Darkmod: Inspiration thread

[Sotha]

Yep. Textures, textures, textures. It is all about textures.

[Obsttorte]

Looks really awesome and very athmospheric. What's the name of this FM?

[Arcturus]

It is all about textures.

And soft shadows.

[Melan]

Textures are important, but particularly in that alleyway shot, you see an enormous attention to environmental detail. You've got ivy, vegetation, a transition between dark grass and cobble, different planes of elevation, what seem to be rotting/half-buried barrels, and some neat irregular angles. Together, that creates a very organic look. Very impressive.

[Sotha]

I've been staring those interior shots. Like a painting!

 

The geometry is simple, and there are only a few objects in the scene. Not much detail.

 

Yet it looks like it was real. Like someone lived there. Like there was generations of history of people living between those walls. I cannot wrap my head around what causes this.

 

In TDM the textures are very 'crisp.' I know that if you built the same scene in TDM it would look somehow sterile. The griminess of the textures and the gentle soft blotches of shadows does a lot.

[Arcturus]

Textures in Darkmod don't make a coherent set. They have different styles, quality and colour palettes. They are often too saturated. If you wanted to make something like this in Darkmod you would have to at least fiddle with hue and saturation of textures and sometimes make your own.

[Lux]

The textures are pretty good in those screen shots but I think the real difference is in playing it, not just taking a screenshot. TDM may not look as good in a screen shot but, for me at least, the flickering shadows and lighting when you're in-game are leaps and bounds over anything T2 can pull off. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then real time lighting is worth 10 thousand.

[chakkman]

 

Runkelstein Castle, near bolzano (italy)

Would make a nice cloister.

[Springheel]

In TDM the textures are very 'crisp.' I know that if you built the same scene in TDM it would look somehow sterile. The griminess of the textures and the gentle soft blotches of shadows does a lot.

 

The T2 shot is extremely limited in its colour palette...it's almost monocrhomatic, which gives it a strong sense of unity. Everything is soft and blurry as well, which lets your imagination fill in many of the gaps.

[SeriousToni]

Wow that is Thief 2?? Amazing! But we have the smarter ai

[Bikerdude]

it's almost monocrhomatic, which gives it a strong sense of unity.

Does TDM have an arg so you can play a mission in sepia or black and white like you can do in T2..?

[Melan]

You can't do that in T2 either.

 

Although you can play TDM in Rotoscope mode (g_rotoscope 1), which is often neat.

[nbohr1more]

I know there is a material property that can make a texture monochrome but I don't recall a switch for the whole renderer.

 

There have been Doom 3 mods with monochrome only but I think they used custom lights and textures...

[Obsttorte]

Does TDM have an arg so you can play a mission in sepia or black and white like you can do in T2..?

You can change that in your video driver settings.

[rich_is_bored]

Sikkpin wrote a mod for D3 that included color grading.

[Outlooker]

This guy seems quite capable:

 

http://darkfate.org/...ing/screenshots

 

This pic feels especially cosy and atmospheric:

 

Edited September 11, 2013 by Outlooker

[ERH+]

 

When I look at shots like this, I think most of textures have same noise applied on them. Maybe one grainy texture for ambient light can do the trick?

[pusianka]

Ok this thief 2 shot is kind of... SUPERB!

[RPGista]

That last screenshot is from a game called Severance, amazing combat system on that one, beautiful maps (though not really that detailed, more on the scale of a Tomb Raider kind of exploration map), dynamic lights... Groundbreaking game.

 

[RPGista]

Since we are talking about oldies but goodies, some nice looking architecture from Mount and Blade:

 

 

 

 

[Bikerdude]

The second and last shots look bloody fantastic, I am hafl tempted to do some "lets do this is tdm" screenshots.

[Obsttorte]

It itches my fingers, too.

[Sotha]

If you do, it would be useful to modularize those into pieces,from which people could construct any kind of houses.

 

Here is how I would take it apart:

 

See? All you gotta do is modules A, B, C, D, E and F. That is 6 modules. Then you could build this house or similar house of almost any shape simply by mixing and matching lego-like module pieces.

[demagogue]

What we could use is some wall and roof models like that to piece together to make houses like that.

 

Edit: haha, brilliantly ninja'd. =D

[Obsttorte]

Maybe those buildings were even build that way. Once I've finished my current WIP I may take a look.