Tels' textures

[Tels]

I checked in two new versions of the stone/bricks/red_angled_ground:

 

One with light-grey mortar and a new normal map to make a "clean" version, and using the new diffusemap and the old normalmap to produce a rought, but cleaner version:

 

(the original had too much moss for indoor use :-D

 

 

Enjoy

[Tels]

Oh, I forgot, Arcturus painted a lovely height/normalmap for my rough stones and checked it in:

 

 

Thanx Arcturus!

[Baddcog]

Looks good!

[sparhawk]

Nice.

[Springheel]

The scratches on the bricks might be a little overdone...those grouping of parallel scratches look like someone was counting the number of days left in prison, or something.

[Tels]

The scratches on the bricks might be a little overdone...those grouping of parallel scratches look like someone was counting the number of days left in prison, or something.

 

Yes, the do bother me for a similiar reason: I don't know why they are there. The texture stems from a wall in a small trainstation in Germany, in Altenahr:

 

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&...p;z=18&om=1

 

Here is my original photo of the wall, scaled down by factor 3:

 

 

What bothers me is that althoug it looks old, the building might be very well modern, and maybe the scratches on the stones are from modern equipment?

 

 

Anyway, there are many inspiring buildings all over here, and as soon as the weather gets better, I intend to start taking more photos

[Arcturus]

Yes, the do bother me for a similiar reason: I don't know why they are there. The texture stems from a wall in a small trainstation in Germany, in Altenahr:

 

I could remove them from normal map. And make this line we talked about more deep (although I like it).

[Tels]

I could remove them from normal map.

 

Maybe just tone them down? Or remove most of them, but on the diffusemap, too?

 

Do you have a heightmap from which you created the normal map? Because I was pondering doing variations of that texture for corners, and if I re-arrange the diffuse, I need a new normal map again

 

And make this line we talked about more deep (although I like it).

 

No not more deep, even less deep so it is not as visible

[Arcturus]

Maybe I'll just send you a heightmap.

[Tels]

Maybe I'll just send you a heightmap.

 

Good idea :-P

[sparhawk]

Hey! Altenahr is not THAT far away from Essen. Maybe we can meet one time? Would be pretty cool to actually meet some team members from TDM.

[Tels]

Hey! Altenahr is not THAT far away from Essen. Maybe we can meet one time? Would be pretty cool to actually meet some team members from TDM.

 

I am shy - but maybe if you buy me a beer? Ok, I buy you a beer, too, when you fix the SVN problem

 

I am actually located even closer to Essen - it's an one-hour train journey from here to Altenahr

 

See if you recognize this:

 

http://bloodgate.com/photos?id=193&s=ascore&sh=1

[sparhawk]

If this is in Bonn, I 've only been driving through. But if you ever come up here, or I'm going down there, I can drop you a PM.

[Tels]

If this is in Bonn, I 've only been driving through. But if you ever come up here, or I'm going down there, I can drop you a PM.

 

Sure.

[Arcturus]

Did you get my message Tels? How can I send you the files?

[Tels]

I added two light textures:

 

lights/tdm_window_grating_2x2 and lights/tdm_window_grating_2x3

 

These can be used to create fake light-falls-through-window light effects. Just use them on a projected light and scale the light so that the size matches your window size.

 

Should absolutely be used together with Drams volumetric light effect

[jdude]

wow! I'm goign to have to retexture my map using some of these much cleaner textures

[Tels]

wow! I'm goign to have to retexture my map using some of these much cleaner textures

 

Glad someone likes them

 

Anyway, on the quest optimizing my Old Mill map, I got the idea that I can make a "combined" texture for the roof underside. In normal buildings you have usually some sort of "paneling", but if it is a poor house, or a stable or some roof that isn't used too much (and maybe the winters aren't that hard , then often you can just see the underside of the shingles.

