Improve groundhemi textures on PR maps?

[Outlawz7]

This is one thing that is somehow always left out on some maps and no one seems to notice or ask anything about it.

For a quick explanation, the groundhemi.dds file is basically a huge square texture that's similar to the map's minimap and controls the darkness/lightness of all dynamic objects on a map (vehicles, soldiers, team assets).

Now most maps don't have issues with this, but one very awful offender is Qinling, very dark soldiers on a bright green terrain versus a white sky, hasn't anyone noticed this since the map made it into the mod in 0.7? See below
(pic taken from the screenshot thread)



I played with the file in PR SP's Qinling and eventually went for simple white texture and the results:

Before:

After:


Like I said, this is not an issue on all PR maps or at least noticeable, but another map with this issue is also Asad Khal, where you have Karkandish soldiers on a bright sandish map, although it's not as noticeable there.
Discuss.

[Smegburt_funkledink]

Nice, can you get some before and after shots of vehicles too? That does look like a good improvement.

[=Romagnolo=]

There is a noticiable difference between those pictures. Is it hard to change ? If not, that would be a good improvement for a future release.

[Jigsaw]

Nice, does look like an improvement. Not sure the same problem exists on Asad Khal though as you have sandy coloured terrain and sandy coloured camo, so I think they blend quite well.

[Robbi]

Its more at a distance, the model looks black, instead of the colour of the camo.

Changing the shade of the groundhemi.dds isnt hard at all.

[Smegburt_funkledink]

Changing the shade of the groundhemi.dds isnt hard at all.

Does someone want to rename the thread to "Just make the groundhemi textures white FFS"

[Robbi]

Its not changing them white Smeg, its just changing the shade of it to match into the map more. Nice quick find though Outlawz mate, well done

[=Romagnolo=]

Outlawz for R-SMART

[McBumLuv]

Outlawz for R-SMART

Is there any R- Outlawz hasn't been

Awesome find. This aught to fix up a few things.

[Rhino]

yep nice work Outlawz. I always forget to to generate ground hemi button as its hidden away

Something we should look into for sure on PR maps

[Outlawz7]

My first idea was actually to suggest using minimaps as groundhemi, since those are more detailed and would work better for area specific textures (ie. dark in forest, light in fields), but they somehow give out the same result as the original groundhemi, perhaps minimap+Photoshop and you'll have something.

[Rhino]

My first idea was actually to suggest using minimaps as groundhemi, since those are more detailed and would work better for area specific textures (ie. dark in forest, light in fields), but they somehow give out the same result as the original groundhemi, perhaps minimap+Photoshop and you'll have something.

afaik shadows and buildings are included inside the alpha channel, here is muttrah's (resized)



as you can see all the shadows are inlcuded and where there are buildings it also has it as a gray instead of a black (can't see too well in that but not the building shadow, where the building is standing).

So using the minimap you would probably have large conflicts with the shadows, would need to test it out.

The really interesting thing I have not noticed before is looking at these hemimaps is that not all the buildings etc are included in the RGB channels, it looks like they have not been drawed much like when crating a minimap, it only draws objects in the centre unless you force it to.

It might be an idea to generate the colour of the ground hemi by the minimap, but you disable all lightmaps before hand and then do it, then transfer it in with photoshop etc.

Thou it seems like a lot of work for something that isn't going to improve it much.

Qinling's is really bad since it was far too dark compared to the lights colour and that was easily tweaked in photoshop, and it isn't upto date looking at it either but other than that, dunno if it is really worth improving them much more than that?

[Outlawz7]

Qinling's is really bad since it was far too dark compared to the lights colour and that was easily tweaked in photoshop, and it isn't upto date looking at it either but other than that, dunno if it is really worth improving them much more than that?

Yeah, good point, just improved enough so soldiers and vehicles don't go out of contrast with the map and light settings.

Also Qinling's groundhemi is actually 1024x1024, the "standard" size is 2048x2048, so you could get some more detail with the bigger size.

Come to think of it, maybe using the alpha channel as RGB would solve most issues or at least as partial overlay.

[charliegrs]

hey qinling looks alot better like that, now if we could just get some servers to actually play it

[Rhino]

Yeah, good point, just improved enough so soldiers and vehicles don't go out of contrast with the map and light settings.

Also Qinling's groundhemi is actually 1024x1024, the "standard" size is 2048x2048, so you could get some more detail with the bigger size.

Come to think of it, maybe using the alpha channel as RGB would solve most issues or at least as partial overlay.

every map's groundhemi I've looked at is 1024x1024, making it 2048x2048 would make seance for a 4km map because then you would have the same detail as a normal map but doing so would make the file four times as large making it 4mbs instead of 1mb which when you consider Qinling lags enough for most players its not really an option.

Also putting the alpha channel into the RGB as in a shadow layer would most likley not be a good idea (and most likley buggy too) since the engine most likley takes into accounts shadows and makes it so vehicles above buildings and the ground do not have that shadow applied to them, some how.

[Outlawz7]

No, I meant copy the Alpha layer into a new picture as RGB. Of course you'll get a channel called Gray, since there's no colors.

[Rhino]

I dont see where your coming from?

[Outlawz7]

The idea that the Alpha channel which already has all the bright and dark areas drawn is used as a RGB for the whole texture, since you can't get lightmaps onto the groundhemi texture when generating it like you can on the minimap AFAIK and since the colors more or less seem do nothing ie. the current Qinling hemi is brownish and green and all the vehicles and soldiers are blackish.

[Rhino]

the point is you dont want the shadows etc on the RGB channel

reason why the players and vehicles where blackish on qinling is the colour was too dark, needed brighting up


I think the colour helps quite a bit overall, like when a helictoper flys low over the water you want the water to reflect its colour up onto it very slightly and when going over a sandy area, it dose that. Very hard to notice it but it helps with keeping everything in contrast with the surroundings which happens in r/l

[Outlawz7]

Ah ok then ops: