new hi res q3 texture pak on the way

[Paulomars]

Hi guys,
Just wanted to give you a peak at what Ive been working on. I know others have done this but I wanted to do my own version of a hi res texture pak for Q3. They are not resized - apply filter jobs, they are made from scratch. So far 99% of the base textures are completed, I'll be doing the Gothic textures over the coming months. Some of the original textures are true pieces of art and to reproduce them faithfully is a lotta man hours. In these cases I have tried to do some justice to the original, but I don't claim to be an artist. I'll try to have a pk3 available in the next few months.
Cheers,
kpax

http://www.xcsv.net/hires/
DOWNLOAD XCSV HIRES TEXTURES

[obsidian]

Nice work. Only advice is to use less of the bevel&emboss features of Photoshop since it tends to look too obviously like the, well... bevel&emboss filter. Instead, try painting them in and maybe play around with the layer blending modes.

You may want to get in touch with "speaker" of Q3Min. He and his team has been working on a lot of Q3 replacement textures under a GPL.

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=41813

[Paulomars]

thanks!! you're right about the bevnemboss filter, but to paint them in will probably take me too long, but I'll give it a try

[Perle]

Wow. Nice work. I could need a texture artist for my Q3Rally Mod. ;-)

[Noruen]

I must agree with Obsidian. It is good work, but it looks really VERY like photoshop-made. Textures have not deep plasticity and I think they are not better than original textures. I don't want to demotivate you, because material side of your work is excellent, but it really need more painting and playing with more Photoshop features.

[Paulomars]

Well like i already said Noruen - I'm not an artist and I simply don't have time to lovingly paint each one, and thats only 12 of the 250+ I have already made, which has taken me more than 300 hours. I totally agree that some are not better than the originals - particularly the more detailed ones. You haven't de-motivated me, so don't worry - my aim is to have a legal distributable texture set for my own mod, plus I just enjoy doing it. I'll eventually post some more of the basic (non-bevely) ones that perhaps don't look VERY like photoshop-made.

[Foo]

Those look excellent, nice work!

Any timescale for a release? Not sure if anything would stop you releasing early then updating over time...

[Eraser]

Can you simply replace the textures with higher res ones? Aren't the texture alignments and scaling all messed up then?

[o'dium]

You can't drag and drop without some form of code that says "hey, keep the scales!" last time I checked... But I'm not sure. Its possible that the map keeps the texture coords and scales intact and you can just replace them.

If it doesn't you have two choices. One is that you make a small mod that does this. The other is that every texture gets a material with new scale settings, that match the original dimensions.

On the actual textures, I can't say I'm sold Paul. Some are ok but others are so far away from the original and use so many cheap photoshop bevel and lighting tricks they don't really look better. Remember that if you do any form of re-texture project you will need to take the original texture and get its "base shapes" first. This means making the original texture the scale you want the retexture to be, defining shapes in it, and remaking them. Otherwise, you will find a lot of maps will suddenly stop working nice because the small trim they used off oen texture is now the wrong scale.

One of the reasons retextures are a bitch. I know, trust me

I did do a couple of Q3 ones but they used normal/diffuse/specular so wont be much good here.

[Paulomars]

the map keeps the scale of the textures, and it definitely works. O'd - I know exactly what you mean, and thats how I've done some of the more intricate ones.

Foo - thanks! I reckon it will be 2-3 months yet before I have a worthy release. As I said, my aim is to be able to release them freely with my mod. Well actually its a standalone game, not a mod, which is the reason for doing this so that 3rd party maps wont have missing textures.

some screenies here of them in game.
http://www.extremedivision.org/compare/ximages/screens/

[Perle]

Looks good. Will the textures be GPL´ed?

[Bliccer]

The texture for the t4 floor doesn't fit. The original looks darker and well... more comicish.

[Paulomars]

Perle - yep they will be GPL'ed when theyre ready

[Perle]

Sounds great.

[DaEngineer]

Try to smooth the sharp lines in the textures. As Bliccer said, Quake has this comicish style in some way. Try to blur some lines (just minor enhancements of course, don't sponge them to death). That would make them more eye friendly and soft like the original ones are.
Then there was one issue with this shiny tiling chrome textures (don't know what picture is was right now, the link seems to be broken). There is one bright spot on them which is really, really mean when it comes to tiling.

But keep up the work! You should offer your help to the Open Arena Mod, these guys would surely be pleased with this.

[cityy]

Oh hi DaEngineer!

[Paulomars]

DaEngineer - thanks for the feedback, I've been reworking a few of them and trying to get a more painted feel, but its hard going. Each time I do one though, I learn a bit more so I think they will improve Sorry the link is down, gotta pay my server , will be back up later.

[AL|EN]

Excellent work ! Thank you !

[Udi]

Paulomars, DaEngineer already mentioned the OpenArena project which has the same aim for the 0.9.0 release as you: 100% hi-res GPLv2 textures. The process goes slow, so far I finished every texture in q3ctf4 [link] and I started working on q3dm17, but it wasn't finished [link]. And recently another OA mod was started with the same texture replacement goal and with the aim of going standalone [link].

So far all the replacement projects are one-man shows (I have contact with Marco, who's making the oaUN mod graphics), but we have the same goals and licenses. So may I suggest joining the efforts in making one superb quality and trusted GPLv2 (the Q3Min textures are low quality and the sources are fishy) pack! I don't know your workflow, but both OA and oaUn textures are made with GIMP and all the .XCF source files are available. If you work with Photoshop that's not a problem, but it would be cool if you could share the .PSD files (GPL requires some source files).

Also if you want to make a mod and later make it standalone, you should consider joining OA (which has a different style and does not support competitive gaming) or the oaUnofficial project (which makes a lot of effort supporting CPMA and QL features). I've also read that Q3Min's development will be continued. That's already a lot of projects to choose from .

[AL|EN]

Udi: I just want to add that GPLv2 textures will be used in Defrag Standalone. This will be great thing for all people who come from QL and want to do some tricks.

Pls merge you efforts into one project - it will server q3 community much more.

[Pext]

http://www.extremedivision.org/compare/ximages/screens/

the reflection on the trim texture on shot 65 looks wrong.

[Paulomars]

Udi, you are right, but I'm getting pretty close to completion now. There are just over 1000 textures in the set if memory serves, and I'm at about 850. What I will do is finish them all and then let you guys use what you want from it to make a GPLv2 pak. Feel free to msn me on mr_paul_m@hotmail.co.uk to talk about it. I want to include mine in my project. I already have a project that is standalone and 95% complete, but its not ready for release yet, so I wont be needing OA.

I really like your atech texture on dm17 - that one really gave me headaches!

Rather than do them on a map by map basis, my approach is folder by folder. Currently working on Gothic_Trims - heres a few new ones I did in the last few days. I'll eventually be releasing the PSD files as well but its a lot of uploading to do, and they are totally not organised

[Paulomars]

http://www.extremedivision.org/compare/ximages/screens/

the reflection on the trim texture on shot 65 looks wrong.

its possible that the env map it uses wants a tweak in brightness/contrast, but thats tidy up stuff I will do at the end when I can walk around the maps and look for anything that seems wrong.

[obsidian]

I love that rusty metal panel texture. Really well done! Is that paint chip look photo sourced or did you somehow paint that. If the latter, could you share your technique?

[Paulomars]

Its photo sourced, tweaked and overlayed Obsid - sorry, no secret technique to it. It looks really gnarly with a Hard light on it.