Dave's Texture Contributions

[ascottk]

A small handful of new ones. The door is from str8g8, and the tiled floor is from Redface. Two of these don't conform to the multiples-of-2 rule (they are 1024 X 768 instead) because they already tiled (well, mostly) and I don't have the patience to do them by hand all over again (I realized it after finishing them).

The brick's normals seem inverted which looks odd.

[SneaksieDave]

Deja vu? It is a plaster-covered brick wall where various spots which have cracked and fallen out, exposing the bricks underneath. The bricks are thus sunken with respect to the remaining plaster.

[Gildoran]

I'll try to get these up tonight or tomorrow... However, I should note that if you don't scale the images to a power of 2, D3 scales them down anyway, resulting in lowered quality. When I put them up, I'll scale them to a power of 2 so D3 doesn't have to, and so that it doesn't waste space.

[sparhawk]

Looks quite good. I especially like the worn look of the tiles. As for rough stone walls, don't we have already a lot of them?

[OrbWeaver]

You can never have too many rough stone walls (or any other kind of texture for that matter).

[sparhawk]

Yeah, but if we already have a lot of textures of one kind we should try to balance it, as we need all kind of textures.

[SneaksieDave]

I'll try to get these up tonight or tomorrow... However, I should note that if you don't scale the images to a power of 2, D3 scales them down anyway, resulting in lowered quality. When I put them up, I'll scale them to a power of 2 so D3 doesn't have to, and so that it doesn't waste space.

They're on CVS already, since my post. When you say you'll scale them, you mean squeeze them so they fit powers of 2? That's going to look pretty lousy; I tried it before submitting (for instance, the blue stones one is already flat enough - now it'll be even flatter - looks bad; not to mention the masonry normalmap was done by hand, and if squeezing that messes it up, it's not being done over again - I value my sanity too much). Also, I'd doubt leaving it to authors to stretch them back out will work - most people will simply use them as they are, which will result in a lot of fugly texture use. Is it worth it?

 

As for needing different types, I whole-heartedly agree, but there are generally no requests/suggestions, and barely any good sources, so it becomes pretty much "put up what comes along and is of high enough quality" (which isn't much). When looking through a "real game" texture library (e.g., Blade of Darkness, TDS, etc), one discovers two things: just how many textures we're lacking (a great many), and just how bad so many of ours are (especially the old ones). Personally, I'd prefer scrapping a decent portion of the repository and accept having fewer, over presenting poor quality stuff.

[Springheel]

Yes, our texture department seems pretty non-existant at the moment.

[OrbWeaver]

They're on CVS already, since my post. When you say you'll scale them, you mean squeeze them so they fit powers of 2? That's going to look pretty lousy; I tried it before submitting (for instance, the blue stones one is already flat enough - now it'll be even flatter - looks bad; not to mention the masonry normalmap was done by hand, and if squeezing that messes it up, it's not being done over again - I value my sanity too much). Also, I'd doubt leaving it to authors to stretch them back out will work - most people will simply use them as they are, which will result in a lot of fugly texture use. Is it worth it?

 

The problem is that if you scale them, this will change the aspect ratio. If Doom 3 scales them, it won't (because the UV mapping has nothing to do with the pixel size), so in this case you may be better to leave them as they are and accept a slight wastage of disk space.

[greebo]

When I converted some of my textures into DDS format I had to rescale some of them as well (being 1024 x 768 for some reason). I ended up stretching the non-power-of-two dimension to the next greater step (which made the texture 1024x1024).

 

As Orbweaver said, I'd rather waste some disk space than have the overall dimensions shrunk down.

[SneaksieDave]

The problem is that if you scale them, this will change the aspect ratio.

That's what I'd assume/worry about. When I was making them, I had forgotten about the 2's rule (I haven't made a texture in months) so when I went to make the DDS', it complained "not a power of two" and I thought, "Ah shit. Oh well! I'm not re-doing them." First, they already tiled (the masonry needed minor adjustments). Second, the mansonry normalmap was by hand, and very much not fun (and I'm not even happy with it) and took hours - there's no way I'm starting it over.

