing if something that tiny would fix it, lol.

Oh you mean full on normal, with nDo? Yea, with the right setup the chest can look awesome, soon, soon!

But you're right I guess, even with high res models, high res textures for the stock models will always be used by someone at least.

The triangle problem is probably how the mesh gets treated by the shader, it's just totally strange why particularly on those parts, and not everywhere, or in other areas. There are a few key spots that seem quite weird. On the Helmet, I thought it was to create a shadow effect for the antenna on one side, but maybe I was wrong, we'll see.

Can't wait for the Chest to be done, the rest will go fast and I can start the interesting process of tweaking as I mentioned, I got some ideas which are probably totally impossible or unrealistic, but they're worth a shot. Now when I think about it, the Palette might be fixable if I use grey instead of pure white on the alpha, so the color from the palette is weaker, thus the main texture should show through better, ugh why haven't I thought of this before, it's so obvious, but I don't know if it works yet, so we'll see tomorrow. Also gotta test the bump map effect again with the right alpha, but I highly doubt it'll work well with the palette, since they both use the same alpha which is beyond stupid, sigh.

I wish I could create a second alpha and change it so the game assigns the palette to a different layer, it's totally out of my expertise and probably not possible, but I'll try unless someone tells me it's actually not possible.

Anywho, I'm off to bed, looonngg overdue. Night night.
 

Tonberry

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Good lord... Kay, you're alive!

I thought for sure you'd have wasted away playing Skyrim by now. :p
 

Timbab

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Okay to kickstart the session today, I'm running some tests on what I talked about yesterday.

I just tried the 8bit thing, it had literally no effect, but adjusting the brightness works as expected. Even though the texture itself is way brighter than the original SOE one, in the game it's more even now. The whole thing is still strange though, I wonder why, maybe the higher reso? I don't know.

Gonna edit in more stuff in a few.

Edit 1: As expected, once you change the white in the colormap Alpha to a grey tone, the palette color becomes weaker, mixed with the overall new brightness of the colormap itself, it looks more natural overall, checking which Alpha tone is the best atm.

Edit 2: I think I found the trick to keep the dirt colors dominant over the palette. :D Posting screenies in a few, PS kept crashing, redoing it now the right way, hopefully it'll work.

Edit 3: Okay, first attempt at fixing the Alpha, far from perfect but I understand it now. Also fixed some areas of it too, but that palette strip on the cord is driving me nuts, no idea where on earth it is on the Alpha, it doesn't even make sense. I'll check it out further down the road, I'm just happy I found the 'dirt fix'. Also the back side of the antenna isn't colored due to a mistake I made.

In the SS, some areas are too bright, the red looks even worse on the visor, some shadows are gone, etc, because I just bumped the curves to test it out. I'll find the correct curve levels later on and will probably just brighten some parts, rather than all of it. I used the same blue as yesterday for comparison purposes, just with a lighter colormap.




Just to show how the brightness matches up with the original set and the darker one before the change (see the Chest)



By the way, Kay you're brilliant for reminding me to force AF, it looks so much better, I totally forgot about it.

I'm pretty sure though that the bumpmap (Effect) just won't work. Since everything in the Alpha needs to be in a grey shade to show up, the palette will just tint everything. Unless there is a way to split the effect and palette into 2 different channels, you can forget about it.

Gonna go work on the Chest again once I got me some food, hopefully going to get to a stage of it tonight, where I can test that brilliant nDo thing.
 

Kayliaah

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That's near perfect now with the greyish alpha, details still show after the color is applied to the armor.

Well when you switch your texture to 16bits, it becomes darker and that's final, you'd have to start at 8bits and keep it this way but you'd miss the greater color range of the 16bits.
Besides when you close PS reopen the texture afterwards, the mode is automatically switched back to 8bits, if you keep changing the mode to 16bits it'll ultimately get darker and darker.
I was afraid that adjusting the brightness would result in a loss of small details but it looks good, you could try using levels instead of brightness for greater control over shades.

