new textures

[Turboman.]

i did what you asked and sent you an email diehard, could you plz inform me (either by email or via the board) if it arrived and if you got the textures?

[DieHard SCWS]

I am downloading right now


Ill have a look at it tomorrow (3.43 in the morning here)


If its all correct than ill add it to the database tomorrow, though i still need to make the pages :-/
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[DieHard SCWS]

I made a stupid mistake


I misread on what package you are working on, i thought you wrote about Starship, which you see in my reply above.


I am fully working on the PlayrShip package and basically i have already created all bases for all textures. Except for the ones already done and visible on the website, i am working simultaniously on some 60 other textures from that package, because the bases from almost all of those are linked together. those are not on the site yet because they are all half done, almost done or any variation in between.


The stupid thing is, i have been working for the past 10 full hours on the textures, accidentelly also on the blood textures, so i just couldn't believe it when i received yours, not sure i had to laugh or cry..........


Those were the last textures i finished, while working on them i was downloading your file, and when i finished the blood textures i wanted to take a fast look at what you had made before i went to bed, and than.......... i just couldnt believe it.........

But i guess its all my fault, i completelly misread on what package you wanted to work on


At this moment i am very tired and its 5.38 in the morning overhere, ill give you a decent reply by mail tomorrow. Besides that, i think we need to have a better contact with eachother, i will also sent you info and logins for TeamSpeak so we can have a chat, instead of typing to eachother. I think doing that is a smart idea.


As it is now, most of the textures you made cannot be used unless i throw some 70 textures in the recyclebin



As said i am very tired now (my eyes are hanging on my feet), and i need to give your textures a better look tomorrow to see if they can be added or not in combination what i already made.


I definatelly ow you an apology about this............ and i for sure hope you not too disapointed


So its not your fault just me being very stupid....
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[Smirftsch]

relax, s*h*i*t happens, i'm sure turboman sees it the same way

[Turboman.]

i'm sorry but i dont have teamspeak, although you can always contact me via email or msn messenger (both are at same email as i sent you).

if you contact me we can always sort things out, and maybe make a more clear plan, its np if the textures i made dont match and cannot be used, i'm curious how your textures worked out though and very maybe we can combine them somehow?

ps: there may be an icq number in my profile, but it isnt active since i abandoned that years ago.

[Hyper]

[...]

ps: there may be an icq number in my profile, but it isnt active since i abandoned that years ago.

Then update your profile

[DieHard SCWS]

I did sent you a mail for TeamSpeak anyway, i prefer TS over yahoo or msn because of my hands :-/


I did have a look at the blood textures, if i compare yours and mine in Photoshop than mine do have more detail, however, yours definatelly look very cool, and above all you used a much better mergingmethod, one i am desperatelly looking for in the past months.


To make a decision i added both your and mine texture in a S3TC testmap, and i think i prefer yours above mine but still not sure lol, maybe its the combination of both techniques i would like to see. Your clearness in the color and merging and mine detail somehow.


For now however i choose yours to be added in the package. For the blood textures i am not worried about a later incompatabillity problem, they only combine with the already excisting S3TC floor.
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[Xavious]

Yeps but it seems to me that many people don't like actually speaking to each other over the internet...It just doesn't seem right to me...

[Hyper]

I rather Type than speak in online games. Speaking is an offline thing for me, except for the telephone then :p

[DieHard SCWS]

To me its not really a choice, i can completelly wreck my hands for a week in about 5 minutes of yahoo typechat.


Typing on this forum is a big strain on my hands for me, and for me, i am used to go voice, if there is something to talk about, talking makes speed up things 10 times faster.


And actually, i love to be on TS, in general its great fun to even be on TS itself, to me it adds big part in a social game , i would not want it anymore without it.
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[Smirftsch]

usin ventrillo here...but havin ts installed as well, what server do u prefere ?

[DieHard SCWS]

Do you want the logindetail Smirftsch, i can sent them by mail.


