Dak's Texture Stuff

[Dak Drexl 10]

Well hello there, long time no see! Been away for a while now, but lately I've had some free time so I thought it would be fun to pick up some modding again. It's cool to see how the community has changed and how much the quality of the mods have improved! 

 

Anyway I'm just going to be working on character texture stuff. Nothing too crazy

 

I'm starting with Mandalore. It's definitely in progress, but I think it's on the right track. Would love to hear some feedback (sorry the screens are so dark, the Ravager is not the best place to show off textures). What I noticed is that a lot of the details I painted are too high-frequency to show up in-game, so I think I'll increase the size a little to see if it reads better.

 

 

Fun to be back!

 

[milestails 264]

Nice subtle changes! Welcome bak Dak!

[Canderis 180]

Dak! Good to see you back! Nice work so far. 

[134340Goat 116]

Beautiful. Armour looks much more worn and scratched up, and I like the detail on the helmet's visor

[Fair Strides 509]

First Seikan and now you, Dak! We've never met, but I've always heard good things about you.

 

I'm glad you've come back for a visit, and I'm definitely proud that you noticed a big difference in the quality of the mods.

[Jorak Uln 458]

welcome to the forum, Dak!

I used your mods for years - especially before i went modding myself -

and im glad to see "one of the old guns" here;)

 

your armor retexture looks quite good, i like that worn out look - but would it be possible to make some areas shiny (e.g. transparent with assigning a cubemap)?

[Sithspecter 909]

Dak is back!!

[Sith Holocron 2,478]

Welcome back, good sir!

[LDR 234]

Great to see you back, old pal! Your texture work is spectacular as always.

[Dak Drexl 10]

Thanks guys! Hello to some familiar faces as well as some new ones. Glad you're liking the armor, I think I'm pretty much ready to call this one done.

 

 but would it be possible to make some areas shiny (e.g. transparent with assigning a cubemap)?

 

 

Yep, good call. I was saving this for the end so I could try to make a fake sort of gloss map that's based off the color. I was kind of successful, but the game's baremetal effect just doesn't look that good. It pretty much seems like an "all or nothing" type of thing that's kinda hard to control. Anyway, here's the latest:

 

 

 

[Mutilator57 140]

Great to have you back mate!

[Malkior 476]

 

Thanks guys! Hello to some familiar faces as well as some new ones. Glad you're liking the armor, I think I'm pretty much ready to call this one done.

 

 

 

Yep, good call. I was saving this for the end so I could try to make a fake sort of gloss map that's based off the color. I was kind of successful, but the game's baremetal effect just doesn't look that good. It pretty much seems like an "all or nothing" type of thing that's kinda hard to control. Anyway, here's the latest:

 

 

 

 

 

 

-snip-

 

 

 

 

Very nice work on the armor. I am still working on getting metal to that exact level of shininess akin to plate armor, and I am quite pleased with the look you've created

 

By the way, if you are interested, a Darth Sapiens both discovered and created custom cubemaps in his mod. http://deadlystream.com/forum/files/file/498-modders-resource-cubemap-pack/

[Dak Drexl 10]

Very nice work on the armor. I am still working on getting metal to that exact level of shininess akin to plate armor, and I am quite pleased with the look you've created

 

By the way, if you are interested, a Darth Sapiens both discovered and created custom cubemaps in his mod. http://deadlystream.com/forum/files/file/498-modders-resource-cubemap-pack/

 

 

Huh I didn't know about those, I'll have to test them out before I release this mod. Thanks Malkior! 

 

About the shininess: I didn't really notice a difference in the amount in-game until I reached brighter values. If 100% reflective = an alpha value of 0 (completely black), I didn't see much of a difference until I reached .5 or above (meaning completely black and 50% black looked pretty similar). The values that I settled on in the alpha were about .7-.85, except for the visor which was higher. Hope that helps.

[Jorak Uln 458]

Huh I didn't know about those, I'll have to test them out before I release this mod. Thanks Malkior! 

 

About the shininess: I didn't really notice a difference in the amount in-game until I reached brighter values. If 100% reflective = an alpha value of 0 (completely black), I didn't see much of a difference until I reached .5 or above (meaning completely black and 50% black looked pretty similar). The values that I settled on in the alpha were about .7-.85, except for the visor which was higher. Hope that helps.

Looks much better already!

 

I've experimented with cubemaps since a while too, with different variants, but my program works with opacity instead of alpha channel.

Here some things i discovered:

 

1. Basically if i make a tex with 30-40% opacity (~65 % reflective) its super shiny already:

 

Floor tex WIP:

 

 

If you watch the floor closely, you see that I didn't use any of the games/Sapiens cubemaps, but just a Screenshot image:

 

 

The trick is to declare envmaptexture CM_ME3 in the name.txi as usual but just to drop CM_ME3.tga into Override (without adding a CM_ME3.txi - that way Kotor does not recognize it as a cubemap).

That way you can use any image you want as envmap without being limited to the vanilla Cubemaps.

 

 

2. What is great for metallic textures -if you use cubemaps though is CM_baremetal from Darth Sapiens:

 

watch the window frame and the pipes:

 

 

 

 

 

The possibilities are really endless. I'm excited for what you come up with next...