The grass in Tag's screenshots looks strange to me. It looks sorta like the grass that model railroad builders use.

I mentioned this once before (either in this thread or in a similar one) but never got a response. Does anyone know how big the grass texture is in-game? In other words, is the grass a 5m x 5m square? smaller? larger? I think this factor will have a big impact on how realistic textures look once they're put into the game. If each grass "square" is 5x5m but we use a texture that's 2x2m, then the grass blades will look twice as big as they should. I think this could explain the "big" look of the grass in these shots.

i find it funny that you create hires texture pack but dont even use hires textures that are already done for lfs (talking about our hires skies)

Quote from Don :

i find it funny that you create hires texture pack but dont even use hires textures that are already done for lfs (talking about our hires skies)

The sky never bugged me like the closer textures did... I won't make high-res sky textures, since I know you did those... And I'll be using those when mine are done

Quote from Cue-Ball :

The grass in Tag's screenshots looks strange to me. It looks sorta like the grass that model railroad builders use.

I mentioned this once before (either in this thread or in a similar one) but never got a response. Does anyone know how big the grass texture is in-game? In other words, is the grass a 5m x 5m square? smaller? larger? I think this factor will have a big impact on how realistic textures look once they're put into the game. If each grass "square" is 5x5m but we use a texture that's 2x2m, then the grass blades will look twice as big as they should. I think this could explain the "big" look of the grass in these shots.

That's the problem I've mentioned a couple of times before (and aswering your question)... There are mapping issues on the models that cause the texture covered area to have different sizes... So, yes, sometimes the area is 6x6m, but a few meters further down the track it's 12x12m.

Part of the funny look is the color... That'll change. Part of it is probably the size, so I'll change that too...

Here's a screenshot of the weird mapping you get at times.

Quote from Cue-Ball :

I mentioned this once before (either in this thread or in a similar one) but never got a response. Does anyone know how big the grass texture is in-game? In other words, is the grass a 5m x 5m square? smaller? larger? I think this factor will have a big impact on how realistic textures look once they're put into the game. If each grass "square" is 5x5m but we use a texture that's 2x2m, then the grass blades will look twice as big as they should. I think this could explain the "big" look of the grass in these shots.

sorry i don't know the answer...i wondered myself too while doing asphalt tests and i answered myself just by eye-look...btw it really doesn't matter since eric maps the textures in a very weird way -> once a square texture is mapped into a square, in another place the same texture is mapped into a very stretched rectangle and sometimes this happens even on contigous regions...

today at lunch time i could borrow a photoshopped workstation at work and i made some test for asphalt textures from scratch, they are far from being final (very far), so i consider as "proof of concept" to see what you guys think are the most realistic or better looking for a game.

as you can see there are 2 kind of textures each one from different perspective and one of them with original/new side by side.

i tried to keep the same colour of the originals, every criticism is welcome.
do you think it is worth to continue, or i'd better stop now?

They both look good, but the 2nd one needs at least double the resolution...
It's too rough atm.

me thinks we should coordinate the texture creation business a bit, just so none of us is doing work that doesn't need to be done anymore.

Im really glad you guys n gals are doing this. Its nice to have the option of Hires textures. Im always looking for ways to lower my ridiculous frame rate .

Tagforce is right about the need to combine your efforts, just so its less confusing for us end users with seperate updating etc and to make sure you dont spend ages fiddling with some thing thats already done.

One negative aspect about the whole hi-res texture thing is that it really does make other textures look ten times worse. Honey's Aston track texture, for example, the rumble strip next to the new tarmac looks very odd. But i guess this doesnt matter if everything gets updated eventually

anyhow keep up the good work

Quote from TagForce :

They both look good, but the 2nd one needs at least double the resolution...
It's too rough atm.

yep! you're right! the second is still too "zoomed" at start it was 16x times zoomed than that in the screeny, so when i did it "i couldn't see" that it needed much more work
my doubts are about the types of asphalt and colours, because i think originals are maybe too light, also the first type is my favourite but maybe is too street-like...

Quote :

me thinks we should coordinate the texture creation business a bit, just so none of us is doing work that doesn't need to be done anymore.

umm, maybe would be better...however i'm still testing and i've not decided yet if i will finish it.
btw my goal is to have better asphalt and if i will succeed, better kerbs.
my work is retexturing from scratch and i started testing only after i saw that others were simply upscaling and adding some detail textures (this way it's not worth the effort imho).
i'm separating my work into three stages (S1, S2, S3...lol ): (S1) make best possible basic asphalt textures of few types, that looks uniform and without imperfections (S2) create basic resources (small textures, brushes etc.) and tecniques to create after effects on asphalt (broken asphalt, low freq bumps, rust, sand on track, consumed road painting, etc.) (S3) combine S1+S2 to retexture all LFS tracks aimed to achieve the most realistic result.

