[WIP - Project] An Attempt At HD Textures

Timbab

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I've been wanting to do a mod like this forever now, I was in a team with Xiox too at one point, but things never picked off. Since there still isn't really a HD mod around, I thought, I might as well do now, else I'd never do it, besides, I need the hand exercises (for drawing). I don't know how much time I can invest in the coming months, but I'm eager to get some things done at least.

Alright, first of all, I never did textures before, some minor DDS work back in the day and worked on some minor FX stuff when I was young. The only background I got is digital drawing/sketching, so I'm pretty much a complete newb when it comes to DDS and texturing in general.

If someone could enlighten me more about bump/normal maps, or if you got any other tricks when it comes to DDS, I'd greatly appreciate it. At the moment, the only thing I'm doing is upscaling to 4096 and then redrawing the texture.

This is far from finished, but I thought I'd include some pics, to show what I'm doing at the moment. (Click for bigger image)









Here is the DDS (had to save it in jpeg due to size), just to show how it looks in comparison to ingame:



P.S. I don't quite know yet why the edited texture is darker in game, also, the black lines are too hard atm I think, they won't be in the final I don't think.


Edit: Updates can be found in later posts.
 

Kayliaah

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You, here, the circle is complete...ly facked. I've seen it all.

Hand drawn on 4096x textures, sounds pretty good, I love how huge the difference is.
The art reminds me of Borderlands (remember in coop :D ), cell shading and all that, it's pretty cool.

Don't stop at cleaning the texture, give it the German touch whatever that means. :exclamation:
 

Timbab

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Signed up in 2010!

Yea it looks pretty cell shaded at the moment, I can change it though, but atm I'm just color picking and brushing over, and creating solid drops and edges. Too bad the model streches some areas a bit much, but I'll see if I can figure it out down the road.

Edit: The rest of the set will go fast, the helmet just has tons of areas.

P.S. Ignore some of the wobbley lines, they'll be corrected at polish.
 

Kayliaah

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Oh right, signing up is one thing, PARTICIPATING is another lol.

I had this idea after playing Rage (which turned out to be CRAAAAP), design is slightly cell shaded but much less than Borderlands, and besides the TERRIBLE console port and the HORRIBLE textures (even after using their 8192x8192 megatextures that couldn't render correctly and still looked worse than Half Life close up) it added something to the graphics.

Hand drawn stuff looks much better than throwing the final texture into a vectorisation filter, but you need the hardware.
You still have that SUPER EXPENSIVE tablet right.
 

Timbab

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Yea still got my Wacom, I couldn't do this with just a mouse.

It's fun really, I didn't expect it, I used to dread anything texture related. Tried to setup my own server but I keep running into problems, I'm just a complete Linux retard, oh well, with the Emu server being down I'm just glad I found some random ANH one.

After I'm done with the comp, I'll probably move onto some of the popular weapons.

But damn, I really need to figure out .dds fully, with all the maps, etc.

Edit: Keep the 'thick' or heavy black lines, or lighten them up so it's more 'together' or solid?
 

Kayliaah

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It's up to you, but inbetween sounds good.

Also what problem do you have with dds?
I'm sure you know what normals do but NVIDIA's plugin for normals is pretty meh, also alpha channel controls light reflections for this one if I recall, with obvious bright light on white and no light on black.

And no bump maps, only old school ARGB normals, it's pretty old, alpha being pretty useless most of the time.


I assume you're using PS with NVIDIA DDS plugin, I only use three "compression" formats myself.

DXT1 RGB 4 bpp no alpha -> with alpha channel isn't needed/deleted.
DXT5 ARGB 8bpp interpolated alpha -> compressed dds with alpha channel, retains quality.
8.8.8.8 ARGB 32bpp unsigned -> uncompressed/full sized texture (pretty big) with alpha.

Don't forget to convert your texture to 16bits (32bits if you really need it) before doing any changes for epic color range, no need to convert it back the plugin does it on its own. Image>Mode>16bits/Channel
The texture MIGHT be rendered darker ingame, but not always, you can fix that anyways.
 

Timbab

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How do I fix the darker textures? Cause as you can see, they are darker in comparison to the original.

Yep I used the NVIDIA DDS plugin, exported with DXT5, I'll try out the 8.8.8.8 for fun, see if that changes anything. Good thing that you mentioned 16/32bits, had it at 8 before.

But my problems with the .dds stuff is, I just don't really know anything about it at all, I've read a bit, with alphas and all, but thought there might be some more tricks to it. I gotta make a normal map tomorrow for this one and just toy around with it I guess.

But didn't you create this extreme bump or reflection layer once? What was that?

Edit: Lmao, it crashed with the 8.8.8.8 @ 32bits. Crashes PS too. Hmm, maybe it'll work with a lower reso.

