AEcell - Cell Texture Pack - beta2 d/l

[sock]

Change the name of the texture set from 'temp_ae' to 'aeoncell', it is not really temporary anymore.
You could try merging your sub folders as follows:

_base = temp_ae_base (evil lair's original template textures)
_floor = temp_ae_floor, temp_ae_pads
_wall = temp_ae_wall, temp_ae_grate
_sfx = temp_ae_sfx, temp_ae_light
_trim = temp_ae_trim, temp_ae_pipes

[AEon]

Pat,
noted. I agree.

Sock,
good idea... fewer folders are better, will merge the folders as you suggested. I had been thinking about this, but in the above case "temp" is supposed to stand for "template"... only no one will read it that way, it seems... hmmm... "aecell" would be fine and short. I am never totally certain about names, are the textures really "cellular"?

I have created default shaders for all textures, now I need to double-check how Sock's "simple" colorize shaders will also work with transparency and light sources.

BTW, Sock, I have separated the color of the light textures from the light textures. I'll use the "light color" as blend/glow, trying to place it "over" the generic light texture.


On editor preview: Alas the editor does *not* show the recolored textures, so all of them are in drab gray. On that note, all the textures are TGA (27.7MB) of them unpacked, packed is less than about 800KB. That said I'll probably add a folder "aecell_edit" that contains *all* textures in orange, add a 2nd set of shaders that explicitly uses the orange textures in-editor. For these I'll merge the color into the light textures. As should be clear the gray textures are missing some preview quality, especially the light colors would need some form of preview in the editor. Any ideas?

[sock]

I would call them cellular; heavy black lines, contrasting details, bright abstract colours, feels cell shaded with soft fuzzy lighting on top! I did not realise you were naming them template, temp is really an universal short form for temporary, most disk systems have 'temp' directories with piles of temporary files waiting to be deleted.

The simple recoloured shaders should work fine with blend/light glow variants. If you have problems then just post your shader, I am sure someone here will be able to help. I would only recommend you do one set of editor textures, honestly you have done enough work already. I don't think you need to do a crazy amount of editor versions, most mappers are lazy and will just use what they are given.

[AEon]

Well ... those orange textures already exist, so I might as well add them. I went the "hard way". All the textures are black with an opacity level set, I can recolor them in PS on the fly. And did so using the orange tone from the original texture set.

Cell shading, or animation cells... yo... you are right, the name fits. Neat. Hope to have a "relatively" complete beta out tomorrow.

Another thing: I thought it might have been better to sort out some of the more detailed textures, to create a more minimalistic set. But why bother, the mapper can easily stick to the base set, and use the "new" textures as he/she prefers. Though technically I am hoping to have created enough textures to actually texture a "real" (not only a test) map with them.

Cannot wait to see a map in blue, or green

Update: OK, creating a test map for all the textures, and one thing is quite clear, it is pretty unbearable to have to use gray textures in the editor all the time. The editor images will point to orange versions. In theory, folks could recolor the gray textures manually, to let them use the color the like in the editor.

[AEon]

I seem to have been able to get the much more complicated animated, transparent shaders to work with the recoloring on my first try. The lights were a bit more tricky, luckily you can test stuff like that with q3ase. The shaders are quit probably not perfect, but seems to do the job so far.

• 

I used very simple colored light "areas" (blend) for a generic lamp, thus any mapper will be able to easily add light colors of his/her own. The color of the light is defined by the "blend" texture's color.

• 

Strangely enough the coloring of all the 200 textures worked right away in-game. Well, obviously it would for the trivial textures, since Sock provided a shader for them. But it also seems to work well for those with transparency.

• [lvlshot]http://aemap.hugelaser.com/misc/temp_ae_textures23.jpg[/lvlshot]

This is the way things look in the editor. That much gray gets on my nerves. Will create a folder called aecell_edit that contains an orange texture version specifically for the editor use. And all the shaders will explicitly link to those. The gray textures will then only be used in-game.

Alas recoloring the gray textures to any color you might like, e.g. to create your own editor "preview" textures, would not work via IrfanView (batch recoloring) properly. But a seasoned artist will probably figure something out.

[Pat Howard]

Everything is turning out awesome, AEon. Customizing textures is really starting to look appealing. Don't worry about the editor images; the yellow color is fine. If I really felt I needed to distinguish between colors I would probably just run a batch file on all the textures I'm using that pastes the word "RED" in red font on every texture's editor image or something. This is not something you need to do though.

Keep up the good work, bud.
-pat

[AEon]

Thanks ... AFAICT the shaders are all done now, and seem to work.

