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Bob's Textureplasty Clinic


Bob Necro

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Springheel: used together, they are cohesive and amazing, but as I have discovered in FMs, including one of my own missions (Bad Debts), using one or two can really make them look out of place. In particular the red brick series, the flagstones and cobblestones and the weathered planks. But again, there are also amazing textures there I'd love to see, like the metal railings which could become decals or objects depending on preference).

Come the time of peril, did the ground gape, and did the dead rest unquiet 'gainst us. Our bands of iron and hammers of stone prevailed not, and some did doubt the Builder's plan. But the seals held strong, and the few did triumph, and the doubters were lain into the foundations of the new sanctum. -- Collected letters of the Smith-in-Exile, Civitas Approved

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Possible application for the old/new set of classic textures would be in a "dreamscape" situation...ie the player is transported to more or less the same place, but things look subtly strange.

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s I have discovered in FMs, including one of my own missions (Bad Debts), using one or two can really make them look out of place. In particular the red brick series, the flagstones and cobblestones and the weathered planks.

 

 

There are definitely some where I can see that--usually the ones where windows or trim have been added manually after the fact, and the metal with rivets is clearly hand-made and doesn't quite fit, unfortunately. The textures are also a little more colour saturated than most of our outdoor textures. But I'm surprised you mentioned the weathered wood one though...I can see the risk of it getting repetitive, but I actually quite liked it. Is it really that different than our weathered wood?

post-9-0-92373500-1437310569_thumb.jpg

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It is the strong bluish tint, I think. I experimented with it in my map, and it stuck out like a sore thumb.

Come the time of peril, did the ground gape, and did the dead rest unquiet 'gainst us. Our bands of iron and hammers of stone prevailed not, and some did doubt the Builder's plan. But the seals held strong, and the few did triumph, and the doubters were lain into the foundations of the new sanctum. -- Collected letters of the Smith-in-Exile, Civitas Approved

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Dat blustn variant! B) Do we have the original?

 

And thanks for the warped window! That looks just about perfect. There is so much good stuff, I will have to go back to my earlier missions and delete my old, shoddy versions of all these revised textures.

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Come the time of peril, did the ground gape, and did the dead rest unquiet 'gainst us. Our bands of iron and hammers of stone prevailed not, and some did doubt the Builder's plan. But the seals held strong, and the few did triumph, and the doubters were lain into the foundations of the new sanctum. -- Collected letters of the Smith-in-Exile, Civitas Approved

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I completely missed it, even though it is one of my favourite textures!

Come the time of peril, did the ground gape, and did the dead rest unquiet 'gainst us. Our bands of iron and hammers of stone prevailed not, and some did doubt the Builder's plan. But the seals held strong, and the few did triumph, and the doubters were lain into the foundations of the new sanctum. -- Collected letters of the Smith-in-Exile, Civitas Approved

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  • 3 weeks later...

It is the strong bluish tint, I think. I experimented with it in my map, and it stuck out like a sore thumb.

 

Personally speaking, while I like the second texture as well, I think it should only be used for environments that have an appropriate context. The appearance of those boards makes it look like they've been in some outdoor environment for a long time, possibly near a humid location (e.g. a swamp, a wetland), and possibly as part of a ruined or slowly falling apart wooden building. I can imagine that texture quite well in some mission that's set at a lakeside house or cabin overrun by vegetation and various dirt sediments brought about by years of rainy and windy weather.

 

Here's a pack with some of the newer textures.

http://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzHmWZvs_ns1VksyaXJLR2dLLVE/view?usp=sharing

 

FWIW, if you really want to add some of the textures to core resources, now that I've already done the heavy lifting with the normal maps, recoloring and desaturating the diffuses is an easy operation.

 

Cool, just like your previous efforts. :)

Edited by Petike the Taffer
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  • 2 months later...

Noice! Shouldn't the normalmaps be deeper, though? They are very shallow, and a bit flat.

