6497 réponses à ce sujet

[ElectronicPostingInterface]

Oh.

Oops.

In retrospect...hm. Yeah, Oops.

Modifié par PKchu, 01 octobre 2012 - 09:56 .

[Dead_Meat357]

Doing a final round of testing. But looking good so far.








I've got to do another round of testing on James Vega's Colector's Edition armor. But it's nearly finished. I have had trouble with the version that eliminates the fire on the right side. This only pertains to the version which requires coalesced.bin modding to use. Obviously the fire version works fine. The version without fire has a red tint to parts of the right side of the texture even though I've sabotaged the file that is responsible for the fire effect. I've scoured the memory for textures that might be responsible and Texmod has been unable to find one that I missed. So as a result, that version looks a little weird. You get kind of a rust color on parts on that side. I may post it anyway, but I'll keep working on it.

Anyway this project was started due to me finding a way to mod the coalesced.bin to allow me to change helmets with the Defender armor equipped. I also stumbled across a way to make the BF3 armor available in SP. I immediately thought of disabling the fire and using the texture in both SP and MP. Unfortunately I found out that the texture isn't the MP texture at all. There are two different BF3 armors in the game! In any event, I knew the SP version needed to be updated as it looked pretty bad up close. The texture is a half ass OD green and Marpet conglomoration. I set out to use a Marpat pattern. When combined with a metal texture it would be ideal for Shepard's BF3 armor, and James Vega. I also knew that I could recode the files for use with the regular N7 armor to replace the green texture for people who either didn't like it, but liked camo or just didn't want to screw with modding the coalesced.bin file.

So I set out to make four versions. N7 Defender texture mod, BF3 texture mod, with and without fire and a version for James Vega. The latter would be modified to make it more in line with his original camo armor included with the Collector's Edition. That's exactly what I've done. 

Future versions and implications: 

One implication of finding this armor in the game is the realization that BioWare included a fully functional armor and never activated it. They also had no reason to disallow the changing of helmets on the N7 Defender either. What's interesting is that there is no version for FemShep. The code added to the coalesced.bin enables a gray Defender armor without camo or carbon fiber for FemShep and the BF3 version for Male Shepard. A version of the Desert Defender is possible for her, both to replace the gray armor or the green armor. Unfortunately, for those who like it the version with BF3's fire effect will not likely be possible without combining two textures. Even then the inability to remove the red tint from the male version via texture modding indicates that even combining textures may never produce the effect for FemShep. It may be that they never completed the SP version for her and that's why neither FemShep or ManShep have them available in the single player game without coalesced.bin modding.

Vega's variant can be recoded to replace his green armor if you'd rather, however I will not be releasing this variant myself. While BioWare has never said anything as far as I know about adapting her Collector's Edition outfit for use as a replacement for the blue and white standard outfit, I do not wish to create trouble by offering a free version of the Collector's Edition outfit. You want to do it, code the files yourself.

And yes, I took quite a bit of artistic license with these. The original textures are bad. Very bad. Furthermore the half-ass combination of jungle and desert colors never made any sense to me. I had the missions on Tuchunka largely in mind while making these and I often choose desert themed outfits when doing this part of the game. So I figured this would be a nice way to continue that work. I will be making a variant of Garrus's camoflauged armor which will match these somewhat with that thinking in mind. The original texture had marpat like colors and combined olive drab with them. I tried to match this and at one point switched it out for Flat Dark Earth colors. Unfortunately it didn't look right so I scrapped that and made it more of a realistic modern military outfit in regard to the camo pattern and what colors various accents would be. The original armor had Shepard's stripes in Silver, but that never made any sense. So I went with subdued military-esque colors instead.

With Vega I was a bit more of a purist and tried to match the colors of his outfit a bit more closely with regard to the stripes. This was also done to differentiate his armor from Shepards so they didn't look exactly the same when seen on screen together.

Yes, I may consider doing other camo colorings as time goes on. It would be very easy given that I kept the Marpat layer separate from the rest of the texture. So recoloring wouldn't be out of the question. Nor is out right changing of that pattern for something else.

