Big Ol' List of Terrible Textures and Other Graphical Gripes Which Plague Us So

[Malkior]

This list is an all-encompassing account of the parts of Kotor 1 and 2 which really bring down the calibre of the texture quality and are as of yet, impossible for us in our current capacity to fix.

 

My goal with this thread is to chronicle all of these problem areas, and offer or present solutions to them. Sort of like a massive request log, but one only concerned with how the graphics fall short of HD.

Hopefully in time, we can get these fixed and see Kotor as good as we possibly can.

 

 

_-------<<

 

 

To get this gravy train rolling, I'll offer my at the moment short list of problems I want to see fixed, but can't fix no matter how hard I try.

 

 

1. The Ebon Hawk during the prologue:

 

The floor texture throughout this sequence is both pixelated and overly contrasted. I believe this is due to the player being on the actual Ebon Hawk model which was never meant for such close up detail. Work to up the resolution does virtually nothing except make the engine work harder. (Minimal detail boost and only at 2300 + resolution)

 

 

2. The tiny sith ships that fly outside during the Ravager sequence:

 

Likely the texture is just too close to the camera; each ship is so blurry that one cannot distinguish any details. The texture also includes the Ravager with them, so scaling them up to add detail to them makes the ships look extremely large and equally blurry.

 

 

3. Some of the railing textures in the Telos Landing Bay:

 

These railings in the landing bay have an extremely pixelated/muddy texture with metallic highlights which is further exacerbated with how the railing geometry warps the texture further.

 

 

4. The trees throughout the Telos Restoration Zone:

 

Terrible UVW unwrapping coupled with bizarre shader anomalies causes any texture edits to be both distorted and overexposed no matter what work is done on the texture side. I have no idea how to even begin to fix it.

 

 

5. The Smoke Effects:

 

Some may disagree with me, but a lot of the smoke textures are grossly small and while they may hold a classic charm for some, are a pretty good indicator of how low rez the textures are when observed.

 

 

Lastly,

 

6. The Ritual Animation in the Tomb on Dxun:

 

Extremely small animated texture that goes every level of crazy when edited at all. The texture stops animating if the edited texture is put in the override, and if the shader envmap is changed, it animates..wrongly.

 

--/

 

There's no set format at the moment except that I may draft up a master list if the problems and solutions get buried as comment threads tend to do.

[DeadMan]

Nice list, Malkior, but could you also add actual texture names in it? This may help those of us who want to try their skills with them, but have no idea (or too lazy to find out;)) what textures are actually used there.

And screenshots for some cases could be helpful. (For example, I never noticed any problems with #1. Or I just didn't actually played the game for too long;))

[VarsityPuppet]

The Force cage textures are atrocious, and I think the computer terminals could use an overhaul.

[Malkior]

Hmm.. Okay I can't get too many personal screenshots at the moment, but the texture files are as follows:

 

1. 002_EBO_Main3 and possibly 002_EBO_Main1 as well as 002_EBO_Inside1 for the outside metal panelling.

 

2. TEL_Rav -only texture for both the ships and ravager background image.

 

3. Unknown. I've gone through the texture list time and again, and can't find which one it is.

 

4. Trunk of trees is TEL_trunk01 and branches are TEL_Bra01

 

5. fx_smoke -but there may be other varieties I missed.

 

6. fx_ritual01

 

 

 

 

---

Sorry bout that. It may help to actually know where the textures are :/

 

 

Oh yeah. #1's pretty bad. This is the best I could do and only after boosting the size of the textures to 1820x1820

http://s140.photobucket.com/user/cosmonuclearblur/media/Gaming%20Screens%20Kotor/K2_00158.jpg.html

(my phone may not post spoiler tags, so I apologize if the picture is too incredibly big...or if the image never gets embedded at all.. Pic is from my photobucket)

[Kexikus]

I found a solution for number 2. I'll upload the texture as soon as it's done.

The trick was to increase the texture's dpi. That might also work for number 1.

 

And I also found some other textures that could use higher resolution versions (although they might exist): The skybox for Taris and Anchorhead in K1.

