Just a brief update on the project

[gp]

Sounds good, DieHard. Thanks for the continued work.

[GreatEmerald]

Ah, that explains why Epic S3TC had skybox masking problems, I guess.

[NaliSlayer]

:Dnice sky texture,but dieHard,you are replacing all stock textures in Unreal,are you going to replace the weapon and pawn textures too? (i mean from stock pawns,skaarj's,fish,pupae etc) because the game looks great with S3TC but the low end pawns and weapons suck hell when everything else of the game is high res. :-/

[[§Ŕ] ŤhěxĐâŕkśîđěŕ]

It's not your fault if it works with some maps and not with some others. It's just mappers' fault.

[Hyper]

I would love to see the distant mountain textures in hires! These are so heavily used and the current ones are very low res.

I really love how you did the sky islands, they look very much detailed now. If you can achieve similar results with the mountains than I'll be very happy!

And the moon is looking great to me. No update necessary.

[DieHard SCWS]

Ah, that explains why Epic S3TC had skybox masking problems, I guess.

Well yes and no, its the same problem alright, but without interference from me the textures in UT are fixed. But why now it doesnt work for these i have no idea.

It's not your fault if it works with some maps and not with some others. It's just mappers' fault.  

You are more correct than you think. If a mapper made a good and solid skybox than it should be fine. Because behind the mountains there should always be clouds or stars, which means if the skybox is setup properly the problem should never occur. Only if its a poorly made skybox where the mountain textures actually are the last part of the skybox, than i asume problems will be there.


Though bad mapping will add to the problem, i am not going that far by blaming those mappers. They after all added a non masking texture as last one, not knowing it could lead to problems later on. Its kinda similar to the holo screens in Vortex2. Half of them are added inverted, while the mapper never could forsee, that one day those screens actually can be read..........

If you can achieve similar results with the mountains than I'll be very happy!

Again yes and no. I am almost completelly done with the mountains, i only have have Bryce render the last set thats made of 4 textures(which are made out of 3 sets of renderers, so 12 renders in total). But you really need to keep in mind, that those mountains ingame actually are half a mile high, and are only made out of oné texture!


So yes they will be high res, but not as you are used to see most other textures because the mountains are not textures added to a mesh that represents a mountain, they ARE the mountains. Which means they might have a scalling of 64000%,  128000% or whatever measeure is used to make them sky high.


But of course they will have 1600% more detail than the original textures, but it kinda gets lost due to the sheer size they are used. And i am only saying this upfront so people (hopefully) will realise they will never look as good as other textures that are only scaled up by 100%, 200%, 400% or even 800%


But as far as i can see in tests ingame, if you dont really go zoom in fully on them, they look ahella lotta better


So i guess, dont zoom too much



P.S. On this release i will leave out the structures sitting on top of the floating islands. I simply need much more time to tweak those and mainly to make them apear better in 3D so they look real. Because i already found out they can look ugly real fast, and i need to find a way to make those work nicelly as well. But it even might be impossible, because the textures ARE high res. In this case the high res spoils the mysique that is present in the old textures, you cannot really tell whats there, and that adds highly to the coolness of those.


Effectivelly you need to see theres is something there, but at the same time, you cannot really tell whats there, even though its all in high res  ::) In other words contradictive stuff
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[DieHard SCWS]

you going to replace the weapon and pawn textures too? (i mean from stock pawns,skaarj's,fish,pupae etc)

Forgot to reply on that, but maybe, in time. Though i still might invite a real texture artist to do that work, because theres other people that know how to create those textures alot better than i can. I am not exactly a specialist in creating skins. Aside that, there needs to be found a way to replace them. And its good you asked that, because i should contact Smirftsch about it.


So either a tool needs to be made for it that handles .u files, or all textures need to be reasigned to .utx files, so they wont be sitting in UnrealShare anymore. Which means aside drawing the textures, we also need to overcome the technical difficulties.



In the meantime i took a screenshot from a beta model from the blue mountains. Keep in mind it still needs a bit of tweaking:

[url=http://www.unrealtexture.com/Media/S3TC/BlueMountainsBeta.jpg][img]http://www.unrealtexture.com/Media/S3TC/BlueMountainsBeta_Small.jpg[/img][/url]



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[[]KAOS[]Casey]

a .utx is identical to a .u, they use the same package format and whatnot. Just that utx typically will _only_ contain textures, but can contain more.

In theory it can be done easily, but... I am not too sure. I can give it a shot.

