Metal Set For The Gen_texture Project (screenshots)

[ascottk]

For the gen_texture project I'm working on, I'm creating a set of textures and materials for general use that can be used in models or walls. I'm finding that the trickier sets are the metallic ones (which would look rather silly as walls). Feedback is appreciated. But first guess which metal goes with which model. The choices are bronze, brushed metal, copper, gold, and silver:

 

Some of them are fairly obvious, some are tricky, and one material desperately needs help.

[SneaksieDave]

I'd say copper, silver, brushed metal, bronze, gold. They look pretty clear and good to me. When you start getting into the copper/bronze area, there's always some flux anyway. The only one making me slightly uncomfortable is the gold. A bit too much red. Then again, I've never been the biggest fan of gold, and there are many shades of it.

[Springheel]

Since we're not planning on having loot glint, we need to make sure our loot textures/models are easily distinguishable. I think anything that isn't actually gold or silver should look considerably different from things that are. If I saw cups with those skins, I'd assume both 4 and 5 were gold, for example.

[ascottk]

I'd say copper, silver, brushed metal, bronze, gold. They look pretty clear and good to me. When you start getting into the copper/bronze area, there's always some flux anyway. The only one making me slightly uncomfortable is the gold. A bit too much red. Then again, I've never been the biggest fan of gold, and there are many shades of it.

 

I'm pretty happy with the way the copper and bronze is turning out. I have issues with the rest, especially the silver and gold.

 

Since we're not planning on having loot glint, we need to make sure our loot textures/models are easily distinguishable. I think anything that isn't actually gold or silver should look considerably different from things that are. If I saw cups with those skins, I'd assume both 4 and 5 were gold, for example.

 

Maybe a cubemap would work for loot? I'll have to experiment with those.

[ascottk]

Here's the gold and silver with a cubemap:

 

 

Maybe it's a little too subtle . . .

[Springheel]

It might also be wise to make sure that any brass/copper is a little darker than it might be in real life, just so that it's clear it isn't gold.

[ascottk]

It might also be wise to make sure that any brass/copper is a little darker than it might be in real life, just so that it's clear it isn't gold.

 

Well, let's try it out in-game because screenshots rarely do justice:

 

http://208.49.149.118/TheDarkMod/models/as...st_genmetal.pk4

 

The map is "test_genmetal". There's a couple of loot goblets in there and some examples of material usage.

[PinkDot]

Are you going to make some more dirty versions as well? Those might be useful mostly for loot like models.

 

Well, I think it might be good to have also some plain textures with diffrent materials, so when texturing the model like Dave's bell we can use gen textures for metal and wood parts and make only one unique for the bell. That would be the compromise between saving memory and making models look uniqe and interesting.

[ascottk]

Are you going to make some more dirty versions as well? Those might be useful mostly for loot like models.

 

Well, I think it might be good to have also some plain textures with diffrent materials, so when texturing the model like Dave's bell we can use gen textures for metal and wood parts and make only one unique for the bell. That would be the compromise between saving memory and making models look uniqe and interesting.

 

I plan on painted metal, rusted metal, some iron, and others.

 

& I'm not forcing anyone to use gen textures. If they do use gen textures, they can use them any way they want. In fact, I was modifying a model to use more than one material so basically you could use the main part of gen_gold & have trim in gen_silver.

[Springheel]

Taking a look at them in-game, it appears that the textures are pretty oversaturated with colour and are also quite bright. That's why they're coming across as a bit cartoonish. In fact, they almost look as though they're being frobbed even when they're not.

 

Compare the gold goblet with our current gold loot goblet:

 

 

 

 

 

I think if you desaturate them a bit and take the brightness down significantly, they would fit better with our existing textures.

[ascottk]

Taking a look at them in-game, it appears that the textures are pretty oversaturated with colour and are also quite bright. That's why they're coming across as a bit cartoonish. In fact, they almost look as though they're being frobbed even when they're not.

 

I think if you desaturate them a bit and take the brightness down significantly, they would fit better with our existing textures.

 

Yeah, I'm not liking the gold & silver I really don't want to follow in tds' footsteps & be cartoonish

[SneaksieDave]

The bell isn't set up to use with these (although skins can be made for it). Just FYI.

[ascottk]

I'm getting closer with the gold:

 

[Springheel]

Yeah, that looks very close. Based on that screenshot I don't think that it needs to be adjusted any further than that.

 

My suggestion for the other metals is the same--desaturate and darken. The non-loot metals should even be darkened slightly more than seems realistic, just to make the gold/silver textures stand out a bit more.

 

One other suggestion is to add a little more 'noise' (scratches, discolouration, etc) to them, especially the non-loot textures.

[OrbWeaver]

The reason it is difficult to do gold is that the "gloss" of the specular is not high enough, causing the metal to look rougher than polished gold would normally be. This would require glossmaps to solve properly.

 

EDIT: another suggestion -- try using a yellow/orange specular colour rather than white for the gold material.

[ascottk]

The reason it is difficult to do gold is that the "gloss" of the specular is not high enough, causing the metal to look rougher than polished gold would normally be. This would require glossmaps to solve properly.

 

EDIT: another suggestion -- try using a yellow/orange specular colour rather than white for the gold material.

 

I remember coming across glossmaps on the doom3world forums & they got it working I think . I need to follow up on that to see if they actually did get it working.

 

I was wondering if speculars could be other than grey scale

 

I'll experiment with those.

[OrbWeaver]

Glossmaps kind of work, but not well enough for general use. The ideal situation is to set the specular exponent from the alpha of the specular map (which is currently ignored), but it seems that Doom 3 does not pass the specular's alpha to the shader. This meant that the glossmap mod had to use the diffusemap's alpha to set the gloss factor, which is not acceptable due to the conflict with the normal use of diffusemap alpha to control alphatesting.

 

Perhaps further investigation might reveal that it is possible to pass in the specularmap's alpha, I haven't really looked into it.