 

Edit:
Here's a screenshot of the fighter texture I made.

 

 

 

It still needs some finetuning work, but I think it's looking quite good. But the biggest problem is that I have no idea where I could get a useful texture for the Ravager.

The best thing I could find is this one:

 

 

 

The problem is that this picture is neither big enough nor the right perspective.

Any help would be much appreciated if anyone has the skill to draw a texture, has a good 3D model to take a picture from or knows of a good source picture.

[InSidious]

A good list. Thanks for compiling it, Malkior. I'd add that the generic background starscape could probably use an overhaul.

Also, the non-beam effects for stun, drain life, shock/lightning/storm etc. (fx_tex_ filenames), could use an overhaul. The problem is that their .txis as exported from KT do not work, so you end up with a static effect. I don't know if it's the TPC-TGA conversion which is mucking them up, or if something else is going on, but I haven't been able to make them work when edited, and to be honest they probably need a proper replacement, though I've not really tried this yet, myself.

[Kexikus]

Yeah, the starscape texture could certainly use an upgrade. Do you know their names?

 

And about number 2, although I'm not sure if this is the place to discuss the development of the new textures:

I found out that the dpi has no effect at all, that was a mistake on my end^^ And the game blurrs the texture differently depending on its size, even when they look exactly the same (i.e. one pixel in the small texture is the same as 4x4 pixels in the bigger one). I think I'll try some more things with that texture but a real new Ravager image would probably the best solution.

[Fair Strides]

A good list. Thanks for compiling it, Malkior. I'd add that the generic background starscape could probably use an overhaul.

Also, the non-beam effects for stun, drain life, shock/lightning/storm etc. (fx_tex_ filenames), could use an overhaul. The problem is that their .txis as exported from KT do not work, so you end up with a static effect. I don't know if it's the TPC-TGA conversion which is mucking them up, or if something else is going on, but I haven't been able to make them work when edited, and to be honest they probably need a proper replacement, though I've not really tried this yet, myself.

Use the hex viewer in KT, in ASCII mode, and scroll to the bottom. The .txi info is there, plus at the end of the last line of gibberish.

 

For help, here's my tutorial on it.

 

http://lucasforums.com/showthread.php?t=212213

 

Third post has simpler directions, but first post has pics.

[RFaurora]

KOTOR 1, Grass textures in Taris' Undercity and on Dantooine

[InSidious]

Use the hex viewer in KT, in ASCII mode, and scroll to the bottom. The .txi info is there, plus at the end of the last line of gibberish.

 

For help, here's my tutorial on it.

 

http://lucasforums.com/showthread.php?t=212213

 

Third post has simpler directions, but first post has pics.

Thanks, FS! I'll try that and report back.

[Sith Holocron]

This one would probably go under the graphical issues rather than textures. I've covered this before so I'll just copy and paste the relevant portions over tho this thread...
 

The interiors of the Ebon Hawk in both KotOR and TSL suffer from both shader and UVW issues. Some examples follow:

If any one has any additional problem areas in the interior of the Ebon Hawk that they'd like to highlight, pictures of those errors/graphical bugs would be appreciated.

Fallen Guardian also spotted a few issues.

The parts he circled in Red are basically parts that are just not there. You can see right through them. They are there on the texture, but not on the model as seen in the game.

Finally JCarter426 reported this one:

Not sure if you can see it in the picture, but there's a slight crack that's especially obvious when the ship is in hyperspace.

As any mod that wants to improve/alter the interiors of the Ebon Hawk will have to deal with this UVW mapping issue, I made a modding request to correct these graphical issues.

[Malkior]

KOTOR 1, Grass textures in Taris' Undercity and on Dantooine

Agreed with you there. If I might also note that all of the grass textures in K2 are pulled from the Dantooine grass as well.

 

I saw a few hopeful results in a texture pack of the Dxun textures with high resolution photos as reference. From what I've seen of the texture itself, it seems the alpha layer is to blame for its pixelated quality.