The skybox is AWESOME ... but!! With the new resolution change feature, if you use the -1 or -2 setting the skybox looks a little ugly I don't like saying that because its a beautiful skybox!!!! All it needs is some dithering to the texture so when you use lower res you cant see the color changes as much i will post a pic.
Here's how the skybox looks now at -2 resolution It could look like this if the skybox texture was dithered. Dithering textures makes gradients from color change to color change less visible. Dithering is great for great for crap resolutions and great for video cards and monitors that can't output the same large array of color as other video cards
Damn i only just noticed it looks the same regardless of the in game res. Does your look like this too?? If yes then uber defiantly needs to dither this texture!!!!
The skybox currently looks like someone got a 32bit texture and converted it to 16bit without dithering the color gradients.
Dithering the texture itself isn't actually a good solution, but perhaps adding a film grain filter would help (as a byproduct a film grain effect will dither the gradients).
I can see the banding in your second example still and the colours are desaturated and look like they went through an NTSC filter. (The tv regulation filter that takes the fun out of colours before we get to watch the show) Really all that I am seeing happen here is the contrast ratio has changed to push the banding closer together. Dithering is not really going to be the best idea for solving banding issues. Dithering is a problem solver but is essentially polishing a turd. I bet the original PSD of that skybox looks flawless and its just what we have in the current build, the bit depth is probably pretty low. This is sort of the issue we get from night/space skies, because its all generally not much contrast, and is trying to appear black without being at technical 0.0.0 black. Throwing in some blue, purple, or in this case a fantastic green (which I love as a style choice). Also, no matter what res you render the image at, its going to be the same cuz its the same texture and the higher res you interpret that same texture at, the more true to its original state you will get (back to polishing a turd). But this sky box is not a turd. And I had not noticed till you pointed it out, and still dont until i stop to look at it. Try adjusting your screen contrast to reduce banding.
Film grain is the 3rd last node on all our comp trees here at work to eliminate banding in the black spaces.
I didn't attemp to fix the texture myself, i just photoshopped the screenshot with a basic dithering gradient. it was only an example.
also im using an acer iconia tablet, i dont have contrast control. not unless i change it in my intel graphics setting and then its applied all across windows, so i would need a contrast for setting for just PA, then also it would change the contrast of the rest of the game , wich is fine at the moment. The skybox is beautiful, i wouldn't want it changed but the posturized look to the color gradient can be eliminated an im sure now that uber knows its like this it will be fixed
Totally, and I find those tablets are a touch bright. I agree messing with the nvidia settings are effective but also sort of ruinous. Pretty sure the textures will get put in at a better bit depth, or the banding will be solved otherwise. My screens are usually dark because later on I have to get stuff approved on an OLED which can provide "true black" with no LCD backlighting. Generally everything comes out darker than expected but the contrast is mind blowing (the OLED monitor is $16000...*barf) But ya, you can see how the photoshop filter pushed the colours closer to eachother to kill less banding than it did absolutely mercilessly slaughter the colours. ...just like that monster known as "NTSC FILTER"
i converted it to greyscale, thats why it slaughtered the colors. i did a BAD photoshop effort there. i could have kept the original colors but it was a very lazy effort to show my idea
OMG ben your a genuis, Film grain noise is the best solution to my dithering issues in photoshop i have been looking for the perfect filter to get rid of posturized color gradients in pictures and you just told me the perfect answer. I could slap myself for not thinking of that earlier and sending much plutonic love your way.
blurring noise is a nice way to dirty up spec maps and such. Or get a bit of hammered metal look in normal maps!
do you mean use a film grain filter then a gaussian blur at say .5 pixel depth after to make it look smoother??
Yup, and your blur distance will pick the how dense it is after. Oh, and sometimes I throw a high pass on the noise first. I use it all very sublty though. Just enough that nothing is perfectly flat.
Thank-you heaps, both you and ben have given me tons of good info for making art/textures cleaner and better looking. Im only new to animating and photoshopping, i have been learning over the last few weeks. the more i learn though the more i can offer help. I don't like to critisize, i prefer to offer my opinion and help or ideas to help. i think it helps people get an idea of what you are trying to point out, and its easier to do if you use visuals like pictures, so im learning 3d animation and good photoshop skills so if i do want to offer help i at least have the skills or enough skill to make a visual representation of what im trying to explain
Apparently with the limited color range of the background, 32-bit color just isn't enough. (I must be a greedy videophile if I can't wait for 48-bit color.) Personally I'm not a fan of film grain filters either, because they subtly animate the screen and pollute screen detail. However, subtly noising the texture itself may actually help, because you can noise the background landscape to distribute color gradations, slightly blur or despeckle the noise, then add finer details like stars afterwards. That would solve the issue.
