How to make high resolution textures?

[cryfreedom66]

Hey guys. Ive done some work with other games making custom textures but one thing I dont understand is how the heck to mod authors make high res textures out of low res textures?

 

If you have a 1024x1024 and up it to 2048x2048 its just going to be a stretched out version. It wouldnt actually increase the texture appearance in game would it?

 

Can someone explain the steps taken to achieve high resolution texture modding or point me in the right direction please...id like to start learning how to do this and contribute to the mod community...

[Thepal]

There are a bunch of options. You can resize it in different ways, which can make it look not just stretch it. You can use four times as much of the original texture to make it larger (instead of stretching it). Or you can just draw the new texture yourself or replace the original with a higher quality texture.

[cryfreedom66]

There are a bunch of options. You can resize it in different ways, which can make it look not just stretch it. You can use four times as much of the original texture to make it larger (instead of stretching it). Or you can just draw the new texture yourself or replace the original with a higher quality texture.

 

 

i see and when you say you can use four times as much of the original texture do you mean just replicating the original texture 4 times over a larger canvas?

[FoolyFooly]

What he means to say is that all people are doing is doubling the size of the texture and adding a sharpen mask in photoshop. "High-res" is a gross overstatement. Edited November 15, 2011 by FoolyFooly

[cryfreedom66]

What he means to say is that all people are doing is doubling the size of the texture and adding a sharpen mask in photoshop. "High-res" is a gross overstatement.

 

gotcha so what would be the point of doubling the texture size just to use a sharpening filter? Why not just sharpen the original image?

[FoolyFooly]

gotcha so what would be the point of doubling the texture size just to use a sharpening filter? Why not just sharpen the original image?

 

It's a gimmick, there is no point. It's just a way to release something without actaully doing any work.

[cryfreedom66]

so...in point...the only way to do this effectively is to increase texture size and then hand paint the texture?

 

how does qarl do it so effectively?

[FoolyFooly]

so...in point...the only way to do this effectively is to increase texture size and then hand paint the texture?

 

how does qarl do it so effectively?

 

There are a number of procedural enhancement tools avilable for Photoshop, some are better than others. Some people make their own textures from scratch, or modify the existing textures with updated assets. a lot of what you see right now is just sharpened vanilla textures, and the effect just looks ugly IMO.

[Bythemark]

I do what you're talking about. I stretch the image, create a normal map for it, bump map it to hide stretching, and then I bump map it again with a noisy texture to fake detail. While creating a whole new texture is ideal, it's not really reasonable.

 

However, what the others in this thread have said is sometimes true. My method doesn't work for all textures, and scale>sharpen will never work for anything. Another method was mentioned, and that was to pre-tile the texture (make it, say 1024x from 512x and just have 4 copies of it). This will work, but everything will be itty bitty (rocks become pebbles) and tiling will be even more obvious.

 

edit: an example for my method. The last one was too large to keep as a png, so it's a jpg. Not much quality was lost, though. It's somewhere from Solitude.

 

http://ponypic.com/i/Se3DF.png

http://ponypic.com/i/YDRLg.png

http://ponypic.com/i/jlThr.jpg

Edited November 15, 2011 by Bythemark

[y3ivan]

fix the crappy bump mapping is enough