Adventures In Texture Editing

Was it this?

CandyCaneStaff_zpsd568d6bf.jpg


Woldo didn't say a word about it when I showed him it initially, then someone said in OOC that Santa Troll had a cool staff. Turns out someone (Woldo, I assume) put it in without even saying anything! :cool:

I had a cool quest using it all planned, but life kicked in and I did not finish it. So I put it on Santa Troll himself for this year!
 
I had a cool quest using it all planned, but life kicked in and I did not finish it. So I put it on Santa Troll himself for this year!
I wondered what had happened with the Christmas Imp all along, but I was just thrilled that Santa Troll 2.0 made it in. People really seemed to like him.

By the way, I have some texture ideas for Valentine's Day (which may or may not involve the obese Erollisi Marr posted above). Is this something I should keep pursuing?

Pretty sure that's Marthog's bride.
She'd absolutely crush his wimpy Erudite frame! Oh, wait. Marthog is an Ogre. Curse you, Headmaster's Visage, for making me think so many people are Erudites when really they're just big phonies! :mad:
 
I'm going to scrap this idea because nothing seemed to look quite right no matter how much I tinkered with it, but here's what might have been a kind of Valentine's Day mascot for SoD:

OgreValentine_zpsd437c1b3.jpg


I called her Madame Love, and I envisioned her giving out free chocolate bars and "love potions" to people passing by (hence the belt, which I lifted from one of the Ogre Velious textures). The model isn't the playable Ogre, by the way; it's actually the Oggok Citizen model, which would mean anyone would be able to see her regardless of their settings. The problem is that Ogre models are just so hard to work with! The seams on the torso are uneven, and the legs are mapped in a strange way unlike any of the smaller races. While I had fun coming up with the design and color scheme, she probably would've looked a little too clownish to go into the game anyway. But hey, at least her fingernails and toenails match! :rolleyes:
 
Remember this homely dame from Dreadfang Spire/Tower of Frozen Shadow?

Abhorrent_zps470833d4-1.jpg


Apparently, the model is known as "Abhorrent" (race ID #193). I studied the wireframe a little and wondered whether it might be put to use for some kind of non-ugly character. So, I dug into existing files (mainly the High Elf female Velious armor and classic Wood Elf female armors) and tried my hand at some new techniques in my image editing software. Here's the end result:

AbhorrentBeauty1_zps306c9931-1.jpg


Who knew you could get from that up there ^ to this? I didn't have a real aim in mind with this lass, but she almost looks like she's ready to go to a wedding of some sort. Alternatively, if she were given a fancy bow, she might do for a "Shiritrian love nymph" -- Dalaya's equivalent to Cupid. She'd need a proper name, of course....

AbhorrentBeauty2_zps487e4915-1.jpg


If the staff want to pursue this texture set for some purpose, let me know and I can make any desired color changes or whatever. There are also (as usual) some annoying problems with getting this particular model to accept a new texture set, which I can explain in detail if necessary. Whatever the case may be, attached is a zip of the raw texture pieces should anyone on the development team like to tinker with her down the line.
 

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  • Abhorrent Beauty Complete.zip
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Remember this homely dame from Dreadfang Spire/Tower of Frozen Shadow?

Abhorrent_zps470833d4-1.jpg


Apparently, the model is known as "Abhorrent" (race ID #193). I studied the wireframe a little and wondered whether it might be put to use for some kind of non-ugly character. So, I dug into existing files (mainly the High Elf female Velious armor and classic Wood Elf female armors) and tried my hand at some new techniques in my image editing software. Here's the end result:

AbhorrentBeauty1_zps306c9931-1.jpg


Who knew you could get from that up there ^ to this? I didn't have a real aim in mind with this lass, but she almost looks like she's ready to go to a wedding of some sort. Alternatively, if she were given a fancy bow, she might do for a "Shiritrian love nymph" -- Dalaya's equivalent to Cupid. She'd need a proper name, of course....

AbhorrentBeauty2_zps487e4915-1.jpg


If the staff want to pursue this texture set for some purpose, let me know and I can make any desired color changes or whatever. There are also (as usual) some annoying problems with getting this particular model to accept a new texture set, which I can explain in detail if necessary. Whatever the case may be, attached is a zip of the raw texture pieces should anyone on the development team like to tinker with her down the line.

This would not exactly work for it, but it makes me think that there has to be a way to make a cool Jayla model that is still a high elf, but is a little more unique.
 
I became curious what the Enchanter's Invisible Man pet would look like if I were to apply an actual texture to it, and the result is predictably bizarre. Firstly, the model itself is given only one blink-and-you-miss-it texture in global_chr.s3d, and it is titled ivmhe0001.bmp. The texture itself is nothing but an 8x8 square of the the previously mentioned magic pink, the color which the EverQuest engine renders as transparent. I palette swapped the pink for a horrible, blinding chartreuse and this is the result:

InvisibleManPaletteSwap_zps8ae8975b.jpg

Interestingly, the wireframe of the body seems to be taken from the Human Male, but the head is distinctly that of a Wood Elf. There even seems to be a strange disconnect between the head and the rest of the model that makes itself apparent when the Invisible Man partakes in any kind of animation, as seen in the second and third shots. When it sits, attacks, or does anything else apart from standard walking/running, its head slides back off its body until the animation is completed! :whoa:

Nothing remotely useful, of course, but maybe some of my fellow Enchanters have also wondered what their pet would look like with some "skin" on it. :keke:
Kind of a late reply, but given how the head looks, it MIGHT have been a failed attempt at creating a ghost like we see in Shrouded Isle and/or Kaladim.

