Stuff to make a HD tremulous

[jm82792]

Specular?
Trem has no specular shading capacity right?
If so that's great.

But....
WE NEED SMOOTH SHADING!
Really everything right now renders solid

[Nux]

Yes the ZIP compression for the PK3s basically does nothing to an already compressed file format like JPEG or PNG.

This really depends on how well the file was compressed originally which in turn depends on the compression method and the target file. In the case of ZIP we don't have to worry about losing information- if you compress lossily over and over you will eventually end up with nothing -but generally once something has been compressed to something without any pattern left you will most likely increase the size of the file when you try to compress it again.

Also note that as ever, a trade-off is happening when you compress. You don't get something for nothing. If you encode something a lot, it'll take longer to read and if you don't it'll take up more space in memory. This is where you decide which thing is more of a problem for you.

[cron]

TGA supports RLE compression, but is not truly lossless

Oh, how so?

And what does an 8bit pcx achieve that an 8bit png wouldn't? i'm a little surprised to see pcx mentioned at all thesedays.

Since you were too lazy to visit the OA forums, here's a post in it's entirety about this:

Shaders cannot do that.

I think I found something which _seems_ to accomplish what I was looking for, but I lack the knowledge how shaders really work, so please check if it's a viable solution. Basically what this method is about is that, after a blendFunc GL_DST_COLOR GL_SRC_ALPHA step another blendFunc filter will "mask" the second texture according to the first greyscale alpha texture. I've tried it with two transparent textures, and the results seem to be the same.

First example is the metafloor_wall_14_specular texture (OA doesn't use it yet, but you can find it in q3dm16).

The separated pcx solution is a little bit darker, according to the heppler reference, it's due to the additional blendFunc. The shader definitions used (left the transparent TGA, right the two PCX):

Code: [Select] textures/base_wall/metalfloor_wall_14_specular { qer_editorimage textures/base_wall/metalfloor_wall_14 { map $lightmap rgbgen identity } { map textures/base_wall/metalfloor_wall_14_specular rgbGen identity blendFunc GL_DST_COLOR GL_SRC_ALPHA } }

Code: [Select] textures/base_wall/metalfloor_wall_14_specular { qer_editorimage textures/base_wall/metalfloor_wall_14 { map $lightmap rgbgen identity } { map textures/base_wall/metalfloor_wall_14_specular-alpha.jpg rgbGen identity blendFunc GL_DST_COLOR GL_SRC_ALPHA } { map textures/base_wall/metalfloor_wall_14_specular-color.pcx rgbGen identity blendFunc filter } }

Filesizes (512x512px):
metalfloor_wall_14_specular.tga: 1.0 MB
metalfloor_wall_14_specular-alpha: 248.7 kB (8bit PCX) or 194.9 kB (grayscale JPG)
metalfloor_wall_14_specular-color: 259.5 kB (8bit PCX)
Sum: 1024 kB vs. 508.2 kB

The another example is the cybergrate2 shader, which you can find on the railgun platform of oa_ctf4ish. It's trickier than the previous, because only the metal grid was transparent, the electricity effect wasn't, but due to the method both had to be made transparent. The result:

The PCX solution is a bit ugly on the edges, but don't worry about that. Shaders used (left original, right new):

Code: [Select] textures/base_floor/cybergrate2 { surfaceparm metalsteps cull none { map textures/sfx/portal_sfx_ring_electric.tga tcmod scroll 1 -1 blendfunc add } { map textures/base_floor/cybergrate2.tga blendFunc blend rgbGen identity } { map $lightmap blendFunc filter rgbGen identity } }

Code: [Select] textures/base_floor/cybergrate2 { surfaceparm metalsteps cull none { map textures/sfx/portal_sfx_ring_electric-alpha.pcx tcmod scroll 1 -1 blendFunc GL_DST_ONE_MINUS_COLOR GL_SRC_ALPHA } { map textures/sfx/portal_sfx_ring_electric-color.pcx tcmod scroll 1 -1 blendFunc filter } { map textures/base_floor/cybergrate2-alpha-mono.pcx rgbGen identity blendFunc GL_DST_ONE_MINUS_COLOR GL_SRC_ALPHA } { map textures/base_floor/cybergrate2-color.pcx rgbGen identity blendFunc filter } { map $lightmap blendFunc filter rgbGen identity } }

Filesizes (256x256px):
cybergrate2.tga: 132 kB
cybergrate2-alpha: 5.1 kB (8bit PCX) or 3.6 kB (1bit PCX)
cybergrate2-color: 35.7 kB (8bit PCX)
Sum: 132 kB vs. 40.8 kB

Here's a test package so you can try this at home: http://udionline.hu/fajlok/z_pcx-experiment.pk3

The filesize compression is more than 50% in both cases, but of course the shader steps require more computing. Is it worth to deal with this method?

[Nux]

Seems like a nice attempt, though sadly- as you know -there are key differences between the textures (i.e. the darkening in the former comparison and the light edges in the latter).

But you say yourself about the processing time trade-off. Aren't I justified in saying that file size really isn't as much of an issue as processing time with todays computers?

