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OrbWeaver

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Note: Due to chronological ordering of posts, an intro/descriptive comment couldn't be inserted before OrbWeaver's post below, so I placed it within.

 

Toward the goal of overhauling the material library, we can use this thread to discuss new additions (created or found), what we need, sets that should be designed, etc. For further and related information, and in the spirit of balance, see also this discussion's sister thread, the chopping block. -Dave

 

 

Normal posting resumes below:

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The new, scratched one looks really good, too. Orbweaver, could you please commit it?

 

I have added it to the hires repository as textures/darkmod/stone/brick/interlocking_angled_grey_d.tga and _local.tga (which reminds me I was supposed to rename them to have "dirty" in the path somewhere, oh well).

 

I'm not sure what I'm supposed to commit into the main repository though -- obviously both of the DDS versions, but what else goes into the textures/ directory? Is it just the TGA version of the normal map and the editor image?

Edited by SneaksieDave
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I have added it to the hires repository as textures/darkmod/stone/brick/interlocking_angled_grey_d.tga and _local.tga (which reminds me I was supposed to rename them to have "dirty" in the path somewhere, oh well).

 

I'm not sure what I'm supposed to commit into the main repository though -- obviously both of the DDS versions, but what else goes into the textures/ directory? Is it just the TGA version of the normal map and the editor image?

 

DDS of the diffuse, TGA of normal map, JPG of editor image as far as I know. Is the normal actually different from the old one? If not, we could re-use the old one for both textures (saving memory).

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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DDS of the diffuse, TGA of normal map, JPG of editor image as far as I know. Is the normal actually different from the old one? If not, we could re-use the old one for both textures (saving memory).

 

Yes the normal is different, because I changed the shape of the stones (added the curves).

 

For some reason the DDS of the diffuse shows up black in game, setting image_usePrecompressedTextures to 0 solves the problem so clearly there is something wrong with the DDS itself. I just exported it as DXT1 using the GIMP's DDS plugin, does it have to be in a particular format or something?

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Yes the normal is different, because I changed the shape of the stones (added the curves).

 

Aaaah, I had thought mabye my eye were going wonky and the screenshot showed some subtle curves.

 

For some reason the DDS of the diffuse shows up black in game, setting image_usePrecompressedTextures to 0 solves the problem so clearly there is something wrong with the DDS itself. I just exported it as DXT1 using the GIMP's DDS plugin, does it have to be in a particular format or something?

 

Gimp does not work, sadly :( Stumbled over this, too:

 

You need ATI compressonator running under wine:

 

http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php/Dds

 

Edit: Actually, couldn't post the relevant section to the wiki, it is here:

 

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=8509&hl=

 

endedit.

 

I got that setup on my PC including a small script to auto-convert TGAs for TDM, so if you upload the TGA I can recompress it easily as DDS tomorrow.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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Gimp does not work, sadly :( Stumbled over this, too:

 

That's a bummer. Do you know why? Surely a DXT-compressed DDS file is pretty standard, especially for the diffuse which doesn't require any channel swizzling or anything.

 

I got that setup on my PC including a small script to auto-convert TGAs for TDM, so if you upload the TGA I can recompress it easily as DDS tomorrow.

 

Well the images themselves are in the hires repository if you want to get started with them, otherwise I will check out the compressonator when I have time. The material decl is basically a copy of interlocking_angled_grey with the images changed and specular stage removed.

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That's a bummer. Do you know why? Surely a DXT-compressed DDS file is pretty standard, especially for the diffuse which doesn't require any channel swizzling or anything.
I'm not sure, but I guess for diffuses this should probably work. Maybe the dds is not power of 2? (tgas that are not power of 2 will just be resized, but dds will simply be black...)
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That's a bummer. Do you know why? Surely a DXT-compressed DDS file is pretty standard, especially for the diffuse which doesn't require any channel swizzling or anything.

 

I don't know why. Maybe it is a bug that that compressonator and Doom3 share?

 

Well the images themselves are in the hires repository if you want to get started with them, otherwise I will check out the compressonator when I have time. The material decl is basically a copy of interlocking_angled_grey with the images changed and specular stage removed.

 

The hires repo is something I cannot check out. For over a year, it gives me the same damn SVN error - no matter on which computer I check it out or where.

 

So I don't even bother to try now, I wasted at least 10h of my life just to check it out over the course of months.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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A diffuse can be compressed with any program, only the normal maps require ATI's compressonator.

 

S we *can* compress normal maps? The wiki is undecided on this issue :)

 

If yes, that's good news, we can reduce the size by a few hundred megabytes easily then. :D

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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I'm not sure, but I guess for diffuses this should probably work. Maybe the dds is not power of 2? (tgas that are not power of 2 will just be resized, but dds will simply be black...)

