These textures, something tells me they havent' been made with lightmap baking. Am I correct in my assumption?
You can open the models easy enough in a modelling package and bake a new set you know. Assuming the models save their UVs anyway which I assume they do otherwise they wouldn't be useable.
Yes of course they save their UVs. And most smd importers support texture coords as well. Baking a lightmap into existing textures isn't hard, it just takes time.
"the models" "save their UVs". Lets ignore how little knowledge you have and repeat my post again. Nobody has the "high res" versions of the models, the old diffuse textures have baked occlusion from the "high res", if you don't have them, you can't bake new ones. durr duurrrr.
They're talking about ambient occlusion maps, it's a very cheap way to do final gather, by baking it onto the diffuse texture.
I probably should have phrased that 'assuming the models will still have their UVs when you import them from the SMD' as yes they obviously save them in the SMD otherwise the textures wouldn't work. Considering how hacky the SMD importer is though I wouldn't be surprised if it couldn't read them. You don't need the high res versions to bake AO maps, you can get them from any model, you won't get all the AO detail but you'll get quite a lot of it. I've done it often enough, I should know. To be honest I don't really know why you need to considering the default textures are mostly just the basic texture of the tank, just use it as an overlay and put the camo map underneath it.
I understood it the first time you said it, the only way you would understand how dumb that single statement is, is by understanding what a "SMD" file, or better yet, a "model" is. Apparantly you lack the fundemental knowledge to be able to come up with such a redundant and idiotic remark. Saying it won't load the UV coords is like saying "durr de durr durr, I'm trying real hard to sound interesting by not having any clue what I'm talking about" or something more sensible like "if the importer actually works". Aah right I see, one person notices the camo textures don't have AO, I then reply by saying the original ones were baked into the original texture. You then decide to give free lessons on how to use computar to absolutely fucking nobody. You should try Notepad, it ain't multiplayer, but you've got better chances to express yourself in an environment where people give a crap. The original textures have occlusion baked in from the high res version, apart from bump maps, thats the second most important and applicable reason for games to have a high res version of the model. problem is, there is no seperate AO of it to overlay, the AO renders on the low poly model simply won't ever look as good because they lack complexity, most of the low poly tanks will even look like total donkeyrear without the texture as they're simply just cubes with turrets on them. The camo's salvaged some of the original texture to use on the new camo's, fyi, the detail that is salvaged came from a 3d baking workflow, involving AO as well as rendering and baking diffuse etc etc. This is quite noticable if you look at the original texture. Not having access to the high poly model and creating new textures is basically downgrading. While I would agree that it would've been the least you could've done, I still wonder why anyone would bother doing it because they look like those amateur models people make, a primitive polygon with one grungy texture slapped all over the model, complete rubbish. Sure the camo's look cool, but the original texture will always look better.
Urgh I know what models are, I've made several, and I know what UVs are, I've had to set up more than I would like to. The UVs tell the game how to translate the 2d texture onto the 3d model, however you can have a model without any (useful) UV data, you just won't be able to texture it. As I've managed to break the UVs by importing from other formats a few times, it would not surprise me in the slightest if it did that when you imported a compiled source model back into a modelling package to bake an AO map. I assume you would have to do this as I highly doubt the devs have kept the original source files because that would be too convenient. AO maps are hardly neccesary anyway, you can get the same effect in photoshop, it would be quite easy to salvage almost all the AO data from the original map with some basic photoshop skills, it's only 'downgrading' if the texture artist sucks. That's it, I don't really get what you've got a stick up your ass about.
I always have a stick up my ass, its what motivates me to get off my ass. But no, some programs might not generate UV's, but they are required for mdl models. An SMD breaking the UV's is as likely as the SMD breaking the tris coords. It doesn't consist of much else. It's debatable whether a good rendering workflow can yield better results than a good artist, I don't think anyone would want to spend that amount of time handpainting their models, unless they're making art, or are obsessive perfectionists. You could do anything, I'm sure. I never questioned that. But the theory isn't important, if you looked at the for instance the high poly version of the med tank and the low poly, you could atleast agree that its a lot of complexity you wouldn't want to lose when making a new texture.
As the original textures are mostly just the dirt and the AO though, you should be able to desaturate it, play with the levels a bit in photoshop, and get what amounts to a dirt/ao map from the original texture, which you can just overlay on top of the camo texture.
and i always thought UV would just refer to the textures translated coordinate space independend what kind of texture it is ... :p
About five minutes in photoshop, personally I like the clean look of the camo texture but if you want more of the original texture it's easy to do.
I have no clue how to texture or model, bu is there a possiblity we could make higher resolution textures for vehicles? They look terrible at the moment.
Yeah probably, restoring resolution isn't impossible, but it is very boring. The UVs are quite well distributed so it should just be a matter of scaling it up twice and then going over all the edges with a brush to remove the pixellation. The current textures aren't even 1024x1024, they're 512x1024, which is like half the size of most of the world textures, really small for something like a heavy tank. A single building tile is 512x512. Might have a go at some point, but really the vehicle textures need redoing, the originals look like ass, the tanks look like piles of rust.
I'd be very happy if I could get even a minor improvement on the texture resolutions. We ain't playin quake any more kiddies, it's about time we stepped the graphics up.
