Reply With QuoteThis is what we need...Congratulations, the task is yours...
I was wondering -before I put the work in myself-, if anyone has made or assembled a pack of textures that are simply higher-res versions of the ones seen in Thief (Gold, preferably)? I know there's "better texture" packs out there, but many of them don't look as close to the originals as I'd like.
If such a thing doesn't exist... well, I know what I'll be doing the next few weeks =)
This is what we need...Congratulations, the task is yours...
I tried to do this as much as possible with the EP, but that's only objects, not terrain textures.
-sigh- Time for effort!
Good, now get to work!...
I think this is really needed, especially now that replacing them doesn't require touching the .mis files. The two TG texture upgrades shown over in Thief Gen have their merits, but both seem to stray far from the LGS textures at least in part. I think a canonic texture upgrade pack true to the originals would be a huge achievement for the community. Good luck!
Here, here!
Making a "same but better" high-res texture package for Thief is one of those tasks that's exponentially easier said than done. The original textures were put together by some of the best graphic artists in the business, and there are hundreds of them to replace.
This task is further frustrated by the apparent fact that genuinely good graphic artists seem to hate hate hate slavishly imitating someone else's work (see for example, SS2 Rebirth).
Yeah, no kidding. I've also run into the logistic hurdle of "wait, if I make them bigger, they'll look mis-aligned in-game >_<" (though didn't someone release a tool or it's a part of 1.19 that will automatically shrink new textures down? I'll have to look into that)
With that said, I'm going to make the textures for FM use primarily. If there's a way to make them work in the OMs, then great, but for right now, 32 pixels isn't a whole lot to work with and won't look too superior once it's in-game and blown back up anyway =/
Incidentally, this will take more than "weeks" XD
See [NewDark] Batch texture scale . That feature seems tailor made for your needs.Originally Posted by EmperorSteele
Why do you think we all applauded your commitment? We know how much work it will be to blow them up and then polish them so that the new textures not only are bigger but are truly high resolution. The missing detail can't be auto-magically added. That has to be added by an artist manually and laborously. So pip-pip, time's a-wasting, pixels don't fix themselves.
Proof-of-concept time...
New one's on the right. Not too shabby, but not a -great- improvement, either. It's too bright, and I went a little nuts with the shadows/contrast. But I can easily edit that in photoshop!
When making the texture, i was looking at the old one, blown up, as a base so I'd know what colors and shadows to put where. It looked more accurate in photoshop, but in-game it's a huge difference, so back to the drawing board I guess!
Here's an attempt at blustn. The original has a funky color for stone, but I did my best to color match it. The new has the same number of rows and about the same relative size of stones. What do you think? I'm not convinced that I like it. Maybe the new stone looks too porous?
Original:
New (click to enlarge to 1024x1024):
Yes, and rough. I always imagined blustn as smoother than yours. And therein lies the whole problem here... the lo res originals necessarily leave a lot to the imagination, and we're never going to all agree on the details.
This one is less rough, but still too rough & still too porous looking. It is a pain to try and get it right.
This one is better, but not great.
Last edited by LarryG; 11th Oct 2012 at 02:44.
[QUOTE=LarryG;2146904]This one is less rough, but still too rough & still too porous looking. It is a pain to try and get it right.
I think what's missing is the brighter highlights that the original has. They'll make it look a little shinier and therefore smoother.
I think the second one translates rather well, actually...save for perhaps having larger blocks with less breakage...but that is getting nit-picky.
These are both good stone walls, but neither are exactly right as blustn replacements. Sigh. The second is IMHO the better of the two in color. Close enough?
Last edited by LarryG; 11th Oct 2012 at 03:47.
Yes...I would say blustn5 translates very well.
Good work.
Btw, does it bother anyone else seeing vertical seams align like that (and also in lesser extent in the blustn)? That's a huge structural weakness
In most real levels that texture's used for floor or trim though. I think most authors are aware of what brick textures look unstable or unrealistic.
Good point, didn't even think about that. Still applies to blustn (which LarryG explicitly said is a stone wall) in a few places.
Since everyone's showing off their blustn textures, here's one I did. It's redrawn from the original bricks, so everything at least fits the same as the original. I tried making it a little more dirty looking than I originally had it, but it could still use a bit of work.
And I know this one isn't much, but I just finished it a couple days ago, because I needed a replacement for the regular cement tile texture. And I feel it's the best replacement texture I've done yet
Last edited by Xorak; 11th Oct 2012 at 06:50.
Really nice @ Xorak!
Here is what i have...
--
Does anyone think it's possible at all to change the textures without touching the architecture? The issue of low-res blur being better for a dirty look and the player's imagination has been mentioned, but what about high-res textures making the bulky architecture painfully obvious? At least that's what I thought of when looking at both Gecko's and vurt's projects.
Some awesome blustn textures there!
I think Xorax's is the best straight-up replacement, since it aligns to the existing brick structure perfectly, but the colour tone on it is a little off. Larry's colours match better, but the different bricking style (especially how many of the bricks are piled on top of each other without any real interleave) is a large departure from the original.
Herein lies one of the problems with a terrain texture upgrade pack: it's easy to get similar textures to the originals, but to make a perfect drop-in replacement, you really need to draw them by hand from scratch using the originals as a base, and that's a lot of work.
With object textures, it's generally not as important to perfectly match the original, since it will most likely come with a new object model, and the test of accuracy then is how much the entire model resembles the old, not how closely the specific texture matches.
With terrain textures, it becomes more complicated, because you don't know how the terrain textures were used in different FMs. For example, with a brick texture, someone might have carefully lined up the terrain that uses the texture so that a surface ends with the edge of a brick in the texture, and changing the size/shape of the bricks will destroy that careful detail.
Another example would be a hole cut into a brick wall, using air brushes to remove individual bricks to align with the texture. If the position of the bricks changes, then the "missing brick" air brushes will be misaligned.
I'm not trying to dismiss Larry's work - those textures are great - but I'm asking if they'd really work as a drop-in replacement, because of the above issues, or if they'd be better suited for a nice blue stone texture family for FM authors?
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