HybrisFactory - Terraining and Mapping Resources

[Talavaj]

That would require all models in the map to be modified so they omit x-rayed models and leave some which do not.
It is more a concept really, there is a few drawbacks in it that makes it more suitable for limited usage.

Also I reckon, people would prefer this texture pack. The textures are based from carefully selected stocks so they fit with other "realtexture" (B2M or whatever similar you use) packs better.
Added to the OP.

 

[sonofjay]

I think it will be most useful and easier to use for maps that have fix camera on certain areas(like resident evil 1 and 2). Not really that useful since those kind of maps are rare. But still awesome.

 

[Talavaj]

Yeah, well the most useful it would be to make units/objects/things visible through walls for a brief moment maybe.
Some sort of x-ray vision hero ? Tactical shooters or stealth games tend to commonly have something similar.

As for that, I started making interior doodads. They are very simple and because of how I can't really add detail with the tiled textures I'm trying to add extra polygons here and there, chips in the wood, some extra chamfers, insets and bevels to add some extra detail.
The results are acceptable so far.
I'll try to make the core furniture first then move onto random props like pots, bottles, tools or whatever down the road.
So far I planned out about 9 unique pieces for the rough wood set. Two of which will be interactive chest and a bedside table that will have open and close animations.

 

[Adiktuz]

wow, that's really awesome stuff...

 

[sonofjay]

Like I said before.

That crates and wagons.

And looking forward for this animated crates.

 

[Talavaj]

Well got about 15 unique props now, but keep on fighting with my 3ds max not liking my ram and bluescreening on me all the time which results in my files being corrupted.
I mean seriously, I have never seen a program other than 3ds max doing that. (as in corrupting files when it crashes or pc unexpectedly shuts down even if 3ds max itself is turned off sometimes)
I suppose I'll have to buy new ram.

Anyway, I was meditating over a rough wood bed that uses hay and realized a pretty genius usefulness of the alpha channel when trying to optimize the hay texture for it.
That being that the part of the texture that is covered by alpha layer can still be filled with useable texture and hence it can be used both as a tileable texture and as a transparent one as long as it uses two materials.
I the hay texture ended up fairly big in the process but I will use it on some more things anyway (and also on the hay roof and hay insulated log wall) so I can justify it.
I know it is a bit too fluffy, I shortened the sticking out parts already.

Also I know hay bales are tied up with rope usually, but rope is very poly heavy so yeah. It doesn't look that wrong anyway.

 

[marko9]

I see a Hay Roof texture...

 

[sonofjay]

I see a Hay Roof texture...

That would be lovely.

 

[Talavaj]

Bumpy
Made some new stuff, decided to also add limestone props and base them on the old nordic props from Skyrim (found in draugr infested dungeons).
Because the limestone and the metal texture go fairly well together.
Also replaced log cut texture with a nicer, higher definition one it is mostly covered by the anvil but yeah.
There is a through in there if you noticed, the weird pixelated gradient inside is water. It uses a small gradient texture to fake volumetric transparency of water (so the bottom of the trough is darker).

It currently looks like that... I'm just testing whether it is viable at all to make decent looking water with textures below 64p.

Hidden

Well I made a few more props. What I was just messing around is modeling the tree parts and came up with a super-efficient workflow.
Anybody who does polygonal modeling definitely realized at some point that modeling branches can be a pain in the ass, especially when you have to make many different ones.

I messed around with a few ways and researched some things related to trees in 3d. Came over speedtree and this .. model pack from dexsoft. (it is seriously laughable that they ask 29~200$ for those trees seeing how hideous they are.)
So I just tried to use the same workflow I have for my mod.

That is modeling with splines. It speeds the process so ridiculously much it almost feels cheap.
I just grab a spline and two circles to define the thickness and the path and create a loft mesh from it.
The most amazing thing is that you can change the spline on the fly however you want, add segments as you want and the model will change because the spline works as a controller.
Subdivide the mesh and sculpt some wrinkles into it so it looks more organic then reduce the poly count and voila !
The problem I'm having now is the textures, which still look crap ! and won't let me put the detail I want in the small texture space I need.
That is something I have to give credit for to the dexsoft, while the modelling is pretty sloppy the leaf textures are gorgeous.

 

[BallisticTerrain]

Nice workflow! I'll have to try it out. You say you got leaf textures from dexsoft? Are those available for download someplace?

 

[Talavaj]

No I didn't get leaf textures from them. They sell some in their asset packs, I merely dug through their stuff hoping to see how their leaf textures look like.
I'm having big problems with leaves to be honest, the one on the branch process is drawn by me and it is butt ugly not to mention it has to be small for low filesize.
But the process is around the same, I use it for memento mori too except that I bake the tree texture afterwards.

