S3TC Textures again...

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Re: S3TC Textures again...

Post by Hermskii » Fri Sep 16, 2011 12:04 pm

How long did all of that research take? That was a lot just to read. I can't imagine the work it took too.
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Re: S3TC Textures again...

Post by Diehard » Fri Sep 16, 2011 3:35 pm

Bugreports are vital to both the URP and UTRP projects. And each bug that is reported i will always investigate to see what the cause is. Just to make sure its a bug that can be fixed, avoided, or it might also show up in other packages. It also helps players so they know the issue is reported. As said before, as soon as this release is done ill go work on the S3TC helpfiles, and those helpfiles will contain a list of all bugs and how they can be solved or how they can be avoided.

Aside that, players need to be cofident that issues they reported are taken seriously, and efford is being undertaken to solve it where possible :)


And yeah, on occasion it consumes lots of time.
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Re: S3TC Textures again...

Post by Hermskii » Fri Sep 16, 2011 4:37 pm

I certainly appreciate the effort. Great work. I hope you just cut and paste responses from here to the bug report. No reson to type all of that again for this certain bug. What is your avatar?
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Re: S3TC Textures again...

Post by Diehard » Fri Sep 16, 2011 5:12 pm

My avatar is a part of a painting from Luis Royo and its called The Wait. The girl you can see is the French actrice and model Laetitia Casta.


Here is the complete painiting: The Wait
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Re: S3TC Textures again...

Post by Hermskii » Fri Sep 16, 2011 8:16 pm

Any hidden meaning in this picture for you?
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Re: S3TC Textures again...

Post by Diehard » Sun Sep 25, 2011 3:54 pm

Any hidden meaning in this picture for you?
No not really. Luis Royo uses alot of black in his paintings and adds colored spots on top of that. That way his painings often look like black and white and at the same time are not.

Though it looks colorfull while its used in a for me special way. I had one printed out and hang it my hallway, except it got stolen lots of years ago. And i still need to replace it. The girl also apeals to me, but only found out years later that she actually is Laetitia Casta, which is a pretty woman to begin with.

A couple a years ago i needed a new avatar, and i choose this one. And it reflects what i do in making textures, while my grandfather and my father also were painters. My grandfather actually made alot of awsome paintings and they are scattered all over the country and likelly over the world. Unfortunatelly only a few remained in the family.


Here is a painting from my grandfather called Korhoen(after the bird Korhoen). Backthan, and actually this is still done in most parts of the world, you hang it to rot for 4 days, which improoves the flavour highly. Mostly this is done with wild(wild game) animals like ducks, rabbit, haze, etc. And yes that is also done in the US :)


Korhoen

This paining was made around 1930
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Re: S3TC Textures again...

Post by Diehard » Sun Sep 25, 2011 3:55 pm

Furthermore, i released the updates for Unreal and UT. And for UT you can grab them from these forum links: Beyond Unreal UT
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Re: S3TC Textures again...

Post by *POTS* » Mon Sep 26, 2011 1:26 am

I took my time and read all the pages of that thread... not gonna do it again lol.

First of all, I'm glad to see such a major update concerning the S3TC textures. It kinda felt the same as when Microsoft released the SP2 for WinXP. I actually think you should call this update S3TC SP1 or something. :lol:
Of course I've already downloaded and installed the new packs in that page, overwriting my old ones.

Second, I have a lot of questions that came to my mind after reading that whole thread.

- 1 -
Its similar to the hologram screens. Now you can read them, but in the past they were often added mirrored to a map. To solve that i need to mirror the textures. But same there, if a mapper added the textures correctly it will get mirrored because i did mirror it......... Therefore the S3TC versions are as they should be, not mirrored.
I've noticed some of those mirrored texture after installing the S3TC textures (the keyboard and one of the hologram panels), but since it was affecting only some maps while in other maps they looked right I thought it may had to do with the maps themselves so that's why I never asked about that before. My guess is the resolution was so crappy with the plain textures I didn't even notice it. Still wonder why mappers have to use mirrored textures...