And if anyone has any ideas about eliminating the red tint from the half of the BF3 version please let me know. I used a green colored specular map and that got rid of it, but glossed the CRAP out of the entire armor and made it far too reflective. Interestingly, when I replaced the fire texture with a copy of the main texture, the problem also went away, but left that half of the texture excessively bright. When I darkened it the effect went away and ended up with the same old red tint. I believe the engine is doing something with this file and I'm not sure I'll ever be able to fully correct this problem.

Modifié par Dead_Meat357, 02 octobre 2012 - 01:44 .

[McRileyW]

was installing the new hardware today.

the new bf3 armor looks great. thank you.

[ElectronicPostingInterface]

I finished the diffuse map for my Tali alternate HD project.

The results are disheartening and barely improve the original model. I'm kind of depressed because I spent virtually every non-busy moment working on it and I not only barely see a difference, I notice in cases I've introduced new issues with the texture.

Here's a comparison shot, new on the left column, old on the right column: http://i.imgur.com/Sut3H.jpg

Right away, I can notice (and I'm sure there's more):

* The top of the helmet looks low res and the buttons look low res. There are also squggly lines that add a negative jaggy appearance.

* The necklace, you can see a line error quite clearly in it. This probably stems from my dumb way of lining the models, which I thought I fixed but apparently didn't.

* The spandex around the upper arms, I left it in the original file because I thought it looked good and my replacement texture looked bad in Photoshop. Didn't look so good in game.

* Belt buckles seem to pop out more...in the "inferior" model.

* It just doesn't look..."different", like it doesn't pop out to the eye like using the default N7 armor then going to Smarteck's or Dead Meat's. I see a few cosmetic changes but it looks like virtually the same.

If some odd reason anyone wants it, I did upload it and labeled it as "alpha": http://filesmelt.com...ernateAlpha.tpf

If I end up ultimately failing to make any more headway, and anything useful can be used from where I already started, there's this stuff: Feel free to use it for whatever, remake it, etc. Don't care.

This is the overly detailed outline I made in .png form. It includes some more edits to avoid the seams I would have created if I left it in it's original "finished" state: http://filesmelt.com/dl/outline21.png

Here's a .png of the diffuse map as it was imported into game: http://filesmelt.com...ASSEFFECT3.png 

And here is the .psd, where you can go in and tinker with all my layers and edits and alter stuff to your desires if you wish: http://filesmelt.com...terialWorks.psd

Also, in case anyone could use this because I had a hell of a time finding it:

Jean-Luc's Tali Headdress Pattern from 2010 (different in Jean-Luc's modern Tali's): http://img203.images.../taliswirls.jpg

MODERATELY RELATED:

1. I was planning on lifting the face pattern/visor color (with the seeable eyes/"canon" tech things not on Smarteck's) and lowered "visibility" from Jean-Luc's mod. I don't see...anything that relates to this as the face looks plain and untouched. I need help figuring this out.

2. There isn't an alpha channel in the mod because there isn't one ripped with the original file.

Thanks to Dead Meat, Smarteck, and Salt is Good for all your help and stuff. I feel kind of burnt out and depressed because I spent all that time and my texture still sucks, but I'll feel better about it later and probably get back to it. And oh yeah, thanks Jean-Luc cause I totally stole your texture.

Completely unrelated: damn, that BF3 soldier is nice.

EDIT: Also, the From Ashes skin is virtually identical line to line with only one slight edit needed to "map" it to the existing outline.  So if/when the project is finished, the 3rd skin will probably come relatively quickly after.

Modifié par PKchu, 02 octobre 2012 - 12:49 .

[saltisgood]

Hey PKchu, don't be disheartened about your work. There's a reason why I never released my first mod (it was terrible). If you keep trying I'm sure you will improve.

1. On the Tali face front, I've just had a look at it and I believe that the face is stored in the spec map. If you have a look at Jean-Luc's Tali Spec map and just select the blue channel you should be able to see it in the sort of middle-left. It'll look like this:


(With a comparison to show it ingame)
Just look for that whitey-grey bit and I'm pretty sure that's it.

