Enhanced Monster Skins

[Lightning_Hunter]

Skywolf, I am using 2048x2048 24-bit BMP that I do not want to reduce the quality of.  As such, I am not indexing/converting the images at all. I am importing the 24-bit BMP files directly in to UnrealED.  As I already stated above, I know the masked texture works if I convert the image to 256 color Unreal palette using the program Bright (which, btw, is far better than GIMP and Photoshop at converting images to 256 colors).  Also, these files are not 227 exclusive.  In fact, I am creating them for UT99 first before I even release them for 227.

What I need help on is figuring out how to make the texture masked using 24-bit BMP.

In the meantime, here is a near-complete Krall.  I just need to fix the staff masking bug, and it should be done.  This skin took nearly 100 layers in photoshop to complete (all of those layers created using the Laso tool)!  The Krall definitely has a lot of different parts to it.  I think some of the other models will be easy in comparison.

[img]http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y226/l_hunter8/Krall2.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y226/l_hunter8/Krall.jpg[/img]

Old Krall:
[img]http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y226/l_hunter8/KrallOld.jpg[/img]

Once again, make sure to click the images to blow them up!

[Skywolf]

Skywolf, I am using 2048x2048 24-bit BMP that I do not want to reduce the quality of.  As such, I am not indexing/converting the images at all.  I am importing the 24-bit BMP files directly in to UnrealED.  As I already stated above, I know the masked texture works if I convert the image to 256 color Unreal palette using the program Bright (which, btw, is far better than GIMP and Photoshop at converting images to 256 colors).  Also, these files are not 227 exclusive.  In fact, I am creating them for UT99 first before I even release them for 227.

What I need help on is figuring out how to make the texture masked using 24-bit BMP.

Then you're out of luck. As far as I know. Using .DDS files and AlphaBlend is the only way to get the maximum image quality Unreal allows (which is DXT5 compression) and have some form of masking in it. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong though.

As for the skins, Shouldn't the red paint be less vibrant and more washed out? It seems to be that way in the original texture. Other than that is looks pretty good.

[Lightning_Hunter]

Then you're out of luck. As far as I know. Using .DDS files and AlphaBlend is the only way to get the maximum image quality Unreal allows (which is DXT5 compression) and have some form of masking in it. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong though.

If .DDS will work for UT99 as well, then maybe someone can help me get it imported (seriously, I looked at a tutorial twice in the past and gave up both times).  24-bit BMP file is just far easier to use, and is 100% lossless.  The only advantage so far that I have run across for .DDS is with masked textures.  I would be shocked if there was no way for UT99 to work with masked BMP files.

As for the skins, Shouldn't the red paint be less vibrant and more washed out? It seems to be that way in the original texture. Other than that is looks pretty good.

I also considered making the paint less vibrant (believe it or not, it was even more vibrant to begin with).  The reason I ended up not doing so is because it looks so much better with the added contrast between the skin and the red paint.  I'll bet Epic would have done the same thing, but they had the 256 color restriction.  Converting the image to the Unreal palette probably turned the paint more of a yellow/brown color.  Of course, if people really do feel strongly about it, I can make the paint less saturated.  I just think it looks really snappy with a stronger red hue.  From a distance, the skin looks identical to the original (which is my goal), so I don't think it makes that much difference!

[Kajgue]

The Krall is nice, good work.

But yeah, I'd agree, maybe tone down the strength of the borders of the tattoos, even a very thin gradient should work just to take some of the 'sharpness' off of it.

Pretty good so far.

[Lightning_Hunter]

The Krall is nice, good work.

But yeah, I'd agree, maybe tone down the strength of the borders of the tattoos, even a very thin gradient should work just to take some of the 'sharpness' off of it.

Pretty good so far.

I can easily blend the edges of the paint using feathering, but Skywolf was talking about the saturation of the paint, not the edges.  Does the color of the paint need to be changed, or should I just blend the edges?

Edit: Oh, and btw, I don't really know how to use gradients with layers that have pattern overlays applied. Is it even possible? I only ever messed with gradients a few times. It's probably a useful tool I should learn. Everything I have learned from photoshop has been self-taught. Most of the time, I haven't even looked up tutorials!

