That and I'm on a poly budget too, so I have to clip some details to keep it low count, and spammable.
I'm really just saving the PWN for the Leveler and Slasher
Core Raider light tank +1
Moderators: MR.D, Moderators
I wasn't expecting many Hooo's! and Yay's! out of this one, most ppl think of the raider as a pretty shitty unit when gameplay is concerned
That and I'm on a poly budget too, so I have to clip some details to keep it low count, and spammable.
I'm really just saving the PWN for the Leveler and Slasher
That and I'm on a poly budget too, so I have to clip some details to keep it low count, and spammable.
I'm really just saving the PWN for the Leveler and Slasher
-
Pressure Line
- Posts: 2283
- Joined: 21 May 2007, 02:09
id have thought that the fact that they are moving and shooting would be a dead giveaway.Saktoth wrote:After playing some CA with these models, in game, as is common with s3o's, the models are very dark and monotone. The textures are spectacular at close range but they have poor distance impact and its hard to tell them apart from corpses. The Gator in particular.
-
SwiftSpear
- Classic Community Lead
- Posts: 7287
- Joined: 12 Aug 2005, 09:29
Most players don't constantly have all their tanks moving and shooting.Pressure Line wrote:id have thought that the fact that they are moving and shooting would be a dead giveaway.Saktoth wrote:After playing some CA with these models, in game, as is common with s3o's, the models are very dark and monotone. The textures are spectacular at close range but they have poor distance impact and its hard to tell them apart from corpses. The Gator in particular.
Its alot to do with how the MIPMAPS are used through the game engine, at the distance at which I play, and I would assume most other players, the mipmap level would be roughly equal to a 128x128 or even 64x64, no wonder it doesn't look remarkable at those distances..
I use ATI omega drivers, and within the settings there are options to force Mipmaps off, so everything is crystal clear, and the textures look fairly good in those conditions.
I think that something that might help longer ranges would be to add in thicker lines in the main texture, but that would make the texture look really cartoonish up close.
Most OTA textures are very contrasted and cartoony, which is why they show up so well at distances, but the closer inspection, they look like pewp, and even worse is they're all distorted due to quad stretching and using tilesets.
I use ATI omega drivers, and within the settings there are options to force Mipmaps off, so everything is crystal clear, and the textures look fairly good in those conditions.
I think that something that might help longer ranges would be to add in thicker lines in the main texture, but that would make the texture look really cartoonish up close.
Most OTA textures are very contrasted and cartoony, which is why they show up so well at distances, but the closer inspection, they look like pewp, and even worse is they're all distorted due to quad stretching and using tilesets.
-
Warlord Zsinj
- Imperial Winter Developer
- Posts: 3742
- Joined: 24 Aug 2004, 08:59
I have long since wondered about spring mipping.. can you post a few shots without the mip?MR.D wrote: I use ATI omega drivers, and within the settings there are options to force Mipmaps off, so everything is crystal clear, and the textures look fairly good in those conditions.
I think that something that might help longer ranges would be to add in thicker lines in the main texture, but that would make the texture look really cartoonish up close.
MIPmapping improves the look, the texure wouldn't be large enough to be drawn at full res anyway and at least MIP averages over all texels instead of just the ones that happen to match a pixel.
If your texture turns into a mess at large distances it's because you have only high frequency details, i.e. greebles. You also need low frequency details. I'll drag out an old model to explain it:
High frequency is stuff like the lines on the armor (that's still pretty large, high frequency can be much smaller), low frequency is things like the shoulderpads or the chest armor. If you thumbnail the model the high frequency detail becomes hard to see but the differently colored pieces of the armor still show up. Camo works by disguising all major shapes in high-frequency details, making it hard to distinguish things.
If your texture turns into a mess at large distances it's because you have only high frequency details, i.e. greebles. You also need low frequency details. I'll drag out an old model to explain it:
High frequency is stuff like the lines on the armor (that's still pretty large, high frequency can be much smaller), low frequency is things like the shoulderpads or the chest armor. If you thumbnail the model the high frequency detail becomes hard to see but the differently colored pieces of the armor still show up. Camo works by disguising all major shapes in high-frequency details, making it hard to distinguish things.
-
Mr.Frumious
- Posts: 139
- Joined: 06 Jul 2006, 17:47
KDR, what game did you make that model for? It's wicked. I've only seen your stuff from the dark, early period on Polycount in which you were ramming out visibly-rushed models based on every FF game and anime you could think of - but that cartoon model is hawt secks.KDR_11k wrote:MIPmapping improves the look, the texure wouldn't be large enough to be drawn at full res anyway and at least MIP averages over all texels instead of just the ones that happen to match a pixel.