2. On the actual mod front. (NOTE: Everything I say here applies to me only. Anyone else can correct me or suggest a better method. These are just my suggestions.) Just looking at your photoshop file, is it just me or are your replacement layers all really low opacities? Since they're all set to Normal Blending and 100% opacity I assume that at some stage you've group a bunch together. If it were me I probably wouldn't do that. I only tend to group layers that have the same blending modes and I take off any blending before I group them, because otherwise you lose the ability to continue playing with them. Furthermore, I very rarely merge layers, just because I'm so paranoid about losing the ability to change them later.

For example, the current one I'm working on is an armour texture like yours. I'm only halfway through (I work very slowly) and I already have 78 layers. I'm not suggesting that you have to have that many layers, I'm just saying that it gives you more freedom if you do.

My main point is that with the psd file as it is, I can't see any of your blending modes and opacities. So, I'm going to assume that you're just using a normal blending mode with variable opacities. If that's the case then you're not going to be able to get a massive quality increase, as the final image is going to be part low-res part hi-res. I typically use complete opacity if I'm overwriting a texture. If I want part of the original to come through (for example on hard to replicate gradient patterns) then I would set the new layer to Overlay or Hard Light and modify the opacity. They allow the main features of the original to be seen but let the higher res sections of the new texture to be placed on the surface.

As for sections not popping out, that can be fixed with the modifications to the normal map. I know that buttons on my diffs are very flat compared to the originals since I just lazily draw circles on there (generally). But when you take the diff and run it through the NormalMapFilter you can greatly increase the strength on certain sections (like the buttons) to give them a greater sense of depth on the end model. I'm telling you this because I can see from your *.tpf that you've only modded the diff at the moment.

To sum up, an armour mod is pretty tricky at the best of times. So to attempt it first up is quite ambitious. I just went for simple stuff like pistols while I learnt my techniques. If you can, I'd give that a go now. And also look at a lot of the finished versions of textures to try and see what you should aim for (you can extract the individual textures from a *.tpf with TPFextract and it's GUI). If any other modders want to correct me or add to what I'm saying please feel free.

[Dead_Meat357]

saltisgood wrote...

Hey PKchu, don't be disheartened about your work. There's a reason why I never released my first mod (it was terrible). If you keep trying I'm sure you will improve.

1. On the Tali face front, I've just had a look at it and I believe that the face is stored in the spec map. If you have a look at Jean-Luc's Tali Spec map and just select the blue channel you should be able to see it in the sort of middle-left. It'll look like this:


(With a comparison to show it ingame)
Just look for that whitey-grey bit and I'm pretty sure that's it.

2. On the actual mod front. (NOTE: Everything I say here applies to me only. Anyone else can correct me or suggest a better method. These are just my suggestions.) Just looking at your photoshop file, is it just me or are your replacement layers all really low opacities? Since they're all set to Normal Blending and 100% opacity I assume that at some stage you've group a bunch together. If it were me I probably wouldn't do that. I only tend to group layers that have the same blending modes and I take off any blending before I group them, because otherwise you lose the ability to continue playing with them. Furthermore, I very rarely merge layers, just because I'm so paranoid about losing the ability to change them later.

For example, the current one I'm working on is an armour texture like yours. I'm only halfway through (I work very slowly) and I already have 78 layers. I'm not suggesting that you have to have that many layers, I'm just saying that it gives you more freedom if you do.

My main point is that with the psd file as it is, I can't see any of your blending modes and opacities. So, I'm going to assume that you're just using a normal blending mode with variable opacities. If that's the case then you're not going to be able to get a massive quality increase, as the final image is going to be part low-res part hi-res. I typically use complete opacity if I'm overwriting a texture. If I want part of the original to come through (for example on hard to replicate gradient patterns) then I would set the new layer to Overlay or Hard Light and modify the opacity. They allow the main features of the original to be seen but let the higher res sections of the new texture to be placed on the surface.

As for sections not popping out, that can be fixed with the modifications to the normal map. I know that buttons on my diffs are very flat compared to the originals since I just lazily draw circles on there (generally). But when you take the diff and run it through the NormalMapFilter you can greatly increase the strength on certain sections (like the buttons) to give them a greater sense of depth on the end model. I'm telling you this because I can see from your *.tpf that you've only modded the diff at the moment.

