Head to the official forum at GSC Game World for more information and alternate links (link below)

Mod Name: TemplarGFX's Parallax Mod
Mod Author: TemplarGFX
Version: 0.7
Release Date: 23/05/2014
Category: Graphics
Forum: Gsc-game.com

===========
Description
===========
Replaces 500+ Parallax Maps in STALKER Shadow of Chernobyl with individually modified and tweaked maps to give much better and more realistic parallax mapping.

Also included is a complete set of shaders that will improve the look of the game by adding things like (improved parallax mapping, dynamic depth of field, SSAO, HDR, Soft Shadows)

Shader Details (based on a mix of Dynamic Shaders 1.2b+SkyGraphics 2.0R4+ShaderMAX1.06)
Shadow shaders slightly altered to allow modification of the amount of jitter applied to sun and light source shadows through shadersettings.txt.
Removed hard-coded maximum Parallax distance to greatly improve the visual quality of distant objects.
Added a 3 step interpolation to the Parallax calculations to allow a much greater degree of control over how the shader interprets the height data. (Not used with my textures. Can be used to mostly fix the appearance of textures from other mods)

Texture Details :
All Textures in the following category that had height data in the original game have been manually tweaked using one or more of : Blur, Selective Gaussian Blur, black/mid/white adjustment, min/max adjustment.
Crete
Detail
Door
Glas
Grnd
Mtl
Prop
Ston
Trees
Veh
Water
Wind
Wood

Some textures were then configured to use detail and height data from other texture variations to increase the number of surfaces and objects using Parallax Mapping. Finally all Scaling and limiting applied in the vanilla release were reset.

============
Installation
============
If this is your first mod installation, please read a general mod installation guide online to understand what it is you are changing.

The Textures can be installed without the shaders, and the shaders can be installed without the textures. However some manual tweaking will be required. I recommend referencing those settings that come with this mod.

Vanilla (original) stalker
simply extract this to your games installation folder and you are ready to go.

Already Modded Stalker - Shaders
BACKUP!
Copy the shader folder into your gamedata folder after backing up your current. The shaders are not required for the parallax to work, however you will need to edit Sky4ce's settings in your current shader (see below). Using the included shaders will give you access to additional shadow and parallax mapping settings for further performance/quality tweaks.

Already Modded Stalker - Textures
BACKUP!
Extract this mod to a temporary location
Copy all the folders inside of my textures folder into your gamedata\textures folder.
Replace all files that already exist with these. Providing that your current modifications use the original textures for their base, these should work together.
Next you need to merge your textures.ltx with my textures.ltx file. To do this I recommend a free program called Winmerge. The follow is instructions for that application.
open your textures.ltx on the left and mine on the right. find any highlighted line in on the left (your current file) that lines up with a blank section on the right (the mods file). Right click the highlighted section and choose copy to right.
Save your changes to the file
Copy textures.ltx from my mod into your games gamedata\textures folder, replacing yours

Configuring a Sky4ce/Meltac/Kingo64 shader to use the new Parallax Maps

Open the file gamedata\shaders\r2\shadersettings.txt in notepad (or better notepad++)
Look for this line
#define PARALLAX_OCCLUSION // Enables Parallax Occlusion Mapping
Ensure there are no // at the start of this line

Scroll down until you find this section and modify the values to match :

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Parallax Occlusion Mapping
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
//Basic Options:
#define MAX_SAMPLES int(80) //Maximum amount of samples done to a texture.
#define MIN_SAMPLES int(20) //Minimum amount of samples done to a texture.
#define PARALLAX_OFFSET float(0.017) //Height of surface per sample.
#define FINAL_INTERSECTION_LOOPS int(10) //Amount of additional samples to increase accuracy.
//Performance Options:
//#define PARALLAX_FADE //Parllax textures fade back to regular normals with distance; increases FPS and fixes anisotropic filtering. #Disabling this strangely gave me a much higher FPS.
#define START_FADE float(0.0003) //Distance the fading starts
#define STOP_FADE float(0.004) //Distance the fading stops, and the texture returns to just using normals.
//Other Options:
//#define USE_TEXTURE_PACK //DO NOT ENABLE. Requires Sky4ce's special texture pack. will not work with mine.
//#define CORRECT_PERSPECTIVE //WARNING!!! artifacts will appear if defined
#define CONTRAST_COEF_Q1 float(0) //Amount of contrast in calculations.
#define CONTRAST_COEF_Q2 float(1) //Amount of contrast in calculations.
#define BRIGHTNESS_COEF float(0.0) //Amount of brightness in calculations.
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Ensure any lines with (or without) // are copied also

If some settings are missing, just ignore them. The important ones are always there.