[Kajgue]

If the tattoo is on another layer, I would use a feint erasor on the edges just to dampen them a bit, just make sure you don't erase those edges too much, just enough for them to blend smoothly

[Lightning_Hunter]

Hows this?  I ended up feathering it a bit, because there are far too many edges on that layer to do it manually (besides, I've done enough manual editing on this skin!).  I also changed the hue to be more brown like the original, although I still think the red looks better...

[img]http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y226/l_hunter8/KrallNew.jpg[/img]

[Lightning_Hunter]

Actually, I realized the last edit to the Krall skin made the paint look a bit blurry, so I did another modification:
[img]http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y226/l_hunter8/KrallNew2.jpg[/img]

[Lightning_Hunter]

Krall Elite:

[img]http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y226/l_hunter8/KrallElite.jpg[/img]

[Skywolf]

Looking good .

As for the masking. From what I can find does it seem that DXT5 support is exclusive to 227 anyway. From the wiki:

• Added: DXT3/DXT5 support and the necessary additions to UED2. Any format can be chosen during import of bmp files (32bpp) directly in UED now.

[url]http://www.oldunreal.com/wiki/index.php?title=227_release_notes[/url]

UT compresses textures to a 256 color map regardless (and in my experience does a pretty shitty job at it). If you want to get the most image quality out of the textures you will have to create seperate versions for UT that uses 256 indexed colors while the 227 package uses DXT5 compression (with AlphaBlend).

[gopostal]

Damn, these look good. You should be proud.

[Lightning_Hunter]

Thanks for the comments, everyone.  I am going to work on the Skaarj next.  Honestly, it should be easy compared to the Krall.

Looking good .

UT compresses textures to a 256 color map regardless (and in my experience does a pretty shitty job at it). If you want to get the most image quality out of the textures you will have to create seperate versions for UT that uses 256 indexed colors while the 227 package uses DXT5 compression (with AlphaBlend).

Actually, that is incorrect information - at least with the UTGLR OpenGL and D3D9 renderers (I'm not sure about the default Direct3d).  24-bit BMP files are loaded in the game just fine with no quality loss or compression.  Just look at the screenshots I have posted.  I just have to find a way to get masking to work.

[Skywolf]

I see. It was the editor using software renderer that made it look like shit .

Still, Dont think there is a way to get masked textures to work without indexing the textures to 256 colors. Except when using either Software or Direct3D renderer. And on those you wont get any advantage from importing with more colors anyway.

But is the loss of quality really that bad? Can you post comparison screenshots?

[Lightning_Hunter]

I checked it out just now, and Bright does a pretty good job at converting the Krall skin to 256 colors with very minimal loss. I can only contribute this to the fact that I mostly stuck with the original colors, and the Krall skins aren't all that colorful. There are some minor differences between the 256 color and 24-bit skins, including minor hue changes of the straps/belts (barely noticeable), and the middle of the chest gets a little bit grainy if you really look at it closely. The Krall Elite skin is mostly ok, except for the eyes - which becomes somewhat desaturated with 256 colors. I can edit the pcx after conversion to fix the eyes, but I would have to do this more than once if I modify the original skin at all.

For now, the solution will be to use 256 colors for the Krall, but I hope someone can find a way to get masking to work with the 24-bit BMP files. I would certainly like the full quality images used, even though the difference is minor.

[Skywolf]

You can get a little creative and remove the need for masked textures all together. Like by filling up the whole triangle that makes up the metal parts of the Krall's weapon.

[Lightning_Hunter]

You can get a little creative and remove the need for masked textures all together. Like by filling up the whole triangle that makes up the metal parts of the Krall's weapon.

I can do that as long as all the purists out there have no issue with it. It is true that the metal parts of the staff look a bit ridiculous, being 2D and all.

[Lightning_Hunter]

Here is a first version of the Skaarj Warrior.  I need some opinions before I use this style to create the other 5 Skaarj skins.  Otherwise, I will have to modify them all, since I am using this as a base. This skin was surprisingly hard to deal with. It was difficult finding the correct details that both keep the faithful Skaarj look, while looking more detailed at the same time...

[img]http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y226/l_hunter8/SkaarjW.jpg[/img]

Old Skaarj:
[img]http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y226/l_hunter8/SkaarjWold.jpg[/img]

[gopostal]

I like it, and bonus for using Nyleve as the background. One thing that's starting to worry me though is are these going to be improved so much that they start to jump out from the level and no longer fit within the art style of the rest of the map?