To sum up, an armour mod is pretty tricky at the best of times. So to attempt it first up is quite ambitious. I just went for simple stuff like pistols while I learnt my techniques. If you can, I'd give that a go now. And also look at a lot of the finished versions of textures to try and see what you should aim for (you can extract the individual textures from a *.tpf with TPFextract and it's GUI). If any other modders want to correct me or add to what I'm saying please feel free.

On Tali's darker outfit that came with either the Collector's Edition or From Ashes, I can see the face in the texture of the main layer itself. There isn't any detail to it and the eyes and the glow are applied in the orange / whatever texture.

As for the blending, Saltisgood is right. You want to only link layers with the same blending properties. And actually you generally want to go with full opacity then link the layers, and work from there. Overlay mod is often too aggressive a blend, but you have to be careful tweaking normal mode and opacity. You generally want about 55-75% opacity. Almost never less or you won't see anything. You can also bring up the contrast on the layers being blended as it will allow you some finer control over how the layer looks blended. There is also a balance that needs to get struck with what looks great on the texture while it's flat and what looks good in it's proper places on the model in game.

I generally only have about 30 layers as I group things as I go. When it comes to normal maps you have to be careful not to get carried away with them. Everyone's experience differs a lot with that as we all use different textures in our work. My weathered, scratched up steel texture that's found in virtually everything works really well on a lot of things. It also doesn't like normal mapping. You quickly end up with an unfinished fiberglass look if you go past a scale of 1.0 on the normal map filter. Every texture you work with is different too. I can go with 2.2 or so on the Defender armor before I run into problems with artifacting. With Ashley, anything over .8 gets me into trouble. Some other objects take a scale of 5 very well. The Alliance helmets were easier to work with. I had to actually do their breather grill part on the sides with a normal map strength of like 10 or something to get rid of the original raised detail while still keeping the old data.

The point is that there is tons of trial and error here. Just look at the version numbers of some of my more recent mods. 1.5, 1.8, 1.52, etc. These all started at 1.0 and went up from there. I've probably got 6 or 7 versions of Ashley out there. This type of work requires a high amount of trial and error. You'll get there. I also started modding with a squad mate armor. In my case I chose Ashley because I thougth it would be easy. The texture map for it is much simpler than most of the other squad mate armors. Unfortunately it wasn't as easy as I'd thought. It was just a lot easier than the N7 Defender armor which is what I really wanted to do.

Updated my Mod post. Includes all the download links. Here are some of the screenshots:

Battlefield 3 Single Player Armor (Must enable through coalesced.bin to unlock)

With and Without Fire



James Vega's Collector's Edition Armor

Modifié par Dead_Meat357, 02 octobre 2012 - 04:16 .

[McRileyW]

awwww shepard and james look so HOT in that armor thank you

edit: don't see vega's armor atm but I can wait

PS MASSEFFECT3.EXE_0x68E8107F.dds is just a purple square. Is that the right file?

Modifié par McRileyW, 03 octobre 2012 - 01:14 .

[Dead_Meat357]

McRileyW wrote...

awwww shepard and james look so HOT in that armor thank you

edit: don't see vega's armor atm but I can wait

PS MASSEFFECT3.EXE_0x68E8107F.dds is just a purple square. Is that the right file?

Yes. It's not being blended with original NM data. If you pull it into the DX SDK tool you can see the lines in it. Usually it is necessary to retain some of the original data due to the reflective properties of them. In this case I wanted more of a matte finish and didn't desire any of the original armors details to be retained via the normal map. So I created an entirely new one. The benefit of this is that I was able to do a much higher quality normal map than I'd ordinarily be able to get away with. Vega's still retains some of the original NM data, but this was because I had problems with the normal map on him. Not sure why. There is more gloss to his as a result, but not too much. 

The James Vega Collector's Edition armor is now on the download page.

Modifié par Dead_Meat357, 03 octobre 2012 - 03:32 .

[ElectronicPostingInterface]

[quote]saltisgood wrote...