Dunno if this is any use to anyone, but a rippled sandtrap texture I made recently:



The download is the original 1024x1024 size. Probably looks better with bump mapping, but might be useful perhaps.



Regards,

Ian

Quote from DratsaB :

Im really glad you guys n gals are doing this. Its nice to have the option of Hires textures. Im always looking for ways to lower my ridiculous frame rate .

i'm really sorry...but those hi-res textures won't affect your framerate!!! if you want to make it lower, go look somewhere else

Quote :

Tagforce is right about the need to combine your efforts, just so its less confusing for us end users with seperate updating etc and to make sure you dont spend ages fiddling with some thing thats already done.

One negative aspect about the whole hi-res texture thing is that it really does make other textures look ten times worse. Honey's Aston track texture, for example, the rumble strip next to the new tarmac looks very odd. But i guess this doesnt matter if everything gets updated eventually

anyhow keep up the good work

yeah i know what you mean...if everything get update: of course no problem, but also to help those who don't want/cannot update all textures, we'd better define texture packs that are consistent, for example: one pack for all pavement things (asphalt, kerbs, etc.), one pack for natural ground (grass, mud, sand, etc.), one pack for landscapes, etc.
in that way everyone's can choose his/her custom level of detail

Do we have a list anywhere of which textures correspond to which tracks?

Quote from Cue-Ball :

Do we have a list anywhere of which textures correspond to which tracks?

Not that I know of, but the filenames are mostly consistent...
AC_* = Autocross
AST* = Aston
BW* = Blackwood
City* = South City
CTY* = South City
GW* = Aston (originally named Greenwich?)
HGA* = Kyoto
JA* = Fern Bay
KYO* = Kyoto
RALY* = Blackwood
WST* = Westhill

The other textures seem to be global textures. linesALPHA.dds, for instance, is used as the pit markings on every track.

Some of the textures may be used on different tracks though.

Hi TagForce,

I really like your road texture as from your last screenshots it looks also really nice from close up view.Definately better then the oroginal one.The TV looked also very good however I have some doubts about the grass texture.

It looks very nice from TV view but where there is a close up like on your last screenshots the grass fibres looks very,very big(on the right part closer to bottom of the picture).I am not sure if its a problem of mapping or your texture has big details.I saw a lot of nice grass textures which could be used for LFS but the problem is that were taken like from 1 meter above so its not suitable for LFS.As I described the big fibre effect.When you look at Eric`s grass texture they are lowres but the grass fibre details is very,very tiny resulting in accurate grass effect in LFS.

I think its not problem going with 2048 texture size in LFS.Maybe it would be worth to try the 4096*4096 version and comparing the performance hits/drops on various PC configurations.Just something to wroth trying.

Between what resolution you used for the road texture and for the grass texture?

Honey,
I like more your 1st(left) attempt as it look closer to realife roard surface.Still a bit artificial but its as you said very early try so the texture itself need some more random flaws etc.
Your second attempt looks more like a concrete wall then road surface.
What resolution you used as well for that road test?

I am impressed by both of you guys with the WIP or early work tests.I think there is place for using both road textures as it will suit each track in its best way.I think TagForce road texture would suit more to "ovals" like Kyoto or Westhill and Honeys 1st road texture to other tracks.

The problem is not in the size of the texture, but in the mapping that's being done with it... I'm working on resizing it, and it's getting better

In fact, Eric's textures have the exact same problem, but it looks less shaky up close because there's so little detail in them... It's virtually impossible to see which pixel goes with which strand of grass. And then there's the obviously shoddy mapping on the hillsides which has really huge strands of grass even in the original...

Rest assured though, that I will be keeping you all updated on the progress... As soon as I have something worth showing you, I will.

I'm afraid this is kinda what will have to do until Eric remaps the track sides on the other side of the track so they both transition from grass to tarmac at the same width. It looks kind of funky with dirt on one side of the track.

This texture is 4096, and needs to be cleaned up a lot (there's visible lines on grass transitions) but it gives a basic idea.

Quote from TagForce :

I'm afraid this is kinda what will have to do until Eric remaps the track sides on the other side of the track so they both transition from grass to tarmac at the same width. It looks kind of funky with dirt on one side of the track.

This texture is 4096, and needs to be cleaned up a lot (there's visible lines on grass transitions) but it gives a basic idea.