Come the time of peril, did the ground gape, and did the dead rest unquiet 'gainst us. Our bands of iron and hammers of stone prevailed not, and some did doubt the Builder's plan. But the seals held strong, and the few did triumph, and the doubters were lain into the foundations of the new sanctum. -- Collected letters of the Smith-in-Exile, Civitas Approved

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In this case, the contrast (is that the depth of the normalmap, right?) would be the thing to change, and not radically (the original normal is kinda shallow as well). But if it is possible, raising the contrast on the brick foundations would be a big thing.

 

But in the case of a few other textures, the method you use is less rounded than optimal, like it was with the case of blocks_ochre_smooth or old_small_bricks_grey. In both cases, something in the way you generate the normals makes them sharper, but more flat.

 

post-496-0-75260700-1443003093_thumb.jpgpost-496-0-47812200-1443003298_thumb.jpg

 

Of course, it is argueable which is better on a case-by-case, texture-by-texture basis. Which is why we are discussing it.

Come the time of peril, did the ground gape, and did the dead rest unquiet 'gainst us. Our bands of iron and hammers of stone prevailed not, and some did doubt the Builder's plan. But the seals held strong, and the few did triumph, and the doubters were lain into the foundations of the new sanctum. -- Collected letters of the Smith-in-Exile, Civitas Approved

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Oh yeah, those. The ochre normal map is actually a just a slightly tweaked version of the one cgtextures made themselves, and considering they were the ones who took the original photos, I'd wager they know best what the surface looked like in real life.

Of course, since the diffuse is exactly the same as the old one, just higher in resolution, it still fits snugly enough with the old rounded normal map so you can keep that one around for 2.04 instead, if you really want to.

As for the other one, based on what the bricks look like in the diffuse I personally can't interpret them being very rounded, but I can increase the contrast if it'd help.

 

For the record, I calibrate my normal maps based on a standard I've seen in most other games - a fair chunk of Dark Mod normal maps are rather extreme in the contrast department. But if you want me to hold myself to that standard instead, I guess I can play ball.

 

I'll monkey around some more with the framed plaster normal maps. But, fun fact: I basically left the brick foundations untouched after upsampling the originals. If you want me to make them even deeper than they were originally, I'll do so.

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  • A fair chunk of Dark Mod normal maps are rather extreme in the contrast department. But if you want me to hold myself to that standard instead, I guess I can play ball.
  • But, fun fact: I basically left the brick foundations untouched after upsampling the originals. If you want me to make them even deeper than they were originally, I'll do so.
  • Its a free perf enhance in that we get 3D without having 3D etc,
  • Yes please, the porblem is a lot of our textures/nromals are way to flat . They only show any kind of 3D when a light is close to the surface etc, where as in RL we would see far more detail. So the only way to get this without having lots of tessellation is extreme normals.

On a side note if I was able workout a easy to follow workflow, I would update ALL of our flat(non extreme) normals!

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But, fun fact: I basically left the brick foundations untouched after upsampling the originals. If you want me to make them even deeper than they were originally, I'll do so.

 

 

That brick texture is used elsewhere, so best to leave it alone so there isn't a clear difference between the two.

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Which one is it? I might as well "deepen" that one while I'm at it.

 

EDIT: Nevermind, found it meself. Here are the tweaked normal maps: http://goo.gl/photos/FjLc1dEphwoHvuz16

I've cranked up the contrast to the point that the edges of the straight planks are pure black and pure white in their respective color channels.

Edited by Bob Necro
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Way ahead of ya, bruh. ;) Check the post right above yours.

 

Part 12 of random tweaks: http://goo.gl/photos/e1uF6w66q64Bf9Ze6

Contains alternate versions of the normals Melan brought up and some miscellaneous stuff mainly focused on removing baked in lighting. The book rows also have extra specular maps included - don't forget to include them into the shader-thigywhathaveyou if you want the books to shine like the originals, except now in a dynamic fashion.

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