 

It looks OK to me:

 

~$ file .doom3/darkmod/dds/textures/darkmod/stone/brick/interlocking_angled_dirty_d.dds 
.doom3/darkmod/dds/textures/darkmod/stone/brick/interlocking_angled_dirty_d.dds: Microsoft DirectDraw Surface (DDS), 512 x 512, DXT1

 

Also checked it's fine in the GIMP, maybe it's because I didn't generate mipmaps? I will try exporting again.

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I forgot to update my post -- no, generating mipmaps didn't solve the problem either. Another thing I could try is to use the write DDS functionality of Doom 3 (which I have never tested), but by all means feel free to copy over and add the images from the hires repository.

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I forgot to update my post -- no, generating mipmaps didn't solve the problem either. Another thing I could try is to use the write DDS functionality of Doom 3 (which I have never tested), but by all means feel free to copy over and add the images from the hires repository.

 

I could also generate the same DDS with the compressonator, then we could make a diff between this and the Gimp version?

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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I added OrbWeaver's texture to the repository yesterday evening. I took the liberty to reduce the saturation of the diffusemap by some extent, because it was looking very yellow-ish and the name was saying "interlocking_grey".

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Just uploaded three incredible selections from str8g8:

textures/darkmod/stone/brick/old_worn_blocks_small (this one might need minor tiling fixes)

textures/darkmod/stone/natural/grey_cracked_001

textures/darkmod/stone/natural/grey_cracked_002

 

I'm baffled. What does a person do to get such results? Is crazybump (or whatever other tool) this smart, or is this modeled, or a combination of that and contour maps, or what?

 

Look at that third one; that's a friggin flat wall! :blink:

post-58-1225382463_thumb.jpg

post-58-1225382473_thumb.jpg

post-58-1225382481_thumb.jpg

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Hard to say. Crazy Bump can do a pretty good job, but I think the base tex has to be really good first. Most likely if it was crazy bump then a greyscale image was made from the diffuse then edited.

 

Maybe str8g8 would be willing to share some secrets :)

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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He's a little bit better at it, but I think his technique is about similar to mine. I've taken some of his diffusemaps and ran it through my little process, and the resulting normal was close to what he made.

 

It's basically a mixture of desaturating your diffuse, screwing with the levels, tweaking your lights and darks, then doubling up, overlaying, blurring, and adding different textures to your normalmap. They've got a good tutorial on the normalmapping process over at CGTextures.

 

Crazybump helps with the process, but it can be done easily just using the Nvidia PS plugin or Gimp

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Crazybump helps with the process, but it can be done easily just using the Nvidia PS plugin or Gimp

 

Understatement of the year. I couldn't produce a decent normal map if my life depended on it! :laugh::blink:

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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Hell, it's easy once you figure out the basic rhyme and reason of it all. Read up on that tutorial I mentioned (www.cgtextures.com, then the tutorials tab for reference), it'll help you get started down the road to awesome normalmaps.

 

Also, I did a little write up on how I made that one wall I parallax mapped over on the T3 forums. It's alot more time consuming than the usual method, and not quite as precise, but it can make for some decent normalmaps.

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Hell, it's easy once you figure out the basic rhyme and reason of it all. Read up on that tutorial I mentioned (www.cgtextures.com, then the tutorials tab for reference), it'll help you get started down the road to awesome normalmaps.

 

Also, I did a little write up on how I made that one wall I parallax mapped over on the T3 forums. It's alot more time consuming than the usual method, and not quite as precise, but it can make for some decent normalmaps.

 

Well, just knowing the steps and having the tools doesn't mean you will achieving high-quality results - I can buy a big stone, a chisel and a book about sculpting - but I would still royally suck at it - even with months of training :P

 

Apart from that, I think my time is better spent with programming, and you handle the textures :)

 

Btw, this bit:

 

2. Take your texture into Photoshop and convert it to 16bit color, and then desaturate it.

- We work in 16bit color space with normal maps to avoid color banding later on due to the nature of this process.

 

AFAIK Gimp does not uspport 16 bit color space yet. Bah :(

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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Btw, this bit:

AFAIK Gimp does not uspport 16 bit color space yet. Bah :(

 

I think they just have that in there to sound extra fancy and technical. I've ran both 16 and 32 bit textures through the normalmapper, and I think the only way I'd notice a difference is if I zoom up the texture 1000x and pressed my face against the monitor.

 

Hey, I can remember reading that tutorial: http://www.cgtextures.com/content.php?acti...;name=normalmap. It has been very useful when starting to make some of your own textures. I can recommend it to anyone, it is indeed fast and powerful.

 

Yup, that's it. I would've linked to it myself, but CGTextures likes to hide their URLs.

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