If you look at the pdf of their tree pack you can see the textures are really nice, even if their modeling level is pretty poor.
I mean do you see the trunks and the wraps ? That is some hideous work, kudos for their courage to ask 30~200 euros for that.

By the way, check some stuff from the unity store if you want more to research.
There are tons of absolutely gorgeous resources and pretty much all have some sort of presentation.
I browse through sometimes for inspiration. Mainly for the trees because it lists all files there and you can see the thumbnails so it gives you the idea of how the texture should look like. Which is weird to be honest seeing how people can just download the thumbnails.. for quick rips even if they are only low resolution ones. I mean you can still download 256p textures like that.
If you have unity you can also download the free asset packs and use textures from them maybe, there are also plain free texture packs there.
You may have to register though I think, in order to download even the free assets.
Some of those assets are of such high quality it makes me question the claims of AAA devs on how high quality visuals cost insane amounts of money.

That dude is great:

 

[BallisticTerrain]

Yeah, the wrap was... sloppy.
Lots of stuff on the internet is overpriced.
I do actually check the unity store quite often. I've downloaded several texture packs from it after downloading the unity engine. A lot of the models there are incredibly well made. I got the inspiration for several of mine from them.

I've always had problems wrapping tree branches and trunks. I usually just use the UVW Wrap modifier and mess around with it for a bit until it looks acceptable.

 

[Talavaj]

Wrapping trunks is probably easiest with the boned cylinder method. Just wrap the cylinder before deforming it and it should look ok unless you stretch it too much.
If you do then just unwrap the cylinder afterwards and fix those part that are stretched.

Oh and did I mention the unity artist is none other than killst4r ? Now one of the highest grossing artist from the unity store.
See peeps, learn stuff. You may make money in the future.

 

[BallisticTerrain]

Wait, he's on the Hive? Damn. I never noticed.
One day I'll be good enough to sell my models. Today is not that day.
Maybe I can sell my textures as ice cream though. According to Krybi0 they tast pretty good.

 

[Talavaj]

Yeah he is, or was at least. Been inactive for quite a while from what I see.
Also if people would like, I can release the props with pre-rendered lights sometime down the road for projects that can disregard the massive filesize.

I also have a concept of casted shadows (by that I mean only the shadow of the wagon projected onto the ground), that could be bundled in with the regular size models because they are really small.
The drawback of those is that it is capable of hard shadows only and it cannot be used on sloped terrain, only on flat surface. Well it could be used on slopes but they need to be big and smooth enough and the doodad needs to have the proper pitch angle.

 

[Celaquil]

Personally, I'd like it better if you spent time finishing up the smaller doodads and the environmental doodads, but hey, it's your pack, and it's all your choice.
- It's just I'd have great use for some of those environmental doodads, as well as the crates, lamps, and whatnot. All of those smaller once you've currently
portrayed would also be mighty useful to me.

Hurry up! Will you?

 

[Talavaj]

Relax, the props are what I'm currently working on now
There are many more than what I have shown (brooms, rakes, shovels, various types of pots and baskets different barrel and lamp types) but they aren't showcase ready because they don't have texture wrapped yet.
The actual modeling process is very fast (5~30 mins per prop) the wrapping though can take anywhere up to 4 times as long as the model itself and it is often boring and tedious.

The shadows and whatnot is what I do when I'm bored out of my mind from wrapping, but there is always about 5 models sitting and waiting to be textured.

 

[Talavaj]

Relax, the props are what I'm currently working on now
There are many more than what I have shown (brooms, rakes, shovels, various types of pots and baskets different barrel and lamp types) but they aren't showcase ready because they don't have texture wrapped yet.
The actual modeling process is very fast (5~30 mins per prop) the wrapping though can take anywhere up to 4 times as long as the model itself and it is often boring and tedious.

The shadows and whatnot is what I do when I'm bored out of my mind from wrapping, but there is always about 5 models sitting and waiting to be textured.

BUMP !
I know, I know models ! But this is an exciting one. A friend of mine, BallisticTerrain pointed me to a great website with a compilation of tips and tricks used in a 3d and 2d animation. And I immediately jumped in to test a few tricks that can be applied within wc3.

One of these tricks is scribble cel animation, it is an animation used to fake specular highlights on moving surface by using multiple animated textures and alpha masks. It is perfect for water or highly reflective shiny surfaces like wet rocks, metal, scales, wet skin and things like that.
It can create extremely crisp animated speculars even with low texture size and in any lighting conditions. (so it can make really bright highlights even at in-game night)
The downside is that the water (if that is your target application) cannot be transparent unless you make it in-game using triggers changing its vertex color and transparency if the model is a dummy unit.