Then they decided: We don't really need an elf ghost.


Which is also why Wood Elves probably didn't have the robe fully implemented, when it would have been so easy to do so. Wood Elves didn't have any classes that would ordinarily have worn a robe - despite the fact that IIRC there was an all/all robe in Classic. Which, as we all know, just recolors your chest when worn if your race doesn't have the mesh. Saved a short amount of effort and some precious lines of code. Which weren't really an issue a few years after EQ came out.
 
This would not exactly work for it, but it makes me think that there has to be a way to make a cool Jayla model that is still a high elf, but is a little more unique.
It's possible to do this using the female variant of the Felguard (106) model. This would mean that she would be seen the same regardless of whether people use new or old High Elf models. However, remember the difficulties you came up against over Christmas trying to do that exact thing with the new Santa Troll textures? I haven't tested whether this would happen with model 106, and I couldn't even if I wanted to; the only zone I'm able to pull her up in is one of the very few zones where she's loaded natively anyway!

Anyway, here's an example of the Felguard (not the playable High Elf) model being repurposed in such a way:

JaylaTest1_zpsf6d17157.jpg


Nothing about a design like this screams "Goddess of Knowledge & Goodwill" in particular, so I won't bother posting the pieces, but it at least shows that unique textures can still be applied to this very old model. For the record, the blue armor pieces were recolored and modified from some golden Erudite Velious armor (which can be seen here), and I removed the armor along the arms/lower legs to include a lace design so she'd look slightly less battle-oriented.

Sometimes texture mapping was done so poorly for these old models. Note how the lace on her arm in the last picture looks perfectly nice on the right side and then gets all stretched on the left side. Little things like this arise all the time in pre-Luclin models, and it's discouraging because one close look at an otherwise decent texture set ruins it. Fixing things like this is well beyond my ability, as it would involve redoing the mesh altogether in a 3D editor. Another example of this is the lace pantyhose; for some goofy reason, the texture cuts into the shoe at several points. It looks fine from afar, but again, a little bit of scrutiny ruins the illusion.
 
Someone should make grinkles a special account flag that lets him use some simple spawn commands in one specific zone, maybe one only he can get to? or maybe just the arena? just like a /gspawn and it spawns a level 1 whatever race he chooses with whatever texture modifiers he'd need access to.
 
Someone should make grinkles a special account flag that lets him use some simple spawn commands in one specific zone, maybe one only he can get to? or maybe just the arena? just like a /gspawn and it spawns a level 1 whatever race he chooses with whatever texture modifiers he'd need access to.

Everyone has this basic tech now in Athica B!
 
Grinkles: I put up a new version of EQGExport that will let you drag-and-drop to import files. Link.

No idea what stopped me before. Turned out to be trivial -- just randomly occured to me to do it while I was sitting here at 3am.
 
Grinkles: I put up a new version of EQGExport that will let you drag-and-drop to import files. Link.

No idea what stopped me before. Turned out to be trivial -- just randomly occured to me to do it while I was sitting here at 3am.
This will come in handy. Thanks! Having to manually select files can be a real drag when you're working with folders inside of folders inside of folders and so on. I'll put it to use next time I pay a visit to the shapeshifter NPC in Athica B. :)
 
Zaela, I just thought to give this latest EQGExport a test run and came across a problem right off the bat. :confused: The first column (which lists .s3d files) populates just fine, but when I click any of those .s3d files, the second column (which is supposed to show .wld files and texture pieces) remains empty. Is it possible I'm missing a .dll or something?
 
Zaela, I just thought to give this latest EQGExport a test run and came across a problem right off the bat. :confused: The first column (which lists .s3d files) populates just fine, but when I click any of those .s3d files, the second column (which is supposed to show .wld files and texture pieces) remains empty. Is it possible I'm missing a .dll or something?

Works correctly out of the box for me on three separate machines... one of which has no Windows DLLs to fall back on since it's Linux. Everything related to loading the contents of the S3D and filling up the lists is contained in the scripts and the executable anyway. Not sure what to say.
 
Someone asked me why some of the water in my post about underutilized locations looks unusual, so I figured I could share about it here. Water in pre-Luclin zones typically consists of four frames of water texture that are cycled through rapidly to give the (unconvincing) impression of wave motion. In some cases, such as in King's Pass or the Newport Sewers, the water is semi-transparent; this is presumably done because the body of water is so shallow and it would look less realistic to have a completely opaque water surface in such areas. Large bodies of water, such as the water around the Newport docks or spanning the entire Sea of Swords, are opaque.

Zaela's Transparentifier tool can be used to turn opaque water textures semi-transparent so that they match the shallower bodies of water mentioned earlier. The result is that the player can see all the way down through the water from above. Visibility underneath the surface is still murky and awful, and I don't know of a way to counteract this. (I believe the new client will mean much less murkier water vision though!) This is useful for spotting NPCs, groundspawns, or other landmarks from the safety of the surface, but it also makes for some strikingly unrealistic visuals, such as clouds scrolling underneath the horizon and bizarre underwater geometry that was never intended to be seen in such a way.

Here are some pictures to show the effect:

Transparent%20Water%201_zpsw0rbsizq.jpg


Transparent%20Water%202_zpsqblqjbwv.jpg


Transparent%20Water%203_zpsilv3aam2.jpg


Transparent%20Water%204_zpsdghexifm.jpg
 
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