The visor even cleaned up looks kinda weird, especially with the fake red reflection at the top, it really needs a glow.


I'll take a look at that little blue thingy on the cord, it looks messed up.

EDIT: Nevermind, once again those damn useless servers are down, they have 4 servers and not one is up, brilliant.





EDIT 2: TONBERRY YOU CRAZY! Red Christmas background behind a blue interface!

We need a temporary green layout to go with it!

Aw you removed it, it had motion and all, but I saw it!
 

Tonberry

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Kayliaah said:
EDIT 2: TONBERRY YOU CRAZY! Red Christmas background behind a blue interface!

We need a temporary green layout to go with it!

Aw you removed it, it had motion and all, but I saw it!
Had to fix a bug. And sadly I don't have time for a green layout lol.
 

Timbab

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Yep, near perfect, it'll look even better once I do a serious attempt, last one was rushed and had to do a temp fix for some of the 'dirt', but it'll get there, figured out what I needed badly.

That could be it, but if I remember correctly, the first time I ever tested the texture out, it was 8bit with never touching 16bit, yet it was still darker, I'll check that though with the next piece though.

Ignore the visor and other crap, just a rushed attempt, stupid 'reflection' at the top gets absurdly stretched, amongst other crap. Gonna redo it fully, just didn't want to post it with the stock one on the Emu boards, it's even worse now with the brighter texture. Your right though, levels/curves is the way to go, I had a better setting but forgot to save it as a preset, I'll make a good one soon, don't worry.

But today is a slow day, servers being down here and there, PS crashing a lot or being really slow, kind of lost the mood for the day, but gonna continue a bit longer. They're up atm though I think, at least it says though in #serverstatus.

P.S. LOL nice background theme.
 

Tonberry

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Forgot to say that blue helmet is looking daaaamn good. ;)

And yeah, the theme revamp came with seasonal stuff, for christmas and halloween at least, they just needed implemented. Figured I'd sort it now before I forget.
 

Kayliaah

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Tonberry said:
Kayliaah said:
EDIT 2: TONBERRY YOU CRAZY! Red Christmas background behind a blue interface!

We need a temporary green layout to go with it!

Aw you removed it, it had motion and all, but I saw it!
Had to fix a bug. And sadly I don't have time for a green layout lol.
Lies, it takes 5 minutes in PS with Hud/saturation, 10 minutes if you want to do it right. :D
No need for a new layout, just the color needs changing.
 

Timbab

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@Ton, ty :)

Random question before I forget to ask it again, does anyone have any idea what on earth the Scatter Pistol texture name is? I've looked twice now and haven't found it. Or at least, in what folder it is.
 

Tonberry

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Kayliaah said:
Lies, it takes 5 minutes in PS with Hud/saturation, 10 minutes if you want to do it right. :D
No need for a new layout, just the color needs changing.
There's more to it than a quick photoshop job. I really don't have the time to modify the images, let alone go through the CSS.

Timbab said:
Random question before I forget to ask it again, does anyone have any idea what on earth the Scatter Pistol texture name is? I've looked twice now and haven't found it. Or at least, in what folder it is.
I've retextured the scatter pistol in the past but I just can't recall the texture's name off the top of my head. >.<

Just have a skim through and it'll jump out at you. ;)
 

Timbab

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I must be super blind then, I just can't find it. :p

It's in the 00-07 Texture folders right? I looked in your mod, _pistol_scatter for example, or if I just "Find" scatter in the folders, nothing shows up, tried numerous things and skimmed all folders twice, maybe the third one is the charm, I'll check tomorrow.
 

Kayliaah

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Lol, how about "scatter_pistol.dds".
Took me 20 seconds. :D Thanks to Uli's fast TRE Explorer.
 

Timbab

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Oh wtf. I had extracted all the texture TRE's before I got started, seems like the 05 one never fully unpacked. No wonder I never found anything.

Looked through the TRE's themselves with the explorer like you just did and obviously found it, along with a bunch of other stuff I was missing, like Pants. Thank you.
 