The example scribble cel is sucky yah, it is just a simple test, but you get the idea. It can make nearly shader quality specular higlights on your surface.

Second trick is a method of modeling tree leaves clumps so they have an apparent volume it is super neat, you will see later.

 

[sonofjay]

The animated water was nice but its too busy and eye-catching to my liking, I still see the simple waterplane by iNfraNe more appealing.

Second trick is a method of modeling tree leaves clumps so they have an apparent volume it is super neat, you will see later.

I'm looking forward to see this one.

 

[Talavaj]

Yes indeed, it is not as much about the water as it is about the trick that is used to make the animated speculars.

Which can also be used like this ,the speculars are actually following the wisp in real-time. Similar reflections can be done on water (if certain requirements are met):

 

[PurgeandFire]

That's a really cool effect! Is it based on omnilights?

 

[Talavaj]

Heh, it is just two planes. The top one is a transparent (with alpha mask) one which has the highlight parts erased the lower plane is not transparent and has the same texture.
They are extremely close to each other so it looks like there are no holes in it whatsoever.

The glow is an animated flat plane, much like an aura which is however below the unit so it goes into the ground (the model is a walkable platform) exactly in between the two planes and it glows through only the highlighted erased parts.
That is, if you want a moving unit to do that, you can only do that on completely flat surface for moving units though.
If you want a static model illuminating environment like that you can make the effect on anything (like a brazier illuminating a dungeon corridor etc) and without having to duplicate the mesh. (because it can be a glowing material layer sandwiched in between the normal textures)
The water is done the same way, it has holes in it and the highlights are a bright layer that flows underneath and only shows in the holes, resulting in a fairly random specular sequence.

Well thinking about it, a similar effect could be made using omni lights. By making a two layered material with alpha mask that would remove the black spots with an unshaded material below it.
The top one would get affected by omni and the bottom one would not (so it would stay darker than the highlighted areas)
That is in theory, I never tried it though.
Odds are that the light will illuminate both though, or that the wc3 omni lights are so dim it won't even show.

 

[RiotZ]

Suddenly Skyrim.

 

[Talavaj]

So, made new stuff. Made a sign concept using splines as a replacement for textures because any decent texture would add 20kb extra while the splines are of 2~4kb size (sure it is 30 faces instead of 2 but it is a completely affordable price).
If the sign info looks too crap I'll make it into an embossed metal (like the frame)
Now there are only bed, chest, bed table and a big cupboard left to wrap then I'll move onto regular wood furniture, which will be the more fancier variant.
After that I may make more misc stuff like fire pits, braziers, pots, vases, washbasins, and other stuff that does not necessarily fall into a single material set.
The set has roughly 30 unique variants right now.

Also, do you want the sign and lamp posts to be animated ? (swaying in the wind)

 

[marko9]

Awesomeness...

 

[sonofjay]

Can't wait for the next update!

And yes animate the lamp post! Don't forget to give it a on and off animation.

 

[Deleted member 212788]

These are perfect for the theme I'm trying to create. Me wants moar!

 

[BlinkBoy]

I suggest you use Paletted BLPs for low quality textures, they compress way better and have even higher quality.

 

[Talavaj]

Wow, that didn't occur to me. I thought paletted mode would be way too low quality given the limited number of colors.
But after converting a few using blp lab I can't even see the difference.
In the picture quality I mean, the filesize dropped down to 6.4kb per the biggest texture which is down to about 35% and they appear to have all the same filesize so I assume the filesize is constant and linked to the texture dimensions ?

Either way that is nuts, assuming the same conversion rate all the current textures would be down to about 70kb flat (and much less when compiled in the map) which gives me more freedom to pack in more different textures seeing the filesize is so low.
It handles alpha channels the same way ? Thanks for the tip by the way !

 

[Shadow44]

All this stuff is awesome.

Can you make towers, walls, gate similar to this one - http://www.jeuxcapt.com/upload/module_images/1377093375_376545_the-witcher-3--wild-hunt.jpg.png?

 

[Talavaj]

Similar towers can be made using existing rough wood pieces. (wall foundations, pillars, roof pieces)
As for the walls and stuff, I'm planning to make another type of stone because the current one still looks a bit too neat and polished. The extra one will be a lot more greyed out random and weathered so the new pieces may look similar to that.
The current stone is efficiently just cobblestone, the new one will represent just stone (and may be used for rock pieces in some props like fire pits).
Gates, extra bridge and some other "macro" pieces (like extra roof types because they are fairly limited atm) will be added sometime later too.
Probably after props.

