[0.9-Now] Quality of Textures

[DeltaCommando]

Description:
The quality of textures is very odd. Don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about the skinner's skills, but the way the textures have been saved. Since PR 0.9, I have noticed a lot of colored spots on the textures (especially weapons) and it looks very ugly. It would be fixed if you had the original PSD of the textures and saved it correctly. I know there is a right way to save it, because textures don't look like this in VBF2 or other mods.

These colored spots can be seen in most weapons, not only in the weapons of the pictures I'm posting here!

Steps to Reproduce:
Just play the game (easier in High settings) or open the textures in PR mod folders.

Screenshots:

Look at the wounded MEC soldier's hair. It has a lot of green and pink spots.

Yellow, pink and other colors spots on the back of the carrying handle, stock and ACOG's base.

You can see that the M9 looks very weird in PR, I guess this is because of the wrong settings when making the texture 2x bigger and when saving it.
(VBF2's M9 at left and PR's M9 at right)

Looks like someone dropped wine on the M249!

A lot of huge pixels and pink spots.

So, that's it. Please, as I said before, don't get me wrong. I just think this is something that looks ugly and could be fixed. That would improve a lot the visual quality of the best mod ever!

Tested On:
I noticed this since PR 0.9, but it might have happened before this version.

Video Settings:
All @ High
8x AA

Thanks.

[Rudd]

http://img835.imageshack.us/img835/4452/m240fail.jpg

definately ignore that one, its a LQ asset that has wanted to be replaced for ages and ages

[Psyrus]

Texturing seems like something you could learn and fix yourself, don't you think DeltaCommando?

You clearly have an eye for these things (because I didn't even notice the issues till you pointed them out), and I heard that it's not super hard to learn texturing. Maybe you should consider it

[DeltaCommando]

I sure could try to fix them, but fixing those over a texture won't look the same as the original, the consistency of the brushes won't be as good as in the original texture. If you look at the PR's M16A4 that Millenia released for CS:S, you'll see it doesn't have the spots! :/

[AnimalMother.]

If you look at the PR's M16A4 that Millenia released for CS:S, you'll see it doesn't have the spots! :/

what!?


either way i see what you're talking about, i just imagine it'll be a right ball ache to fix

[DeltaCommando]

Yeah, not having the PSDs would make it very difficult to fix, because there are tons of textures. :S

About the M16A4: here.
(sorry if I'm not allowed to post external links)

[DankE_SPB]

Lots of users already have performance problems and the memory error, causing CTDs.
Increasing the size of textures will make situation even worse. Textures are saved in DXT5 .dds mostly and it does heavily compress them, you can notice difference between it and original .psd without any zoom and research, but this is something we have to do.(note:i'm not a texturer )
There are things to be improved, yes, but not as bad as you described it -

because I didn't even notice the issues till you pointed them out

this quote kinda sums it up. When you know how things made and work you notice faaaaaaar more things, but for average user it is much less obvious.

Some things could be overlooked in process of creation, on some we might not have source files now to fix, there is simply too much stuff to control, i.e. some things like you pointed out were caught on textures for next release and were fixed.



And don't look at the MG on landy, its in the plan for long time and everybody knows its **** overall

I heard that it's not super hard to learn texturing

Good luck with it, each to his own though
Decent texturers are in big scarce.

I sure could try to fix them

if you have skills in texturing, i'm sure we can find something for ya

[Drav]

Yep I've noticed this (only on the weapons tho) I'd guess its a .dds compression thing. I'll have a look at how to fix it.

[Psyrus]

DankE_SPB;1407257']Good luck with [learning to texture], each to his own though
Decent texturers are in big scarce.

Well I did say learn... I didn't say it was easy to master. I suppose in the same way it's easy to learn how to script/program but learning how to make efficient/elegant code is another story altogether. As I said, if DeltaCommando has the eye to notice these things, conceivably he's artsy enough to be able to do the texturing thing (as that's what my minuscule understanding of the process leads me to believe)

[Pride]

Its all down to the DDS compression.