Hey PKchu, don't be disheartened about your work. There's a reason why I never released my first mod (it was terrible). If you keep trying I'm sure you will improve.[/quote]Thanks. after taking a break I feel less bad about it. I think I've got to be less ambitious. >_>

[quote]1. On the Tali face front, I've just had a look at it and I believe that the face is stored in the spec map. If you have a look at Jean-Luc's Tali Spec map and just select the blue channel you should be able to see it in the sort of middle-left. It'll look like this:[/quote]Thank you for this - I couldn't figure it out and I much prefer his version of it. I at the least am going to mod my personal files to reflect congruity of face.

[quote](With a comparison to show it ingame)
Just look for that whitey-grey bit and I'm pretty sure that's it.[/quote]Yeah, when I looked in the files I saw the face but not any edits Jean-Luc had done. It makes sense it's in the spec map.

[quote]2. On the actual mod front. (NOTE: Everything I say here applies to me only. Anyone else can correct me or suggest a better method. These are just my suggestions.) Just looking at your photoshop file, is it just me or are your replacement layers all really low opacities?[/quote]No, you're right. I was mistaken and thought I was supposed to use patterns at lower opacities as to not obliterate all detail underneath, like shading and one line long seams and scratch marks. I also used the opacity while making the pattern, instead of just altering the layer's opacity.

[qutote]Since they're all set to Normal Blending and 100% opacity I assume that at some stage you've group a bunch together.[/quote]I had them grouped by "replacement texture" usually sine I went way overkill on my outline, I could at once target all types of replacement texture. That was my thinking anyway.

[quote]If it were me I probably wouldn't do that. I only tend to group layers that have the same blending modes and I take off any blending before I group them, because otherwise you lose the ability to continue playing with them. Furthermore, I very rarely merge layers, just because I'm so paranoid about losing the ability to change them later.[/quote]Ah, OK. I'll stick to messing with the opacity via layer, not when first putting the pattern in.

[quote]For example, the current one I'm working on is an armour texture like yours. I'm only halfway through (I work very slowly) and I already have 78 layers. I'm not suggesting that you have to have that many layers, I'm just saying that it gives you more freedom if you do.[/quote]Huh. Interesting.
[quote]My main point is that with the psd file as it is, I can't see any of your blending modes and opacities. So, I'm going to assume that you're just using a normal blending mode with variable opacities. If that's the case then you're not going to be able to get a massive quality increase, as the final image is going to be part low-res part hi-res. I typically use complete opacity if I'm overwriting a texture. If I want part of the original to come through (for example on hard to replicate gradient patterns) then I would set the new layer to Overlay or Hard Light and modify the opacity. They allow the main features of the original to be seen but let the higher res sections of the new texture to be placed on the surface. [/quote]So I ought to complete overwrite the textures in the future. After I do that, I can change settings to make the layer "overlay" or "hard light" and then "modify the opacity?"(Sorry I'm a bit confused.) 

[quote[As for sections not popping out, that can be fixed with the modifications to the normal map. I know that buttons on my diffs are very flat compared to the originals since I just lazily draw circles on there (generally). But when you take the diff and run it through the NormalMapFilter you can greatly increase the strength on certain sections (like the buttons) to give them a greater sense of depth on the end model. I'm telling you this because I can see from your *.tpf that you've only modded the diff at the moment.[/quote]Ah, OK. That makes sense. Yeah, I only started with the diffuse.

[quote]To sum up, an armour mod is pretty tricky at the best of times. So to attempt it first up is quite ambitious. I just went for simple stuff like pistols while I learnt my techniques. If you can, I'd give that a go now. And also look at a lot of the finished versions of textures to try and see what you should aim for (you can extract the individual textures from a *.tpf with TPFextract and it's GUI. If any other modders want to correct me or add to what I'm saying please feel free.[/quote]It is pretty complicated - I think I'll sort of lower my expectations and work more slowly/piece by piece, see it as a more long term project.  

Thanks for all your help and advice.


"As for the blending, Saltisgood is right. You want to only link layers with the same blending properties. And actually you generally want to go with full opacity then link the layers, and work from there. Overlay mod is often too aggressive a blend, but you have to be careful tweaking normal mode and opacity. You generally want about 55-75% opacity. Almost never less or you won't see anything. You can also bring up the contrast on the layers being blended as it will allow you some finer control over how the layer looks blended. There is also a balance that needs to get struck with what looks great on the texture while it's flat and what looks good in it's proper places on the model in game. "

Thank you for this and your other comments, they're very informative. I was doing everything completely and totally wrong.

