Canon texture packs?

[Renzatic]

The proportions are what they are. We are trying to figure out what the lost details are, not reinterpret what the original should have looked like.

Truthfully, you kind of are. Case in point, the grouting in the floor texture we did. To me, that single line of highlighted/shadowed pixels looked like a bevel. To you, grouting. At least on the smaller textures, there's going to be at least a little guessing and assuming going on.

I did your original size test, and...



...I'd say they're twins, but one's been out in the sun for awhile. :P

Lets see if I can make em match just a little more.

[ZylonBane]

You can see the square pattern from the original tile on the new tile.

Yup, that's exactly what I'm seeing. Between the low source texture resolution and the posterization created by the low color depth, original textures often have these large monocolored blocky regions. As tempting as it is to just soften the source and use it as a background to the high-res texture to preserve the original tint, I've found out the hard way that it's almost never that simple. You instead end up with what we have here-- the original texture visible as a blurry thumbprint on the new texture.

The colors are what they are.

Only to a point. There are many textures in SS2 that are duplicated across families, that are clearly intended to be exactly the same surface, yet they have slight color differences due to being palettized to different master palettes. This problem is exacerbated in TDP, where every texture in the entire game is represented by a single 256-color palette. Of course some weird color shifts snuck in. I don't consider eliminating them to be a flaw.

[LarryG]

Yup, that's exactly what I'm seeing. Between the low source texture resolution and the posterization created by the low color depth, original textures often have these large monocolored blocky regions. As tempting as it is to just soften the source and use it as a background to the high-res texture to preserve the original tint, I've found out the hard way that it's almost never that simple. You instead end up with what we have here-- the original texture visible as a blurry thumbprint on the new texture.

I don't see what you are saying that you are seeing. Why don't you give it a shot and teach me what you mean by example?

[Renzatic]

Well shit, meant to post, accidentally edited. Response down below.

[LarryG]

Take a look at this that I made from your original. It's as dark as the original, and the panels have been straightened and moved to match the original in position. I don't think it is ugly. I do think it could use some better surface texturing as I messed up your original in getting this example done. But the colors look good IMHO. Maybe they could be a smidge darker.

[Renzatic]

edit: Quitted bitching, started doing. Colors are about dead on, proportions should be perfect (I did a fade in using the old texture, and it looks alright). All I've got left to do is clean up any tiling issues, and I'm ready to commit it.

By the way, what happened to everyone else? Towards the start we had a whole bunch of people throwing textures around in this thread. Now it's just LarryG and I arguing about colors.

Are we that obnoxious? :O

[Yandros]

You've still got ZB here nitpicking, and me gawking at all you talented artist types.

[Xorak]

I'm around. But just between doing textures for my own mission, and working on the mission itself, I don't have much time to also work on this project right now, though I like doing the occasional one just so I don't get too rusty. Although as I've said a few times in the past, I intend to work on it full time when I finally finish my mission, if other people haven't done most of it yet. I can't do both at once, or else I get nowhere with both.

I did attempt this texture about a week ago. I needed some good high-res indoor textures, and I wanted to test myself to see how well I could redo the stock indoor textures. I still need some more practice to take on the harder ones though, so instead I've been making my own.

I used a marble base for the inner square, though I'm not sure what it's supposed to be. I'd also like to get a little more detail on the square trim.

[LarryG]

I thought I would take a stab at the KDEC2 texture in NEWKEEP. To my mind this one is horrible to figure out, so what you see is my interpretation. It still needs dirtying up and some color enrichment (blueness), but this gives you an idea of where I'm going.


Orig - - - - - NEW


4X


8X



Edit: There is a difference, but even I can't see it here. I added some dust and a little more blue.


4X


8X

[Xorak]

Well, if we're going to nitpick I'd say the new doesn't match up that perfectly. I see something more metal-like and less stone looking. The new texture is missing the X shape which sort of defines the two panels, which stands out more than the swirly bits, and which holds the swirly bits in place. Though your shape of the swirly bits do seem to match well. Plus your new texture has different borders.


The texture almost seems like something taken from anglo-saxon jewellery. It has a 'clasp' in the middle of the texture which seems to serve no purpose, other than that the panels are actually two small doors, and the clasp is a small lock. I see something more generally like this (with a different pattern obviously)


And pasted overtop glass like this. Though I could be way off.



To produce something kind of like this

[Renzatic]

I've been messing with this texture on and off all damn day, trying to get it to not only look good, but be as close to the original as possible. I came close, too. Had the paint patterns down, had the colors matched. It was all good. I dunno if OCD is something you can develop over time, but if it can be, I took at least 5 steps towards today.