I am thinking of adding a some decals, e.g. the gate now also exists in an unnumbered version, so some numbers might be good to have, plus there is a cog somewhere that might be an interesting default pad as decal. But this would not be for the next beta, but the one after that. Maybe I'll give "rust" a try as well... might look funny to have such clean textures, blotched and rusted with decals, maybe From a template mapping point of view this may be a good thing.

General question on texture folders: I noted that GTKradiant 1.2.13 displays *all* the textures, e.g. in aecell_sfx, when you pick it from the menu. You will also see all the "blend" textures that have no direct shaders attached to them, and should actually *not* be used. I would prefer them not showing up in the texture window. Would placing them in a subfolder aecell_sfx/blend help? Is this a "good" thing to do at all? I'd also like to have the aecell_edit editor preview images "hidden" in some way, so that folks do not accidentally use these, maybe put them in aecell_sfx/edit?

[AEon]

Alas whenever you think you really have all the issues solved some ugly new ones show up.

The shaders now all reference the aecell_edit folder with it's orange textures, using them for the preview in GTKradiant 1.2.13. This works just fine, plus lets you preview the light colors. The gray versions of the textures along with their shaders still use the aecell_wall, aecell_floor, ... folders.

Alas a shader called temp_basetrim_128g (shown in orange in the editor's texture window, will *also* show the gray texture temp_basetrim_128g.tga, even though the shader should supersede the actual gray texture file. ...

I now see twice the number of images in the texture window, and half of them, the non-shader versions in gray are superfluous. Drat!

Any way to avoid this ugly issue?

Seems like the editor shows all images in the aecell_base folder, no matter what.

Hmmm... may need to put the orange textures in the explicit folders, and all the gray ones into aecell_edit to avoid this. The engine would then actually use the images in acecell_edit, and the explicit folders like aecell_wall would just be "dummies" for the editor.

[AEon]

Finally seeing the end of the tunnel... renaming paths etc for all the shaders (twice) was worth the work. Now you only see the shaders you should see, all the blend etc textures are "hidden", and in-game the gray textures are colored. Whee

An idea that occurred to me: Would there be any interest in a version of the base textures, the originals created by evil lair, that shows the size of the texture in numbers: e.g. your standard wall texture would be 256x256 pixel, the text on the textures edge would read 128u x 128u (since by default all textures are scales down by factor of 2 (50% size)).

Would give a texture set a techie look.

[AEon]

Slow weekend it seems. Experimented with recoloring the in-game gray textures:

(image see next post)

I the light brown tone is almost there IMO, not so sure about green and blue. I seriously wonder if one can make those colors look good. Well something for an artist

[AEon]

AEcell - AEon's Cell Texture Pack - beta1

• 

Details:

• Texture pack expands evil lair's "template" texture set by about 200 new textures.
• Shaders included for all textures, i.e. JP, AP, fan, grates, lights, etc.
• Texture set based on gray textures that can be recolored via shaders.
• Using orange texture set version for GTKradiant preview.

Download:

• • AEcell_texpack_beta1.zip (1.60 MB) @ hugelaser.com
    (Install: Unpack the .zip into your baseq3\ folder, read the .txt file for details.)
  • Test map: map-aecell_r05.zip (2.06 MB) @ hugelaser.com
    (Install: Unpack the .zip into your baseq3\ folder.)

Feedback:

• From my tests everything should work, but there are bound to be suggestions for improvements, especially the shaders will probably need to be optimized more, e.g.:
  • The lighting on the grates does not look that good.
  • The large round "window" lights (colored blend) could use some more "glow" like the other blend textures.
  • I am still using alphaFunc GE128 most of the time, this may need to be changed.
  Any suggestions appreciated.
  
  Next: Looking into adding some more deco textures and also looking into creating some "nice" decals.

Update:

• I added my test map (aecell.bsp) for download as well. This lets potential mappers better check out how the textures actually look in a map. Plus it should be easier to experiment with recoloring via shaders.

[sock]

Wow, they do indeed look good, congrats Aeon good texture pack

[AEon]

Tabun generously let me "trace" his textures (tx_tabgen_1 to tx_tabgen_5). I picked a few -ish ones that could look neat in a template map:

• [lvlshot]http://aemap.hugelaser.com/misc/temp_ae_textures25.png[/lvlshot]

Thanks... there are still a few others I'd like to add.

Note the new decals... not quite sure how to best add them via shader, but they should be interesting to have. These are purely gray-scale, i.e. all of the "colors" are pure black, at various opacity levels.

[Pat Howard]

Once again, looks great. Not really much I can help you here with, but I will mention you should add the "cull disable" line to all your grates. Right now they are invisible if you walk behind them.