If your texture turns into a mess at large distances it's because you have only high frequency details, i.e. greebles. You also need low frequency details. I'll drag out an old model to explain it:
High frequency is stuff like the lines on the armor (that's still pretty large, high frequency can be much smaller), low frequency is things like the shoulderpads or the chest armor. If you thumbnail the model the high frequency detail becomes hard to see but the differently colored pieces of the armor still show up. Camo works by disguising all major shapes in high-frequency details, making it hard to distinguish things.
I don't know kdr, something is wierd about spring. Model textures look muddier then I am used to seeing. I do not want to derail the thread with the discussion but I honestly feel that is something is wrong with spring and the way it handles mips/textures or something. textures look really muddy in spring and I am not sure what is doing it.
Fruminous: It was for a game idea I once had but doubt I'll ever implement. The reason it looks better than what you saw is simply because I got better over time, when I came to Polycount I was still a total nublet. That and texturing is my weak point which cell shading conveniently hides 
.
Smoth: I'm not even sure how much the software can do about the MIP behaviour, most of that is in hardware and I noticed around the time of the GeForce2-3 the hardware started mipping way too strong (Probably performance rivalry), especially for faces that aren't facing the camera.
.Smoth: I'm not even sure how much the software can do about the MIP behaviour, most of that is in hardware and I noticed around the time of the GeForce2-3 the hardware started mipping way too strong (Probably performance rivalry), especially for faces that aren't facing the camera.
I don't think there is much to do about the mipmap behavior either, in most games the range distances that you play at are much much closer, so the mipmaps being used never small enough to blur and wash out the textures.
I'm speaking in general of most First Person Shooter games, where the player character and model objects are pretty close range, so you're always viewing the 1st mip level alot more often.
RTS on the other hand use distances far longer than most games, and alot of the time until recently don't use alot of zooming for the camera.
Even OTA, Warcraft 1-2-3, Starcraft, C&C, which did use a locked FOV, were able to have a texture set which looked good at that 1 zoom range.
Use SupCom for example, unit textures get washed out just as badly at those extreme ranges, just like spring does but spring uses much smaller starting textures, and requires about half the Memory usage of most of these modern RTS games.
Mip-mapping from what I understand is pretty much only for performance, and to keep texture memory from being hogged, its not there to make things look necessarily better.
I'm speaking in general of most First Person Shooter games, where the player character and model objects are pretty close range, so you're always viewing the 1st mip level alot more often.
RTS on the other hand use distances far longer than most games, and alot of the time until recently don't use alot of zooming for the camera.
Even OTA, Warcraft 1-2-3, Starcraft, C&C, which did use a locked FOV, were able to have a texture set which looked good at that 1 zoom range.
Use SupCom for example, unit textures get washed out just as badly at those extreme ranges, just like spring does but spring uses much smaller starting textures, and requires about half the Memory usage of most of these modern RTS games.
Mip-mapping from what I understand is pretty much only for performance, and to keep texture memory from being hogged, its not there to make things look necessarily better.
Well another thing I was thinking about, is what about different texture formats?
When I save to .dds after doing the teamcolor, it asks me about creating MipMaps right there in the file.
Now I know that the old TA .tga textures did not have mipmapping in the texture files themselves, any mipmapping would have to be done via software on the videocard during texture rendering on screen.
Could this be the cause, where the texture having its own mipmaps, and the program trying to mipmap for textures that don't have them, and the spring engine doing a double mipmap where .dds textures are concerned?
That would make some really nasty blurring, like what Smoth is saying, and what we're seeing happen on these new units in CA and other mods.
Possible?
When I save to .dds after doing the teamcolor, it asks me about creating MipMaps right there in the file.
Now I know that the old TA .tga textures did not have mipmapping in the texture files themselves, any mipmapping would have to be done via software on the videocard during texture rendering on screen.
Could this be the cause, where the texture having its own mipmaps, and the program trying to mipmap for textures that don't have them, and the spring engine doing a double mipmap where .dds textures are concerned?
That would make some really nasty blurring, like what Smoth is saying, and what we're seeing happen on these new units in CA and other mods.
Possible?
Mipmaps increase the texture's resource footprint by 1/3. They might improve the fillrate though.
Graphics cards can compute mipmaps on the fly, with DDS you can put them into the file to save that time and possibly deal with the compression better.
I think modern graphics cards just use earlier mipping to boost their benchmark results. You can probably adjust this in the driver settings.
Graphics cards can compute mipmaps on the fly, with DDS you can put them into the file to save that time and possibly deal with the compression better.
I think modern graphics cards just use earlier mipping to boost their benchmark results. You can probably adjust this in the driver settings.
-
clumsy_culhane
- Posts: 370
- Joined: 30 Jul 2007, 10:27