Then I went to tile it. That was no problem. Tiling is easy. There was only one problem. It looked...terrible. I mean, like...suck. Paint doesn't peel that way. It looked fake. Dumb. Stupid. I figured I'd have to find that balance of nice looking and faithful to the original source. Again. For that, I thought I'd have to see what LGS did to get it looking alright.

The goddamn thing doesn't really tile. The seams are immediately apparent. The only thing saving it is that it's about the size of an icon, and the blendy bits are huge chunks of single colored pixels. It reinforces my belief that what looks good on a painterly 64x64 256 color texture doesn't necessarily look good on a 512x512 millions of colors semi photorealistic one. There's a ton more fine detail to screw things up.

I redid it in a way I think looks good considering the theme with respect to the originals. The colors are the same, but the patterns of peeling paint are totally different. I'm putting it on the backburner and starting the bookshelf tomorrow.

Also I will admit I'm a whiny bastard who gets pouty and petulant when things don't go their way. :P

[LarryG]

Well, if we're going to nitpick I'd say the new doesn't match up that perfectly. I see something more metal-like and less stone looking. The new texture is missing the X shape which sort of defines the two panels, which stands out more than the swirly bits, and which holds the swirly bits in place. Though your shape of the swirly bits do seem to match well. Plus your new texture has different borders.

This is where we get into the differing interpretation place. The original is so bad that it is hard to tell what it really is. My interpretation is that it is a painted tin / copper / brass ceiling tile.



It gets used exclusively on ceilings IIRC. And lots of them do look sort of like this one, just none exactly right. So I tried to craft one. What you are seeing as an X-shape, I see as a very low resolution remnant of a fleur de lis pattern. I haven't found a fdl ceiling tile that works well yet, so I used a different floral look to try and emulate it. When scaled down to the original size (64x32) my version looks pretty similar. Not as much color variation in the highlights, but not too far off. I'll keep looking for a good fdl tin pattern, but until someone comes up with a better interpretation, this may do as a nearly good enough drop in.

I think the source image for those tiles might have been colored more like this one (just not this pattern):





I've been looking at places like this one, http://www.americantinceilings.com/pattern/, but no direct hit yet.



- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Edit: Another attempt, still not right. I need to get a more pronounced X effect when scaled down. But the color's pretty good.










- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Edit: This is as good as I can get it today.

[Nameless Voice]

I'm going to attempt to explain the "coloured pixels" thing again, this time using some images of one of my own textures which suffers from this problem.




Excerpts are from the new EP rust textures:

[ZylonBane]

Just to throw more fuel on the fire, this is that wood panel (or possibly a recolored version of it) as it's used in the T1 training mission:



Doesn't seem like an environment in which the paneling would be distressed. Looks like it started life as some nice glossy mahogany. Maybe cherry.

[Nameless Voice]

Those "hit by a bomb" EP metal doors really could do with a revisit.

[LarryG]

This is side by side. One had a 20 pixel Gaussian blur on top of the soft focus stuff that I already did, the other just has soft focus. There is a slight difference. but I don't know that one is "better" than the other. To my mind the blurred one doesn't look as dirty or worn.

[Renzatic]

Doesn't seem like an environment in which the paneling would be distressed. Looks like it started life as some nice glossy mahogany. Maybe cherry.

What I find strange is just how little the blue shows up in that shot. The texture itself looks like old, peeling paint when viewing it in PS. Ingame, it looks about like what you said, with the center piece being slightly more shadowed than the rest.

I'll give it another go, and have something later on tonight.

[Renzatic]

This is side by side. One had a 20 pixel Gaussian blur on top of the soft focus stuff that I already did, the other just has soft focus. There is a slight difference. but I don't know that one is "better" than the other. To my mind the blurred one doesn't look as dirty or worn.

Think of it like this. Your original should be used only for colors, not for suggesting shapes. What I do is take the original teture, gaussian blur it, slap it near the top of the layer stack, set opacity to 30-50%, and paint in every small detail myself. If the original has a highlight painted on somewhere, I don't want it to display the low res highlight on the high res texture, I only want it strengthen the color of a highlight I painted or placed myself. And even then, only just.

You can tell how well it works by the shading, gradients, and smoothness. If your highlight goes from, say, dark orange to light yellow rather suddenly, then it's too close to the original. LGS only had a small amount of pixels to work with. You have tons. Blur it, paint around it, and blend it in so it looks more realistic. Your texture on the right, though darker and not as glossy looking, does a much better job in that regard. If you want to strengthen those highlights, do it by hand.