 

Not to mention, if we're worried about disk space, there's a nice chunk of old textures which have... well, they don't even *have* normalmaps by any definition of quality, let alone any appeal at all, nor tiling, and could should be hurled into the nearest ocean.

 

If it's really a problem, I guess we could move those two out of the main repository and put them in a /sd subfolder or whatever. Most everyone else seems to put textures whereever, not bothering with the guidelines, and they don't run into any problems. When I follow them as best I can, I hit snags in the road each time (just read this thread for proof). It's frustrating to say the least (part of the reason it's been months since my last submission). One advantage is it would be much easier to put them up that way. I do fully support the texture guidelines, make no mistake - but they haven't been followed, they're generally not being followed, and as a person trying to follow them, I get flustered. There is so much wrong in the texture repository that it seems odd my non-two dimensions are a problem.

 

By the time I'm done a texture, I'm generally so frustrated and pissed, I just want to get them submitted and never see them again.

[OrbWeaver]

As Orbweaver said, I'd rather waste some disk space than have the overall dimensions shrunk down.

 

That's not exactly what I meant -- if Dave rescales his textures, he is going to break the aspect ratio no matter what. If he doesn't rescale them, they will be scaled by Doom 3, probably[1] to 1024x512, which means that the 1024x768 size has wasted some disk space storing detail which is only discarded by the game. However, this is probably a better option than breaking the aspect ratio or having to remake the textures.

 

[1] I'm not sure it has actually been confirmed that the game scales them downwards, maybe they are scaled upwards, I don't know.

[greebo]

The aspect ratio doesn't matter anyway, the texture coordinates already take care of that. At least it worked in my case (I hadn't to re-texture a single brush).

 

I just wanted to state, if there is an odd dimension in any of my textures, I rather stretch the according size up, so that Doom doesn't have to downsize at all. I don't want my 768 pixels become 512, I'd rather have my texture at 1024 pixels containing interpolated data than let Doom discard a third of the information.

 

(Don't want to quabble around here, as we're probably talking about the same, just wanted to make my point clear.)

[OrbWeaver]

The aspect ratio doesn't matter anyway, the texture coordinates already take care of that. At least it worked in my case (I hadn't to re-texture a single brush).

 

True, if the texcoords are already specified (in an existing map, or on a model). However if the aspect ratio is wrong this would become visible in the editor when applying the texture for the first time, because AFAIK the default scale always assumes the pixels are square.

[Gildoran]

Not to mention, if we're worried about disk space, there's a nice chunk of old textures which have... well, they don't even *have* normalmaps by any definition of quality, let alone any appeal at all, nor tiling, and could should be hurled into the nearest ocean.

I completely agree, but everybody seems to want to keep even the bad ones. Maybe I'll start a thread for textures that might not be worth keeping...

 

True, if the texcoords are already specified (in an existing map, or on a model). However if the aspect ratio is wrong this would become visible in the editor when applying the texture for the first time, because AFAIK the default scale always assumes the pixels are square.

If you provide an editor image, the editor bases the scale off of the editor image, so the source images can be powers of 2. However, D3ed will scale the editor image to a power of 2 before deciding how to apply the texcoords, so the net effect is as though all the images had been scaled to a power of 2.

 

If DarkRadiant pays attention to the original scale of the editor image, that'd be useful.

 

[1] I'm not sure it has actually been confirmed that the game scales them downwards, maybe they are scaled upwards, I don't know.

That's controlled by the image_roundDown cvar. It defaults to true, but perhaps quality settings affect it.

[SneaksieDave]

I completely agree, but everybody seems to want to keep even the bad ones. Maybe I'll start a thread for textures that might not be worth keeping...

Probably a good idea. I'm sure many of the bad ones can be fixed, and I plan to try my hand at it when time allows, but there are others that are just undeniably bad, and are only taking up HD space.

