Textures: What We Need And Where We're Headed

[Renzatic]

I'm gonna condense our two sticky posts into a single thread and outline exactly what we need to do in the next few.

 

First off the themes a'la Fingernail:

 

City Textures - very similar to the Thief 3/2/1 City. Slightly Tudor/medieval, with elements of neo-Classicism and gothic. Also steampunk - ie. pipes, chimneys. Vaguely Victorian. Basically it's melting pot of styles - a bit like London, a bit like Prague, Paris and Vienna in my mind.

 

Mansion textures - similar to the T2 style/Moira's manse from T3. Wood panneling, rich wallpaper, carpets, shiny wood flooring, elaborate doors, grand staircases, large windows and roof lights. A bit of art-deco influence ala T2 would be nice.

 

Church Textures - should be Alexius' speciality wink.gif . High Gothic, St Vitus, Notre Dame, large stain glass windows, many vaults, columns, transcepts...you get the picture. Stone mainly. Some 'Hammer-equivalent' logos would be nice.

 

Catacomb/sewer Textures - just some boney, wet, damp rock & brick. Quite a small section.

 

Core Textures - very crucial. All the standard bricks, wood, flooring, tiles, edging, grass, that would go well in pretty much any situation.

 

Water Textures - new shaders should be made. This should probably involve new fragment programs, which means someone should have a bash at learning the fragment language (check D3W for scant details).

 

Glass Textures - people have windows, ya know. All styles.

 

Door Textures - some pretty general wood & metal doors.

 

Metallic Textures - all the shininess: pipes, grates, fans, valves, infernal machines. Go crazy & nuts with this one, I want to see all sorts of Edward Scissorhands craziness.

 

These will be our basic catagories. I might edit them down later on into more specific catagories, but for now they'll work fine.

 

__________

 

The first thing we're gonna concentrate on are mansion textures. I'm gonna be a bit more specific here and say that we need to take everything into consideration, from the basement (my current project) all the way up to the attic.

 

We'll also need to split each texture into 2 catagories:

 

1. Clean, pristine textures. These will be used for our well maintained mansions. A few marks here and there will be good for portraying a lived in look, but for the most part these should be nice and pretty.

 

2. Grunged up and decaying. The same textures with grime, torn wallpaper, and watermarks. These will be good for our abandoned or haunted mansions that have been unkempt and exposed to the elements for awhile. Windows will be cracked or grimy, doors will be warped, and floors should have a nice layer of dust and other debris layered about them.

 

Each catagory will have it's own specific textures of course, but making dual versions will help keep the style consistant and will save us on some time.

 

__________

 

Last night I've come to the realization that we're missing quite a few detailing textures. I've spent most of my time working on walls and surfaces, and when I started to build my map I realised that I could desperately use some trimming details, decals, and other small miscellaneous textures. It's these textures that add life to a map, without em everything we build will end up looking bare and spartan.

 

So for the next few we need to concentrate more on making these than anything else. Windows, trim, support beams, a few more doors, decals (such as books and whatnot)...aim for these rather than wide surfaces.

Edited October 9, 2004 by Renzatic

[Springheel]

So for the next few we need to concentrate more on making these than anything else. Windows, trim, support beams, a few more doors, decals (such as books and whatnot)...aim for these rather than wide surfaces.

 

Are these made any differently than regular textures? For example, if I wanted to make a painting texture with frame, does it matter what size I make it? Do I just put it on a transparent background? (actually, should paintings be textures or should they be modelled?)

[Renzatic]

It depends on what you're wanting to achieve. Right now I'm working on a stone trim for my basement walls, it only needs to be 512x32 so why waste all that extra space on a much larger texture when all I intend to use it for is a thin strip?

 

There are quite a few ways you can do paintings. You could design an actual frame and make the area designated for the painting transparent, you could design the picture and frame together (probably the best way to do it), or you could just do a small piece of wood (about 128x16 would work) that you can tile at an angle and build your painting out of 5 brushes.

 

You could also model the paintings, but only if the frame is so ornate that you can't fake a good sense of depth using a normalmap. The actual picture itself will never need to be modelled since it's just a flat surface, you could give the impression of brushstrokes and oil thickness using normals.

Edited October 9, 2004 by Renzatic

[Springheel]

Well, seeing as I'm starting to get the hang of making textures, and I have some original art we can use, I'll try to come up with some painting textures. I think I'll go with the frame/painting combination approach, since making textures transparent is beyond me at the moment.

 

I suspect we're going for a Gothic/Romantic style, artistically, for the paintings? I'll see if I can do that with some filters. If not, I may do modifications of historical pieces.

[Renzatic]

I suspect we're going for a Gothic/Romantic style, artistically, for the paintings? I'll see if I can do that with some filters. If not, I may do modifications of historical pieces.

 

Yeah, Gothic/Romantic style will represent the majority, but just about any piece of art that fits with the ingame style will work.

[oDDity]

Are these made any differently than regular textures? For example, if I wanted to make a painting texture with frame, does it matter what size I make it? Do I just put it on a transparent background? (actually, should paintings be textures or should they be modelled?)

The usual convention is to model the frames, otherwise they'll look like posters.

A lot of the Dutch master's painting look great in thief games. And Springheel could alays knock up some custom ones depicting burricks etc.

[Alexius]

I am sitting on vast, vaaast archives of church textures.

I got around 500 new ones. Just gota convert them to Doom 3 format and we should have a-plenty.

[BlackThief]

sounds good hope they are more high-res than T2 textures though...

Edited December 19, 2004 by BlackThief

[Fingernail]

he's got source photos too.

[Alexius]

Aye. And I am going to get some even more awesome source photos from local cathedrals on the 25th, when I purchase me a 6.3 megapixel digital camera- Canon digital rebel.