[AEon]

I normally use "cull none"... and I added some two-sided grates, _2side in the shader name. So you can choose if you have to see the other side or not. I did not do this for all grates though. Hmm... not sure it makes much sense in most cases. Maybe you could point out the grates that could use a two-sided version. I'll then add these additional shaders.

Update: Speedy just got back to me about "tracing" his Andromeda texture set. It's fine with him... good news

[AEon]

So... these could pretty much be the last textures I'll be re-creating for AEcell, the various doors from and DOOM, are based on Tabun's textures. Some of them are actually 512x512, so the preview images does not really do them justice. The "fence", light trim and the decal_spawn1 are based on evil lair's e8 texture set:

• [lvlshot]http://aemap.hugelaser.com/misc/temp_ae_textures26.png[/lvlshot]

I have the feeling the AEcell set is still missing some support textures, and/or variations of exiting textures, but I'd need to actually build a map from them to find out what is missing. Maybe fKd has some suggestions, since he has been using the set proficiently.

[fKd]

chuck us a d/l link and i'll see whats going on. i've been a bit on the quiet side as of late due to os upgrading... map is coming along nicely tho... but im gonna hold off showing shots etc so i can wow (with any luck) some of the ole q3 community

[AEon]

I need to create the shaders for the new textures, hopefully I'll have beta 2 out today.

[AEon]

AEcell - AEon's Cell Texture Pack - beta2

• 

Details:

• Texture pack expands evil lair's "template" texture set by about 200 new textures.
• Textures are based on:
  • Q3A originals by id.
  • A few from evil lair's E8 set.
  • Quite a few new ones based on Tabun's tx_tabgen set (in / DOOM style).
  • And of course from Speedy's Andromeda set.
  Thanks go to these authors for letting me "trace" their textures.
• Shaders included for all textures, i.e. JP, AP, fan, grates, lights, etc.
• Texture set based on gray textures that can be recolored via shaders.
• Aside from the weapon/item spawn pads, added several new decals.
• Using orange texture set version for GTKradiant preview.

Download:

• • AEcell_texpack_beta2.zip (2.48 MB) @ hugelaser.com
    (Install: Unpack the .zip into your baseq3\ folder, read the .txt file for details.)
  • AEcell Demo Map: map-aecell_r06.zip (2.91 MB) @ hugelaser.com
    (Install: Unpack the .zip into your baseq3\ folder.)

Feedback:

• From my tests everything should work, but there are bound to be suggestions for improvements, especially the shaders will probably need to be optimized more, e.g.:
  • The lighting on the grates does not look that good.
  • The large round "window" lights (colored blend) could use some more "glow" like the other blend textures.
  • I am still using alphaFunc GE128 most of the time, this may need to be changed.
  Any suggestions appreciated.

[Tabun]

Wow, it's become a huge and beautiful set! Begs for a lot of maps to be made with them..

One side note: that should probably be "tx_tabgen" in there (not that it matters).

[Anthem]

I have to say... Quite the nifty texture pack.

[AEon]

Thanks ...

Presently doing a real-world test with the texture set trying to come up with a map design for it... calling the map AEmars. Will combine DOOM3 look in patches and some Q2 Strogg elements (textures mostly)... no idea how this will come out, but it's fun to start a completely new map. So far, when I was looking for a texture, I actually found one, so the set seems to be large enough. The nice thing about all this, I'll actually have the "skill" to add more textures as needed.

[Pat Howard]

I'm making an alpha with these textures right now for the NoGhost contest so I'll be coming back to this post periodically to jot down things I've noticed.

10.28.09
- Fence textures and other transparencies need the "surfaceparm nomarks" line.

10.29.09
- How about a simple 64x64 unit wall texture? Like the 128x128 but halved.
- I think fKd said something a while back about numbered location markers (like the "5" texture.) I think you should do this too. Just change the font on all of them if you can't find a match for the "5".
- "aecell_deco4"... best texture ever?

[AEon]

Pat,
yo, thanks... that's the best feedback... based on real-world tests. I noted that some of the lights should better be using explicit color textures to light the map instead of using the "blend" ones.

The round large spider lights are broken, the lightmap is not placed on them. I asked about fixing them in the AEmars thread, no feedback alas.

Hope you'll experiment with a different in-game color. Would be cool what colors an artist comes up with. Obviously, in-editor the textures are still orange, but that should be OK, sort of.

[Silicone_Milk]

AEon, I mirrored the latest beta of this texture pack on Filefront.

http://www.filefront.com/14957171/AEcel ... _beta2.zip


also, bitchin work man. These textures are helping me get a better sense of the scale of my brushes too I'm using it in quicke3 alpha as I rework some terrible routes and rescale areas.

Thank you