Canon texture packs?

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Originally Posted by ZylonBane

I was going to go with "blotchy". All those light spots and weird discolorations make the wood look like it's been splashed with industrial-strength solvents.

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Those are the colors and intensities present in the original. That's the problem with the texture. For a drop-in replacement, you have to preserve the colors and at the same time make it high resolution.

I don't know how much wood staining you've done, but prior to modern staining techniques and chemicals, wood penetration by stains was not uniform due to differing densities of the wood grain, resulting in a certain bitchiness. Modern pre-treatments minimize that, but back in the day, it was normal to see.

This is all to say that I don't know how to preserve the colors of the original and make it look good as a higher resolution stained wood panel texture. I can minimize the color variation, but it wouldn't be true to the original. Is that what people want to see?

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It looks better, but is less dramatic than the original.

I still see a noticeable seam where the bottom of the texture is purplish, but the top isn't.

Better now? There is a wood grain there, and I think that was all you were seeing. I prefer the one above, myself.

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Yeah, though the seams are still pretty obvious.
I'd assume that the sections between panels would be one solid piece of wood? Or are they not meant to be?

In RL, the rails (horizontal pieces) might be either one solid piece or two pieces (upper and lower), the stiles (vertical pieces) are typically two pieces. That's another reason I'm not to worried about a seam showing sightly, especially on the stiles. I have a version with different grain pattern for the rails and stiles that tile perfectly, but I don't like the look. The grain isn't as nice. I'm still looking for a better grain pattern that I can tile.

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Originally Posted by Beleg Cúthalion

Snip

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You're about my bestest friend forever right now. Though I can't delve deeper into the database your link eventually led me to (which I'm willing to bet has tons more shots buried within), it still provided me with at least 14 excellent, high res samples right from the first image search. Appreciate the help, man. :D

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Originally Posted by ZB

Looks like you applied a heavy noise layer to the books?

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I did on a couple. Kinda regretting it now, too.

Coming back fresh after spending a night and a morning away from it makes me realize that, yeah...I don't like it all that much. Even with all the books in place, it'll probably be pretty ugly if I continue going the way I currently am. I tried making it look more rounded, giving it a little more depth, while trying to maintain the colors and look of the original somewhat at the same time. I ended up failing at both. Plus, I should've made it 1024x instead of 512x.

I think I'm gonna redo it. I'll chalk this one up as a practice run.

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Originally Posted by LarryG

One of the things about that texture that has always bothered me is the lack of dimensionality. Somehow a sense of the 3-D nature of a bookcase needs to be imparted. I think that there needs to be some subtle shadowing, of the shelves on the back of the bookcase, and of books that are slightly pushed forward on books that are slightly pushed backwards. So for shadows to show up, the base color of the back of the bookcase needs to be a lighter shade of brown. Also, when you get to the cobwebs, they need to reinforce the 3-D nature as well.

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I agree. Bookshelves are kinda...er...2Dish anyway, but I'm thinking throwing in a few shadows and making it look a little like this probably wouldn't hurt. I think I can do this while still keeping faithful to at least the proportions of the original.

Link no good. "Direct Linking Not Permitted"

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Originally Posted by LarryG

In RL, the rails (horizontal pieces) might be either one solid piece or two pieces (upper and lower), the stiles (vertical pieces) are typically two pieces. That's another reason I'm not to worried about a seam showing sightly, especially on the stiles. I have a version with different grain pattern for the rails and stiles that tile perfectly, but I don't like the look. The grain isn't as nice. I'm still looking for a better grain pattern that I can tile.

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Okay, fair enough. But your seams look like texture seams, not like the gaps between two separate pieces of wood. If you want the stiles to look like they are made from two pieces of wood, you'll need to draw the edges between them, otherwise it just looks like a texture artefact.

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Originally Posted by LarryG

Link no good. "Direct Linking Not Permitted"

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Here you go.

Either any better?

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or

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Originally Posted by Renzatic

Though I can't delve deeper into the database your link eventually led me to (which I'm willing to bet has tons more shots buried within), it still provided me with at least 14 excellent, high res samples right from the first image search. Appreciate the help, man. :D

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I've found eBay, of all places, to be a surprisingly effective image resource. For example.

The edge pixels still look a bit harsh.

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Originally Posted by LarryG

Either any better?

