What's up with making some of the cowebs look like..... saliva? Clear ectoplasm?Originally Posted by Renzatic
I figured out I'm quite good at drawing snot, and wanted to flex my abilities.
To me, it looks like halloween haunted house cobwebs if anything. Let me see if brightening it up a bit fixes it.
edit: check out the previous page. I might need to soften up a couple.
Yes, welcome to last week.
I would say that the cobwebs are made out of yarn. They are way too thick. They should be thin and wispy.
If they're too thin, then you barely notice them. What I'm trying to go for is an effect somewhat like this, but made a little thicker and dustier so they stand out more...
I've only got so much resolution to work with, and the shadows over the books obscure, so I either have to make them a little thick, or make them overly bright if you want to notice them. I went with thicker, since it looks better to me.
So how's this?
You're going to hate me for this, but the thing that's annoying me the most about that texture now is the fact that so many of the books are really thick, whereas most of the books in the original texture were thin.
Look at the bottom-left shelf, for example - the are much fewer, fatter books there in the new version than in the original, where the shelf was cram-packed full of thinner volumes (which looked more like a large reference collection of similar titles, rather than assorted books.)
These were probably meant to be something like log books, which would be thin and same-y looking. Keepers love to write everything down, so them having shelves filed with logs would make perfect sense.
Contrast the top-left shelf, which looks spot-on in terms of the size and shapes of the books there.
The books in the original texture also look really tightly packed, whereas all these thick books give too much of an impression of empty space. A Keeper library should be packed and overflowing with books.
The looser, less organised look in this texture fits more with the rescore bookcase families (you wouldn't expect e.g. Ramirez to have as well-organised bookshelves as the Keepers.)
Last edited by Nameless Voice; 26th Oct 2012 at 06:07.
Sigh. Damn. If you, ZB and Larry all agree it should be redone, I'll do it. It'll take a vote to move me, because I kinda like it as is.
...but
If you all do you agree to it, I want to work on another texture first. I've spent more time on this damn thing than most painters do on their masterpieces. I need to take a break from it before I come back and redo all those books, shadows, cobwebs...
Gawww.
Yeah, I can replace the bookcase itself fairly easily. Still taking a break from it if you all think it should be completely redone, though. :PThe looser, less organised look in this texture fits more with the rescore bookcase families (you wouldn't expect e.g. Ramirez to have as well-organised bookshelves as the Keepers.)
They can't. Like I said, people using texture replace with terrain textures on pressure plates didn't occur to me when I talked about how we could replace textures with 2x2 versions with variations.
However, in this specific case, the 2x2 version in the place of the 1x1 version will actually look better on the places that use this texture in the OMs, so we might be able to get away with it. Otherwise.... .dml for the OMs?
The new cobwebs look much better. Though the straight lines look like there is scratched glass between us and the book case. Can you get rid of the scratches?
As to the number and size of the books, I'm OK with it as is. I would prefer a closer match, but I understand how hard it is to find / make high resolution replacements. So count me as an abstain on this question.
What do you all think about this interpretation of the tiles, a hand made terra cotta style with depth. I'm beginning to like it.
or this, which I think tiles a little better
Last edited by LarryG; 26th Oct 2012 at 11:37.
The main thing we should be concerned about is that it will line up properly with the OMs/FMs that turn any of the books into switches.
I agree, I don't think it's that important to match the density of books but to make sure OM book switches work in the original placement (although can't that also be adjusted by DML?) Speaking of, someone needs to improve the book switch. I have a book switch in DCE but used a book object.
LGS' texture alignment was pretty sloppy.
More than sloppy. It looks non-existent. Gar!
Gotcha. I'll do it, but like I said, I want to take a break from it and do another texture before I begin the do over. It shouldn't take nearly as long the second time, because, if I'm following the original more closely, most of those shelves will only have 3 books copy/pasted into nice, tight rows.
I think I'm gonna start KWALL10A.
Also, from NV's shot, it's weird, but my texture doesn't look that much higher res than the originals. I barely noticed he was using mine until I gave it a second glance.
Not so weird, considering the distance from the viewer of the old shelves. They're filling space on the screen barely larger than the native resolution of the texture itself.
It does, however, throw into stark relief the differences in color and composition between the two. One advantage that I hadn't realized until now is that by packing the shelves as LGS did, with very few open gaps, the texture looks much less "painted on" when viewed from oblique angles. Not so much a better sense of depth, as lessened cues to the lack of depth.
This is really the sort of texture that screams for bump/displacement mapping, but getting that in Dark would probably require gutting the renderer and rewriting it from scratch.
The original is also one of the few textures in Thief 1 which is already 256x256.
Good point. I can add the missing books in on my original right fast, since they're actually, just turned off. I seem to have an obsession with too much variety, and it's caused me some grief with this texture.
Rewriting the engine would be the start of it. I shudder to think at the amount of pain everyone would have to go through making Thief look good with bump and displacement maps. It'd take tons more effort than just slapping on a bunch of new textures. Like relighting all the levels, upping the geometry to make the displacement maps look good...This is really the sort of texture that screams for bump/displacement mapping, but getting that in Dark would probably require gutting the renderer and rewriting it from scratch.
...yeah, it'd be a horrible idea, and I hope that never happens. We've got TDM for our modern renderer Thief needs.
KWALL10A question:
Would you say that wall is messy, old, uneven brick, or old plaster? I'm leaning more towards the former, myself.
Just whipped this up out of 3 textures...
Think it'll work as the base?
Last edited by Renzatic; 27th Oct 2012 at 00:50.
My opinion? KWALL10A is a stuccoed over adobe brick wall where some of the stucco has fallen off. I can't find a good example of what I mean right now, but something like these, but the damaged sections are smaller. The shape of the brick is somewhat visible through the stucco, and the bricks are wholly visible where the stucco is missing.
Last edited by LarryG; 27th Oct 2012 at 01:21.
I greatly prefer the smooth version. It never even occurred to me they could be rough like this.
Material files for all of the original textures, giving the appropriate terrain_scale to allow for easy dropping-in of replacement images of whatever size.
Note that I generated all of these with a script, so something might have gone wrong in there for all I know.
I refined my earlier GLASS2.PCX replacement:
Those inconsistent join thicknesses are driving me bonkers.
Also stained glass isn't beveled.
To be fair, the lead was different thicknesses in the original, too.
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