TagForce,
Thats the WOW update.Kudos to your work.Did you notice any framerate drop with such a hi-res texture?Would be possible to take screenshots from TV view looking down to straight so see how much repeating effect is visible?I bet almost none due to the quality of your work.

Thats what I meant about the detailed grass texture.Its something I was trying but wasnt able to achieve .Hope Eric will correct the mapping later on the tracks.

I would like to see your work in action on my PC as soon as possible.

Quote from DEVIL 007 :

TagForce,
Thats the WOW update.Kudos to your work.Did you notice any framerate drop with such a hi-res texture?Would be possible to take screenshots from TV view looking down to straight so see how much repeating effect is visible?I bet almost none due to the quality of your work.

Thats what I meant about the detailed grass texture.Its something I was trying but wasnt able to achieve .Hope Eric will correct the mapping later on the tracks.

I would like to see your work in action on my PC as soon as possible.

There is almost no drop in framerate as of yet, but I haven't done extensive framerate testing... A bigger concern will be the filesize... 4096x4096 = 16MB per texture... I'm afraid that's going to be a problem (and according to the file info that is without mipmaps and using DXT3 compression).

There is repetition at this point... But that's mostly due because of strange mapping in the texture itself. I need to clean that up.

This is turning out to be more work than I initially anticipated, but I love doing it
Up next is the other grass textures... Good thing is that the grass I'm using for a base is almost infinitely tilable with very little cleaning up to do afterwards. All I need to find is some good tiretracks, and different types of dirt.

Quote :

Tagforce is right about the need to combine your efforts, just so its less confusing for us end users with seperate updating etc and to make sure you dont spend ages fiddling with some thing thats already done.

Honey- I really like the definition/detail of your track, a good base to work on. Although at the moment it's all too uniform thoughout.

Tag- I really like the little cracks and imperfections in your track, although your's at the mo appears somewhat 'flatter' in appearence to Honey's.

If you could somehow elegantly combine them, you would have the ultimate track, IMO...

@TagForce: really nice job man, looking forward to using it
Kudos to everybody working on the textures, it makes LFS look even better

@DEVIL_007
i used 2048*2048 and imho no texture should be above that resolution to avoid possible ram problems, btw 2048 is even too much to see very high detail on close views, at the end even 1024 maybe very good, btw atm i'm working at higher resolutions (i'm not eric :P ) -> my psd file of one texture is above 130MB lol -> there's always time to downsize

PS you may be surprised but both types of textures started from real tarmac photos -> even the second it's just too close as tag also noticed


@Electric Kar
i already know and collected few tecniques to add cracks and imperfections, asi said that is my "stage 2" i still have to produce one or 2 types of asphalt at "final" quality, unfortunately i have very little time to work on that because i must do at work and only one workstation has photoshop (and it's not mine ), today i couldnt do anything, maybe monday i will be able to show some progress


@anyone

what does "Kudos" means? i see sometimes this words is used but i don't know what it means...

Quote from Honey :

@anyone

what does "Kudos" means? i see sometimes this words is used but i don't know what it means...

lol

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=kudos

Quote from Tweaker :

lol

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=kudos

omg that rly meanz something!!!
thankz also 4 da link of da urbandictionary ...kudos 2 u!

Quote from Honey :

@DEVIL_007
i used 2048*2048 and imho no texture should be above that resolution to avoid possible ram problems, btw 2048 is even too much to see very high detail on close views, at the end even 1024 maybe very good, btw atm i'm working at higher resolutions (i'm not eric :P ) -> my psd file of one texture is above 130MB lol -> there's always time to downsize

PS you may be surprised but both types of textures started from real tarmac photos -> even the second it's just too close as tag also noticed

I'm slowly starting to realize that anyone creating high-res textures for use on racing tracks in a certain game we all play has serious mental problems (or will develop them soon enough)... But I'm having fun doing it...

I'm using 4096 sized textures at the moment because that's what I'm using for the originals (which are partly upscaled from lower res textures, including Eric's originals for luminosity layers) and I can't be bothered to downscale them everytime... But there's absolutely no noticable loss in quality when going from 4096 to 2048... Not unless you put a camera straight down at 2ft high, anyway.

Quote from TagForce :

I'm afraid this is kinda what will have to do until Eric remaps the track sides on the other side of the track so they both transition from grass to tarmac at the same width. It looks kind of funky with dirt on one side of the track.

This texture is 4096, and needs to be cleaned up a lot (there's visible lines on grass transitions) but it gives a basic idea.

that looks nice