Kayliaah

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Why are you looking inside each patch? Just use the toc to open everything at once.
Unless you don't have a NGE install, no toc for you.
 

Metal

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I'm still here, didn't wanished.


Yestarday i tried for like half a day, to come up with something i coud be useful and help the project out. I coudn't find anything good for me. I'm way to noobish to help out and i woud only hinder everbody here.

I know how to texture really simple ground and houses, but other people are working on this and i dont really wanna make angry anybody.

Atleast i tried to some how help :)
 

Timbab

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Well you'll stay noobish if you won't practice/learn the tools. :p

I doubt anyone would get angry if you attempt to texture anything others might be working on, rather, the more people the better it is for everyone. Once you get comfortable with the tools and your work, we can all work on different things and not cross each others paths, but build it up together. I mean, there are what, around 10k textures? Enough for everybody, haha.

Normal texturing really is more about knowing the tools than anything else, what I'm doing is mainly drawing, which is one way to go about it, but not the only.

If you have any questions, spam away here or talk to me on IRC, I've started being on again while modding.

Kayliaah said:
Why are you looking inside each patch? Just use the toc to open everything at once.
Unless you don't have a NGE install, no toc for you.
Haven't had a NGE install since years.
 

Uli

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Kayliaah said:
Why are you looking inside each patch? Just use the toc to open everything at once.
Unless you don't have a NGE install, no toc for you.
Remind me sometime to generate a TOC for upto patch 14.

Like in 8 months maybe.
 

Timbab

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Ugh, constant distractions, can't mod in peace! Barely got anything done today, but worked a bit on the Bicep.

As it stands right now, progress wise...

Helmet - 90%
Chest - 60% (Stretches and some lines need to be fixed, details & dirt texture)
Bicep - 60% (Stretches and some lines need to be fixed, details & dirt texture)
Bracer - 50%

Vibro Knuckler - 10%

Tried out nDo last night, it was pretty sweet, but had a wrong layer setup, so I didn't have as much control as I'd like, from what I could see, it produces a LOT better normals as you said, Kay. Still using the Nvidia filter to test WIPs, no need for perfection there, so future WIP screenshots will still contain normal normals.

Oh yea, and I tested out what caused the darker textures in game, 8bit vs 16bit doesn't do anything in terms of darkness, at least not on the textures, blowing it up to 4096 doesn't change it either, but it's the DDS compression, from NVIDIA at least, I'll try another dds saving tool in the next few days, see if that fixes it.

Don't really want to show it at this stage, it's pretty ugly, but I said I'll show my work process, so whatever...

Note: the round marking and stuff is not worked on yet, that's why it's missing on the shoulder, it looks pretty flat atm, etc, etc, just a dirty WIP. But as you can see, stretching nightmare again and at the bottom some weird triangle I need to figure out, but it might be the mesh, then I can't fix it.




Other Angles:

In Game:


 

Kayliaah

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Now it kiinda reminds me of Robocop lol.



I never had any lighting issues with NVIDIA's DDS plugin, you sure you got the latest version? There is one for PS 64bit too now.
And as far as I know, NVIDIA's plugin is the only available tool for PS that adds DDS support, so good luck finding another!
Unless you plan on using an third party converter, careful with the loss of quality, it would be a lot better if SWG used tga for everything.

It could be your how your plugin is configured.
Try saving a DDS to make the NVIDIA window pop up, don't hit save but click on the tab that says "Read Config' (second column) and make sure "Load Using Default Sizes" is checked and everything else unchecked.

Also I counted 17751 textures that we can use exactly, for SWG up to patch 14.




@Uli, I thought you were retired? :D
You keep asking me to remind you to do it but then you vanish because you're busy.
 

Timbab

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Lol, yea, ignore the overall look, just a really bland mix of unfinished textures.

I do have the latest version, but the uncompressed save option crashes my PS too, so maybe something really did go wrong in the install of it, ugh, I don't know. I'll figure it out. I'll try what you said with the config tomorrow though.
 
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