gold Better looking metals in Darkmod

[Arcturus]

Same material with increasingly blurrier cubemaps. At the end it's pure white color.

 

[Guest]

1st version looks wet, but 3rd one is promising

[Arcturus]

It's in the repository.

[Arcturus]

Armor material has a heightmap that adds random noise that I should've deleted completely, it doesn't really match the mirror polish.

 

[nbohr1more]

Elite City Watch looks good with 2

Elite Guard looks better with 3

[Wellingtoncrab]

#3 about 12 seconds in starts to look about right to me.

[MirceaKitsune]

2 hours ago, Arcturus said:

Same material with increasingly blurrier cubemaps. At the end it's pure white color.

The second half looks like what I imagine the current material being upgraded to, I don't think one can truly say it alters the original too much. The first half is indeed very shiny, I'd go with making it part of a whole new outfit like for royal knight maybe!

[ChronA]

My vote would be for a new armor set using #2, or maybe blend between #1 and #2; the guy with the breastplate looks good at #3, and #4 looks good on the guy on the left with the shoulder plates. I think that would give a appropriate progression of ostentation, without any of the armor sets subverting the implication of pervasive decay that characterizes the TDM aesthetic.

Addendum: IMO #4 is definitely too shabby for the breastplate set. At that level of grungyness I feel like we should be seeing more rust spots and pitting on the face of the breastplate, and the fact that they are not there makes it look like a painted prop rather than actual steel. The texture work for #4 on the gorget and spaulders of the guard on the left do it right.

[ChronA]

By the way, the blog "A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry" by Dr. Bret Devereaux is a great resource for accessible information about historical armor and warfare generally. As it happens, his most recent post critiquing sci-fi armor in movies and video games gives a good primer on historical armor design in general.

Of course, it should go without saying that just because historically things were done a certain way does not mean that artists need to follow suit. But it can be helpful to understand the practical logic behind the traditional iconography of armor in so far at that informs modern expectations. The linked post is also interesting in providing some insight into how practical requirements for real ballistic armor and film costumes have skewed the popular understanding of how armors should look.

(Lastly I would be remiss not to recommend Bret's stunning dissections of the battles in The Lord of the Rings -- examining every level of the action in both the books and movies from the perspective of a historian of warfare (starting here).)

[Arcturus]

The key to make metals using specularmaps only, without relying on cubemaps, is to increase specular to diffuse ratio.

diffusemap:

specularmap:

and also making the specularmap colored (in case of colored metals). This is more convincing on bumpy surfaces that don't require mirror reflections.

With a different normalmap:

With a cubemap:

 

[snatcher]

I don't know anything about what you, fine people, are discussing here but this is what I see:

(this video does not represent Shad's entertainment value, check out some of his other videos)

[Guest]

On 12/2/2024 at 9:53 AM, Arcturus said:

The key to make metals using specularmaps only, without relying on cubemaps, is to increase specular to diffuse ratio.

Yup, this looks consistent with my findings from several years ago.