Texture Organization

[Renzatic]

Within the next few days I'm gonna be reorganizing the texture pack so it'll be easier for us to plug textures into our cooresponding packs with only minimal fuss. Not only will the directory structure be changed, but I'm gonna adopt a new naming system that's more homogenous and easier to manage.

 

First off, instead of just having 3 main catagories (Walls, Floors, Objects) I'm going to sort them into themes. For now I'm thinking Mansions, Cityscapes, Churches, Factories, and a misc catagory for things that can easily overlap among all the themes. The directories below these will still be the same, a folder for each type and material. This is open for discussions, of course, so if anyone has a better idea of how structure the texture tree feel free to add to the discussion.

 

Next comes the naming scheme, we're gonna keep this as straightforward as we possibly can. If you have a wood floor that'll go well in a mansion then it'll be called Mansion_Floor_Wood0x to coorespond with the directory it's gonna be placed in. Any variations on the same texture should have a letter applied to both...like Springheel and I both have Jay's tile floor in our respective packs, but somewhere down the line I changed mine to a black and white marblesque texture, so Spring's version will be Floor_Tile03a and mine will be Floor_Tile03b. Simple, straightforward, and easy to change if we have a naming conflict. If we do it right we can all send each other small updates that can be plugged into our material files easily without having to worry about sending increasingly larger packs to keep up with.

 

Another thing to keep in mind is making similar textures share the same specular or normalmap. Once again I'll bring up Jay's floor texture for the example. The changes on mine are just cosmetic, so both can use the same local and spec and save on some file space. Just name it Floor_Tile03_local or _s and direct the material file entry to it.

 

If you want to make 2 versions of the same texture with different overlays or material properties, like a really shiny version of a brick wall that has an ultra reflective spec or a glowing fullbright window, just name them what you think is appropriate..like wall03_wet for the shiny wall or Window02_lit for the fullbright window. Nothing complicated there. Taking this and the above change into consideration, we can have entire families of similar textures that can be swapped back and forth easily.

 

We'll have to keep track of what we're all doing for awhile, but once we get this rolling it shouldn't take much management to keep things running smoothly.

 

Blackthief: You'll need to get in the habit of doing this, too. You don't have Doom 3 yet but you will eventually, getting into it now will make things easier for you when you do. Just remember to name your dither as x_x_d and the normals as x_x_local and save em as TGA files...rar em up if you're worried about them being too large, they compress well.

 

That should about do it. I'll also post an update listing all of our current textures once we get this squared away.

Edited October 17, 2004 by Renzatic

[BlackThief]

alright. shall I also rename the textures that are already on the ftp and arrange them ?

[Springheel]

Another problem is the material .mtr file. I had added some new ones to mine, and then downloaded a new version from Renazatic. I either had to go in and do all kinds of swapping and cut and pasting, or just make two different .mtr files...one for ftp downloads and one for my own textures. It's a piecemeal solution though.

 

One problem, Ren...what happens if we all make a mansion_wood_01? How do we avoid duplicating names?

[Renzatic]

Blackthief: Nah, don't worry about those, I'll get em done. But any new ones you make should follow the new naming scheme.

 

Spring: No matter what we do there are still gonna be some naming conflicts between us, I'm just trying to make them as subtle as possible so they're easy to change.

 

What I'll eventually do is post another sticky detailing the current layout of the texture tree, and all 3 of us can make a single post in that thread dedicated to our current projects. When we're finished with one texture and have started work on another we can just edit our respective posts and I'll change the texture tree post ot coorespond with it. It'll end up looking something like this:

 

________

 

Renzatic

 

Finished Church_Window_Stainedglass05

 

Started work on Mansion_floor_Marble03

 

_________

 

Springheel

 

Finished Cityscape_Misc_Facade05

 

Started work on Mansion_Misc_Painting06-09

 

_________

 

Blackthief

 

Finished Mansion_Door_Wood04

 

Started Mansion_Trim_Stone06

 

_________

 

It requires a little extra effort on our parts, but it'll keep any naming conflicts down to a minimum. If we do end up making the same texture name, we'll just..um..flip a quarter and see who has to change their set.

Edited October 17, 2004 by Renzatic

[Springheel]

What if we incorporated our names into the texture name for the time being? My textures could be spring_mansion_woodfloor_01. That way we don't have to worry about renaming things as we up or download to the ftp site. As things are put into collections we can rename them if we want to.