[[§Ŕ] ŤhěxĐâŕkśîđěŕ]

The mountains are awesome

[DieHard SCWS]

a .utx is identical to a .u, they use the same package format and whatnot. Just that utx typically will _only_ contain textures, but can contain more.

In theory it can be done easily, but... I am not too sure. I can give it a shot.

If it would be possible than that certainly would be cool. If i got a tool that handles them than i am sure i can come up with a few updates myself, and as said i could invite a good skin artist to join me on the project.

P.S. to Casey: I am preparing a few packages for you to test the Mergertool with procedural textures. As soon as i released these updates ill have a better look at the subject.





In the meantime i got all textures oin the SkyBox package done, except i need to know if the blue mountains also are used masked ingame.

So does anyone know what maps you can find those blue mountains ?:

[img]http://www.unrealtexture.com/Unreal/Website/TextureDatabase/Unreal/SkyBox/SkyBox/NonGroup/lnd3.gif[/img]


For this screenhot:

[url=http://www.unrealtexture.com/Media/S3TC/BlueMountainsBeta.jpg][img]http://www.unrealtexture.com/Media/S3TC/BlueMountainsBeta_Small.jpg[/img][/url]

I did edit Nyleve. But i need an actual map that uses them to go test them. So the more maps you guys know the better, and preferably stock maps. So theres my request, do you guys know any stock maps that use the blue mountains?




I also had a look at the mountain textures in ShaneDay and ShaneSky but those are alot more tricky to reproduce due to the snow on top of the mountains. The mountains themselves i can do, but the snow......... Thats difficult alright
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[Hyper]

Those blue mountains look familiar, but I can't find them in a quick scan through the stock Unreal maps. Maybe it is only used by a few custom maps?

[DieHard SCWS]

Past days i asumed they would be added as non masked by me, untill yesterday when i couldnt find a reason why they shouldnt be masked. Because i asumed they could not be used masked, but when i checked it in the editor you can make them masked. So for the moment i am gonna add them masked. And we will just see what happens, because i dont want to postpone the releases too much.


But if someone does know a few maps, please post that here so i can have a look at it.





P.S.

While looking at all the stock maps i came across TerraLift, and that map really does show the work on DecayedS, so if you didnt check that map yet, its a cool one to look at
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[[]KAOS[]Casey]

I tried working on the merger to allow searching through .us, but I came across random and strange errors, but since I don't have documents on how the package format works I don't know how I should allow/disallow the suspected errors.

Things will have an invalid super class or and invalid name index, or so I think invalid, I am not too sure..

What was weird is the initial error of why it wouldn't work is because it wouldn't read a "None" as a type, index 0 on the name table is None, but the algorithm for checking decrements by one.. 0-1 = -1 = invalid array index. I'm not quite sure why it subtracts by one.. it could be a bug that has gone unseen.

[DieHard SCWS]

I tried working on the merger to allow searching through .us, but I came across random and strange errors, but since I don't have documents on how the package format works I don't know how I should allow/disallow the suspected errors.

And Smirftsch cant provide documents on them? Or in that respect any kind of needed info?
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[[]KAOS[]Casey]

well I'm sure I could contact the UTPT or wotgreal guys about it.

[DieHard SCWS]

Right, you could ask Cordero, he has hiw own site now at: http://www.acordero.org And he is still activelly working on the UT package tools.
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[GreatEmerald]

In the meantime i got all textures oin the SkyBox package done, except i need to know if the blue mountains also are used masked ingame.

So does anyone know what maps you can find those blue mountains ?:

[img]http://www.unrealtexture.com/Unreal/Website/TextureDatabase/Unreal/SkyBox/SkyBox/NonGroup/lnd3.gif[/img]


For this screenhot:

[url=http://www.unrealtexture.com/Media/S3TC/BlueMountainsBeta.jpg][img]http://www.unrealtexture.com/Media/S3TC/BlueMountainsBeta_Small.jpg[/img][/url]

The texture thumbnail looks nice, but once zoomed in, it looks unsmooth, a lot of sharp polygons. From the thumbnail, however, they look almost exactly like those in Severnaya of Unreal II
Also, if you need to leave a kind of a mystery, maybe some kind of a fog effect could work?

