Renzatic on 14/10/2012 at 09:58
I've been messing with this texture on and off all damn day, trying to get it to not only look good, but be as close to the original as possible. I came close, too. Had the paint patterns down, had the colors matched. It was all good. I dunno if OCD is something you can develop over time, but if it can be, I took at least 5 steps towards today.
Then I went to tile it. That was no problem. Tiling is easy. There was only one problem. It looked...terrible. I mean, like...suck. Paint doesn't peel that way. It looked fake. Dumb. Stupid. I figured I'd have to find that balance of nice looking and faithful to the original source. Again. For that, I thought I'd have to see what LGS did to get it looking alright.
The goddamn thing doesn't really tile. The seams are immediately apparent. The only thing saving it is that it's about the size of an icon, and the blendy bits are huge chunks of single colored pixels. It reinforces my belief that what looks good on a painterly 64x64 256 color texture doesn't necessarily look good on a 512x512 millions of colors semi photorealistic one. There's a ton more fine detail to screw things up.
I redid it in a way I think looks good considering the theme with respect to the originals. The colors are the same, but the patterns of peeling paint are totally different. I'm putting it on the backburner and starting the bookshelf tomorrow.
Also I will admit I'm a whiny bastard who gets pouty and petulant when things don't go their way. :P
LarryG on 14/10/2012 at 14:33
Quote Posted by Xorak
Well, if we're going to nitpick I'd say the new doesn't match up that perfectly. I see something more metal-like and less stone looking. The new texture is missing the X shape which sort of defines the two panels, which stands out more than the swirly bits, and which holds the swirly bits in place. Though your shape of the swirly bits do seem to match well. Plus your new texture has different borders.
This is where we get into the differing interpretation place. The original is so bad that it is hard to tell what it really is. My interpretation is that it is a painted tin / copper / brass ceiling tile.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]1329[/ATTACH]
It gets used exclusively on ceilings IIRC. And lots of them do look sort of like this one, just none exactly right. So I tried to craft one. What you are seeing as an X-shape, I see as a very low resolution remnant of a fleur de lis pattern. I haven't found a fdl ceiling tile that works well yet, so I used a different floral look to try and emulate it. When scaled down to the original size (64x32) my version looks pretty similar. Not as much color variation in the highlights, but not too far off. I'll keep looking for a good fdl tin pattern, but until someone comes up with a better interpretation, this may do as a nearly good enough drop in. :erg:
I think the source image for those tiles might have been colored more like this one (just not this pattern):
[ATTACH=CONFIG]1330[/ATTACH]
I've been looking at places like this one, (
http://www.americantinceilings.com/pattern/), but no direct hit yet.
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Edit: Another attempt, still not right. I need to get a more pronounced X effect when scaled down. But the color's pretty good.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]1332[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]1331[/ATTACH]
[ATTACH=CONFIG]1333[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]1334[/ATTACH]
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Edit: This is as good as I can get it today.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]1332[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]1340[/ATTACH]
[ATTACH=CONFIG]1341[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]1342[/ATTACH]
Nameless Voice on 14/10/2012 at 19:55
Those "hit by a bomb" EP metal doors really could do with a revisit.
LarryG on 14/10/2012 at 22:55
This is side by side. One had a 20 pixel Gaussian blur on top of the soft focus stuff that I already did, the other just has soft focus. There is a slight difference. but I don't know that one is "better" than the other. To my mind the blurred one doesn't look as dirty or worn.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]1344[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]1345[/ATTACH]
Renzatic on 14/10/2012 at 23:10
Quote Posted by ZylonBane
Doesn't seem like an environment in which the paneling would be distressed. Looks like it started life as some nice glossy mahogany. Maybe cherry.
What I find strange is just how little the blue shows up in that shot. The texture itself looks like old, peeling paint when viewing it in PS. Ingame, it looks about like what you said, with the center piece being slightly more shadowed than the rest.
I'll give it another go, and have something later on tonight.
Renzatic on 14/10/2012 at 23:27
Quote Posted by LarryG
This is side by side. One had a 20 pixel Gaussian blur on top of the soft focus stuff that I already did, the other just has soft focus. There is a slight difference. but I don't know that one is "better" than the other. To my mind the blurred one doesn't look as dirty or worn.
Think of it like this. Your original should be used only for colors, not for suggesting shapes. What I do is take the original teture, gaussian blur it, slap it near the top of the layer stack, set opacity to 30-50%, and paint in every small detail myself. If the original has a highlight painted on somewhere, I don't want it to display the low res highlight on the high res texture, I only want it strengthen the color of a highlight I painted or placed myself. And even then, only just.
You can tell how well it works by the shading, gradients, and smoothness. If your highlight goes from, say, dark orange to light yellow rather suddenly, then it's too close to the original. LGS only had a small amount of pixels to work with. You have tons. Blur it, paint around it, and blend it in so it looks more realistic. Your texture on the right, though darker and not as glossy looking, does a much better job in that regard. If you want to strengthen those highlights, do it by hand.
LarryG on 14/10/2012 at 23:28
There are two different versions of KWGRAIN2, one in KEEPER and one in NewKeep IIRC, and they are slightly different in color. My belief is that they were painted and the paint has peeled and worn some.
Here is my version slightly distressed and aged.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]1346[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]1346[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]1346[/ATTACH]
[ATTACH=CONFIG]1347[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]1347[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]1347[/ATTACH]
I think it should be made to tile better. The original didn't tile perfectly . . . but it did tile better.
Renzatic on 14/10/2012 at 23:55
Quote Posted by LarryG
There are two different versions of KWGRAIN2, one in KEEPER and one in NewKeep IIRC, and they are slightly different in color. My belief is that they were painted and the paint has peeled and worn some.
Here is my version slightly distressed and aged.
I think it should be made to tile better. The original didn't tile perfectly . . . but it did tile better.
After seeing the ingame shot, I'm thinking it's more LGS playing with what they've got to paint gloss and highlights onto a texture, rather than peeling paint. Like ZB said, that doesn't look like an environment where you'd see a decrepit, neglected tile like what I've been trying to make. Old maybe. A little careworn. But not peeling, dusty, and left to moulder.
I'm thinking the wood would look more like what you see on (
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3018396/WoodFine0028_2_M.jpg) this texture than anything we've done previously. Paint in some highlights and shadows, and I think it'd be a closer paring to the Original Intended Vision rather than what we've been trying for.
My final remake version looks like (
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3018396/panel_shot.jpg) this by the way. There's a lot more blue paint on the thing, and doesn't come nearly as close to matching the colors of the original as it once did. I got a good reason for doing this, though. For one, it looks better tiled. The old one had weird strips running along the seams. A blue line of peeling paint that marks perfectly where the edges meet. It tiled and flowed, but looked stupid. Like the paint was peeling away from the center out, rather than in random chunks. Secondly, it had too many distinct places on the surface, which means you'd get obvious repetition. For one-off usage, it'd be alright. Try to do something like a panelled ceiling, and it'd look slap nasty dumb.
I made it more generic so it'd look good in a wider variety of usage scenarios while trying to stay true to the original style. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like the source texture all that much anymore, beyond basic shape and proportions. It's now a better fit for a high res reimagining, rather than a drop-in high res rescale. As of right now, I'm having trouble doing the later while keeping it looking alright.
