Hi-Rez Biped Textures (Request)

Is there anyone out there that is able to make the textures from Bipeds look more.. nice?

I mean, dragons are kinda HD in comparison of Bipeds.. I would like other humanoid looking like bipeds (like elf, human..) and such to have more nicer faces. Is that possible to do? I know theres nothing to be done about the hair since its a model, but I think the face could be made a little better. Like, most of the faces you can choose from are either like an old person, or has really low quality that it doesn't even look like a human anymore..

I would try to do something about it, but I just can't seem to convert the projects back into .agh so Im asking someone that maybe could so something about it.

I'm sure I'm not the only one complaining about lack of texture work on Bipeds..

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Originally Posted by Nazderan

Is there anyone out there that is able to make the textures from Bipeds look more.. nice?

I mean, dragons are kinda HD in comparison of Bipeds.. I would like other humanoid looking like bipeds (like elf, human..) and such to have more nicer faces. Is that possible to do? I know theres nothing to be done about the hair since its a model, but I think the face could be made a little better. Like, most of the faces you can choose from are either like an old person, or has really low quality that it doesn't even look like a human anymore..

I would try to do something about it, but I just can't seem to convert the projects back into .agh so Im asking someone that maybe could so something about it.

I'm sure I'm not the only one complaining about lack of texture work on Bipeds..

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well, there's two things kicking back when it comes to biped textures:
1. the low poly-count of the model, this isn't that big of an issue, but it does kinda limit how well the texture shapes out to be.
2. the low resolution for the textures. I wouldn't be mistaken if the biped facial texture is 512x512 (perhaps even smaller), just like the dragon wings and head, this is the nastiest bit, as sizing down does cause some loss of detail.

that being said, yes, you are not the only one who finds the textures...lacking, but it's not just the textures for me, it's the whole char creation, specificly the more humanoid races.
What you'll notice is that, compared to the beastraces, their facial texture is linked to body colour, which can be really....really annoying if you want your character to have a certain face, but not the body colour that that texture happens to be in.

*cough* I do have more biped texturing/re-texturing in mind for future projects though *cough*
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As for turning pictures back to .aghs:
1. place the .png in resources-override (preferable with the correct name.)
2. start up istaria.
3. use the command : "/aghConvert [Filename+extension (ie. Face_01.png)]" and it should be converted back properly.

You can use /purgetex to force every texture to reload, which makes sure that you don't have to relog every time.

(purgetex only works if you have a file with the exact name in resources-override that you want to edit before converting, so take a dummy file, give it the proper name, log-in, aghConvert, remove dummy file and rename proper file, purgetex to check without having to relog a single time)

Another neat trick is if you have to convert a large number of files (repeatedly) you can also just chain up a text command macro(/hotkey binding) with
"/aghConvert [file1]
/aghConvert [file2]
/aghConvert [file3]
etc."

and it'll save you a lot of typing/copy-pasting :)

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Originally Posted by meepsa

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As for turning pictures back to .aghs:
1. place the .png in resources-override (preferable with the correct name.)
2. start up istaria.
3. use the command : "/aghConvert [Filename+extension (ie. Face_01.png)]" and it should be converted back properly.

You can use /purgetex to force every texture to reload, which makes sure that you don't have to relog every time.

(purgetex only works if you have a file with the exact name in resources-override that you want to edit before converting, so take a dummy file, give it the proper name, log-in, aghConvert, remove dummy file and rename proper file, purgetex to check without having to relog a single time)

Another neat trick is if you have to convert a large number of files (repeatedly) you can also just chain up a text command macro(/hotkey binding) with
"/aghConvert [file1]
/aghConvert [file2]
/aghConvert [file3]
etc."

and it'll save you a lot of typing/copy-pasting :)

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I tried doing that, but for some reason it won't convert, either it says that "Unknown command" or "Sorry, the line you are converting is missing. Try again"

I tried renaming them various times, moving them into folders or leaving them alone, nothing worked. That's why I'm asking someone else to do it. And I know it worked before, but it's not working anymore because I did some modifications and such myself.

To what you first sayd, yeah. They definately should do a bit of a remake. I mean, I understand thay cannot or don't want to do a remake of the whole game because of the sizes and links, they would have to do part per part and it would take forever to change the landscape. But I don't understand why they don't edit a bit the shapes of the bipeds. It's like if the game was only meant to be played as a dragon because of the work they put on it. But that's kinda absurd considering the work they put into making the various armors, weapons, skills, spells, animations and everything for biped. Even the schools.

