Best way to go about re-sizing and enhancing quality of textures?

[L0ki194 82]

I've had this question buzzing around in my head for some time now, and thought "Maybe I should make a topic about it?" rather than make a status update.

 

For those of you who have done texture mods that have up-scaled and enhanced the quality of a vanilla texture: What would you say are the best ways to do so, as well as what to avoid?

[Malkior 476]

Well, the first thing is, there are many different ways to work with a texture after you hit the image-resize button.

 

 

What's worked for me is to basically find parts I like about the original texture and then redraw the rest.

For me, at least, that requires finding a lot of reference photos (5-10 generally and the higher the resolution the better)

 

Once I have the photos, I try to replicate patterns and shapes of the parts I want onto new layers and blend it all as the final texture.

 

If my goal is to retain the look of the original texture, I compare my new one with the original and ensure they resemble each other.

 

I've been learning recently to make sure I actually capture the parts of my reference photos properly instead of running noise for a fake material and putting a bunch of filters over it, but I am still experimenting.

 

 

One thing very important to avoid is keeping parts of the Vanilla texture, especially if they make your final texture look blurry or just flat-out messy. Kotor is made to be seen from a lower resolution, and its smallest flaws will become much more prevalent when you increase the size.

 

 

Second is to make sure you actually change things after increasing the resolution.

 

One of the first mistakes I made was to run a bunch of filters and add little things at a low opacity, but due to how the textures already looked fine in the game, I assumed my changes were responsible for its looking good.

 

My biggest rule of thumb is, if you need to zoom in really close for a comparison shot on your mod upload page, then chances are you haven't changed enough.

I am amazingly guilty of this in my earliest projects (Seriously most of my mods had this problem), and it's one thing I'm working to remedy this time around.

[DarthParametric 3,777]

Also, be aware that some things are not resolvable simply by creating a bigger texture. Blasters, for example, all have irredeemable UV maps. No amount of retexturing will fix their inherent issue. The only practical solution is to re-map the models (or given how terrible the vanilla models are, just make entirely new ones, as per Toasty Fresh and Sithspecter).

[djh269 264]

I'll just leave these here: 

 

https://web.archive.org/web/20151013150937/http://lucasforums.com/showthread.php?t=195825

 

https://web.archive.org/web/20150911192057/http://www.lucasforums.com/showthread.php?t=182155

 

https://web.archive.org/web/20150912224950/http://www.lucasforums.com/showthread.php?t=181976

 

https://www.textures.com/ - great site for downloading various textures. 

[L0ki194 82]

Thanks for the replies so far, I'll be sure to keep note of them.

As Malkior was saying about resizing a texture and then just adding filters over them... that's what I was afraid of. Because I did that for something I'm working on.

I'm working on some skins related to Revan's robes, and for some reason I had the bright idea of resizing the textures to 2048x2048, and then I messed around with some filters in Photoshop. And I'll admit, some things still look blurry (like the clips on the sides of the chest). Seems I fell hard into that trap. Kind of makes me want to start from scratch again...

 

Just showing the vanilla texture, minus alpha channels. I know it isn't a huge difference. The main thing I was going for was to just clean it up slightly.

 

 

 

[DarthParametric 3,777]

If I may paraphrase Private First Class William L. Hudson, raster graphics follow the linear process of an express elevator to hell, going down. If you are starting with KOTOR textures as your basis, you are already in the sub-basement, and there's no real way back up.

[Malkior 476]

Thanks for the replies so far, I'll be sure to keep note of them.

As Malkior was saying about resizing a texture and then just adding filters over them... that's what I was afraid of. Because I did that for something I'm working on.

I'm working on some skins related to Revan's robes, and for some reason I had the bright idea of resizing the textures to 2048x2048, and then I messed around with some filters in Photoshop. And I'll admit, some things still look blurry (like the clips on the sides of the chest). Seems I fell hard into that trap. Kind of makes me want to start from scratch again...

 

Just showing the vanilla texture, minus alpha channels. I know it isn't a huge difference. The main thing I was going for was to just clean it up slightly.

 

 

 

 

Well, sometimes it's better to start from scratch with the same basic original goal than to keep trying to make something that clearly isn't working better. Hopefully, if you keep at it, you will develop a technique of your own.

 

However, I agree with Darth Parametric on this one. The texture is as good as it's going to get. It may be necessary to totally remake the entire thing instead of using the Vanilla as a base. I have some experience in doing that as well, if you need assistance.

[L0ki194 82]

I see. I think for what I'm working on, I'm just going to stick with the base texture for now, and if I feel the need to recreate something from scratch, I'll do it. I'm going to have to look into getting the UV map for the texture though, because I was running into some issues caused by my trial and error selecting the hood and arms areas.

[DarthParametric 3,777]

The N_DarthRevan UVs are trash. There are a whole bunch of faces that fly off 100s of tiles outside 0-1 space. So if you are getting weirdness, that's why. The PxBJ robes have some degenerate polys outside 0-1 space, but they are hidden so it's not a big deal. Although on closer inspection, the fingers are a complete mess... And of course there are overlaps galore, so yeah, another example of quality work by Bioware.

Here are the UV templates:

https://www.darthparametric.com/files/kotor/misc/PxBJ_Revan_UV_Templates.7z

[L0ki194 82]

Yeah, BioWare sure had an interesting way of doing these. Thank you!

 

EDIT: LMAO, the hood looks so all over the place.

Edit 2: Ok, yeah, having these help a lot! Thanks once again.

[Quanon 263]

Well, for my own reskins I made for the K1 party: I only used the old game texture for the color. (Just gave it a minor blurr; mostly use a black/ white copy to boost shadows and highlights, with a layer set on Overlay or Soft Light. Tweak Opacity or adjust it via Adjustment layers. Working none-destructive ;-) )
And as a guide for the layout or where certain folds; belt buckles.. etc, details are.

I then used various other photos of "textures" from fabrics, like burlap, cotton, leather...etc and a few Photoshop filters combinations, plus playing around with layer options, to get some effects.

Then endlessly tweaking contrasts/ brightness... vibrance... or Levels to get a result YOU like.

 

For the human skin, well, the internet is full of bare human skin, I don't think I need to point out where to look

The thing you need to look for when you are searching for your materials is the size of the pictures. Preferable 2000pix and up.

 

Like that you can just use a part of the texture or re-scale it to your own liking. The bigger it is the more you can play around with it.

 

A good scource:

https://www.textures.com/

 

Free to use, no need to pay, but you can only download about 15 textures a day and not always the premium quality.

But they have a huge selection some really great stuff to be found. Sadly Mayang textures is gone; was another good site.

 

Still just using google sometimes gives you what you need.

But as DP pointed out, the UVs for most models have really bad parts; so these can be really annoying as they can wreck details.

[Jorak Uln 458]

If I may paraphrase Private First Class William L. Hudson, raster graphics follow the linear process of an express elevator to hell, going down. If you are starting with KOTOR textures as your basis, you are already in the sub-basement, and there's no real way back up.

Exactly.

If you really want to avoid compromises on quality you need to recreate the textures from scratch.

Some good programs you might wanna check out are  Substance Designer, Substance Painter and Genetica. 

 

And keep in mind that it might be not always  the best solution strictly to recreate  the vanilla  Kotor designs, some texture layouts are just lazy, especially in the second game.