Satyr Texture Modification

[Raeshlavik]

For my first texture project, I decided to try and fix what I saw as a lack of texture for the Satyr's hooves and horns.

It took a couple hours to figure out the arcane ways of Intrinsic Alchemy's texture methods from various bits and pieces of posts here on the forums (and Fridlekh's wonderful AGH exporter). There's another two hours in figuring out the rather odd UV of the meshes used and trying to compensate for some strange texture stretching.

Once I had built an understanding of the model structures and how the textures were applied - which simply required placing colored 'marker' spots in various locations in the exported TGA, loading Istaria to convert the TGA to AGH, reloading Istaria in the character creator to load the modified AGH, seeing where the makers were (hopefully somewhere visible), then rinsing and repeating about a dozen times to figure out the texture placement on the model. (Male Satyr hooves have some pretty bad texture stretching going on)

Actual 'art' time for this project was about an hour - this covers all of the various fur colors for the male and female models for both hooves and horns.

Tools used were Fridlekh's AGH viewer, The Gimp, and the Istaria client.

Here are a few sample 'before and after' images:




Each fur color is reflected in the hooves and horns. I will probably revisit the male hooves as I'm still not completely happy with them. This is due mostly to the odd texture stretching... But I think I can work around it and bring them more in line with the female's with an update.

If there is any interest in these modified textures, I'll zip them up and make them available.

My next project will probably be an examination of the weapon models and associated textures.

[Knossos]

Any chance you can add to your list of texture work the poor fit of sleeves on essense leather (and perhaps other leather and hide armor)? As viewed from behind toon dwarf and saris (and maybe other races) wearing essense leather armor have lots of skin showing. Makes it rather difficult to do dyes that are well different than skin tone.

Knossos

[Xanthia]

That looks great. Would love your mod. Very nice work.

[StalePopcorn]

"The hooves maketh the Satyr"

They are awesome, nice job!

[Raeshlavik]

Any chance you can add to your list of texture work the poor fit of sleeves on essense leather (and perhaps other leather and hide armor)? As viewed from behind toon dwarf and saris (and maybe other races) wearing essense leather armor have lots of skin showing. Makes it rather difficult to do dyes that are well different than skin tone.

Knossos

Looking through the available textures in Frid's exporter, it doesn't appear that we have easy access to the armor textures...

Is the issue gapping in the textures or a mesh collision problem?

The former I should be able to fix if I can figure out how to get to the textures, the latter will take access to the meshes for the various armor bits that I don't know if we can get - as well as a better understanding of how armor is placed on a base model (attachment points, how is the model resized to fit the base mesh, etc.).

On a side note; under structures/community_building/ there are roughly 70 textures prefixed with 'castle_' - anyone know what those are for?

[Raeshlavik]

Knossos,

Okay, I found the models in question and broke out my trusty Granny tools...

Unfortunately I can only look at the .gr2 (Granny) files, and not the .agf (Alchemy) ones. The dwarf_m_sc00_shirt_06.gr2 and dwarf_m_sc00_shirt_07.gr2 sleeves applied to the dwarf_m_m1_bodym.gr2 show that there isn't a lot of space between the arm and the back of the sleeve model - so if one were to turn up the muscularity, I can see where you'd get some collision between the arm and sleeve.

Unfortunately, this isn't something I can fix without spending about $12.5k on the full Granny package so that I can import/export out of Maya. And then I'd have to upgrade to the full version of Maya at about $3k to do anything other than 'personal use'...

There's a reason Vi charges us to play Istaria.

[Solitaire]

On a side note; under structures/community_building/ there are roughly 70 textures prefixed with 'castle_' - anyone know what those are for?

Those are for the castle models. Which are ridiculously broken and why they are not used.

Nice work on the satyrs, btw.

[Knossos]

Raeshlavik:

The problem with the leather sleeves is that they are too small. The other sleeves (metal armor, cargo gear) are just fine. The leather sleeves are too small also as seen on Saris. So problem is unique to leather armor and is not just Dwarf but at least one other race as well.

Knossos

[Raeshlavik]

Raeshlavik:

The problem with the leather sleeves is that they are too small. The other sleeves (metal armor, cargo gear) are just fine. The leather sleeves are too small also as seen on Saris. So problem is unique to leather armor and is not just Dwarf but at least one other race as well.

