Official HR4 (High-Resolution, 4x) Texture Pack - WIP

[jitspoe]

I'm going to be focusing on high resolution textures for a bit.

Goals of the pack:
- Improve the visuals of the game.
- Standardize high resolution textures for fairness in game play.
- GPL compatibility (all textures will have source available - be that photographs, scripts, PSD files, or whatever - and be free to edit, use, and distribute under the GPL license).

You can browse the textures here:
http://dplogin.com/files/textures/pball/hr4/

Or download the full zip here:
http://dplogin.com/files/hr4_gpl.zip

I'll be actively taking feedback and suggestions on IRC (#paintball on irc.globalgamers.net) while I'm working on the textures (~9pm+ EST), and I'll try to check this thread at least once a day.

[CheMiCal]

atta girl

[prozajik]

Nice i really like your textures . Crates look cool
But i have few suggestions maybe someone could confirm or refus it if its not just my video settings
1.X_tile.jpg - seems to overbrighten for me. When it is in shadow its ok but when sun shines on it, it hurts my eyes
2.wizwood1_2,wizwood1_3 - looks for me like non hq idk why from distance it looks like there was some huge texture. The other woods that looks common are good (wood1_1,w_wood5) but those 2 that i mentioned looks like smoothed maybe
Anyway +1 with those textures the game looks awesome

[T3RR0R15T]

I saw, that you have two hr4 skies in the zip. Here are some more:

clouds - bLiNdThInG (http://dplogin.com/forums/index.php?topic=21277.msg205175#msg205175)
pbsky3 - Zorchenhimer (http://dplogin.com/forums/index.php?topic=5762.msg66629#msg66629)
sand - Zorchenhimer (http://dplogin.com/forums/index.php?topic=5762.msg66629#msg66629)


Download: ftp://otb-server.de/pub/HR4_sky.zip



I've also two flames (self made from gif pictures) which i can upload, if you want to add them.

[T3RR0R15T]

Here is the post with my opinions from the "Re: jitspoe's .plan" thread:


The few hr4 textures from 2011 on dplogin.com (i don't know, if you want to keep or remake the other ones, so i only talk about the new textures) are looking good. Especially "city6_8", "rock4_2", "rocks19_1", "rrock1_2" and "wood1_1" are very nice ingame. But there are also three textures, which i personally don't like or which can have a little tweak in my opinion. Let's start with the texture, which needs the tweak: "stonewal". There is a little bit too much red in it. And now the textures "metal2_5" and "metal5_8": They look completely low res, too rusty and too brown ingame. The normal low res texture is grey instead of brown. The color of your new textures is more like "metal2_6" and "metal8_1", but only the color. They look too low res to only rename them.

What do you think about this ones (metal2_5, metal5_8)?


Here are screenshots, how it looks ingame with the low res textures (img 1), your new textures (img 2) and the one, i suggested (img 3):










Edit: Here are two more screenshots. Low res and official hr4.

rrock1_2: Looks really good in the background and ok from the near.
w_metal1: Looks too much detailed and because of that unrealistic. Maybe make it with big plain areas and not so much perforated. The structure from b_tile.jpg could look really good for that.
metal2_5: Like the pictures above this "edit"-part. Too much rust, brown instead of grey and the points need to be brighter to see them as good as in low res. Maybe bigger plain areas (for the background) with only 10-20% rust looks better. If you don't want to use the one from above, i would prefer to make something very similar to that one. It looks pretty nice, detailed and clear ingame.
metal4_8: It's yellow, but the texture itself isn't that bad. I would like to see how it looks ingame with only 25% and 50% of the yellow stripes. That we can see more from the part, which is in the background now.






Without a picture:

- metal1_2.jpg: looks also low res ingame.
- metal2.jpg: Looks pixelated and without clear borders around the points. Maybe a toooo high compression?

[Narga]

I swear that these HD textures were there before the dinosaurs were around! Are you improving them?

[ViciouZ]

I swear that these HD textures were there before the dinosaurs were around! Are you improving them?

Narga, some of these textures are a couple of years old, however jitspoe has resumed work on them and has produced a number of new textures in the last week. Try clicking on the first link and looking at the date column.