Istaria came to the point where you either bare with the uglyness of the polygon Bipeds (Excluding Saris, Sslik) but you get lots of schools, armor, weapons and spells, or you get the nice textured curstomizable Dragon, but you have to bare only with 1 Adventure school and some crafting only.

I'm not asking mutch from the devs, really. They don't get anything new for the past few years. They could add more stuff than just.. new Techs or spells, or scales/weapons. I mean, its nice and all but it's not gonna get the atention of new players.
I know it by a fact, that the new players that stay in Istaria for more than just a few days, it's because of the dragon or some other biped that's not human shaped (Kitty or Lizard). I got lots of friends I invited to play that saw the uglyness of the polygon characters and left. My bf for instance. He told me yesterday that he WOULD play, if the faces weren't that bad..

It's sad to see the game die slowly because of the Devs that don't want to stick their head to work for something new. I don't know, do something, get a new dragon head (I could happily suggest some, even try shape them myself if you give me the name of the program you use), get new decals and colors for them, make the darn scales you wear visibles, make the bipeds head LESS polygon if nothing, why wouldn't you make it a bit better? I'm sure it's not because you don't know how to do models, you clearly proved you CAN do smooth curves with other parts of the body and dragons too..

It's kinda funny to see even mobs being more detailed about it than the characters you're playing.

I think a bit of a remake in what characters comes would definately get the atention of players again. The custimization.. (sorry for the word) sucks... And I WANT to try a biped. The only reason I never did for over 4 years, it's because I just hate the way they look.

*Looks at the plain half cut ball what's supposed to be female hairstyle* What the heck is that? Seriously?...

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Originally Posted by Nazderan

It's sad to see the game die slowly because of the Devs that don't want to stick their head to work for something new. I don't know, do something, get a new dragon head (I could happily suggest some, even try shape them myself if you give me the name of the program you use), get new decals and colors for them, make the darn scales you wear visibles, make the bipeds head LESS polygon if nothing, why wouldn't you make it a bit better? I'm sure it's not because you don't know how to do models, you clearly proved you CAN do smooth curves with other parts of the body and dragons too..

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okay, I'm just going to cut you short here, as there's clearly some stuff you most likely haven't read.

1. the past half-year, the devs have focused on bug fixes, not content, however, before they started on that a large amount of the weapon and tool textures were redone (several demon weapons finally got an actual dedicated texture if I'm not mistaken), and it has been stated several times that work will focus on more of these "artwork revamps" at the start of the next year. Allong with continuation on the Tier revamps (content!)

2. we are in fact getting several new tints for dragons in an upcoming update, including new decal colours.

3. the current devs (or atleast a large part) were not part of the original team that did most of the assets, and a lot of the documentation on how things work engine-wise was either never made, or lost when istaria switched ownership. (which happened...3 times? if not 4)
I also think I remember from quite some time ago, that redoing the models as they are currently, simply isn't feasible with the current engine, I could be mistaken though and mixing up thing A with thing B. ^^;

4. Visible armour for dragons: no can do, the unwrap for it is just...it's a big no, I can attest to that, there's so many things that would be considered "wrong" by most current game artists, heck I've tried several texture mods, some more experimental than others, and I swear I would redo the unwrap if I could, but from what I heard, just as in point 3, it's something that can't be done.
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As for the game dying, to be honest the latest news that there's actually going to be some hardware upgrades are something more promising than any previous update on the game I've seen, and shows that yes, while the game is dying (every game is dying the moment it's concepted), it's not doing so at a faster rate than before.
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Oh and regarding 3D models, most of the work is done in an older version of Autodesk Maya if I'm not mistaken, however, to be able to export them as .gr2 files you'd need a pretty expensive plugin or something allong those lines.

I see, I'm sorry maybe I was a little out of the point since I've been gone for over a year or so. I did read the patch notes that were released since then, but I never actualy cared to read the updates they were planned to get out since when I still did play before I took a rest, nothing that was stated on the "promissed" upcomming contenct was actualy released so I stopped believing on their word. And from what I see, it's still happening.

I just hope they Do domething about it.

And I understand that the 3D moddelling isn't a cheap task. But they are running a game with people on it, they have to be prepared to put some money and effort into it. You can't make a succesful game without throwing a penny to it, if you know what I mean.

Nonetheless I will be trying to figure out how to convert those .agh files and see if I can find something to do.