 

[marko9]

All this stuff is awesome.

Can you make towers, walls, gate similar to this one - http://www.jeuxcapt.com/upload/module_images/1377093375_376545_the-witcher-3--wild-hunt.jpg.png?

You can mix the existing pieces and get it to look like this... I will do something to prove, I like the concept...

As for the walls and stuff, I'm planning to make another type of stone because the current one still looks a bit too neat and polished. The extra one will be a lot more greyed out random and weathered so the new pieces may look similar to that.
The current stone is efficiently just cobblestone, the new one will represent just stone (and may be used for rock pieces in some props like fire pits).

You do that.

 

[Deleted member 212788]

Btw, have you ever thought about terrain tiles? I'd like to see some tiles to go with your awesome models.

 

[BlinkBoy]

Wow, that didn't occur to me. I thought paletted mode would be way too low quality given the limited number of colors.
But after converting a few using blp lab I can't even see the difference.
In the picture quality I mean, the filesize dropped down to 6.4kb per the biggest texture which is down to about 35% and they appear to have all the same filesize so I assume the filesize is constant and linked to the texture dimensions ?

Either way that is nuts, assuming the same conversion rate all the current textures would be down to about 70kb flat (and much less when compiled in the map) which gives me more freedom to pack in more different textures seeing the filesize is so low.
It handles alpha channels the same way ? Thanks for the tip by the way !

if you use a 256 color palette it should be enough if your textures are very monochrome. Normaly the palette is calculated based on your original texture's colors, so using it on textures with low color variation, is great. The best thing of a paletted blp is that they don't blur the image. Therefore, they are perfect for architectural materials where bluring really damages quality.

 

[Talavaj]

Yeah that makes perfect sense to do with these textures then. Seeing how each bit has pretty much its own limited color scheme.

Does that also mean I could do pixel art if I severely limited the number of colors in the palette for example ?

Btw, have you ever thought about terrain tiles? I'd like to see some tiles to go with your awesome models.

Not really, the textures are mostly procedural. I'm not a 2d artist per se, I have plenty of experience with bitmap and vector but not in hand drawing itself.
I could make some bigger procedural textures I guess and see how that would look like.

 

[Shadow44]

You can mix the existing pieces and get it to look like this... I will do something to prove, I like the concept...

okey.

 

[BlinkBoy]

Yeah that makes perfect sense to do with these textures then. Seeing how each bit has pretty much its own limited color scheme.

Does that also mean I could do pixel art if I severely limited the number of colors in the palette for example ?


Not really, the textures are mostly procedural. I'm not a 2d artist per se, I have plenty of experience with bitmap and vector but not in hand drawing itself.
I could make some bigger procedural textures I guess and see how that would look like.

Hmm depend on which dithering algorithm your conversion tool uses, but most likely yes.

 

[Talavaj]

Yes, and stolen by some poser like everything else on the http://xgm.ru .
Don't share plagiarized work in here please.

 

[Deleted member 212788]

I didn't know they were stolen, I apologize.

 

[Talavaj]

Heh it's ok. Speaking of those I was thinking I could style the environmental pack kinda like that, of course while sticking to the existing art style.

The author also made a new pack, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbiT9Qm5Vp0 .
I was thinking I could make something similar later on, how about that ? It would have more fantasy inspired pieces for dungeons and stuff like that.

 

[Deleted member 212788]

That sounds like a great idea. Come to think of it, I haven't seen too many underground/dungeon/mine doodads. I know it's mostly rocks but some people underestimate how many rock types there are under the ground.

 

[Talavaj]

It is time for bumpdate !(a pun!)

Previous bumpdate here:

Hidden

Yep, with paletted textures I can squeeze some more texture variation into the pack. Which will be especially useful for environmental doodads, hence why they can get extra themed variations.

And by the way this is how the interactive doodads kind of look like, the drawers open and so does the chest. (these are actually intended to be rough wood not normal wood)
I noticed that because of the raised amount of detail on the props, using the the Pragmatic texture pack with them will look even more badass.

Also started the wooden pieces, curves are a recurring theme so is plenty of metal framing and bolts. It will look a lot like those in Skyrim because I'm just too lazy to concept anything different.
It also uses new carved wood variant texture and possibly carved metal and cell leather.

And all currently finished props (about 30~34 ?) Slowly starting to run out of things to make, only beds and various tables left and maybe some extra variants of already existing types. Then some random miscs like shelves, display cases, weapon racks and some extra random outdoor misc props.
If you got anything else on mind now is the time to ask !