[ElectronicPostingInterface]

I didn't realize there were modes to layers.  That explains a lot.



EDIT: Also, I just discovered links.

EDIT: Did some more tinkering with the headdress, using the hard light and 75% opacity. The puprle fabric part looks good, but the metal texture I was using seems to almost evaporate under it. I suppose I'll need a new one. I may have to do some actual line redrawing, too - the seams in the helmet still come out weird. That gold button section still looks stupid too, but I can see with more tinkering I can probably get it right eventually.

Modifié par PKchu, 03 octobre 2012 - 10:00 .

[saltisgood]

PKchu wrote...

saltisgood wrote...

My main point is that with the psd file as it is, I can't see any of your blending modes and opacities. So, I'm going to assume that you're just using a normal blending mode with variable opacities. If that's the case then you're not going to be able to get a massive quality increase, as the final image is going to be part low-res part hi-res. I typically use complete opacity if I'm overwriting a texture. If I want part of the original to come through (for example on hard to replicate gradient patterns) then I would set the new layer to Overlay or Hard Light and modify the opacity. They allow the main features of the original to be seen but let the higher res sections of the new texture to be placed on the surface.

So I ought to complete overwrite the textures in the future. After I do that, I can change settings to make the layer "overlay" or "hard light" and then "modify the opacity?"(Sorry I'm a bit confused.) 

To explain what I said in the previous post, by default I have all my modifications on normal blending 100% opacity. That's because it's always going to be the absolute highest quality since only my hi-res modifications are showing. I then assess each part to see whether I can get away with doing it that way. If there is a shading pattern that I want to keep then I would first try and replicate it in photoshop (and set the layer above the previous one with blending mode multiply, depending on how I did it) and if I couldn't do it or thought it would be too much work, only then would I use an overlay.

What I'm saying is that if your modification, for example the pattern you've created, looks good as it is then completely overwrite the old image. So with the outlines you've created you could paint in a pattern onto a new layer at the default blending values (normal mode, 100% opacity). I'd then load it up and see whether it holds up in game.

I reckon on your particular texture if you could find a good pattern to replace the gold sections on the armour you could probably give that a go. I say that because in places there's not a heap of shading going on. Look for some brushed brass or gold textures on the internet, then paste them in to new layers in the places shown by your outline. See what they look like in game. If you want you could then just select whatever layer you want to modify and change the brightness, contrast, colour balance, etc (from Image/ Adjustments menu) to tweak it to however you want. Once you have the colour to what you want you could then place new layers over that one to add scratches or whatever.

EDIT: If you're trying to use blending modes on the layers in the photoshop file that I saw it's probably not going to work out quite so well. That's because the stuff you've currently got is already quite transparent (disable the background layer to see what I mean). If you apply another blend mode over that it's probably making it even more transparent and you're not likely to see much of an effect.

Modifié par saltisgood, 03 octobre 2012 - 10:33 .

[ElectronicPostingInterface]

Ah, OK. That's informative.

No, yeah I was going to just start over and abandon the old file.

[Dead_Meat357]

PKchu wrote...

Ah, OK. That's informative.

No, yeah I was going to just start over and abandon the old file.

I probably started over on Ashley 3 or 4 times.

Exactly. You want the background at 100% then blend textures over it until it looks good. Sometimes it won't and you need to completely replace and area and this may or may not require redoing outlines. The only time I keep the old part of the texture is when I need shadows or particular lines. Again try replicating them in Photoshop and if that doesn't work, then blend. But blending textures generally isn't the goal. Replacement is. Be careful with blending as it leads to subtle changes in the lighting and coloring of the texture in places. Especially compared to areas that weren't done the same way.

Modifié par Dead_Meat357, 03 octobre 2012 - 03:07 .

[Xaijin]

Had some free time after work during crunch so I checked over the various reaper stuff that's out there. For those couple of you who were going to look them over:

1. Adding regularly spaced pattern noise to organic or semiorganic materials as a uniform overlay is NEVER. EVER. a good idea. EV-URRR.

ever.