- 2 -
Lookig at the textures ingame, than High End is by far insuficient to give any real detail, so this package really does apply to have it sitting on your computer as Extreme End. Of course i will release the Low End and High End versions as well, but needs to be said, they are scalled super, super, super enlarged in most maps. Effectivelly this is an Extreme End must have.

[...]

As i told in the Extreme End tread, even if you use High End versions, it is highly advised to use the Extreme End versions from:

ShaneDay.utx
ShaneSky.utx
SkyBox.utx
At a certain point you suggest using the Extreme End versions of those textures instead of the High End ones. Are there any other Extreme End textures you feel like suggesting us to use? I'm currently using the high End packs and I found myself quite comfortable.

- 3 -
I noticed you added three custom packs in your latest release, being the Hourences' textures. That surprised me, since I thought you just had planned on releasing the S3TC versions of the stock UT textures, but also made me think:
are there any other custom, non-stock, S3TC textures available?
For example, I once downloaded a map from Creavion named Antalius if I recall right, and in the readme it said something about an S3TC version of the texture pack bundled with the map, but unfortunately the link was broken. Any ideas?

- 4 -
The main problem I found on the site is that as you navigate through buttons don't disappear and it gives too many options. Downloads should point straight to download imho and not to info pages as valuable as they are .... perhaps a link on the download page to the info pages ect might be possible/preferable.
I'm sorry, but I have to agree with this guy. The actual site is a bit cumbersome and counter-intuitive to navigate through, the main problem being the way the sub-menus and links are organized.

I'd suggest using a toolbar-like menu structure on the top of the page (most people use widescreen monitors nowadays), with just the main folders named there, and contextual menus popping up with mouse-hovering (something like THIS, but better, to give you an idea).
Either that or something like the way bookmarks are organized in your browsers (tree-structure with ramifications).

Not to mention it seems like you splitted/changed the domain, so all UT-related links pointed towards unrealtexture.com are broken now. That's gonna be a problem, since you'll have to update all relevant links manually from scratch. :|

- 5 -
As for the textures for the weapons an monsters there are two problems. The first problem is myself, because i can make textuires alright, but making skins is a conmplete different ballgame. The skins for the weapons i can probably make because they are not that complicated. But the skins for the monsters and playerskins are to complex for me right now. But as i wrote before, i could try turn to a skin artist to have them made for us.


The second problem is to have the S3TC skins implemented in the game. And while i can update .utx files i lack the tools to alter .u files. And all skins for the weapons and lots of the monster skins are sitting in the UnrealShare.U and UnrealI.u.
That's an interesting issue. I know 3 is using hi-res monsters and weapons on his server, and I'm almost sure he's using a mod/mutator to achieve that result. Need to talk to him one of these days.

- 6 -
Its like PCX or BMP. Up to this day 95% of the mappers still believe you HAVE to use PCX. And always the same story PCX is smaller in size, which is total BS. And secondary, but Epic did it too !! Yeah but they used the correct palette which cannot be achieved by The GIMP or Photoshop. It can only be done with BMP, period..............
Hold on for a second, don't tell me BMP files are better than PCX?! People always saying PCX files are superior... And I even noticed UEd can import 24 bit bitmaps with ease. I've tried exporting some textures to the PCX format and not even Photoshop can open them, it gives you an error message. This is kinda off-topic though.

- 7 -
Sometimes in certain maps you can see some textures like carpets or concrete tiles that should be high resolution since you're pretty sure you've seen them like that in other maps, but despite of that, they still look low resolution. Could it be some textures are duplicated/exported to other non-S3TC packages, and the map is using those rather than the S3TC ones? Unless the mapper embedded those into the map with that MyLevel thingy...

- 8 -
When I was still using the old CD1 textures and the UseS3TC option in my renderer was turned off, some custom textures would look blurry and washed out even at a resolution of 1280x720 and all details set to high. Once turned it on, they look like they're supposed to be. I've read somewhere else (EXU page on UnrealSP I think) of a bug with Chris Dohnal's OpenGL renderer that downscales all textures bigger than 256x256 pixels or something like that if the S3TC option is disabled. That would explain it.
The renderer is good but it would be nice to see some fixes and an option to fix the "draw distance glitch" (adding unlimited viewing distance just like in the D3D10 renderer).
I feel like I went off-topic here, but I wish someone was able to contact him... That draw distance glitch is so annoying and never happened to me before with older hardware, so I assume it has to do with newer hardware. :|

P.S. There's one last thing that worries me, I mean those procedural textures. I'm not sure I've fully understood what they are, but it looks like they're causing troubles to the development of the textures, or am I wrong?