Edit 2: Yea, it crashes on 8.8.8.8 even at 16.

Edit 3: Too bad, 8.8.8.8 crashes even at 1024, but maybe the plugin just fucks it up, in Windows it shows no dimensions.
 

Kayliaah

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Well your PS or plugin must be messy, just saved 4096x4096 32bits 8.8.8.8 ARGB 32bpp without problems, it takes like 3 seconds since there is no compression, but 85MB lol.

Easiest way to correct lighting is to use levels (CTRL+L by default), you might want to start with 16bits instead of 32bits as it will mess up the light pretty bad.
Then there is Shadows/Highlights but I don't use it myself.

Or if you're lazy as hell, open the original texture in a second tab in PS, go back to your darker modified texture then Image>Adjustments>Match Color, window opens up, Image Statistics>Source, select the ORIGINAL texture that you opened in another tab and mess with the settings in Image Options.

It will use the original texture's color variants on the modified texture, it should make it brighter then but you can keep messing with the settings if it's not enough.

Make sure the difference is very small, unless you want to fix all the messed up pixels.

Don't use Brightness/Contrast imo, it's bad.




EDIT: Probably your plugin, better get the updated version on NVIDIA's website, there is one for x64 versions now too, no more hassle.
 

Timbab

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Hm, I'll try to see if I can get the 8.8.8.8 to work tomorrow then, weird though, downloaded it a few days ago from the Nvidia site.

I know how to Photoshop in general, I'm just saying, it's weird how the texture appears darker in game than it actually is when you look at it in Photoshop (Like, if you compare the 2 texture jpegs), but I'll see, perhaps making it lighter will do the drink, or actually it might be the normal map file, that I didn't resize/create new, I don't know, we'll see.

Hope I got time to finish the Comp tomorrow.
 

Kayliaah

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Well check the alpha as I said, try making it a bit brighter but not too much or it'll look more plastic than composite.

EDIT: Oh you didn't edit the normals lol, then it's pretty obvious.
Waiting on ingame screenshots!

Later.
 

Timbab

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Yea the normal map is the one that caused it to be darker I think, can't be sure, I can only see it on the loading screen, the damn server I tested stuff on is "loading" since a few hours.

Sigh, I need a stable server with a blue frog.

I'm going to play with the normal maps later once I find a server, see how much can be done.

Edit: Bah, can't find any server that is up *shakes fist*.
 

Kayliaah

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So SWGEmu screwed up again with their cheap SSD's and whatnot lol, I haven't logged on Nova in a couple weeks myself.
 

Timbab

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Yea, worst possible timing. I just checked and my ANH server was up again, thank God, managed to do some normal map testing that I blindly created earlier today. Pretty messy business, but I def need clean ones, else it's fubar. I'll tinker more with it next week when I have more time, barely had any today. But I did find the trick to make it lighter ingame, I think it has to do with the alpha, but I'll recheck. I'll post some pics in a bit.
 

Timbab

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Oh for fucks sake, piece of shit is down again, did some changes, but can't take screenshots now, oh well, I guess I'll show the one from earlier. Not much changed really, kind of anti climax, didn't have any time to really work on it today. Not really worth showing, but!

New always being on the right side:







And here is the newest texture progress itself, that I couldn't screenshot in game yet:



The pixelation is pretty much eliminated for the most part, I just need to massively polish and clean it, I a lot of it is still messy But it's all quite interesting, just taking a bit longer since it's the first time.
 

Kayliaah

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Damn that pixelation was nasty, I wonder how SOE could use such a bad compression and say "Yep, looks good" lol, good riddance I'll say.

Would be even better if you could add some damage around some edge, to give the comp a worn off look, not too much but just enough, I don't know it's up to you.
I just realised there is still a lot of work to do, especially on the chestplate and leggings.
 

Timbab

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Well to be fair, I upscaled 256 reso which upped the pixelation like crezi, but the low resos just suck, as you can see in the OP. Then again, looking at some of the textures, upscaled or not, some of the things just don't make sense at all, some of it has been done pretty carelessly, who knows why. But that's where I come in! Lol.

Yea thought about doing a clean version and a battleworn one, but I'll do it at the very end, after the polish. The chest isn't too bad, same with the legs, pretty straight forward textures, the helm is just more 'complex' because of a lot of different 'plates' that are separated.

Edit: God, I really need to get me a server or something this week, it's terrible with out being able to test something. By the way, does, or did Nova have a bluefrog?
 

Kayliaah

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Yeah Nova had and should still have a blue frog.
There used to be a couple servers around but everything seems to be down atm, can't you setup your own SWGEmu server? I think custom servers can stay up for 12 hours now.
 
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