 

However, not *just* the underside of the shingles, as there needs something to support them. My first attempt were just some brushes as "strips". That, however, creates a lot of triangles. Really a lot

 

The second option I tried was converting these into an entity. That improved the situation some what, but my map was still lagging and I hadn't even added strips to the two other attics. Ouch.

 

So the last two days I made a combined texture of shingles and wood, and painted a heightmap for it, then made a normal map out of this.

 

Here is an ingame shot of world-spawn brushes, func_static brushes, and my new texture (checked in as shingles_red_plus_strips under roof):

 

 

And here is a shot showing the triangles generated by each method. Quite a difference

 

 

A couple notes:

 

* The texture is set as "shingles", so rope arrows will not stick in the wood strips. That's ok, as these are way to small to support a human, anyway.

* the texture looks a bit softer than the brush-work, but I actually like this more (increasing the texture from 1024x1024 to 2048x2048 would make it a bit better but is probably not worth it)

* I spent quite a lot of time to paint a central support beam in, too. However, this does not work for two reasons:

 

* the beam is not wood, so you can't shoot rope arrows in it - big restriction

* the beam looks fuzzy due to the texture size. A real brush beam can have a much smaller texture scale and looks better (plus you can decide on what wood it should have)

* the normalmap has a certain restriction on how much depth it can simulate. It is ok for the strips, but the beam will appear not much thicker, and quite flat and unbelievable.

 

So to add a support beam just use a brush like I did in my example above.

 

The attic is far from complete, but just changing the texture on the roof underside adds already a lot of detail and atmosphere:

 

 

(The new texture works even better when it is not in full light

[PinkDot]

Certainly, you can save a lot of polys with proper texture. And you can go even farther and bake some ambient light soft shadows between wooden beams and shingles - that gives much more depth and nicer effect and makes texture looks interesting even when in shadow.

[Domarius]

Tels is certainly contributing in a few different areas recently

[Arcturus]

You didn't use normalmap of shingles. Diffuse map is just a colour without shadows and contours and without a normalmap it looks a bit flat. I plan to make a better version some day. You could paste beams from your normal onto shingles normal and maybe it would look better?

[Tels]

Certainly, you can save a lot of polys with proper texture. And you can go even farther and bake some ambient light soft shadows between wooden beams and shingles - that gives much more depth and nicer effect and makes texture looks interesting even when in shadow.

 

Usually the diffuse does not contain light and shadow, as this would look wrong under different lights - but in this case, it could really help to add a "slight" shadow around each beam. God, I thought after 2 days I was finally done with this texture

[Tels]

Tels is certainly contributing in a few different areas recently

 

I take this isn't a complaint

[Tels]

You didn't use normalmap of shingles. Diffuse map is just a colour without shadows and contours and without a normalmap it looks a bit flat. I plan to make a better version some day. You could paste beams from your normal onto shingles normal and maybe it would look better?

 

Yes, I did

 

I am using XCF (Gimp native format) to store layers and layer alpha masks, so you can combine and recombine them in many ways:

 

 

The resulting heightmap here was then run through the Gimp Normalmap plugin:

 

 

The settings I used were 9x9 and a height of 25..85 (I forgot which exact setting I used).

 

First: the shingles should look flat, as the strips are essentially covering the "dips" of the shingles. If the strips didn't cover them, the shingles would be suspended in mid-air

 

Second: The normalmap seems only be able to simulate a certain maximum height - and even then not really step steps. Basically, it only goes from 0 to 255, where 0 is down and 255 is up, but the height difference between these values is quite small.

 

And I am using almost all of the available height difference to make the strips stand out fom the shingles, this leaves very little left for making height "bumps" on the shingles or the wood.

 

If anybody knows how to do this better, he, go on and improve it

[Tels]

Added the shadows:

 

before:

 

after:

 

Hm, I had the idea that if I made only the wood strips as half-transparent texture,thenyou could apply these to different "base" textures, and the base texture could have still the normal normal map. Worth trying I guess