====================
Compatibility Issues
====================
LURK and AA2 replace ston_br2_iov with a slightly different brick texture. This causes the parallax mapping on this one texture to not line up correctly. It is only noticable up close.


===============
Licensing/Legal
===============
You are free to do whatever you want with this mod; however, all I ask in return is you give me (or Sky4ce, Meltac, Kingo64) credit if you distribute any part of this mod.

Shaders originally by Sky4ce, Meltac, Kingo64 compiled and then modified by myself

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Post article RSS Articles

0.7a Hotfix Released

News

A few detail textures were regrettably left out of the original download which will effect vanilla users. Patch is available on the forum, and here (after authorisation)

Those users running AA2, LURK, Complete or Super Mod Pack should not require this, however it is better safe than sorry, and only a small file!

Alternate Download Link

Alternate Download Link

News

Alternative download link for a single large file. This may be easier for people to download and use than the 4 parts required by the upload limitation...

Add file RSS Files
STALKER - Parallaxed 0.7a Hotfix

STALKER - Parallaxed 0.7a Hotfix

Patch

A few detail textures from Pripryat were not included in the original download. If you have issues running this on Vanilla STALKER, download this. AA2...

STALKER - Parallaxed (Part 4 of 4)

STALKER - Parallaxed (Part 4 of 4)

Full Version

Part 4 of 4. Replaces 812 of the Parallax Maps in STALKER Shadow of Chernobyl with individually modified and tweaked maps to give much better and more...

STALKER - Parallaxed (Part 3 of 4)

STALKER - Parallaxed (Part 3 of 4)

Full Version

Part 3 of 4. Replaces 812 of the Parallax Maps in STALKER Shadow of Chernobyl with individually modified and tweaked maps to give much better and more...

STALKER - Parallaxed (Part 2 of 4)

STALKER - Parallaxed (Part 2 of 4)

Full Version 1 comment

Part 2 of 4. Replaces 812 of the Parallax Maps in STALKER Shadow of Chernobyl with individually modified and tweaked maps to give much better and more...

STALKER - Parallaxed (Part 1 of 4)

STALKER - Parallaxed (Part 1 of 4)

Full Version

Part 1 of 4. Replaces 812 of the Parallax Maps in STALKER Shadow of Chernobyl with individually modified and tweaked maps to give much better and more...

Post comment Comments
Nwp110101
Nwp110101 - - 4 comments

The game crashed when I started a new game when the game load the texture file, pls help.

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jamesdickinson963 Creator
jamesdickinson963 - - 399 comments

To any other modders out there, feel free to rip any/all of these textures into your own mods. They work better with the original shader than the original textures do so the shader is not required. Any parralax shader would benefit from these

Reply Good karma+1 vote
Lоnerboner
Lоnerboner - - 8,303 comments

Some of the work looks ... wrong. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it looks 'bad' per se, but the effect is too strong, paired with the low-res normals, you'll get these bulky looking dents and scratches etc.

I'd say, tone it down a bit and it will look perfect! I do like the initiative :)

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ketxxx
ketxxx - - 1,288 comments

The problem is more with the parallax shader SoC uses it doesn't work properly or at the very least needs some kind of expansion work on the shader. Theres plenty of stuff you can parallax yet in-game it'll only look like a basic bump map at best.

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Das_P0m
Das_P0m - - 539 comments

Is there a chance of improvement just using the textures with clear sky?

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Guest
Guest - - 690,966 comments

How does it hit performance? Is there a list of uncompatible mods? I would really like to see this made actually with the textures from a mod rather than the vanilla textures, however I understand this takes a lot of work.

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WastedSky
WastedSky - - 631 comments

Nice work!

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jamesdickinson963 Creator
jamesdickinson963 - - 399 comments

Coming Soon in 0.8:

I am in the process of creating maps for the remaining Props and Vehicles in Stalker:SHOC that did NOT have height data originally. Once this is complete I will then start with some of the most seen textures in other categories that are missing data and create them for these also.

The green diesel train (veh_diesel02) included in this pack (check the screenshots) is actually using an entirely custom parallax map, as this is flat in the original release.

Vehicles however will never be perfectly rendered in STALKER due to the depth-only parallax implementation by sky4ce, combined with the mirror-down-the-center texture mapping used on the models. As you move past this seam (generally across the bonnet/roof) a black line appears at the seam. I do not think I am going to be able to resolve this, but I have a few ideas to try yet!

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strelokgunslinger
strelokgunslinger - - 338 comments

will you make a lite version which can be applied to other mods, in the future?

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