Remake HL textures

[zaphod]

hl2 goes for texture resolution, where doom 3 goes for having every texture bump mapped.

[Izuno]

hl2 goes for texture resolution, where doom 3 goes for having every texture bump mapped.

yes that was one of the first things i noticed about D3 textures...the bump mapping. The looked cool, but i started to realize the resulution was less than HL2 (from what i've seen) or Stalker.

Um...so what about high res textures with bump mapping or normal mapping or whatever? (reminder...i consider myself a "texture engineer" rather than "texture artist"...ahem)

[mikezilla]

hl2 has textures with normal maps as well on most surfaces, and spec maps.

[Tisky]

Where are all the textures guys, work work work work.. im gonna make one now.

[kleinluka]

doom 3 also uses like 3 original textures in the whole game.

floor, wall, ceiling.

[Izuno]

doom 3 also uses like 3 original textures in the whole game.

floor, wall, ceiling.

Doom 3 seemed more about the lighting and animation. i liked the skinning on some of the monsters, but mostly cause of the bumpage/normalage...didn't really notice the highressnessage.

[Term]

Personally I don't see normal maps as such a "next big thing" like everyone usually does after playing D3. Sure, the amount of normal textured planes and the resulting display quality is stunning... but when you consider that 99% of D3's surfaces are metal or polished plastic, one starts to wonder what other games should actually do with all that glossyness (is that a word?). For HL2, take a plain sandy desert surface or a dirty asphalt road - these surfaces wouldn't reflect any light in the way normal maps work.

What I want to say is: for corridor crawlers like D3, set in some futuristic tech environment, normal maps come in very handy... but a game with open organic environments like HL2 could as well do with only a couple of those on the more reflective materials (even if Mikey's right and they have normal maps for most surfaces).

[mikezilla]

i'm right.

they actually use them very much to their advantage.. dimly lit corrider with shimmering tiles, wet looking cobble stones... free ledge information on a flat building...

what they dont use them on is surfaces like brick and things that are dry. That would appear plasticy. But there are probably more normal mapped surfaces than you think.

[The Postman]

doom 3 also uses like 3 original textures in the whole game.

floor, wall, ceiling.

:roll: x 1,000

[Taylor]

Doom 3 doesn't have any advantages over HL2 texture-wise. They both have normal maps and spec maps as far as I know. Dooms per-pixel lighting allows the normal maps to look sexier as light passes over them, which is not directly related to the textures themselves. It doesn't have bump-mapping, which creates real bumps on a surface opposed to the illusion of bumps IIRC.

I see the point of scaling up a wall texture 2x to get nice detail, a 256x256 texture over a 128x128 brush seems fine. However, you're being silly when 128x128 walls and 64x64 crates end up at four or eight times their previous size. If someone sits by your wall and activates a sniper scope they probably deserve a few blurred pixels.

Edit: I realise I'm digging myself a hole here, first and foremost: I'm not trying to put down the very talented work within this thread or saying it's wasteful. I'm merely posting my opinion that making everything giant is not going to fair too well. Zaphod obviously knows more about the engine than me and if HL2 IS jam-packed full of 256x256 and 512x512 textures scaled down to 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, etc. of their original size then disregard my ramblings altogether.

[Tisky]

Last one for tonight:

[Skjalg]

nice... but in my rarely serious oppinion that text font/color looks abit.. ugly

[Splitta]

this one roxx0rs Tisky!

[OL]

font looks the same to me, its kerning is a little different i guess

[zaphod]

The reason the hl2 screenshots look better than the hl1 screenshots is becuase there is 4x the texture resolution. This is the biggest graphical improvement over hl1. The defualt texture resolution in hammer for source is .25. There are not bump-maps on most textures in the game, I would guess only on around 25-30% of them, where it would be very noticeable.

But what do I know, I have only been working with the engine for two and a half years.