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Feedback requested: texture generation

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Feedback requested: texture generation

Postby Aaron » Sat May 12, 2007 7:39 am

Hi Everyone,

I've been trying to work out the 'right' way to do anti-aliasing in the texture, to remove those sharp transitions that occur with the 'per pixel land types' option. I have come up with a solution, but to make it work I have to do something fairly radical:

Abolish the high-res texture option.

Let me explain. You will still be able to make high-resolution textures, but they will always be the same resolution as the attributes map. So, if you want a high-res texture, then make a high-res attributes map. The attributes map is, after all, the mask used to generate the texture, so it kind of makes sense to have them the same size.

The up-sides are:
  • You'll get controllable texture anti-aliasing (read: prettier textures).
  • The attributes map brush will work really well, and allow you to paint textures without artefacts (currently there are some).
  • My life will be easier, having a much simpler (but better!) algorithm to work with.
The down sides are:
  • The user-interface may be more confusing for new users, as there won't be any obvious 'high res textures' option on the texture wizard.
Before I go ahead and implement this, I wanted to check with the userbase to make sure such a change would be acceptable, and if so, to provide suitable warning for the change.

So, are there any objections?

Cheers,
Aaron.
Last edited by Aaron on Tue Sep 04, 2007 12:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby metalliandy » Sat May 12, 2007 10:49 am

Hey Aaron,
If it makes nicer textures then im cool with it. :)
Though it might be prudent to still have the high res check box though as it wont confuse new users.
Could you implement the feature in such a way that when the user checks the high res box and picks a size, it would automatically change the attribute map to the same size?
Maybe this would would make it easier on the users?

This would stop confusion in the wizard, as it flows quite well at the moment.

Or at lest have a pop up that tells the user that the attribute map needs to be the same size as the high res. texture.
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Postby Forboding Angel » Wed May 16, 2007 8:40 pm

/ME groans loudly

Yes go ahead and do it. I know what the end result will be, it just sucks cause my rendering time on a 16x16 just rose by 20 minutes :/

THe end result will be worth it though.
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Postby Rummy » Thu May 17, 2007 3:28 pm

In my mind this makes more sense as the attribute to texture should equal 1 and if the transitions are better managed I see no issue on the lower res attribute maps.
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Postby dennis » Thu May 17, 2007 8:06 pm

This will not be an issue for me. I almost always keep resolutions the on all of the maps. As long as you can control the size of the lightmap, texture and alpha maps relative to the heightmap it should be fine.
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Postby SeerBlue » Fri May 18, 2007 9:17 pm

A better texture is always worth the little time it takes to read the doc's to see how things are done, and as the documentation for L3DT is well written I don't think new users would have much trouble, probably it will be the older,, more habit driven users who will have trouble adapting, like me...."damn, where did that button go to now" :lol: SeerBlue
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Postby Aaron » Sun May 20, 2007 4:29 am

Hi Everyone,

The good news is that the 'High res texture' option can stay. I've made the new anti-aliasing texture algorithm work with interpolated attributes maps, so you can have different AM and TX resolutions. The 'per-pixel land types' option has gone, but you can achieve the exact same effect by generating a high-res attributes map.

I've uploaded a few preliminary screenshots of the new texture blender to my dev gallery. Things to note are that the grass-rock interface is still sharp, whilst the grass-sand transition is smooth. This was achieved by giving each land type its own blending radius, which is small for rock and large for grass & sand.

Anyhoo, I'll have a dev build ready in the next few days for testing. Stay tuned.

Cheers,
Aaron.

PS: The new texture blender also runs in parallel threads for multi-cored systems. Yay!
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Postby Madcowthomas » Sun May 20, 2007 5:15 am

Very smooth transition there , awesome work: Cheers! :)
From the mad cows desk to yours,
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Postby Aaron » Sun May 20, 2007 9:57 am

Hi All,

Okay, I've uploaded dev build 37, which includes the new texture algorithm. As I mentioned above, each land type has it's own blending radius, which you can set in the 'texture settings' tab in the land type editor (below 'bump map total'). Typically, grass/sand/snow have a blend radii of 4, and rocks/pebbles have a blend radii of 2.

The texture wizard also has a 'max anti-aliasing' slider, which sets the maximum blending radius that will be used in the calculation. You can use this slider to limit the blending radius of the land types. This can speeding up the calculation if you have many land types with large blending radii...but obviously at the cost of quality.

Cheers,
Aaron.
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Postby dennis » Sun May 20, 2007 3:13 pm

Great! I'll download it and check it out later today.
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Postby Aaron » Sun May 20, 2007 11:39 pm

By the way, if you've ever wondered what the differences between 4x and 8x textures are:

4x res:

Image

8x res:

Image
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Postby Madcowthomas » Sun May 20, 2007 11:40 pm

Wow , that is a big difference!
From the mad cows desk to yours,
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Postby DeathTwister » Tue May 22, 2007 11:00 pm

Haha Hay Aaron,

Well I gues my vote for you to go at it is mute now ROTFL lolol hahaha, Great my new build is almost downloaded so looks like a long night tonight on the new L3DT build WTG brother, I love your ideas and how fast you can make them happen, WOW are you good or what? /winks....

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