 

We probably need to open a discussion about texture guidelines as well (other than here), because there's a lot messed up in the repository; missing _editor versions (which makes loading the libraries take forever and hogs tons of memory), path anarchy (assuming they're official /darkmod submissions of course), etc.

 

Ahh. Textures; they fill me with rage!

[OrbWeaver]

If you provide an editor image, the editor bases the scale off of the editor image, so the source images can be powers of 2. However, D3ed will scale the editor image to a power of 2 before deciding how to apply the texcoords, so the net effect is as though all the images had been scaled to a power of 2.

 

If DarkRadiant pays attention to the original scale of the editor image, that'd be useful.

 

That's interesting - so using a 1024x768 texture in DoomEdit will behave exactly the same (aspect-wise) as scaling it to 1024x512 beforehand?

 

It probably would be possible to add a feature to DR to remember the original aspect ration before scaling, but this is really a band-aid for the problem of people producing textures with inappropriate sizes. It would probably be better to emit a warning of some kind.

[Gildoran]

While I agree with you that it's generally a bandaid fix, there may be cases when it would be more useful to have an aspect ratio of 3:2 for example. Perhaps DR could warn if any of the source images (except the editor image) aren't powers of 2, but when setting texcoords, take into account the original dimensions of the editor image?

[OrbWeaver]

While I agree with you that it's generally a bandaid fix, there may be cases when it would be more useful to have an aspect ratio of 3:2 for example. Perhaps DR could warn if any of the source images (except the editor image) aren't powers of 2, but when setting texcoords, take into account the original dimensions of the editor image?

 

That sounds reasonably -- the editor image is used as an "aspect ratio setter", while the actual render textures should be powers of 2 in all cases.

[Gildoran]

@SneaksieDave: I really like these textures, though I'd like to make a couple of suggestions...

 

As for the plaster, it's clearly lit from below... However, it's only really noticeable at the corners of the center-piece. If you could lighten the two upper corners...

 

As for the bricks, the texture looks like it repeats twice as often as it does... It looks almost kind of like the top and bottom halves were made from the same image. Perhaps it would be less noticable, if either the top or bottom half were offset horizontally? Similarly, if you could get rid of the vertical stain, the horizontal tiling would be less noticeable.

 

I also wanted to say that I really like the quality of the texture-work... My two favorites are the brick and tile textures. They look like photographs with good diffuse and normal maps. It's cool being able to even see the ribbing of the bricks, and the plaster-work for the brick texture is some of the best I've seen. The tile texture looks perfect for a Thief-esque kitchen! I also really liked the stone and antique door textures as they remind me a lot of TDS, except that they don't have crappy compression.

 

PS, please upload the uncompressed diffuse/specular maps to the hires repository.

[SneaksieDave]

I'll see about removing that stain (originally tried it and didn't really see the need to mess with the photo, but since it was mentioned, maybe I'll revisit) and possibly the lightening.

 

Re: the hires versions, the reason I didn't put them up was because what's on the regular repository is already the highest res I've got of these, but I'll put up redundant (non-DDS) copies if that's wanted.

[Gildoran]

Oh, I didn't realize you didn't have uncompressed images. If you'd just be converting the DDS files into TGAs, then there's no need to put them on the hi-res repository.

[SneaksieDave]

Edit:

+ metal/floor/grating_001_local, metal/floor/grating_001_s

+ wood/floor/boards_old_006_local

 

Edit:

+ metal/floor/rust_005_local, metal/floor/rust_005_s

+ wood/floor/tile_decorative_001_local, wood/floor/tile_decorative_001_s

 

Edit:

+ stone/floor/blocks_019_local

 

------Above here may have been renamed with the reorg

 

Edit:

+ door/wood/arched_heavy01

 

Edit:

+ water_source/water_overlay_specular

 

Edit:

+ door/frame/arched_heavy01_frame

 

Edit:

+ lights/tdm_lanternlight

+ mod to spyglass overlay