Realtexture Game Packs

[Renzatic]

So, if the normal maps for these textures are batch-built from these bumpmaps, they will forever be substandard and half-assed incorrect.

 

Or no?

 

No, they'll be fine. It's pretty common to convert heightmaps into normals...there really isn't any difference in quality other than the fact that with heightmaps you only have 512 shades to work with instead of 64,000.

 

So you can't get AS detailed as you can with a normal generated from a model, but with textures that's not really much of an issue.

[oDDity]

Yeah, I think he'd be totally cool about us asking about it.  Maybe he just didn't realize how beneficial and what a timesaver it would be for us to have the normalmapped versions.  Maybe we could repay him by putting a cool animated splash screen at the intro of our campaign and/or toolset, showing his logo(s) and some cool sound effects: "Industry Graphics logo: Creating worlds the way they're meant to be... (pause)... Textured." (pause) -- "Textures provided by RealTexture.com."

 

Or something like that.  I'm sure we could pull off something professional and sweet; not cheesy.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Wise up. I despise advetisments and logos in games, they make me want to punch the monitor (and I often do). Having them in a free game would be beyond a joke.

Giving him one line in the credits like everyone else on the team is more than enough, that's all each of us will be getting FFS, and we're making the game.

[oDDity]

So, if the normal maps for these textures are batch-built from these bumpmaps, they will forever be substandard and half-assed incorrect.

 

Or no?

 

No, they'll be fine. It's pretty common to convert heightmaps into normals...there really isn't any difference in quality other than the fact that with heightmaps you only have 512 shades to work with instead of 64,000.

 

So you can't get AS detailed as you can with a normal generated from a model, but with textures that's not really much of an issue.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Some textures convert to excellent normal maps, like picture fames, wallpaper etc, and some need to be modelled for best effect, like windows. Bricks are a grey area, which definfitely look better modeled.

I think the deciding dactor should be 'how difficult is it to model' If it can be done realatively quickly then it should be modeled.

[Dram]

I despise advetisments and logos in games, they make me want to punch the monitor (and I often do).

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Lol, every single EA Games game comes to mind "EA Games: Challenge everything". Makes me go mad, cos they make it so you can't skip it. though its easy to kill - just delete the fucker (movie that is).

 

Though i don't mind skippable logos, like id's - which actually looks good.

[Fingernail]

The least we can do is stick his name, website and big THANKS in the credits somewhere.

 

And anyway, we'll have to specify an EULA that no one can redistribute his textures.

[Renzatic]

One thing we shouldn't have done was mention that we got em for free outside of the dev boards here.

 

If any of us have let that fact slip in any other forums, we should go back and edit em out...just say that we got a big pack of textures and leave the rest to the imagination.

[sparhawk]

As can be infered from the quote that I used, my statement about asking him was abou twether we should mention him on our site yet or later or not at all. NH is right that he might get hounded by other mod teams, but then again he might get increased business still, because other teams might think it cool that at least one team got them for free. So it should be his decision when and where he should be mentioned, and that we should ask him about this.

[Dram]

Yeah, I agree with Spar on this one.

[Darkness_Falls]

Wise up. I despise advetisments and logos in games, they make me want to punch the monitor (and I often do). Having them in a free game would be beyond a joke.

Well goodie for you. I actually like them Just as I admire the "Dreamworks SKG" cloud fishing thing... the "Paramount Pictures" mountain fly-by... running pegasus, etc. (in movies), I appreciate such things in video games, if done well.

[Dram]

I appreciate such things in video games, if done well.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

And if they can be skipped (fucking EA logo)

[Springheel]

Ok, so what is the plan then for these textures? We need to start divying them up and start converting heightmaps to normalmaps. If they aren't compressed I suppose we'll need to do that too. Some thought should be given to how we keep them separate from our textures for distribution purposes. Ren, are you going to be in charge of organizing all this?

[Renzatic]

Yup, I'll do it..and I guess BT'll want to help as well.

 

Once I get the discs or get them all downloaded I'll start sorting through them.

[Fingernail]

I'll take some.

 

I propose using a prefix for all the Realtextures. And keep them to separate .mtr files might be best as well.

[BlackThief]

ATM I'm converting all the tifs to JPG to save spar some work, when he wants to put them on the server. that takes some time, because almost every texture has got 2 or more "alpha channel" textures, which are all seperate tifs --> 1 texture = 1 diffuse 1 bump/heightmap, 2-3 alpha and sometimes a specularmap as well.

 

that's a lot of stuff, but after jpg compression the filesize is about 50% smaller.