OK that's all for now, sorry if this reply bothered you, but sometimes it's better to report problems and discuss about those rather than moaning in the background without reporting anything IMO.
I've also read you had hard times during the making of these textures (thinking also of family/health issues), so I hope I won't add any additional burden with my post.

Keep up the good work, and take your time. :)


@ Herm: this thread is pretty popular and important, so it should be moved to the Coding/Modding/Tutorials board IMO.
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Re: S3TC Textures again...

Post by Hermskii » Mon Sep 26, 2011 8:18 am

Good call POTS. It is done and look at that! It's right under your topic too! Should I sticky this too? If I do, it will take the top spot I think but I can't recall.
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Re: S3TC Textures again...

Post by *POTS* » Mon Sep 26, 2011 5:40 pm

Nice thanks. I think you can always use the "bump" option in case, so making this sticky it's not strictly necessary at the moment.
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Re: S3TC Textures again...

Post by EvilGrins » Mon Sep 26, 2011 6:14 pm


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Re: S3TC Textures again...

Post by *POTS* » Mon Sep 26, 2011 9:51 pm

@ EvilGrins: That's for Unreal, not for UT, and it might be outdated as well.

However I just found a minor problem still related to that dang Moon and the map IllHaven. As you can see from the attached screenshots the moon (planet?!) seems slightly offset, while it looks fine in other maps like RuinsOfHarobed instead.

I just hope DieHard will be able to find this thread again, since it has been moved now and he doesn't check this place that often hmm. :?
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Re: S3TC Textures again...

Post by Diehard » Tue Sep 27, 2011 8:21 am

I just hope DieHard will be able to find this thread again, since it has been moved now and he doesn't check this place that often hmm. :?

No, i am here. And i will reply to all your questions as soon as possible, its just i need to attend a bunch of personal issues here at home in next couple a days.

However I just found a minor problem still related to that dang Moon and the map IllHaven. As you can see from the attached screenshots the moon (planet?!) seems slightly offset, while it looks fine in other maps like RuinsOfHarobed instead.
I asume you refer to the Moon S3TC.jpg that shows the offset. Didnt saw it before in UT, but the same thing happens in the Unreal map SkyCity. And frankly i have absolute no clue why it happens. Obviously the S3TC moon is the exact same size as the original moon, and also located at the exact same position in relation to all the 4 borders of the texture.

Its one of those things that simply should not be there, but can be seen. In Unreal SkyCity its sitting in the correct place too, and it vagually(being translucent) seems to repeat outside the texture. Which of course is even more weird, i mean how can there be something outside the texture ? ? ?

And i asume this error was already there before the update?
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Re: S3TC Textures again...

Post by Hermskii » Tue Sep 27, 2011 8:22 am

I hope so too. If I keep getting reminded, I'll post it at his place. I'm at work right now.
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Re: S3TC Textures again...

Post by *POTS* » Tue Sep 27, 2011 11:23 pm

Diehard wrote: No, i am here. And i will reply to all your questions as soon as possible, its just i need to attend a bunch of personal issues here at home in next couple a days.
Ah alright thanks!
DieHard wrote:I asume you refer to the Moon S3TC.jpg that shows the offset.
Correct.
DieHard wrote:And i asume this error was already there before the update?
Yes and no...
I mean, before the update the moon was perfectly centered but not masked (that is, black square around the moon), now the moon is perfectly masked but offset.
If you check the screenshot for RuinsOfHarobed though, the moon is both masked and centered. Could it be the fact IllHaven is a single player map and not a UT one?

I need to test again with that MaskedTextureHack option disabled. Will keep you informed in case I notice this weird bug somewhere else, but so far is limited to that map.

The good news is the "non-tiling clouds" glitch is gone from those maps that were affected. :mrgreen:
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