Right, you could ask Cordero, he has hiw own site now at: [url=http://www.acordero.org/]http://www.acordero.org[/url] And he is still activelly working on the UT package tools.
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I don't think he is. Last update was in 2007. Also, your link won't work for some reason, YaBB probably doesn't want you entering http:// for some reason, since this works:
http://www.acordero.org

[DieHard SCWS]

The texture thumbnail looks nice, but once zoomed in, it looks unsmooth, a lot of sharp polygons.

Yeah, but as said that was a beta test, But it cannot be avoided completelly, but i did post screenshots from the final version on BU, so no harm to post those here as well:


OLD:
[url=http://www.unrealtexture.com/Media/S3TC/BlueMountainsold01.jpg][img]http://www.unrealtexture.com/Media/S3TC/BlueMountainsold01_Small.jpg[/img][/url]

NEW:
[url=http://www.unrealtexture.com/Media/S3TC/BlueMountainsAdvancedBeta01.jpg][img]http://www.unrealtexture.com/Media/S3TC/BlueMountainsAdvancedBeta01_Small.jpg[/img][/url]

I don't think he is. Last update was in 2007. Also, your link won't work for some reason, YaBB probably doesn't want you entering http:// for some reason, since this works:
[url=http://www.acordero.org]http://www.acordero.org[/url]

Right, i completelly forgot about that bug. ill edit my post as well.
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[GreatEmerald]

Ah, that looks better! Could do with a little more smoothing, but it's cool now as well.

[DieHard SCWS]

For this update it will be like seen above. But i might work on it again in a future update, because than i do have a solid base to work from which i didnt had before.


On top of that the screenshot is taken in a modified Nyleve, and i hope that most maps that use them are alot more dark than that map, so they blend in into the dark more, which makes the blue mountains fade more. And its the Blue mountains that need a bit more tweaking on the (too) sharp polygones.


But the program i use is very unforgiving, i cannot go back into history, nor can i copy out meshes decently to store them if a change goes bad. So for now its what is seen above, and the mountains on the foreground are pretty much as good as i can get them. And in the meantime ill see if i can get me a copy from Terra Edit to see if i can make much more complex mountains. The shareware version i have from Terra Edit is only limited to 512 pixels i believe(and i need 4096 pixels at least), which is why i tried it in Bryce which is a full copy that can pretty much render as high as i want.
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[DieHard SCWS]

I am testing a better program to see if i can get better versions for the mountains. But for this update they will stay as they are, so dont get your hopes up on the exanmple below:

[url=http://www.unrealtexture.com/Media/S3TC/MountainsNewBeta01.jpg][img]http://www.unrealtexture.com/Media/S3TC/MountainsNewBeta01_Small.jpg[/img][/url]


On itself the program looks promising and i do get cool results, but i still dont know if you can actually create individual mountains in the shapes i want. And that of course is crucial. The program has tons of options to tweak everything, but you still depend on what the program comes up with. Bryce allowes you to add and shape individual mountains or structures like the floating islands. But needs to be said, the mountains themselves look very natural.


And i am getting results right now, but i presume it will take a couple a months before i am able to produce what i want, if its possible......
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[Hyper]

The texture thumbnail looks nice, but once zoomed in, it looks unsmooth, a lot of sharp polygons.

Yeah, but as said that was a beta test, But it cannot be avoided completelly, but i did post screenshots from the final version on BU, so no harm to post those here as well:


OLD:
[url=http://www.unrealtexture.com/Media/S3TC/BlueMountainsold01.jpg][img]http://www.unrealtexture.com/Media/S3TC/BlueMountainsold01_Small.jpg[/img][/url]

NEW:
[url=http://www.unrealtexture.com/Media/S3TC/BlueMountainsAdvancedBeta01.jpg][img]http://www.unrealtexture.com/Media/S3TC/BlueMountainsAdvancedBeta01_Small.jpg[/img][/url]

I don't think he is. Last update was in 2007. Also, your link won't work for some reason, YaBB probably doesn't want you entering http:// for some reason, since this works:
[url=http://www.acordero.org]http://www.acordero.org[/url]

Right, i completelly forgot about that bug. ill edit my post as well.
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This looks awesome. Those low-res mountains always were a pain in the eye for me. This finally fixes it. Great work, as usual!

[GreatEmerald]

The latest mountains look perfect! Don't forget that if a program can't do something for you, you can always alter the render in Photoshop

[gp]

I was always hopeful that these mountains would be improved someday. These examples are looking great, and I am looking forward to seeing how they end up, thanks for your effort!

[[§Ŕ] ŤhěxĐâŕkśîđěŕ]

No idea how you make that stuff but it's awesome