Gotta agree with T3RR0R that the slimy metal plates look perhaps a little too slimy, so that they are more yellow instead of neutral. Although pretty much everything looks amazing

While you're doing all these, perhaps you could make a half-height crate texture for future use by mappers? The current technique of squashing a crate texture to 0.5Y can produce some odd-looking results.

[CheMiCal]

ugliest textures i have ever seen.

[jitspoe]

On the metal5_8, I've attached the original texture (scaled up).  Most of the standalone textures were rushed to avoid copyright issues, so I'm kind of picking the best between the original and standalone or making a hybrid between the two.  This one is pretty much 50/50 original and standalone.

New high res:


Standalone:


The texture you've suggested as an alternative does not look like either the original or standalone.  It's too flat.  It also looks low quality (looks like it was scaled up, blurry, and there are jpeg artifacts visible).  It tiles terribly as well (looks like a giant grid from a distance).  Discovery is a bad map for looking at this texture, as it uses it on a huge amount of area with almost all uniform lighting.

Original:

[T3RR0R15T]

I've only played the standalone version of this game, not the mod. So i have never seen the real original texture and the standalone one is the original for me.
If you want to give the game his real original look back, ok. But remember, that 99% of the players doesn't know it and you'll give the game a completely new look after many years (instead of clear and detailed textures, what i thought). I can't say if the players like or hate it. Also, almost all actual maps are made to look good with the standalone textures. I don't know, if the mappers are happy with a new look of their maps or if we get two different versions of each map with the same name (and need to download another version from each server...) - that won't happen, the most mappers are too lazy to do that


Another thing, i noticed: Why do the new textures have so less details? They are in a higher resolution and that looks of course better than the low res ingame, but they are also mushy. I miss the details. Where are they?

The new textures look like this one (in my opinion):


Why not like this one (clear and with much more details)?





Have you looked at the textures from the near ingame? You can also see some (jpeg ?) artifacts. It's a bit pixelated (and without clear borders around points). Like i said, metal2.jpg is the worst. Look at it on airtime. Is this, how hr4 should look?

[jitspoe]

I'm not sure I follow - you're suggesting this:



Looks sharper and more detailed than this?



Also, "w_metal1: Looks too much detailed and because of that unrealistic."  I'm getting mixed feedback.  Are the textures too detailed or not detailed enough?  I'm just having a hard time figuring out what you want.

I don't see the jpeg artifacts in metal2.  JPEG artifacts look like this: http://dpfwiw.com/images/jpeg_artifacts.jpg

Airtime is kind of a bad example because it scales the texture up and has it sideways.  Pretty much any texture you put there is going to look low res.  Sadly, it's about the only map that uses that texture.  I can make the shadows harder, but that won't change the fact that the texture is blown up in that map.

Nice i really like your textures . Crates look cool
But i have few suggestions maybe someone could confirm or refus it if its not just my video settings
1.X_tile.jpg - seems to overbrighten for me. When it is in shadow its ok but when sun shines on it, it hurts my eyes
2.wizwood1_2,wizwood1_3 - looks for me like non hq idk why from distance it looks like there was some huge texture. The other woods that looks common are good (wood1_1,w_wood5) but those 2 that i mentioned looks like smoothed maybe
Anyway +1 with those textures the game looks awesome

Could you post a screenshot of the overbright tiles?  I didn't think they were that bright.  I agree about the wood.  The problem is, some maps *cough*propaint1*cough* have huge surface areas of wood, and smaller grain textures look bad on them.  Also, the original textures had large grain.  I'll probably make another pass at them later.  I'm trying to at least make a first pass of all the high res textures first.

[Narga]

I'm not sure I follow - you're suggesting this:



Looks sharper and more detailed than this?

I like the top one better because it looks cleaner and more realistic.

The bottom one looks rusty and worn down and is better for maps that take place in old, abandoned building.

[T3RR0R15T]

Yes, i maybe write a little bit too much. Its hard to follow, what i mean.