EDIT:

WE NEED SMOOTH SHADING!
Really everything right now renders solid

Textures are UV mapped so inherently look solid. I think that's what you're seeing. What little shading effect there is seems to be smooth.

[Tremulant]

TGA supports RLE compression, but is not truly lossless

Oh, how so?

And what does an 8bit pcx achieve that an 8bit png wouldn't? i'm a little surprised to see pcx mentioned at all thesedays.

Since you were too lazy to visit the OA forums, here's a post in it's entirety about this:
*snip*

I visited the forums and saw just that post, at no point did it explain to me how TGAs are lossy or why you'd use PCX instead of PNG, maybe another poster explained that elsewhere but i assumed your copy-paste would have contained that salient piece of information had it been readily available.

I don't know the first thing about 3d texturing, well aside from what you told me in irc, apologies if i'm missing something obvious here.

[cron]

I was wrong, targas compressed with RLE compression claim to be loseless. However, I guess undesirable antialiasing can occur in TGAs with a lower color depths (lower than 24-bit?)

[Tremulant]

I was wrong, targas compressed with RLE compression claim to be loseless. However, I guess undesirable antialiasing can occur in TGAs with a lower color depths (lower than 24-bit?)

Undesirable anti-aliasing? do you have a fondness for jaggies? So, back to the question, what's this guy's love of PCX all about? Is PCX treated in some special way by ioq3? Is there a good reason that the guy's storing 151 shades of grey as an indexed PCX rather than a greyscale PNG(of course i'm just assuming ioq3 supports PNGs here, i don't know)?

At least hurry up and post the explanation that i was too lazy to read.

[Odin]

The separated PCX method results in additional shader stages which can cause lower performance. Normally it wouldn't be an issue but these are typical shaders that don't necessarily need to be complex.

Anything after two stages requires a second draw pass.

[gimhael]

Remember that ioquake3 decompresses all textures and either uploads them  to the GPU either in uncompressed RGBA8 form or it recompresses them in DXT1 format. So your graphics card memory limits the overall size of the textures, no matter how you compress them in the pk3.

@tremulant: I guess cron meant to say Colour banding.

[Tremulant]

@tremulant: I guess cron meant to say Colour banding.

Yes, i assumed that was probably what he was getting at.

There still seems to an awful lot of confused excitement around here, vs actual clue about what makes sense.

[Pazuzu]

http://tremhd.unvanquished.net/forum/index.php?topic=18.0
Got any suggestions for Friend Basi 2.0?
UPDATE: Working on model sheets for the Pazilisk, photos when I'm done.
Rough pencil sketch, uncolored:

[KillerWhale]

http://tremhd.unvanquished.net/forum/index.php?topic=18.0
Got any suggestions for Friend Basi 2.0?
UPDATE: Working on model sheets for the Pazilisk, photos when I'm done.
Rough pencil sketch, uncolored:

Use a better image host. imgur/photobucket/tinypic/anything besides the site you just used. Also, that's not how the img tag works.

[Pazuzu]

It's how thumbnails work, though. Should I just post the whole thing instead of thumbnailing it?

[KillerWhale]

Nevermind, I misread.

Regardless, thumbnail/full image isn't working for me.

[Pazuzu]

Thumbnail now links to the same image, rehosted on my Dropbox:

UPDATE: Here's a slightly more detailed version. This time it's thumbnailed with the img tag, and hosted completely on Dropbox:

So after this 3D view gets finalized, I'll do front, side (with and without legs), and maybe top sketches based on it, then import all that into Blender and start modeling.

[cron]

For everything else, the IMG tag can be used like:

Code: [Select]

[img width=640]http://some.png[/img]
For what it's worth, I think it should appear that the basi's legs/claws could stab through human legs and feet to grab them (in addition to grabbing them with their mouth?), ie, looking and acting like they are heavy and sharp.

[Pazuzu]

For everything else, the IMG tag can be used like:

Code: [Select]

[img width=640]http://some.png[/img]
For what it's worth, I think it should appear that the basi's legs/claws could stab through human legs and feet to grab them (in addition to grabbing them with their mouth?), ie, looking and acting like they are heavy and sharp.

Yeah, I figured that out while you were writing this. And thanks for that idea, I might animate the grab that way. Still, the basi is supposed to be a stealthy creature, with a small profile, and I think those spindly legs work well with that.

[jm82792]

I'm poor at modeling.....
But I can animate 

[ULTRA Random ViruS]

i know this is a very old topic, but i remembered, does anyone have the link to download the textures? I could use it if i were to make a trem promo to try to keep trem from dying. Since last year, tremulous has lost about 30 servers on the masterlist, and about 20 players at any time average. [these are my estimations btw]

[Tremulant]

i know this is a very old topic, but i remembered, does anyone have the link to download the textures? I could use it if i were to make a trem promo to try to keep trem from dying. Since last year, tremulous has lost about 30 servers on the masterlist, and about 20 players at any time average. [these are my estimations btw]

Which textures and how are textures going to stop trem dying?

[Qrntz]

[these are my estimations btw]

Cool, no reason to believe them whatsoever.

[ULTRA Random ViruS]

the posts from the beginning such as the goon texture, rifle texture etc... what do you think?