The Celtic Warriors have their own TeamSpeakserver.
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[Smirftsch]

send me

[DieHard SCWS]

Should be there
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[Turboman.]

diehard, sorry if i havent sent you those other textures yet, i had quite afew other things to do in the past weeks, hopefully i will get to do it in the next few days...

also i noticed the opengl driver has been updated with MASKED TEXTURE SUPPORT, however does anyone know how to make textures masked? (does it work with alpha? or some special hack?)

[DieHard SCWS]

You live in Holland too, so you know its hot, i haven't been able to do anything with the textures myself last 2 / 3 weeks due to my eyeproblems that worsened because of that heat

To your question, for now Alpha is a no go, unless you find a way to use them without errors.

But masked can be done alright. In this explanation i use UT2004 editor.

I know you can asign different colors for Masking, but in general all parts in a picture that are 100% black will be recognised by all editors as being able to make the texture Masked. So in effect all 100% black will be your Masked areas.


- To bypass wrong DXT settings i always safe files as TGA(Targa) Photoshop 7 needs the Targa patch which you can find on the tools downloadsection !!!

- Open the UT2004 editor

- Import a texture (without an Alpha channel)

- During import you can give a packagename and groupname, you also have to check "Masked" and "Generate Mipmaps"

- Than rightclick on the textures and choose properties, go to surface and set bAlphaTexture to "True"

- It is double work, but if you don't do both than they won't show up Masked in the Unreal editor !!

- Than rightclick on each texture again and choose: Compress: DXT1, the editor will block each time for a few seconds when it saves that texture compression)

- After saving and running the S3TCext_Version_03 load the package in Unreal, if correct the texture will be Masked, though i also double check its setting there too.

- Than of course you have to change ALL the DrawScale settings from all the S3TC textures in that package.


In the Texture Database you can find the original settings for each texture.

For calculation always do this: original size divide through the new size will give you the right scalesetting.

Example(always pick one of the sides for calculations, either the height or the width):
original 128 x 256
S3TC 1024 x 2028

is:

128 : 1024 = 0.125000

or

256 : 2048 = 0.125000

As said you can choose either side, just don't go mix sides

How big can you make the textures is another question, seeing the NO LAG i have in full S3TC maps it seems that a general size of 1024 does not effect the game at all.


Walls, floors, ceilings, elevators can safelly saved as 1024, this also aplies to rare textures like all the sky and outside backgroundstuff (which you are working on now?)


Even better, if you refer now to the SkyBox texture, they often are used as hugh textures, maybe even choose there 2048 as longest size and see what happens if you play a map that has them all visible at once.


For all decorations and stuff like that, a good one maybe is scale them all up times 4, so that would be:

(for the longest side)
16 = 64
32 = 128
64 = 256
128 = 512
256 = 1024
512 = 1024 (i wouldn't go higher than that for decorations)


All sizes above is an asumption on my part after numerous tests that this all theoretically could work , but do read theoretically


It is for that reason also a pitty i am behind in my work, because the textures i work on will make DmSinfonia FULL S3TC including all decorations (lockers, bloodstains, screens, holograms) and i would have know exact by now how far we could go in size without running into lag problems :-/ But as said, so far i am surprized that you can make them that big without lag.


Initially i all my calculations i came to the conclusion you never could go higher than twice the original size, but that seems now completelly untrue ..... So far....


4 times could be the standard, and maybe even 8 times...
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[Turboman.]

i started working on genearth.utx and made two versions of the rock texture, but now i need your help on deciding which version to use.

the first version is simply the original ran through a bump filter to give it a high detail, while they look like the originals the problem is that the s3tc effect isnt much more then using detailtextures

the second one is a totally redone version, which has all kinds of new details however doesnt really look like the originals.

a side by side comparison.
http://intranet.connectics.nl/Turbo/Shared%20Documents/Unreal/rockcomparison.jpg



your choice ppl, they both have their advantages and disadvantages

[Smirftsch]

i'd prefer the version to the right.

[StalwartUK]

I prefer the version on the left.

[Hyper]

i'd prefer the version to the right.

Same for me. The detail is much richer.

[StalwartUK]

Same for me. The detail is much richer.