 

This might be a good way to go, since I can see a lot of textures that would work in multiple collections (the same stone wall could be mansion_stonewall1, castle_stonewall1, city_stonewall1, dungeon_stonewall1, etc, etc.) If I just call it spring_stonewall1 for the moment, no one will use the same name, and we can decide what collections it will be part of later. Does that make sense?

[Renzatic]

Yeah, that's fine..it'll help make sure we don't accidently overwrite another one of our textures in case of a (much dreaded) naming conflict.

 

The finished and packaged products are gonna use the default naming scheme, though...and one of us is gonna have to decide on the final order everything goes into to keep things running smoothly. Guess I'll volunteer for that job.

 

Oh, and work on the newly restructured tree has commenced. I've done about 4 folders so far and let me be the first to say......blahhhhh. I tells ya, if you need any proof that planning ahead is a good thing to do, this is it.

[Renzatic]

It's done. All I need to do is make the material file and we're good to go.

 

While I was finishing up I decided that it'd be a better idea to just upload everything in the texture pack to the FTP in the current directory structure so we could all follow it. If you intend on adding a texture just go to the proper folder, check your file name against what's there, and upload away.

 

Basically what will be sitting on our server IS the texture pack, anyone that's interested in doing textures or maps at all just needs to grab the dark_mod folder and drag it to their base/textures folder in Doom 3.

 

It won't overwrite the old darkmod directory just yet, that'll still be in use til I port my maps over to the new texture set, but it's there for anyone that wants to use it.

[Renzatic]

Reuploading all the textures again to fit in with the NEW new directory stucture, plus the one that was up there yesterday was kinda borked with too many repeat folders.

 

The new material file is finished.

 

After the new speculars are added to the old textures (the material file already points to them), the pack can finally be considered finished. WOOOOHOOOO!

[Springheel]

Excellent! So, can we start asking ourselves what kind of textures we need next? Are we trying to finish off one 'theme' at a time? We could create an infinite number of mansion textures, I'm sure, but do we have enough that we should start asking, "what do we need that we don't already have?"

 

Also, should we be adding model textures to the list of things we need to make? I notice it isn't up there at the moment.

[Renzatic]

I replied to your PM....model textures might be more the modellers domain than it is ours, we'll see what we can work out and how best to organize it.

 

That is a good question...when should we consider a theme "done". I'd say that once we get a nice variety in each specific catagory we'll move on to the next, but we need to know exactly what we're missing before we can even begin to close things up.

 

I'd suggest starting it off with some architectural ideas..similar to the inspiration thread, but more focused. Everyone from all over the boards can come in, throw down a few pictures or ideas, say that they'd think it'd look cool, and we could build from there. We'll want to get at least 3 architectural themes in place so all our mansions don't look alike...

 

Edit: Oh...we're eventually gonna have to start doing DDS textures so all the low end peeps can have fun with the mod, too. I'm gonna go to doom3world.com and ask around about what quality and how many versions we'll need for each video setting. I think it goes like:

 

Ultra High: No compression, thus no DDS textures used.

High: Uses the specular DDS in place of the TGA

Medium: Uses the specular and normal DDS

Low: Uses all DDS textures.

Edited October 25, 2004 by Renzatic

[Springheel]

Ultra High: No compression, thus no DDS textures used.

High: Uses the specular DDS in place of the TGA

Medium: Uses the specular and normal DDS

Low: Uses all DDS textures.

 

You trying to impress me with all your high falutin' fancy words?

Edited October 25, 2004 by Springheel

[Renzatic]

Fancy words? No. Fancy talkin? Oh hell yeah!

[Springheel]

So don't be coy, what the hell is a dds texture?

[Renzatic]

lol, it's a compressed texture, basically a TGA file that's 1/3rd the size.

 

There is quality loss, though..hence the reason why it's used for the lower end graphic settings in Doom 3.

[jay pettitt]

regarding filename conventions...

 

Can we insert an abbreviation of the authors name in the filename perhaps...

 

ie.

 

leatherpants001_jay_local.tga

 

that way individual authors can be responsible for avoiding name conflicts of their own work, and not worry about conflicts with other authors filenames...

 

 

oh, and no spaces or capital letters of course

Edited October 25, 2004 by jay pettitt

[Renzatic]

No spaces? No problem. Capital letters....err....

 

The way it's set up now you'll have to check and see if there's already an existing texture on the FTP before you upload it. If you get an overwrite prompt you'll know to assign a different number to the end of your filename (you damn well better anyway, I'd hate to have to kick an ass if someone ignores the prompt and overwrites a finished texture *shakes fist*).

Edited October 26, 2004 by Renzatic