And some results while trying to animate texture on curtains. The texture looks kinda shit (it will be more suitable for water I reckon) but the overlay idea is neat. The curtain shades and higlights is a low size low quality texture overlaid on tiled jute cloth texture.
The coloring is animated using vertex color (like model coloring in game) rather than by a colored texture and the shadows and highlights are additive so that it has plenty of contrast and does not end up being washed out because of the vertex color.
The idea was to animate the wrinkles on the texture using animated UVW rather than a linear texture translation but it does not look too ideal.

And new textures. For, you never know what !

New bumpdate:
Well, these last few days I was cracking my head over how I'am gonna make rocks. I tried to sculpt them, make them with low poly hard surface modeling techniques but they all ended up ugly even more so after I textured them.
I spent minutes watching Killst4r's assets over and over to figure out how I should do the textures wrap and the mesh itself.
Then I gave up, made a displacement texture a custom rock "cluster" texture super low poly mesh, subdivided it until like 130,000 polygons and then I plastered a displacement map all over its actual mesh.
Result is something very much like normal/displacement mapping but instead of using shaders and texture maps it bakes the displacement onto a mesh which is then drastically reduced in polies but still keeps its defined shape because of the optimization methods.

With a fairly pleasing result, it is not exactly what I wanted but it looks sick. (really happy about it, I was getting desperate)
The new rock texture is a little bit bigger, but also less tiled. (still has about only 24kb when in paletted mode)

And it looks like this now. I'll have to fix the texture tho because it doesn't seem to fit the rest, I'll have to fire up the contrast and bumps.

Here is the sculpt vs the finished low poly model and the textures.

And these are some test subjects for new prop/structure pack that will be added as extension of the interior/exterior doodads but for underground, caves and dungeons.

 

[Deleted member 212788]

It just occurred to me, will the rocks have a snowed animation as well? Them and the lamp post.

 

[Talavaj]

Possibly, lamp post most likely not. It has only a couple polies facing up it wouldn't even be noticeable probably, another problem is the lamp will sway in the wind which would be way too many keyframes if it was supposed to sway for the whole duration of the snowing sequence.

I could however make a stand alone lamp post with snow, it just wouldn't have snow on/off transition.

Also, I lied lol. Not gonna fix the rocks the texture is fine as it is and it fits fairly well when the rocks are properly scaled. (not to mention they look flat-out gorgeous when you actually put effort into making a realistic rocky formation)
The texture and the mesh make it look exquisite in my opinion.
There will be outdoor rocks made similar way, also the new "rough stone" walls and pieces, the alternative to cobblestone, will be also done a similar way.

 

[Celaquil]

Would you mind showing an example picture of the proclaimed "gorgeous" looking rock formations? Not because I don't believe you, but because I have a hard time wrapping my head 'round how you use square "tile" like rocks to make good formations.

 

[Talavaj]

Hah, that is because it isn't just a square tile I didn't mean making a realistic rocky formation using the tile, I meant making a realistic actual mesh.
It can be displaced on absolutely any kind of shape or form as long as it is properly textured.
The plane is a plane only because I was too lazy to wrap it on anything more complex for the demonstration purposes.
As a matter of fact, same technique can be used to for example "sculpt" a statue, relief, highly detailed pillar and so on.
Of course that would be much more taxing than rocks, considering it is not real-time normals but actual geometry baked from them.
But it is ideal for something as defined as rock formations because they don't require much detail.
That is one texture type, one displacement map. It is not any more taxing than other rock models, except that the geometry is perfectly baked with the texture in 3d space not some random cuboid half-arsedly wrapped with ugly rock tiling texture which was my initial concept of how to make rocks and ended up hideous.
There is an ugly black seam that got there onto the texture though I have no idea how. It happens when you resize textures I suppose, the gravel the main boulders are sitting in was supposed to be entirely seamles...
Of course, I can wrap only a single boulder too. And make separate rocks for whatever else custom you wanna build.

And that for example is your regular modular bouldery clump using only one rock from the texture.

 

[Deleted member 212788]

I'm seriously hyped for the environmental pack. I've been looking for that kind of rock for a fairly large amount of time and now here it is, right in front of me. Is there any ETA on when it might be out?

 

[Talavaj]

Depends, most environmental doodads aren't even scratched yet though. So I'd say about 2~3 weeks minimum.
Interior/exterior props are almost ready for first version release.

That is how the rocks look like in the editor, using omni lights only (removed DNC) the highlights are made using my scribble cel method, shall you want such functionality.
And ofc the pic is taken while using my douche shaders

 

[marko9]

Great...

 

[Orcnet]

Ah shit, this thread just gave me some life, someone out there needs to give you money right now.