Thank you for your replyies :)

To point 4. of meepsa's, why cant actual new models be made,instead of trying to put texture?

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Originally Posted by Salwirk

To point 4. of meepsa's, why cant actual new models be made,instead of trying to put texture?

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well it could be possible, as far as I know atleast, but there's a few drawbacks. And this is something I have no idea on how the engine would like it as we've never heard anything regarding replacing models with newer ones.

1. the community, how would it react? true you could make the model to look like the current one, but there's plenty of work in that alone. ofcourse a large portion wouldn't mind, but I also know for sure that a very vocal minority would speak up about "changing things that don't need changing" or "not focusing on the bigger picture" etc.

2. amount of work. the team is small...as in..REALLY small for an MMO, making a new model (for let's say the dragons) would require 3 models (though all of them are just small tweaks from eachother), if you're not carefull enough a whole new rig and skin, and I have no idea whether you could import the animations from other rigs/skins and put them on a newer one (I actually haven't expiremented all that much with animating.), if not then that would mean re-doing all of the animations too.

so in this case, it would mostly be two things holding it back, is the amount of work worth it, and can the engine even handle it.

I didn't mean remaking dragon model but placing armor models on top of dragon. sorry I should've explained better hehe

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Originally Posted by Salwirk

I didn't mean remaking dragon model but placing armor models on top of dragon. sorry I should've explained better hehe

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aaaaaaaah okay haha.
well...I honestly can't answer that, I know it's been answered before as to why that hasn't been done as of yet, but there's so many threads regarding it I could be searching for a whole year and still not have found the proper thread/answer. XD
I guess partially, it'd have to work with all current animations without clipping through other parts (body or armor) too badly, which could end up being nasty. but yeah, I'm not the best source on an answer in this case ^^

Quote:

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Originally Posted by meepsa

well...I honestly can't answer that, I know it's been answered before as to why that hasn't been done as of yet, but there's so many threads regarding it I could be searching for a whole year and still not have found the proper thread/answer. XD
I guess partially, it'd have to work with all current animations without clipping through other parts (body or armor) too badly, which could end up being nasty. but yeah, I'm not the best source on an answer in this case ^^

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There aren't any armor models for dragons because the dragons have no dedicated attachment points on their body for them. I can't really remember how it works, but Solitaire wrote in a thread how bipeds have places meant for attaching other models in the form of armor.. but dragons don't except for that spot on their shoulder with the shoulder pets.

At least that's what I remember anyway.

What Racktor said is pretty much correct. Take for instance, I wanted to make a spade/spike/blade/whatever model and attach it to the tails. There is nothing back there to attach it to though it might attach to a joint. I never went to the point where I would try. But, there is a problem with that. There are only 3 bones (4 joints) in the tail and the mesh does not quite move the same way that the bones do. If you see it in Maya, the bones actually slip outside of the mesh when the tail is bent. (see below) A spade, if attached, would slide around as the tail swings back and forth. It might be possible to retrofit a locator back in there but since all of the animations are made without having a locator in them, it probably won't move along with the existing animation.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-L...-Ic42/tail.jpg


The biped models on the other hand, have lots of locators in them (the asterisk like crosses) as you can see from the screenshot below. (which includes joint names).

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-h...2/skeleton.jpg

As for increasing the geometry in the models, that is very possible. Just need to make new models and bind them to the same skeletons that are in use now. It would work perfectly fine and keep all of the existing animations. However, bipeds use a lot of models and it would take a lot of work to remake all of them. But certain models could be identified as giving the biggest bang for the buck.

Quite honestly, though. With the amount of work that would be required to go through the raw assets, identify the models and textures then remake them, I think you would be further ahead to just go ahead and make "Istaria 2" using current technologies and techniques. I would love to see something like that.

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Originally Posted by Solitaire

go ahead and make "Istaria 2" using current technologies and techniques. I would love to see something like that.

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I love that idea, would be great if there would be one day.

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Originally Posted by Nazderan

I tried doing that, but for some reason it won't convert, either it says that "Unknown command" or "Sorry, the line you are converting is missing. Try again"

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These commands are in the the /resources/Commands_Player.def , if you view it in notepad, you should see it listed, near the bottom //aghConvert

it's /aghconvert filename.png (or whatever extension). If you get an unknown command error, that suggests you for some reason have an old copy of Commands_Player.def in your resources_override folder, if so delete it or move it.

Got it, and it's working. Thank you Cegaiel.