Knossos

I think I had a bit of a breakthrough in that it appears that most of the clothing/armor textures are listed under the humans. If you can post a quick screenshot of the problem, I'll see if I can find the corresponding texture in the pile and see what makes it different.

[Knossos]

Here is a screenshot of the leather armor sleeve size/fit problem.

Knossos

[Knossos]

And here is a screenshot of Ironsilk Cargo Armor.

Knossos

[Raeshlavik]

Looking over the leather arm textures, it doesn't appear that any of them have sleeves - just that pauldron bit at the shoulder.

The specific texture you're looking at for the first picture appears to be /characters/characters/human_m/clothing/human_m_a02_arms_det_bison.agh

I *think* I can add the rest of the sleeve to this, and have whipped up a test texture based on the plate arms texture which is essentially the same graphic with metal textured sleeves.

Unfortunately, I don't have a biped capable of wearing leather of this type, so I cannot test it.

If you want to, the test texture is located on one of my test servers at work (http://97.65.196.100). Just get the .agh out of the .rar file and place it in istaria/resources_override/textures_agh/characters/characters/human_m/clothing.

If this basic attempt actually works, then it's a small matter to make nice leather sleeve textures (with stitching and such) and getting the alignment right for each of the five leather types in the a02 category.

[Knossos]

Right Sleeve now fits, left sleeve only partially rendered. Both sleeves show no Essense Dye Kit (Did not try to reapply). Looking more closely it seems left sleev is truncated.

Knossos

[Raeshlavik]

Right Sleeve now fits, left sleeve only partially rendered. Both sleeves show no Essense Dye Kit (Did not try to reapply). Looking more closely it seems left sleev is truncated.

Knossos

It is. Was part of the positioning test. The texture is also skewed quite a bit, but that's how it always starts.

The good new is, yes, I can add sleeves to leather armor. There's some figuring out that needs to be done as far as positioning and to make sure tinting still works, but that's all part of the adventure.

I think I can test on my test-peds as well by simply changing the names around (replacing beginner cloth armor with the leather bits I'm working on).

I'll get started this week / weekend.

[Knossos]

I will be pleased to assist further in the testing process if/as needed

Knossos

[Raeshlavik]

Regarding the Satyr mods: I'm holding off on posting the texture collection until Blight comes back up and I can make sure what I did works with any changes Vi did for the model LOD.

From the patch notes:

Fixed Satyr model so that it will load properly at a distance.

I also found a slight issue where what appears to be a bit of boot decoration (one of the separate detail pieces most likely) overlaps the toes of the satyr model... Now that they have color and texture, you end up with a white line across the hooves. I'm researching this as I find various satyr in the game wearing different armors, just to make sure the textures work with every in game possibility.

[Raeshlavik]

I will be pleased to assist further in the testing process if/as needed

Knossos

Hehe. You volunteered.

There's another test texture available on my test server - leather sleeves test

Things to look for: The tint should now work (I hope - the texture is now 8-bit greyscale (versus grey RGB)) and the texture should be even on both arms. If you get a chance to look at it, just post me another screenshot here so I can see how it fits.

If this works, the next step is to make this into a template and get it put into the other leather textures, then make it look nice with a seam and some lacing or straps so that it looks like real armor.

[Knossos]

Sleeves look terrific but the Tunic turned plain white. In fact the "white tunic" is part of the sleeves and the white portion simply covers the regular Tunic. Picture is same with tunic unequipped. If Tunic equipped and Sleeves unequipped, the Tunic appears as normal.

Knossos

[Raeshlavik]

Sleeves look terrific but the Tunic turned plain white. In fact the "white tunic" is part of the sleeves and the white portion simply covers the regular Tunic. Picture is same with tunic unequipped. If Tunic equipped and Sleeves unequipped, the Tunic appears as normal.

Knossos

Yeah. The tintable textures are a bit fiddly, but I'm pretty sure I have a working method to make them now.

What made your tunic white was the non-alpha portion of the sleeves texture overlaying everything else.

Anyways, there is a new version of the sleeves up on the server that (hopefully) will work.

Thanks for all the help Knossos!

[Knossos]

Tunic now visible, sleeves fit properly into wristbands. Now one problem remains to be solved - fit of sleeves to Tunic (fit to tunic was ok with first modified file).

As a note in passing, there is a different file for hide sleeves and hide has same fit problem as originally stated for leather.

Knossos