Steele on 9/8/2016 at 15:35
So. Most people are using Tafferpatcher, and the EP2 that goes along with it. This is fine, except that I personally do NOT like many of the texture replacements, and would like to override them in my FM.
However, a lot of the old textures look absolutely horrible next to the new ones, which seem to have an insane level of detail and some bump-mapping. No matter how big or sharpened I make an image, the game doesn't want to render it as "nicely" as the EP textures. Therefore, I was wondering what process was used to make these textures so that I can upgrade the existing ones I want to use.
I noticed the files in the EP are different... I can't open them with any program that I have. Photoshop apparently has some UV options now, but I haven't figured out how to get them to work.
Any assistance would be much appreciated!
gigagooga on 9/8/2016 at 16:22
Quote Posted by Steele
No matter how big or sharpened I make an image, the game doesn't want to render it as "nicely" as the EP textures.
So... what are you actually doing in this case?
Yandros on 9/8/2016 at 16:39
If you're making your replacements by just resizing the original texture up to 512x512 and sharpening it, then of course it isn't going to look as good as the ones in the EP. Those were handcrafted from scratch to be drop-in hi-res replacements for the originals. What exactly are you wanting to do here?
Steele on 9/8/2016 at 16:49
Quote Posted by gigagooga
So... what are you actually doing in this case?
Converting the texture to rbg color, increasing both the size and resolution, applying shaprening techniques, manually editing out stray pixels, then shrinking it back down to normal size. But no matter what I do, it doesn't look very different in-game, and still looks soft and blurry compared to the EP textures.
I finally found an option in photoshop to make a bumpmap, but it doesn't look like I can save it as the same extension as the ones in the EP =/
gigagooga on 9/8/2016 at 17:20
Quote Posted by Steele
... then shrinking it back down to normal size.
Don't shrink it back, and see what happens.
Steele on 9/8/2016 at 17:51
Quote Posted by gigagooga
Don't shrink it back, and see what happens.
It looks big and blurry in-game. I can then shrink it in-game by going down to size 15, but that's barely any better.
Steele on 9/8/2016 at 18:14
This is part of the problem:
(
http://imgur.com/a/TK8NJ)
Those lines on the white half? Are only ONE pixel wide. But there's details on the EB-ified window wall which are smaller and more clear/sharp. These are both at default size 16. Thief automatically magnifies textures by default (that white image is only 128x128), but somehow this isn't affecting the EB textures. So it's looking like no matter how much detail I put into a texture, individual pixels are going to show unless I shrink it down to size like 13, or unless I can somehow get bumpmapping or something to work.
voodoo47 on 9/8/2016 at 18:22
you need to create a mtl file and specify the original texture size so the engine would load the new hires texture properly without stretching it. EP2 should be full of them, see those for reference.
Yandros on 9/8/2016 at 18:25
Look in the EP and notice those .mtl files which have the same filename as the higher res textures. They tell NewDark to treat the higher res textures as if they were actually lower res so they can be dropped in as replacements without having to reduce the scale in Dromed. You need one of those for your textures as well.
However, you're missing the point that you can't scale up a low res image and do much of anything to it and expect it to look very good compared to a texture which was originally created at higher resolutions, like the ones in the EP. If it were that easy, texture artists would mostly be out of work.
Steele on 9/8/2016 at 18:43
Well, unfortunately, I can't "see those" because I don't have a program capable of opening them. Though, knowing how they work, I can work around it.
Yandros: Good point. Guess I'll have to find and take pictures of some nice-looking stonework, and edit that instead (I tried making a texture from scratch... didn't look convincing at ALL, heh). And I guess I'll just have to have size 15/14 textures all over the place, hope people can still run my mission if I do that!
