mechaerik
Tuturuu!
In terms of Blender tutorials, I highly suggest you read Blender: Noob to Pro, and maybe Ekmek's Leaderhead guide. Both are great tuts.
Some Turkish units and some other things,
- Thread starter Bakuel
- Start date
Acronym2
'Cedo Alteram'
This is primarily directed at Bakuel and WalterHawkwood, but if you know something more than please share. (I might have as well posted this in the main creation thread, but we kind of got started on it over here.)
I was thinking about what you guys posted earlier about skin size and alpha channel. Is it safe to say that one can use the processing saved by removing an unused alpha to increase the texture size? Could it be as simple as saying that my DX1 texture is half the size it was before, so now I can use two without any appreciable change in processing usage? (Perhaps, even some combination like one 128x128 dds with an alpha and another without. One could theoretically use three or four 128's to replace a 256 or even try two DX1 256x256 dds.)
Another thought is to do away with damage states and damage textures. I used to enjoy having them, but my atitude has since changed. (People may disagree, but do they add that much to the game?)
Basically, I want to add more detail to the skin but keep resource usage close to the original or even below. (Perhaps just wishful thinking?)
I was thinking about what you guys posted earlier about skin size and alpha channel. Is it safe to say that one can use the processing saved by removing an unused alpha to increase the texture size? Could it be as simple as saying that my DX1 texture is half the size it was before, so now I can use two without any appreciable change in processing usage? (Perhaps, even some combination like one 128x128 dds with an alpha and another without. One could theoretically use three or four 128's to replace a 256 or even try two DX1 256x256 dds.)
Another thought is to do away with damage states and damage textures. I used to enjoy having them, but my atitude has since changed. (People may disagree, but do they add that much to the game?)
Basically, I want to add more detail to the skin but keep resource usage close to the original or even below. (Perhaps just wishful thinking?)
Walter Hawkwood
RI Curator
Two DX1 256x256 dds is in most cases a bit too much from purely practical point of view - almost no Civ4 unit requires this amount of texture detail. But yeah, you have the concept right. Some practical thoughts:
- Damage state texture and gloss map for a 256x256 skinned unit can be 128x128. They usually don't need to be as sharp as the main texture. Don't do away with damage states; they look quite nice and professional when they are used.
- If using a common practice of head swaps, consider editing the head's UV map so that it only uses the needed part of texture - usually it allows to cut its texture size down from 128x128 to 64x64 without noticeable quality loss. Same goes for equipment.
- If modelling a mechanical unit from scratch, and it is supposed to have alpha somewhere (railings, ropes and stuff), consider texturing them with a separate small alpha-enabled file, especially if main texture is 256x256.
- Make sure to always destroy alpha channels in textures that don't use it by definition, like gloss maps.
- Stripping off mipmaps can also save some texture space and cut its size, but I am not sure if this practice is actually benefical, because then the engine just creates mipmaps on the fly. BTW, in NVidia dds converter plugin at least, you can fiddle with mipmaps, for example, giving them an additional sharpening treatment. Try it!
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