Merricksdad's Black Hills Tileset (First Look)

[Legacy_Jedijax]

               

I'm sort of torn here. Both approaches are very interesting visual-wise. But if I had to choose, I think the second looks best. The first one looks way squared, not so much because of the actual models, but how lighting works on them. The second one looks great in terms of polys, and it flows marvelously; the texture work really shines. It's a matter of performance VS what you were going for, though, so it may make sense to go for the middle ground.

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[Legacy_YeoldeFog]

               

Really nice, all of them. I think I like the bottom image most. Mostly because of the sharper edges. I don't know how much work it would take, but I'd like to see the first picture with more detailed rocks. Basically, the same form, but more irregularity in the irregularity! '>

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Draygoth28]

               The middle smooth rock looks amazing. But the rough cut and weathered look is good too.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

The consensus seems to be that variety is good '>

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_rjshae]

               

The combination of wear and fracturing looks the most natural, I think. I see that type of terrain quite a bit around these parts, although it's mostly a lighter granite.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

The combination of wear and fracturing looks the most natural, I think. I see that type of terrain quite a bit around these parts, although it's mostly a lighter granite.

I totally agree. The rock I used was from my upcoming rock textures package, number 38 or 35. Not sure. But I used it because it was a larger texture and had the most grain to show close up. I don't want to skimp. The darker textures I've tried looked too red.

 

I'm not sure If I want to keep that texture and lighten with the ambient/diffuse settings, or if I want to lighten the texture instead, but I like the texture. You are right though, it does not properly show the correct color of a quartz/feldspar pegmatite granite. And I think it might need some decals to create more variation here and there. Something for the future.


I think tonight, after I make potato leak soup (priorities), I'll go ahead and try that specific mod list on the crossers, see what I get. The variety shown above has the ledges at each increment of base height, and I think that looks good, if not just slightly too angular at the base height. Rubble and other detail can fill it in I suppose.

 

If anybody wants to play with the tiles in the last pack release, here is the mod list I am using:

 

• Edit Mesh: select all faces on the mesh which touch adjacent tiles, except faces which are at an increment of base level


• Face Extrude 0cm at scale 100 to clone out those faces for pulling pushing, yet leaving the edge seam underneath to fill any light holes later


• Tesselate faces via edge 1x at 25.0 tension


• Noise x/y at 400cm with a scale of 50 non-fractal seed 1


• Push 150


• Tesselate faces via edge 1x at 25.0 tension again


• Relax 0.5 x4 with no points retained


• Optimize with face thresh 8 edge 1 no retained boundaries


• Edit mesh to deselect faces


• UVWmap box of 1001 cubed with u/v tile 1: be sure to adjust the location to fit the bottom center of the tile affected (or at least one tile affected in a selected group) because the push modifier will make the tile taller than the box, making lining up textures tile-to-tile incorrect


• Smooth auto thresh 15 prevent indirect smoothing


• Trimesh render with no shadow and no texture rotation ( you really don't want that with the texture applied)

I have temporarily retained the original tile walkmesh, and will update when these are set in stone, pun intended.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

Same shape tiles as the third, with smoothing pulled in a bit, so less angular. Changed the texture, and added a little bit of yellow glossy for the light sources to pick up via the trimesh modifier.

 

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_rjshae]

               

To me the dark texture looks more basaltic. Which is totally fine, and gives it a certain uniqueness as if you're heading into lava-blasted terrain.

 

The extra moss, mold and fungus on the new texture is a nice addition.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

Somebody had requested that I do a lava/volcano variety. I've got some definite basalt images, as well as some pinkish brown ryolite. Almost looks like a big chunk of chocolate. Found this cool rock in Wyoming at the border of the black hills. It seemed very misplaced, but my teacher told me it was from way way back, and the rest of the mass had degraded away already. South Dakota had very few volcanoes, but they were of interesting composition.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

Trying to go for this, but I think the area lighting is doing a good portion of the darkening.

 

 

But I would accept this:

 

They're only like 2 miles away from each other anyway. Just depends on the lighting how things get viewed.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Draygoth28]

               This is looking better and better each time I come here. Amazing work so far.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

I took the area luminance in the sun color from 70 to 140, and I find that it was most certainly the sun color messing with the texture. Cranking it up, in addition to cranking up the texture luminance, makes a mess. It still looks ok, but now you can see the mess in the texture more. Also, at 140 luminance, the mountain does not light as well, becoming too bright to look as though it is casting a shadow without actually having any shadow casting elements.

 

Not sure if I should just revert the luminance on the texture, or revert the luminance on the area lighting...or both. What have you guys done before? I know most module makers, especially newer folks, are probably just going to take the base appearances and apply them without changing much than skybox and weather. But other folks, like myself, have completely redone the selection list in the environments panels. I personally took every single environment I could find in Dungeon Siege, weathered it down to about 16 distinct varieties, and added them all to the base NWN environment selections.

 

Not sure which is best.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

Well, I took a few hours and ran all the modifiers on the fluff and dilate crossers, and am definitely not happy with the results. I think I have two options at this point, the first being to automate applying the modifiers, and make the seed for the noise randomized. The second being that I create 1001 rocks about the size I am expecting for the wall faces, and then chop, crop and paste them onto the wall, much like people do with those fake stone walls they put up in their homes, made of that colored cement.

 

The main issue I am having with the group-selected noise is that the edges of the tiles make a visible crack every single time. The group-selected noise modifier is the culprit. No matter what seed I use, the edge of each tile will line up with the previous, just because of how the noise modifier works. Randomizing the seed will fix that somewhat.

 

Perhaps tomorrow I can make an effort to try the automation and randomizing. If that fails, I'll go back to how I had planned to do this originally, and that is the second option above.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

Major success so far with automating all the modifiers. All I have to do is make sure the correct faces are selected on the mesh level 4 before I apply the script. Bam, instant black hills granite from prototype shape.

 

Pictures in the late morning tomorrow.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_henesua]

               for what it is worth, MD, i actually liked the most angular, low poly rock the best. While people seem to want to push NWN to be more and more naturalistic and realistic, I find that the less realistic stuff is the more charming it is (to use a six-ism).

Don't get me wrong. The stuff you are producing is very nice. And I'm not asking you to derail your process. But something to keep in mind with NWN art is that more polies, more natural is not necessarily better.

I'm finding that my preference with NWN is growing towards a desire for simpler, more angular looking stuff because it feels more fun and less overworked and serious.