How to add vegetation to textures?

[Legacy_Tonden_Ockay]

               

Hi all

 

I was wondering if there was a way to add vegetation like ivy, moss, and so on to say a existing stone wall texture. I know that you can use programs to make stone look aged. So I wasn't sure if this could be done with vegetation as well or if I have to just find a texture that already has the vegetation on it?

 

Here is a pic of what I'm looking for.

 

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tchos]

               

You can just paint it on the textures, assuming your tiles or placeables have UVs that line up nicely enough to do it without bad patterning.  That's how I painted moss onto the bricks in this sewer set.

 

 

This is supposed to be a relatively thin coating, not the thicker vegetation as in your image, so if I were doing that I would need to also adjust the normal maps so that the grout areas would not be indented where vegetation is covering them.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_TheOneBlackRider]

               

Or how about you create a simple plane (or a bit more complex bulging mesh), apply a moss texture of your liking to it and create an alpha, which makes parts of the texture more or less transparent.

 

I use this tool alot to replace alphas:

http://neverwinterva...-tool-nwn1-nwn2

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tchos]

               

Agreed, the decal method is also good, especially if you make enough of them that they're not too recognisable.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_henesua]

               

For what Tonden is talking about, the decal method is the one to go with. The thing is however that it requires adding meshes to the tileset. Its not just a matter of texture editing.

 

However for this, for the most part, you don't want to just edit an existing texture. You want it to look like the plants are growing over the wall and wrapped around the portculis.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tonden_Ockay]

               

How does this look?

 

 

 

 

The green doesn't match or blend well with the grass/ground but how does the texture look on the stone wall?

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tchos]

               

Looks pretty good to me.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_YeoldeFog]

               

With additional bushes, ivy, bramble, thorns you could hide the repeating pattern quite well. I think it works! 

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Jedijax]

               

Depends on what you want to achieve. See, what has been mentioned so far is the basis of how it is done, but you have to remember two things, depending on how far you're willing to go. First, the tiling of decals on your base texture. Decals usually look better when they are irregularly set. Vegetation, tearing, cracks, etc, hardly appear or grow in a symmetrical form in real life. This brings about the second issue, which is texture tiling. In the models you are using, the base texture is repeated over and over in the same manner, which in itself, makes for a pattern that is clearly recognizable. Most older custom content works were designed in this way, and it usually makes them look dated. If you notice, in more refined, newer projects, authors use a variety of textures that are similar but not entirely the same, and tile them in different points and manners so as to make their objects look varied, more realistic.

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[Legacy_Tonden_Ockay]

               

Right jedijax and to be hundred percent honest I'm not happy with the repeat look.

 

 

However to get it to look the way I would really like it to, I think I would need to texture each model separately in GMax (which I don't know how to do). 

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tchos]

               

My thought was that it was a starting point, and you'd break up the pattern as YeoldeFog suggested.  Texture plus decals plus placeables, etc.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tonden_Ockay]

               

It wouldn't be that bad I guess if the ruins was in a forest and mostly buried underground or in a hillside. Then put some placeable trees in and around what ruins is showing. This way you wouldn't see the pattern repeating over and over no where near as much.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_YeoldeFog]

               

If you take a look at Zwerkules Medieval Rural - there is a brick wall with moss. The moss is placed in a smart way - top and bottom of the wall, making it look better seamless. Check it out!

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Bannor Bloodfist]

               

Most of the suggestions here make sense.  Again it points to the basic limitations of NWN.  If only, if only, Aurora allowed multiple textures to be applied such as those used in Skyrim and/or the way they were handled in Witcher etc...

 

The way we accomplished the look in CTP_Babylon was to add that extra layer to the object via 3dsmax/Gmax by adding an additional face whereby a transparent texture could be applied.... This was done on the building sections that were created by OMB and really looked amazing... the issue though was the immense amount of labor to duplicate so many faces and move them  .1cm (point 1), out from the actual building walls etc... it works, but it does take a good hand at mapping textures properly and the texture itself must be large enough (1024x1024 or higher) AND be created in such a way as to hide or eliminate the tiling aspect, which is why you want to start with a 1024x1024 sized texture.

 

Of course, the issue arises that the total amount of vid ram used becomes soooooooo slow in NWN that the look becomes worthless when it takes too long to load an area that folks just want to get in and out of a given area in a mod so that they don't have to deal with the delay.  That delay still exists even on quad core computers with dual sli vid cards and lots of ram since the Aurora engine just was not designed to handle such a load.

 

It works, but you pay for it with load times, and delays while running/walking through areas etc... however, most times, if you use such layering gently enough, you can fool the eye without causing pain to the inborn time sense we all deal with.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_T0r0]

               I, for one, don't mind load times too much if it's smooth in the actual play area.. Now serious fps hits while playing is a show stopper.. IMHO