[LarryG]

There are two different versions of KWGRAIN2, one in KEEPER and one in NewKeep IIRC, and they are slightly different in color. My belief is that they were painted and the paint has peeled and worn some.

Here is my version slightly distressed and aged.




I think it should be made to tile better. The original didn't tile perfectly . . . but it did tile better.

[Renzatic]

There are two different versions of KWGRAIN2, one in KEEPER and one in NewKeep IIRC, and they are slightly different in color. My belief is that they were painted and the paint has peeled and worn some.

Here is my version slightly distressed and aged.

I think it should be made to tile better. The original didn't tile perfectly . . . but it did tile better.

After seeing the ingame shot, I'm thinking it's more LGS playing with what they've got to paint gloss and highlights onto a texture, rather than peeling paint. Like ZB said, that doesn't look like an environment where you'd see a decrepit, neglected tile like what I've been trying to make. Old maybe. A little careworn. But not peeling, dusty, and left to moulder.

I'm thinking the wood would look more like what you see on this texture than anything we've done previously. Paint in some highlights and shadows, and I think it'd be a closer paring to the Original Intended Vision rather than what we've been trying for.

My final remake version looks like this by the way. There's a lot more blue paint on the thing, and doesn't come nearly as close to matching the colors of the original as it once did. I got a good reason for doing this, though. For one, it looks better tiled. The old one had weird strips running along the seams. A blue line of peeling paint that marks perfectly where the edges meet. It tiled and flowed, but looked stupid. Like the paint was peeling away from the center out, rather than in random chunks. Secondly, it had too many distinct places on the surface, which means you'd get obvious repetition. For one-off usage, it'd be alright. Try to do something like a panelled ceiling, and it'd look slap nasty dumb.

I made it more generic so it'd look good in a wider variety of usage scenarios while trying to stay true to the original style. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like the source texture all that much anymore, beyond basic shape and proportions. It's now a better fit for a high res reimagining, rather than a drop-in high res rescale. As of right now, I'm having trouble doing the later while keeping it looking alright.

[LarryG]

I think your remake has the panel slightly skew. It's not level across on the bottom and the proportions don't match the original yet. For me, yours still deviates too far from the original in color as well. I'll keep working on mine and we'll see if I can do better. I know I can do different, better is the question.

[Xorak]

This is where we get into the differing interpretation place. The original is so bad that it is hard to tell what it really is. My interpretation is that it is a painted tin / copper / brass ceiling tile.

I think you're right. So it's supposed to produce an effect something like this? Though it still has that odd clasp thing in the middle of it, connecting the two tiles. I would say, your's still has a rounded square look to it, where the original seems more square. But maybe if the colours were adjusted somewhat, the rounded square look would seem less visible.

[Renzatic]

I think your remake has the panel slightly skew. It's not level across on the bottom and the proportions don't match the original yet. For me, yours still deviates too far from the original in color as well. I'll keep working on mine and we'll see if I can do better. I know I can do different, better is the question.

Yeah, I skewed the panel to the right slightly so it'd give it a medieval style not-quite-perfect look. Kinda wish I didn't, because it's been a pain in the ass to work around. There's always a few stray pixels that need fixing when I make big changes.

And yeah, I did another comparison, and my panel is a tiny bit larger still. I'll do a quick whip-up fix when I get back to it.

Lastly, better should be what we're going for here, while trying to maintain style and proportions. To me, style and proportions are the most important, because the way we interpret color and shading will vary wildly due to the limited palette of the old textures. What they did back then with 5 colors, we can now do with 500,000. Does that mean we should still use puce on off-teal just because that's what LGS used? It depends on why they used it, and for what purposes. Like a red brick wall is always going to be a red brick wall, but purple-pink shadows on neon orange wood might look better translated to darker grey shadows on a medium brown surface when it comes to high res texture sporting a greater color range.

Course then you've got problems like not knowing if a texture is weather worn wood with peeling paint or polished cherry with a low res torchlight reflection slathered on it. When it comes to stuff like that, it's all interpretation.

It's a damn bear of a project, I know that much. :P

[LarryG]

It's a damn bear of a project, I know that much. :P

No shit Sherlock!

This is I think my last best try.

[Renzatic]

Colors look alright, but the seams are really apparent. If you want it, here's the base wood panel without any of the paint on it. It tiles perfectly.