This is especially true of the normal maps. While husks are of course a merging tech and organic. It's pretty obvious which parts should have say, a classic ME hexagonal pattern mesh, and which shouldn't. Don't be that guy or girl.

In addition to completely losing the nuance and contrast between surfaces, it also jacks with the lighting properties of the textures and can even add negative definition on the smooth parts, which looks beyond bad, even in motion.

Also lightening the base texture is also never a good idea. ever.

"But it adds automatic definition".

Yeah, it adds altered or heightened contrasting definition, but that is the ENTIRE point of having a normal map, and it's not the job of the diffuse map in any respect. As has been done with most the good armor mods, the entire point of redefinition in diffuse is to present ->"half"<- of a material you're adding, of which the other "half" of which (minus specular and light) is the normal map.

Remember that unless you have an artist's monitor and ridiculously expensive color gamut tools/apps, your monitor's contrast and color range may not necessarily match anyone else's, much less everyone else's.

Speaking of slickness and gloss, those should be covered in those texture sections; ie spec and lightmap, not the diffuse, even for geth.

Modifié par Xaijin, 04 octobre 2012 - 07:10 .

[ElectronicPostingInterface]

Hey Smarteck - when you were editing the Kodiak's Interior, did you run into any issues/discover anything interesting or worth knowing in terms of editing other "tech" textures, like tech armor/combat drone? I decided I wanted to turn the combat drone purple instead of orange, given that it's odd the color reverted from ME2 to a more blah one. After playing with the textures in Texmod, I discovered:

1) The combat drone shares texture parts with GUI interfaces you can see in spots of the game, and even though the same texture is highlighted, they are two entirely different colors.

1.5) You can't even highlight all of the drone. Only parts of the texture will "green." The orange peel half exteriors don't seem to be selectable.

2) Trying to change the hue of that texture seems to have zero effect. (TPF Failure: http://filesmelt.com/dl/PurpleDronemaybe.tpf )

3) I can't even get tech armor to highlight. This person seems to have pulled it off though: http://social.biowar...704773#12708050 (I sent them a message, but I don't think they're still an active user.)

I figure you might know something given your Kodiak mod/citadel receptionist mod and how the GUI I think is actually altered in the Kodiak mod. If you don't that's cool too. The color might be based on lighting or hard coded into the texture, sort of like Dead Meat's BF3 mod.

Modifié par PKchu, 04 octobre 2012 - 01:03 .

[Dead_Meat357]

Xaijin wrote...

Had some free time after work so I during crunch so I checked over the various reaper stuff that's out there. For those couple of you who were going to look them over:

1. Adding regular spaced pattern noise to organic or semiorganic materials as a uniform overlay is NEVER. EVER. a good idea. EV-URRR.

ever.

This is especially true of the normal maps. While husks are of course a merging tech and organic. It's pretty obvious which parts should have say, a classic ME hexagonal pattern mesh, and which shouldn't. Don't be that guy or girl.

In addition to completely losing the nuance and contrast between surfaces, it also jacks with the lighting properties of the textures and can even add negative definition on the smooth parts, which looks beyond bad, even in motion.

Also lightening the base texture is also never a good idea. ever.

"But it adds automatic definition".

Yeah, it adds altered or heightened contrasting definition, but that is the ENTIRE point of having a normal map, and it's not the job of the diffuse map in any respect. As has been done with most the good armor mods, the entire point of redefinition in diffuse is to present ->"half"<- of a material you're adding, of which the other "half" of which (minus specular and light) is the normal map.

Remember that unless you have an artist's monitor and ridiculously expensive color gamut tools/apps, your monitor's contrast and color range may not necessarily match anyone else's, much less everyone else's.

Speaking of slickness and gloss, those should be covered in those texture sections; ie spec and lightmap, not the diffuse, even for geth.

The only Reaper mod I did was actually Smartek's. All I did was make a normal map and do a higher quality specular map for it and package it with other mods like those done by Wadres. Mods I had to convert from .JPG to .DDS. You are right about what you said.

