Unit Textures

Discussion in 'Mod Discussions' started by emarkus, December 9, 2016.

  1. emarkus

    emarkus Active Member

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    Hi

    I absolutely don't like the standard textures of the units, because they only look a bit two-colored. I even think about creating own textures...

    In past, I enjoyed the textures of Total Annihilation. But i dislike the textures of Supreme Commander...

    are there arternative texture packs available? Or is someone already working on alternative textures?
  2. cdrkf

    cdrkf Post Master General

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    I don't think anyone is working on a texture pack ATM... you could give it a go though! the textures are just image files.
  3. emarkus

    emarkus Active Member

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    I am trying again to get back to the texture thing. Last time, I tried to use the papa tool to export the textures in order to edit them. But it looks like this tool does not has this option.

    Then I tried to use blender + the papa addon to load the units. It worked, but I cant see any textures, nor can I export textures.

    Does anyone know exactly what to do to extract and edit the texture graphics?
  4. stuart98

    stuart98 Post Master General

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    Use PAPA texture editor to extract game textures. To repack them, you need to use the papatran utility in your game files.
    emarkus likes this.
  5. emarkus

    emarkus Active Member

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    I tried three variants of papatran call, but it didn't work.
    - What do I have to put as content root parameter?
    - What is a resource-root setting and how to "fix this"?

    What I tried:

    ./papatran -o /home/surf/Desktop/texturing/tank_aeson/tank_aeson_diffuse.papa /home/surf/Desktop/texturing/tank_aeson/tank_aeson_diffuse.png /home/surf/Desktop/texturing/tank_aeson/tank_aeson_diffuse.png: could not find resource-root setting
    1 error

    ./papatran -o /home/surf/Desktop/texturing/tank_aeson/tank_aeson_diffuse.papa --content-root /pa/units/commanders/tank_aeson/ /home/surf/Desktop/texturing/tank_aeson/tank_aeson_diffuse.png
    /home/surf/Desktop/texturing/tank_aeson/tank_aeson_diffuse.png: could not find resource-root setting
    1 error

    ./papatran --content-root /home/surf/Desktop/texturing/tank_aeson -o /home/surf/Desktop/texturing/tank_aeson/tank_aeson_diffuse.papa /home/surf/Desktop/texturing/tank_aeson/tank_aeson_diffuse.png
    /home/surf/Desktop/texturing/tank_aeson/tank_aeson_diffuse.png: could not find resource-root setting
  6. stuart98

    stuart98 Post Master General

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    Put a default.settings file in the same directory as the output papa's location. You can find an example in the game's /media/pa/ folder.
    emarkus likes this.
  7. emarkus

    emarkus Active Member

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    Thanks, it works. I can edit textures now! :) :)
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  8. emarkus

    emarkus Active Member

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    Some texture experiments...

    - Golden reflecting metal
    - blue noise as pseudo texture

    experiment.png

    Doing some further experiment to find a style...

    Thinking about colorizing the units by their techlevel.
    t1: bright brown
    t2: silver
    t3: gold or blue

    player primary and secondary color will be drastically reduced...
  9. emarkus

    emarkus Active Member

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    Some more noise test...

    noise1.png

    noise2.png


    a bit too noisy and noise on wrong surfaces, but right direction, imho.

    comments?
  10. stuart98

    stuart98 Post Master General

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    Bad.

    How about some sort of camo texture?
  11. emarkus

    emarkus Active Member

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    hm, yes, maybe some sort of... will experimenting a bit...
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  12. emarkus

    emarkus Active Member

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    okay, what about this?

    aeson-texture.png

    Some mistakes in texture, but first serious try. Some new texture area, but still not enough. I like the soft noise. But the noise at the triangle edges at commander head are way too noisy.

    I think I will give the unit these colors:

    rect4282.png

    Comments?
  13. emarkus

    emarkus Active Member

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    Some more experimenting.

    aeson-texture.png

    Comments?
  14. emarkus

    emarkus Active Member

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    I know, that I probably won't be able to create real good looking textures. Look the picture above. I tried. But the only thing that looks good, is the top side of the robots head. I mean the air openings at the head. All other is bad.

    Two reasons:
    - I edited the textures only with Gimp. I got one problem with mask which cannot be solved directly in gimp. Wont get into details here. Would have been way too much work to edit all this.
    - I am not very creative with textures. I only have rough ideas. My stuff looks too painted and 3d-ish enough. And so the textures wont become better. The standard textures are better then.

    Now I found this software: http://neotextureedit.sourceforge.net/usage.html

    Downloaded it now. Now I need to motivate myself to use it. Its procedual texture generation. Maybe I could write some conditions. So the texture modifies the standard textures by some rules. For example, plain big areas of Primary-Player-Color is converted to large Metal-Texture.
  15. DeathByDenim

    DeathByDenim Post Master General

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    Motivation, eh? I can come back here in a month and personally mock you if you haven't updated the thread with new textures if you want? ;)
    nimzodragonlord and lulamae like this.
  16. emarkus

    emarkus Active Member

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  17. DeathByDenim

    DeathByDenim Post Master General

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    You're on!
  18. killerkiwijuice

    killerkiwijuice Post Master General

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    I never really found a more artistic way to do textures with legion. I tried the metal texture which was later removed (not by me). Example of the old, much better legion t2 bot factory:
    [​IMG]
    The nature of the models requires very few textures. You can't really color one face a different color without using more storage space, and using more art time.
  19. DeathByDenim

    DeathByDenim Post Master General

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    Soooo.... you have failed us...! Even with the impending mocking that you knew was coming. So now I have to mock you somehow. Here goes: Uhm.. you have funny hair! Well, I assume, I don't actually know what you look like, but I'm sure it's funny-looking! Anyway, get to work, you lazy bum!

    upload_2018-7-31_18-42-36.png
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  20. emarkus

    emarkus Active Member

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    Oh yes, i were in holidays. now... first a bit PA gaming....
    anyway, at least in meanwhile I created the promised biome mod and i coded a new computer game.

    Next is to fix the biom mod and to publish it...

    yeah and i did some texture generation in holidays, but that was a extreme fail...

    only problems with floating points, radius, distance calculating stuff. at the end the picture greys out... experts said the only way to fix this is to use a integral stuff. dont know. its mathematicall stuff... more experiments required...

    btw the existing texture software is bugged. need to fix it. also for a friend's need.

    Edit: Indeed i have funny hair and your picture is quite accurate! :)

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