Once again, messing with ground terrain image - STALKER: Singularity (SIN) mod for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl
The envisionment of SIN is to bring you what was promised by GSC for STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl, instead of the gutted retail release we were left with. SIN aims to cover every aspect imaginable from gameplay intended to genuinely scare the player, to graphics for the absolute best visual experience, cut mutants, absolute realism, optimisations, stability, and a complete game mechanics overhaul, all without breaking the story. The idea is to present the player with a complete retail experience for the purist that liked SoC but wished it was far more fleshed out. In no way what so ever does SIN try to be like old beta or alpha builds of SoC, SIN aims to enhance everything SoC already has and give it continuity with CS and CoP - nothing more, nothing less.
Still wasn't happy with the grass terrain texture used in the playtester build but think I've finally nailed it and got something I'm satisfied with.
Your textures are getting better and better - where are you stopping!?
Looking really awesome.
I stop when I have something perfectly photographic, ugly chick, hot dress situation ;)
Well I would say by now that ugly chick already got some ******' hot dress :P
Haha thats true, but I like to perfect every little detail as X-Ray 1.0 hardly does a good job on the rendering front I compensated for its shortcomings by hand editing everything. I'm more akin to a artist with a canvas and paint brush than a digital artist with photoshop, digital artists miss many subtle details that make a huge difference.
Yes please send the link, I would love to test for a few hours a week. :)
You have mail ;)
Cool !
I know that I won't get too much credit for this, but I honestly think this texture-tweaking is too much over the top, the same way like an oversharpened image in Photoshop:
Goo.gl
I think I understand that it is hard to stop, and recognise the result once you are in the process (I tend to act the same when editing images), but it is simply too much, and not just a matter of taste, unless someone likes it when it's unnatural and too much, that is especially apparent on the tree barks and the grass that are far. Nothing is that sharp which is far, it kills the dimension.
What you are seeing is high levels of AF, not texture sharpening. The rest of it is just extremely accurate normal mapping.
Anyhow, it makes distant objects unnaturally sharp. The grass in the foreground looks great, it is popping out, but overall the effect feels like an aggressive filter on everything. If you can give dimension to it with blurring the distance somehow, I would say it worths the effort.
My previous comment stands, as as I'm kinda drunk right now I'll let others who know me well fill in the blanks :p
Great!
Have you considered using a displacement map for ground textures instead of normals? I think the issue is that it looks flat, and there's only so much you can do with textures. A disp. map would probably benefit you a lot.
This assumes that'd be possible, or not murder the engine in the process.