When it comes to the glossy finish, it's pretty easy to deal with. Though what people may not know is that the gloss is often applied in 3 ways. Normal map, diffuse map and via the game engine. The latter we can't do anything about. Somethings I wanted to make with a flat finish and never could. The hue of the specular map controls the gloss. Red is the least amount, while orange is medium, yellow is almost frost on most textures and green is a mirror like finish. The color of the underlying texture and the darkness of it also controls these properties. Usually it's best to aim for the coloring of the original map. This can sometimes be achieved through various overlay / layering techniques and using an upscaled version of the original map. If you can avoid that it's best. Sometimes it's really hard though to keep some of the lighting properties and do a completely new map. This is especially true of textures with a lot of mixed colors in the spec map.

Even if you go with a really dark specular map, the color red, etc. you will still see some gloss. You can further rid yourself of it with a normal map created fresh without reusing any of the original data. It's still often present though. Even my desert Defender armors still have some gloss present, though it's toned way down from the original textures. (Done on purpose.)

[Fredy AG]

PKchu wrote...

Hey Smarteck - when you were editing the Kodiak's Interior, did you run into any issues/discover anything interesting or worth knowing in terms of editing other "tech" textures, like tech armor/combat drone?

From what I have seen in Kodiak displays and in Sentry Interface, the color is not defined exactly in the textures, only the visible mass of the object and the areas in which you will have dynamic texture (moving light effects), this is defined in different layers of the DDS file.


If you look at the MOD of the receptionist of the citadel, this is the new texture (Notice the colors):







But this is how the graphics engine shown on the screen:






Maybe the red could be showed as blue, I do not know, you will have to make some tests. 




Good luck with that. 


////// 

[ElectronicPostingInterface]

Yep, that's about what I thought. Thanks Smarteck - saved me a lot of time and speculation.

I'll do some tests for awhile, but if I can't get a change to occur, I suppose I'll have to live with orange.

EDIT: In your image, it seems like it doesn't totally obliterate the original color as it seems to more do an overlay. Right now I'm trying something _extremely_ purple and vibrant to see what it does.

EDIT: AHA! That actually worked! http://i.imgur.com/IsesP.jpg

Of course, the other half is still non-functional and the same color but when I isolate it it should do the same thing.

Modifié par PKchu, 04 octobre 2012 - 03:49 .

[Dead_Meat357]

smarteck wrote...

PKchu wrote...

Hey Smarteck - when you were editing the Kodiak's Interior, did you run into any issues/discover anything interesting or worth knowing in terms of editing other "tech" textures, like tech armor/combat drone?

From what I have seen in Kodiak displays and in Sentry Interface, the color is not defined exactly in the textures, only the visible mass of the object and the areas in which you will have dynamic texture (moving light effects), this is defined in different layers of the DDS file.


If you look at the MOD of the receptionist of the citadel, this is the new texture (Notice the colors):







But this is how the graphics engine shown on the screen:






Maybe the red could be showed as blue, I do not know, you will have to make some tests. 




Good luck with that. 


////// 

Ever think of modifying this image to work on that Texture Smartek?

[ElectronicPostingInterface]

Oooh, that'd be pretty Dead Meat. Great suggestion.

[Fredy AG]

 Maybe... 


//////

[Dead_Meat357]

Just did it.

[ElectronicPostingInterface]

Awesome! I really like the visual reminder of ME2.

EDIT:  I'm going to conver that into a .dds file and put it into my game right now. >_>

Modifié par PKchu, 04 octobre 2012 - 05:05 .

[Dead_Meat357]

I just threw that in the display real quick so that the right Normandy would be shown. Given time I'm sure it can be done better, but you get the idea. I also threw some text in there that made some sense. Like something you'd get from a station scanning a ship that's requesting permission to dock.

Modifié par Dead_Meat357, 04 octobre 2012 - 05:06 .

[ElectronicPostingInterface]

I've really liked that edit and have always used it, but have never understood the random brain scans. Biometric ID or something?

EDIT: Don't think I'm ever going to be able to fully recolor the drone, I see no way to affect the outer layer -but this is kind of cute as a "his and hers" drones thing though, given I'm playing engineer in this playthrough. http://i.imgur.com/0FgWC.jpg 

Modifié par PKchu, 04 octobre 2012 - 05:15 .