So, what are you working on right now?

[Spooks]

WIP is progressing, slowly but surely. I don't want to show too much, so a filter will have to do. If you want the non-desktop wallpaper version, you'll have to wait!

 

 

 

[Epifire]

That's a kickass filter I might add. Makes it look like a painting rather than a screenshot.

[Melan]

The mood is A+ as it is!

[Goldwell]

Even with a filter it's still looking fantastic Spooks!

[Bikerdude]

Man thats awesome, the level of detail and sophistication in this and your other screenshots is leaps and bounds above your first mission. I would say your on par with Kingsal and Johannes level-design wise, as in genius level!

[Aosys]

Decided to go on a small texture spree, and this was the result:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some new wallpaper color variations (plus a couple extra not seen here), and sofa skins that are actually blue (the sofas on the left are our current "blue," which is more violet than anything; the ones on the right are the new ones).

[Epifire]

Aosys, you totally reminded me that I was planning on whipping up some furniture remasters. I've got a good idea on how to just mask out the fabric (via a grayscale in the MTR) and allow people to still include their skins and additional normals blended on top of mine. Maybe you'd care to take a shot at skins when this gets finished?

 

 

 

I tried to stick as close as I could to the original sofa1's bounding and scale. This was just my interpretation on an updated version with proper baked normals and topology. Hoping to get the game version baked and textured tomorrow here. If nobody ends up using these, they certainly make fun day projects just for good practice.

[Obsttorte]

Oh, I'm pretty sure they'll get good use

[Epifire]

Alright, so here's the default chesterfield leather skin. I've got a grayscale that masks out the leather so that should allow the usage of just slotting a tiling texture (fabric or otherwise) as you're own skin. I can't tonight cause I'm already banking on six hours sleep before another shift but I wanna get some example stuff together and toss this around on the forums for people to test. If I'm doing that I might as well include the AO map so that can be applied atop a new skin as well. Either way hope ya'll like it, but now it's time for me to sleep...

 

 

PS: Poly count only adds a couple hundred more at 1030 tris (the old one sitting at 722). All of that baked onto a 1024x texture!

[Springheel]

Looks great, though something about the wood stands out. The wood looks a lot rougher and more low-res than the leather part?

[Epifire]

Looks great, though something about the wood stands out. The wood looks a lot rougher and more low-res than the leather part?

 

I did adjust the woodgrain once already, as some of it was breaking definition of the underlying baked normal. It's had to do with woodgrain normals specifically so I may just try cutting that and only relying on the diffuse and seeing how that looks.

[Bikerdude]

That sofa looks stunning fella, amazing work.

[Goldwell]

[Springheel]

Cool! Has a very blue TDS vibe.

[Bikerdude]

Cool! Has a very blue TDS vibe.

That will be the blue fog light a few of us have been using, but can only get away with using it on maps with low tris scenes.

 

And on the subject of lights, if I bind a light to a nodraw FS brush and set the brush to remove on low LOD setting will that remove the light?

[Obsttorte]

Probably not. Can't you remove the light directly?

http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=LOD_Bias

[Bikerdude]

Probably not. Can't you remove the light directly?

http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=LOD_Bias

let me try.

[Bikerdude]

Probably not. Can't you remove the light directly?

let me try.

That worked! once the LOD has been set to low enough to remove the light, it stayed removed unless the game is restarted.

[Bikerdude]

Here are some gratuitous bling shots of the new SW sections of the city map that is currently being worked on -

 

 

 

 

[Bikerdude]

If you want the non-desktop wallpaper version, you'll have to wait!

 

Dual desktop please, I will stitch the two shots together.

Edited December 13, 2017 by Bikerdude

[Spooks]

 

 

Different filters, stitching panorama images is a real pain with how fov is. The aspect ratio is not perfect, but I think it should suffice.

[rich_is_bored]

Next time capture an environment shot instead. This way it's already stitched and all you have to do is convert the projection from cubic to equirectangular or spherical.

 

For example this would do the job...

 

https://github.com/tmarrinan/cube2equirect

[Spooks]

Interesting, thank you. I initially did the screenshot command with a 32:9 ratio but even messing with r_fovRatio it proved to be way too distorted at the edges. The limitations of 3-point perspective and all. I was quite tired so I sorta rushed it, I'll be sure to get some better promo images for when that section is complete.

[Epifire]

I can't get over how cool that filter is Spooks. I'd be half tempted to play a game with that if it could be passed as a post process screen effect. Can I ask what method you use to edit that with or is it top secret Spook level stuff?

[Outlooker]

I think that filter works the way it does by idealization:

By removing details, blurring them out, the human mind has to "fill the gaps" - and it does so in a way to idealize what it "sees", that is, provides an over-realistic mind-internal representation of reality.

 

It seems this principle works in many areas, for example:

1. Beauty

Female faces from afar (less details visible) look nicer than from close by (pores, imperfections visible).

Makeup serves the same purpose: By removing details (imperfect skin) it shows a smoothed-out superficiality, an ideal.

Female nylon stocking works the same: Imperfections of the leg's surface are hidden and replaced with a perfect, smoothed-out illusion.

(Sidenote: In after WW2-Germany silk/Nylon stockings were extremely scarce, as the silk/Nylon was needed for the War effort (parachutes); they were much more available in the US (Nylon was invented + produced there), and because such stockings increase female sexual desirability for males to such a high degree (increases female power and options), many German women prostituted themselves for those stockings with US soldiers; the exchange rate was roughly the weight of the stockings in actual gold (there was, for some time, a black market in this trade), and some women even traded whole houses/properties for a shoe-box full of Nylon stockings).

 

2. Porn and Prostitution

The red light ("red light district") makes imperfections on female skin (which are often bluish in color, for example small bluish veins) much less visible (no blue light --> blue things become "invisible"), creating the illusion of perfect skin, therefore driving this business.

 

3. Art/Paintings

Compared to a detailed, high-resolution photography, brush-drawn art has a much lower resolution of the image, much less details are visible.

The human mind seems to replace the missing details with an internal model that is idealized, therefore giving the impression that a painting is "beautiful", "more" or more perfect than reality.

 

I noticed this effect in some early video games, for example in early games with a resolution of only 320x240 pixels, which, despite their "blockiness", their low resolution, often provided an aesthetically pleasing experience - because our mind "fills the gaps", idealize what we see with our imagination/fantasy.

 

 

 

 

When our minds lack information, we seem to automatically try to see what we want to see to some degree, and that is, inherently, what we find most pleasing.

Spook's screenshots without the detail-removing filter applied would be a more realistic picture, but also one with inevitably more imperfections, therefore reducing aesthetic pleasantness.

Edited December 16, 2017 by Outlooker