[New Horizon]

ATM I'm converting all the tifs to JPG to save spar some work, when he wants to put them on the server. that takes some time, because almost every texture has got 2 or more "alpha channel" textures, which are all seperate tifs --> 1 texture = 1 diffuse 1 bump/heightmap, 2-3 alpha and sometimes a specularmap as well.

 

that's a lot of stuff, but after jpg compression the filesize is about 50% smaller.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

BT, I would hold off on converting the textures to JPG. I need to make sure everyone has read this thread.

 

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showt...=25entry36852

 

...and this.

 

New Texture Guidelines

 

I would like to keep the texture process as uncomplicated as possible. We have to consider that we will want to keep a back up of the super hi-res on CVS as well as the TGA RLE versions.

 

The Ultra hi-res respository would only be accessed by texture artists who are uploading. [this just needs to be setup as a separate repository like Darkmod_Src]

 

The TGA RLE compressed repository would reside within the mod...or at least that's what I'm suggesting...as it would be a seamless transition and I've finished cleaning up the repositories this week. [i have completed this transition as of yesterday]

 

If we're still considering a JPG repository, then that will mean three versions of the textures on CVS and I'm not sure that's the best use of our resources. The TGA RLE versions have brought the entire mod down to a managable level and doesn't require any filters or reconfiguration.

[BlackThief]

well it's pretty pointless to keep the textures in tif format to save image quality, because we'll have to scale down the textures about 4 times anyway. (the textures have a average size of about 1300x1300)

[Springheel]

jpgs look like crap in D3 anyway, so no point in changing them to that format.

[New Horizon]

well it's pretty pointless to keep the textures in tif format to save image quality, because we'll have to scale down the textures about 4 times anyway. (the textures have a average size of about 1300x1300)

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Well, it's probably better if we have continuity in our file formats. For the ultra hi-res, the would be uncompressed TGA's. Then when they're scaled down 24 bit TGA RLE. JPG's just don't work properly in Doom 3 and I think it would be a waste of time and resources. If you are able to post some on the FTP, I'll take some of them and start converting them based on the new texture guidelines.

[Renzatic]

If it's at all possible I'd want the original textures as unmolested as possible. No conversions, no downsizing, just sexy sexy quality goodness.

 

Have you mailed the DVD's out to Spar yet, BT?

[oDDity]

Don't scale them down to 512 either, we may want to use some at 1024.

[New Horizon]

Don't scale them down to 512 either, we may want to use some at 1024.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Yup, the plan is to keep a hi-res set (maximum of 1024) on hand for later release...although, if some textures absolutely need to be 1024, we can accomodate that. The new texture guidelines are just that, guidelines, but we should definately try to follow them as much as possible. They'll retain the quality but keep the mod from blowing up out of control and also save us a lot of work in the end. From what sledge told me, T3 started out looking a lot nicer in the beginning. It was mostly towards the end that they had to lobotomize the static meshes and compress the textures down to ridiculous amounts to get everything running well and loading faster. We do this now, we save our time for more important things later.

[sparhawk]

ATM I'm converting all the tifs to JPG to save spar some work, when he wants to put them on the server.

 

Don't worry about that. Converting images in a different format is a single line in Linux shell processing, so you shouldn't waste your time with that.

 

that takes some time, because almost every texture has got 2 or more "alpha channel" textures, which are all seperate tifs --> 1 texture = 1 diffuse 1 bump/heightmap, 2-3 alpha and sometimes a specularmap as well.

 

Don't know about that, but if you do this manually it would probably take a lot of time.

[SneaksieDave]

Great work on the current texture updates (compression and elimination of redundancy!).

 

At start of sync last night, my TDM folder was 666 Mb. Erm...

After falling asleep with WinCVS running, a few hours later, ~280 Mb.

 

:thumb:

 

Looking forward to new additions!

[BlackThief]

Don't worry about that. Converting images in a different format is a single line in Linux shell processing, so you shouldn't waste your time with that.

Don't know about that, but if you do this manually it would probably take a lot of time.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

of course I haven't done it manually I used photoshop's batch processing + a macro and I haven't done it only for the DVD, I also wanted to save me some HDD space ATM I'm burning the DVD for spar, which contains all textures (HDR and background stuff isn't interesting for the mod at all) - the interesting ones are tga some other stuff that isn't that important is jpg.

Please don't talk shit like we'll loose a lot of quality that way - about 80% of our current textures are based on jpgs I used - every digital camera I know saves photos as jpg....

 

 

@ renz give me your adress and I'll send you all DVDs

[Renzatic]

Will do.