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I'd go with the bottom one, personally. Looks more natural.

...but I don't know if it works as a drop in replacement now. The shape is now off compared to the original, which might lead to some weirdness in certain situations.

I think this is where we're mostly disagreeing with. I think shape, proportion, and design are more important to the look and feel of the original, rather than complete adherence to absolutely every single shade of color on the original. I mean you don't want to go all out and make a red brick wall a blue one, but there is tons of room for reinterpretation when it comes to raw colors. Specially when you're going from a source that only had a limited selection to choose from during creation, and was tied to an even more limited color index per family.

Think to yourself why that panel is colored that way. Ingame, those purples and reds look like they're there to act as torchlight highlights. You're trying to make them into stains on wood, and you're having to change the shape and look of the texture itself to make those weird ass colors look even a quarter of the way decent.

Think of it like this: you're making a sprite for a modern console game, based off one on an old NES game. You want your update to take advantage of the miracles of modern technology, while still keeping true to the spirit of the original. The NES had 16 colors allowable onscreen, 320x200 resolution, and a 1200 color base palette (this isn't right, but bear with me). On the console, you have up to 1920x1080 resolution, displayable colors and palette both sporting theoretically upwards of 16.7 million colors. When you remake this sprite, you're going to want to capture the look and spirit of the original as closely as possible, but still take advantage of the extra colors and resolution you now have available to you. This doesn't mean you have to use one specific shade of blue for shadows, you have a much larger gradient to work with they did. They only had so much to choose from back in the NES days, and had to get by the best they could. With higher resolutions and a deeper palette, you have much more freedom. What the NES guys had to cheat at and imply to achieve, you can now draw and show.

In other words, you don't want to draw an 800x800 Megaman, then overlay the old 80x80 NES sprite on top of it to get the colors as close as possible. You have to redraw, and reinterpret.

Trying to stick as closely to the colors of the original Thief, as in every highlight, every shadow, every green 5 pixel cluster that's supposed to be moss, is only going to net you janky textures. Stick to the proportions, but reinterpret the colors.

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Originally Posted by ZylonBane

I've found eBay, of all places, to be a surprisingly effective image resource. For example.

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Great! The more books I've got to work with, the merrier.

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Originally Posted by Nameless Voice

The edge pixels still look a bit harsh.

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What does that mean?

The bevel at the top / bottom edge doesn't look like a real gap between two pieces of wood.

Larry: These looks WONDERFUL, except there's a vertical "line" a bit to the right of center in each panel that's bugging the heck out of me. Anything you care to do about that?

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Originally Posted by EmperorSteele

Larry: These looks WONDERFUL, except there's a vertical "line" a bit to the right of center in each panel that's bugging the heck out of me. Anything you care to do about that?

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That "line' is actually part of the natural grain of the wood I used for the texture. But if it bugs you ...

I also tweaked the bevels to try and please NV.

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Edit:

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Originally Posted by Renzatic

...but I don't know if it works as a drop in replacement now. The shape is now off compared to the original, which might lead to some weirdness in certain situations.

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The shape is dead on. I've overlayed the original on top of the new one many times. All the major elements are the same size and location.

I had a version which was a much closer color match as well, but no one seemed to want that. So I'm bowing to the inevitable consensus of preferences expressed here as the definition of an acceptable drop-in replacement.

EDIT2:

Or maybe NV wants a wider shallower bevel? The request is still not clear to me.

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That seam looks better now.

@NV: Which, the 1st or the 2nd?

The second one is maybe going a bit far, it almost looks like the panels are decorative and just glued onto some kind of backing.

I think it should look like the seams were made to look straight and flush, but are made out of two separate pieces of wood, so they don't quite match. Not really bevelled in as such, just a slight gap and a change in the grain of the wood.

Or maybe they were meant to be separate, individually routed panels like that, it's really hard to tell with those tiny original textures.

I'll wait for others to chime in then.

I was hoping ZB would chip in, he's better at explaining how to improve textures.

There have been so many examples posted in this thread I've forgotten what the original looked like.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3018396/CGA.jpg

I don't think LGS' original vision for this was a pink parrot. It could be a blue parrot just as easily.

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Originally Posted by ZylonBane

There have been so many examples posted in this thread I've forgotten what the original looked like.

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go look at http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthrea...=1#post2148195