I hope, i think right and you mean this part:

And now the textures "metal2_5" and "metal5_8": They look completely low res, too rusty and too brown ingame. The normal low res texture is grey instead of brown. The color of your new textures is more like "metal2_6" and "metal8_1", but only the color. They look too low res to only rename them.

What do you think about this ones (metal2_5, metal5_8)?

Of course, "my" metal5_8 texture doesn't look sharper and more detailed. But it looks more like the standalone one (where i thought, they were the original), has more / a bigger similar surface (not each pixel in another color; very hard to explain, because i dont know all the exact words in english) and in my opinion better on the places where it is used ingame atm.
You say, it is too flat. You're right, it is flat if you have your texture beside it. How should it look? My opinion: Your one looks like metal under a microscope and my one looks a bit more like in the real world, so if i buy a lot of metal plates and make a wall of it, they are looking flat. Thats why i use metal and not stone.





Like i said, its very hard to explain what i mean with "bigger similar surface" and "detailed". I hope, this two screenshots can show it a bit. Both are ingame screenshots from the exact same place and both are in a bad quality. The first one has too much details for the bad quality, so there are no clear borders around the points and almost each pixel has another color. BUT, the level of details would be nice to have, if the texture quality itself would be as good as the last picture below. The second one has ~25% of the colors and bigger similar surfaces of the same kind of colors. That looks better on such a bad quality and the points are much better visible. The borders around the points are also not clear and the artifacts are very ugly.








Don't laugh, this is made from the first few pictures, which i found with google What do we need, to have such a clear and detailed/structured texture (if i stand directly in front of a wall) ingame?

[ViciouZ]

I think the point is that the metal5_8, with all the smoothing it got in game, looked rather flat as far as metal goes, and was used in maps looking like that. T3RR0R's HR4 textures fits that use well because it's fairly flat with enough scratch marks etc. to show it's metal. Whereas the new gpl hr4 version may be more true to the original idea of the texture as rough metal, it's too much like bare noise to fit in all the current maps where it's used as a nice smooth floor/wall etc.

What do we need, to have such a clear and detailed/structured texture (if i stand directly in front of a wall) ingame?

HR8

[webhead]

bare noise

yup, it does look like that.

[pvtjimmy]

I suggest to let Jitspoe finish his entire pack, and before releasing it asking for feedback.

This way we'll end up discussing about 3 textures for the next couple of months, instead of making some real improvements.

[Narga]

HR8

I thought this game should have multiple texture packs.

lr240p, lr360p, lr480p, hr720p, hr1080p, etc.

[jitspoe]

metal5_8 doesn't look flat at all, though.  It's pretty noisy both in the standalone and original versions, and I guess the noise is what you're complaining about.

Finding the right balance is difficult.  If I add too much noise, obviously, it just looks like a bunch of noise.  If there's not enough, though, the texture just ends up looking really flat.  Flat textures can work if the maps have enough detail, but PB2 maps are very low poly, and maps just end up looking like cardboard cutouts if there's not enough detail/noise in the texture.

As for texture "quality", what you're referring to is just resolution.  Obviously, more pixels means you can store more detail.  On the plus side, most of the textures I've done are built with filter forge and it's simply a matter of rendering a larger image to get a higher resolution texture.  On the minus side, I don't want to have some 10 GB texture pack, and most video cards won't be able to handle that much texture data.  I am curious what a 16x version of that texture would look like, though...

[jitspoe]

I've redone metal5_8 and metal2_5 a bit.  Less noise, stronger lighting (added in the hard shadows I've been working on).  Do you think they look better now?

[T3RR0R15T]

Yes, of course. Can you make them a bit brighter too?

I've played a litte bit with gimp and both new textures. Here are two results:

http://www.otb-server.de/hr4/T3RR0R15T/metal2_5.1.jpg
http://www.otb-server.de/hr4/T3RR0R15T/metal5_8.1.jpg

http://www.otb-server.de/hr4/T3RR0R15T/metal2_5.2.jpg
http://www.otb-server.de/hr4/T3RR0R15T/metal5_8.2.jpg


Especially the second one doesn't look ingame as bad as i thought (but it has too much blue in it).