Adventures In Texture Editing

Tarutao said:
To paraphrase Heidi Klum: "it's ugly, but it's interesting, and that's worth a lot".

I would so not use that myself, but I look forward to seeing more of your work!
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Maybe not but I assume now that someone has gotten that far, it'll ease up everything else and maybe enhance modifiying in general, no?
 
I'm running the cell shaded looking character models atm for the fun of it. Most NPC's seem to be effected but not all of them, and it doesn't appear that my own char's are taking advantage of it, although my face texture looks to be in a slightly higher resolution. Weird...
 
Haruto said:
I'm running the cell shaded looking character models atm for the fun of it. Most NPC's seem to be effected but not all of them, and it doesn't appear that my own char's are taking advantage of it, although my face texture looks to be in a slightly higher resolution. Weird...
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For reference there are something like 700ish textures for just the zone of east commonlands (the one he was originally working on. This does not include any global models etc.) I'm mentioning it to give some idea of how much work goes into the resolution upgrades they are working on are very slow, and they are a TON of work. I originally couldn't get his textures to work on SoD, but I figured out it is because I am using Luclin models (not Velious) (incase anyone else wanted to use them.)

I have been making a lot of progress with getting a workable modification, and I am close to figuring out modifying zone textures. Once I figure it out, I'll move to working on the character models to see what I can do there.

I am getting a weird line of color on the top and right of the models. I am still trying to figure that out. Once I do that, I can update the tree barks. Here are some pics from attempt 2:

EC_Attempt2_01.bmp

EC_Attempt2_02.bmp

EC_Attempt2_03.bmp

EC_Attempt2_04.bmp
 
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Everything has gotten a lot cleaner since the last set of pics. Looks like your getting a lot closer to finding the stride.
 
Haruto said:
Everything has gotten a lot cleaner since the last set of pics. Looks like your getting a lot closer to finding the stride.
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Thanks! There are going to be some limitations without manually manipulating every texture file. (Which would require months of effort from an entire team.) Some of the textures don't line up seamlessly when positioned next to themselves (prior to any kind of manipulation.) IE - the environment is not seamless even before texture manipulation, so it will not be seamless after manipulation. Garbage in, garbage out. So to speak...

I may take a few days off from this project to get my desktop up and running again. It is much more powerful and makes the Dell E1505 laptop I'm using look like a calculator. It took me 2-2.5 hours to update just the EC zone files, so I am guessing my desktop would do it in a quarter of the time.
 
You may have already mentioned it, and I just missed it, but if you are just running files through a program maybe you can post a little "how to" and some of us can just do it and post a link to the converted file?
 
Waldoff said:
I am totally stealing the king akanon model for clockwork. Holy shit.
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Dude, that was from just July 30th. This should have been implemented by August 1st. Make it happen, cap'n!

Daffie, the cell-shaded, Okami look you're doing is looking way more polished and awesome already. Keep up the excellent work.
 
So I figured out my desktop problems. One of my OS drives an OCZ SD failed. Since I was running a RAID0 to be cool, I need to reinstall and RMA. I'll be running a RAID5 from now on (with the failed drive as a hot swap), but it is going to take me a few days to get things up and running on that machine again.

Some people asked me for notes on how to do this. So you need the following software:
S3DSpy (freeware, i use version 1.2)
Vector Magic (Pay to play, i use version 1.15)
ReaConverter (pay to play, i use v5.5 pro)
(I am positive the pirates can help you find these software versions... I do not condone this course of action...)

Process:
1. Extract all .bmp per file using S3DSpy.
2. Vector and saved as .esp using Vector Magic.
3. ReaConverter to convert these files to .bmp.
4. 'Add' to S3DSpy and overwrite existing files.
5. Log into to check your work. (EQ texture cache needs to be off and the cache files need to be removed. Grinkles posted above on how to do that.)

All these things are set up to do bulk operations (for the most part.) I set up a folder structure in such a way where I don't overwrite files along the way. This lets me run a .bat file I wrote to save the originals and all my work before moving to the next set of vectoring.

I'm heading to work so I can't be more specific right now, but I might take a video tonight.

Issues I need to resolve:
1. Textures seem to convert with an additional line at the top and at the right of the texture. (Tree bark is the best place to notice this problem.) I'm not sure why this is happening, and I may need to resize to fix??
2. Tree branches do not work well at all. I haven't tried fixing them specifically, but I am thinking that EQ is set to show transparency for the background color of this texture.
3. To make this work last 2.5 and 3.0, the update needs to be done on the newest version of the EQ files. This means downloading live and using those files as the source. I have not played with the live files yet. A friend on p99 said with their client he had to do resizing and all kinds of stuff. I have his walk through if we need it. I can confirm his walk through does not work for the current SoD files.
4. I am going to play with the vector color conversion numbers. I think that it is possible that less colors will give better results.

These are my current vector magic settings for the last set of pictures I posted:
VectorMagicCurrentSettings.png
 
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News update for those of you that are interested in my project. Good and bad...

Good news:
-Much more powerful desktop up and running. I can compile in 1/30th the time now. This is really good, and it was no small task... It could actually be possible to update all zones due to this speed improvement...
-I have a local EQ server I can use for testing. It was a little harder than it is cracked up to be install wise, but I got it working.

Bad news:
-Increasing the resolution of the textures is not going to happen. I could not get things to look good enough, and when I even got remotely close there was no way to batch the process. I spent a TON of time on this, but I am admittedly not a photoshop expert. Sorry Woldo :( If someone can figure out a way to do it, and batch the process, I'll help with the conversion.
-I am using an SoF client and install version for my server, and it is WAY different than SoD. The texture update process is different, but I think I know how to do it. One example is that textures are stored up side down in the newer versions (or at least they extract that way...) There are other things that actually crash the client...

Before I continue the project I really need some feedback...
1. If I figure out how to update the SoF textures (which I think is going to be the same texture batches as the underfoot client we are moving to in 3.0) no one can use my changes until the upgrade...
2. If I upgrade the current SoD textures, there could be problems with not-updated textures when we upgrade clients. These not upgraded textures could prove problematic to track down once upgraded.

You guys who want to use this look I'm tinkering with, what are your thoughts?


EDIT - I am honestly thinking that I should just update the current SoD textures and call it a day. It is easier to do, and I can set up a link quickly for people to enjoy if they want.
 
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Daffie said:
-I am using an SoF client and install version for my server, and it is WAY different than SoD. The texture update process is different, but I think I know how to do it. One example is that textures are stored up side down in the newer versions (or at least they extract that way...) There are other things that actually crash the client...
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SoD 2.5 should change this dramatically, i think that uses underfoot client?
 
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