But doesn't resemble the original.

[Xavious]

Does that really matter so much? It looks nicer, thats the main thing.

[Hyper]

But doesn't resemble the original.

It does. I never saw such accurate textures in a re-texturing project than these. But when you want to make them really higher quality they will always look somehow different.

(Imagine this: Even when you go to the "real" planet NaPali with a highres camera to take new photo's of the materials for texture useage they will also look slightly different)

When you are really conservative you probably should stay away from new textures at all.

[Hyper]

Does that really matter so much? It looks nicer, thats the main thing.

Well, they also have to be a good replacement for the originals, but these textures do this.

[DieHard SCWS]

At first i was gonna say, i like the right one more, only with more colorations.


But than i realized i have been working on that package before, but went ahead with the other package, because at that time i did not really master rockfaces. And i recall that that package has alotta S3TC textures in it already.


I noticed that the database does not give the already Epic made S3TC texture (guess i forgot to add them lol) Ill do that asap.


In fact this package contains the most already S3TC textures compared to any other package.


Having a look again at the texture you made, i would not change that texture, [url=http://www.celticwarriors.net/website/S3TC/S3TCTextures/GenEarth/RockS3TC/Wrcka4.jpg]Wrcka4[/url] can be used as base for all the missing variations (8 variations) on that rockface, simply by making (a) new colored layer(s) as overlay.

You can make those variations in basically a few hours(like you already did with the blood textures ).

Seeing the new one you created from scratch you already proove (it looks perfect ) you can make them just fine. If i were you, go create with that technique the completelly missing rocks that are in that package.


The choice you made to go work on that package is perfect too, i am sure you are able to complete the whole package to be honest while the result is awsome.


I have done the same thing, where possible if there is a serie of textures that only differ in color, than take the most basic S3TC texture that is already present and use that one to create the missing variations. In this case [url=http://www.celticwarriors.net/website/S3TC/S3TCTextures/GenEarth/RockS3TC/Wrcka4.jpg]Wrcka4[/url] is there already as S3TC and is in mono color, you can use that one to make all the missing 8 ones (4 are already S3TC)


Side note on above: The Wrcka4 is not just an S3TC texture, IT IS THE ORIGINAL texture used by Epic to make the normal Unreal textures !!!!! So i would never change that !


That same goes for [url=http://www.celticwarriors.net/website/S3TC/S3TCTextures/GenEarth/Ground/Ice.gif]Ice[/url] and [url=http://www.celticwarriors.net/website/S3TC/S3TCTextures/GenEarth/GroundS3TC/Ice2.jpg]Ice2[/url], [url=http://www.celticwarriors.net/website/S3TC/S3TCTextures/GenEarth/GroundS3TC/Ice2.jpg]Ice2[/url] is already S3TC, [url=http://www.celticwarriors.net/website/S3TC/S3TCTextures/GenEarth/Ground/Ice.gif]Ice[/url] is just a different color from [url=http://www.celticwarriors.net/website/S3TC/S3TCTextures/GenEarth/GroundS3TC/Ice2.jpg]Ice2[/url], therefore simply recolor [url=http://www.celticwarriors.net/website/S3TC/S3TCTextures/GenEarth/GroundS3TC/Ice2.jpg]Ice2[/url] and you will have [url=http://www.celticwarriors.net/website/S3TC/S3TCTextures/GenEarth/Ground/Ice.gif]Ice[/url].


My advice; stay away from making them from scratch if there is already a base S3TC available ! And use your from scratch technique only for the completelly missing S3TC textures.


As said the one you made from scratch looks damn good , so use it to make the missing ones and not on the variations on excisting ones.


Another side note, that one is not tileable (yet?), if you don't know how, i can make a how to for you.


This is one of the packages that can be 100% completed with some effort !!! The only problem i can see in that package is the grass and straw, but if you have a HIGH quality Photo from both than you are able to create the paths in them with ease, i am sure of that...... your good enough


I am not criticising your work at all, most of what i saw from you uptill now is simply said, great work, imho the aproach is somewhat wrong , not your work .
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