When we need to make changes to the textures, but we don't have the original PSD files, we have to make changes to the DDS files from the game, then save again as DDS. Each time you save as DDS the compression, and thus the pink spots, gets worse.

[Arnoldio]

I have been wanting to post this exact thread but never took screens and got around. Not that the textures are bad overall, but they are really fcked up in some places (M249).

[DeltaCommando]

I'm not used to DDS or texturing, but is there any way to save it with no compression?
The most common DDS tool I know is the nVidia plug-in for Photoshop, I believe that's what you use?

Edit: something that MIGHT (I didn't test it ingame, only in Photoshop) help is the "Reduce Noise" filter (Filter > Noise > Reduce Noise). On what I tested, simple settings like these (see image) were able to make colored spots into grayscale spots, the only problem is that it desaturates a bit strong colors, like metals (e.g. bullet texture).



I wouldn't recommend using "Remove JPEG Artifact" because it screws up the lines, writings, etc. From what I've seen, it's not a very useful tool, as it only works for small spots.
Cases like M249 would require a lot more work.

Also, for experienced texturers, this filter can be set with an individual setting per channel (RGB), which I believe is a good deal.

[DankE_SPB]

The most common DDS tool I know is the nVidia plug-in for Photoshop, I believe that's what you use?

yep, thats it

I'm not used to DDS, but is there any way to save it with no compression?

we have to compress it, otherwise size would be insane
raw sv-98 texture is ~66mb , compressed to .dds with resize down to 1024x1024 its 1.33mb

[DeltaCommando]

Isn't there any way to use TGA in BF2's engine? I mean, in textures that don't necessarily need an Alpha Channel (or other utilities of DDS extension).
TGA mantains the quality and it has a very good compression ratio inside ZIPs.

[Drav]

Nope, what texture format you use is all down to the Refractor engine. That really is about as hardcoded as it gets.

[RedAlertSF]

This has annoyed me for a long, long time. Never took screens tho, I was too lazy.

Could we get less compressed textures as an add-on pack for high-end computers? Or would Punkbuster go crazy?

I think the weapons' texture quality is pretty much top priority, since that's what we are looking at all the time.

[DeltaCommando]

So... DDS and DDS only?... hmmm
At this point, I believe you guys have tested all the types of compression, which gives me no hope.
But, oh well... thanks for clarifying this to me!

Just curiosity: having original sized textures wouldn't help the colored spots, but they would look better, as the spots would be "smaller" (also, there would be more detail). Are compressed original size textures too big?

[DankE_SPB]

1024x1024 is ~1.33mb, 2048x2048 is ~5.33mb
as said, players already have problems with memory crashes, so increasing the size of textures is not an option and we're actually searching for what we can cut down

[Drav]

Just to clarify what Pride said......its NOT the DDS compression per se, its working on a .dds file (cos the .psd is old/lost/not available) then having to re-save it as a .dds, which then compresses it again (bringing out the purple bits)

[samthegreat4]

1024x1024 is ~1.33mb, 2048x2048 is ~5.33mb
as said, players already have problems with memory crashes, so increasing the size of textures is not an option and we're actually searching for what we can cut down

So you are saying that low FPS on almost all maps BUT Asad Khal (where I have almost 100 FPS constantly) is not due to an error in scripting or bad optimalisation but due to nice looking textures... ? For a Battlefield 2 mod, yes even though the graphics quality is increased a bit, I think the performance is a bit minimal (40/50 FPS, sometimes, heck 30 sometimes) especially considering a great deal of users DO have high-end computers, including me. The strange thing is that my framerate collapses suddenly when I look at certain statics. In Gaza beach it's kinda bad too, average 50 fps or maybe lower. Don't get me wrong I love this mod, but I would really like to see this improved in the next release.

PS: People mentioned that in previous versions of the mod everything was fine.