[Lightning_Hunter]

I like it, and bonus for using Nyleve as the background. One thing that's starting to worry me though is are these going to be improved so much that they start to jump out from the level and no longer fit within the art style of the rest of the map?

Well, the skins are intended to fit in with the S3TC textures.  They are definitely not more detailed than the textures by Diehard, so they should fit in fine.  I actually disabled S3TC textures in the last few screenshots for testing purposes, because it takes longer to load the map.  Also, I would like to note that these skins look almost identical to the original skins when viewed from a distance.  It is only when you see the skin up close that all these new details come out, which was my intention.  I just thought the Unreal skins looked way too blurry up close, especially when compared to the new textures by Diehard.

It sure would be nice to get some help with detailing some of the other objects though! I wonder if any artists on this forum would like to work on the Unreal weapons?

[Skywolf]

Looking good .

As for weapons. I think those need alot more than just some higher quality textures aka remoddeling with more polygons. I already though about doing the modeling and animating part as I have some experience with that in the past (not texturing though) but I have no idea how to export/import animation from/to Blender or whatever program is compatible with Unreal's format.

[Lightning_Hunter]

As for weapons. I think those need alot more than just some higher quality textures aka remoddeling with more polygons. I already though about doing the modeling and animating part as I have some experience with that in the past (not texturing though) but I have no idea how to export/import animation from/to Blender or whatever program is compatible with Unreal's format.

I actually rather like the Unreal weapon models.  I think they are far better than the UT99 weapon models, anyway.  If anyone decides to remodel them, it will be very difficult to get some high quality player hands and animations for reloading.  In fact, I've never seen a remodeling project to date that has good reloading animations.  In some cases, the players hands are missing altogether (Dani J's unfinished Shotgun for Doom).  The only good project for weapons is Quake3 Generations, and they still haven't finished weapon animations after years and years of work!  We might be better off just creating new skins for the default Unreal models.

Anyway, I've done some updates to the Skaarj Skin before moving on to the next skin.  Something about the chest bothered me before, so I've done some reworking.  I forgot to add the nipples before, so now they are back.   This is also my new (crappy) map for testing/screenshots.  I slapped it together in 10 minutes to have neutral lightning, so I can see all the details on the skin for testing purposes.  Also, the map loads faster than Nyleve's Falls.

[img]http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y226/l_hunter8/SkaarjW_1.jpg[/img]

[Lightning_Hunter]

Skaarj Berserker:

[img]http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y226/l_hunter8/SkaarjBNew.jpg[/img]

Old:

[img]http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y226/l_hunter8/SkaarjBOld.jpg[/img]

[Skywolf]

I actually rather like the Unreal weapon models.  I think they are far better than the UT99 weapon models, anyway.  If anyone decides to remodel them, it will be very difficult to get some high quality player hands and animations for reloading.  In fact, I've never seen a remodeling project to date that has good reloading animations.  In some cases, the players hands are missing altogether (Dani J's unfinished Shotgun for Doom).  The only good project for weapons is Quake3 Generations, and they still haven't finished weapon animations after years and years of work!  We might be better off just creating new skins for the default Unreal models.

Dont think it would be that hard with the right software. Unreal uses vertex animations. So if you can export the animation and then just recreate them with higher quality models it should look pretty good. Although using skeletal animation would probably look better considering the sometimes weird deformations that happen in vertex animations. Also, the only weapon with a hand model in the Automag .

Skaarj is looking pretty good. Am only a bit disturbed with how one of the nipples is streched out . I know this also happens in the original texture but with these higher quality textures it's alot more visible. Wonder if you can adjust the texture to somewhat fix this.

[Turboman.]

nice rework, the skaarj looks quite a bit sharper

not really liking the addition of nipples though, can't remember the original having those. And what's the point of those anyway? we know Skaarj aren't mammals

[Lightning_Hunter]

nice rework, the skaarj looks quite a bit sharper

not really liking the addition of nipples though, can't remember the original having those. And what's the point of those anyway? we know Skaarj aren't mammals

The Skaarj actually do have nipples.  You have to look at the original skins very closely.  The Skaarj Warrior skin has the most obvious nipples.  Just take a look at my comparison from the high-res skin vs. the old skin on the last page. Even the Skaarj Hybrid from UT has nipples!

I can try to make the nipples less visible, but I'm not sure it will look as sharp.