New Terrain Textures done

[CryHam]

YES.gif
So, I'm pleased to announce that the big stuff happened. And is done.
All terrain textures are replaced, with great looking 1k sized, CC 0 licensed new ones.
For more info see in data/terrain/about.txt.
This is already on master now. So anybody able to test from sources go ahead.
I hope this is also for you a shocking improvement.

[CryHam]

So for stats, the old ones were size 512 and all was 30 layers, total 24 MB in png, and were _ds and _nh combined in rgba.
Now, we have size 1k (one is 2k), 83 layers, total 151 MB jpg (usually 97%), with separated rgb textures for _d, _s, _n, _h, where needed, no duplicating.

[CryHam]

Ofc, this made road look very ugly (and it was already ugly).
We need new textures to replace most (or all) of the old ones before release.
Also rocks now look a bit stupid on few sceneries, that's easy, I'll recolor them.

[Bertram]

Congrats for the texture switch!!

[Wuzzy]

Whoa! I have checked out Stunt Rally on git lately. This change is larger than I thought. Here are my thoughs on this change.

As standalone, these textures really look cool. However, you have removed the old textures and you seem to have changed the texture for every single track as well. It don’t think it was a good step to remove all of the old textures.

However, the removal of the old textures was not a good step, since there are now some textures missing. There is now a lack of:

• Non-“riffled”/flat sand like desert_6o.png, desert_6.png, sand_2.png, sand_4.png and sand_6.png. Since there is only “desert-style” sand now, this can be only used in deserts and some islands reasonably. It does not work out in, let’s say, greece, where you used some sand.
• A “cracky” texture which has only slight cracks, like adesert_0.png. The new cracky textures are all very sharp. Perhaps too sharp for my taste. There should be at least one cracky texture where the cracks are not too sharp, as this does not fit sell together with a (more or less) smooth road on it. I really liked adersert_0.png for its great normal map, which creates an unique reflection effect on V4-Spikeland. The new textures does not have that effect at all.
• A lack of a rocky texture for not-so-flat surfaces. Something for between very steep and flat. volcano_7.png was my favourite amongst the rocky textures and there is simply no real replacement for it. The new rocky textures really only work out well on steep surfaces. For hills, there seems to be a lack now. You can really see the difference on S6-PipeCrazy. The new texture looks great and sharper on the steep mountain, but on the smaller and grassy hills, the new textures is rather weak. Here I think the old texture is the winner.

A big plus are lots of rocky textures. This really improves all the tracks with mountains. But the textures only work well on steep and large surfaces. It does not work well together on spikes. The new sand textures are very nice, but they only work for deserts.
I have the feeling that many textures are not only in a higher resolution (which is good) but they also have sometimes a rather high contrast (I am not sure if this is good or bit).

There are many tracks which really got improved by this.
All of the mossy and forest tracks were greatly improved by this. The new rock textures work great on the mountain tracks: M3-Mudlake, O4-MossyMntn, F10-MntnTrail V7-Radioactive is interesting because it … glows now? lolwut?
The textures for the magic tracks are much sharper and less repetitive then the older ones.
Most desert tracks look cooler with the new sand, where the new sand actually makes sense.
The jungle tracks don’t seem to have changed very much. I am not sure.

Be careful with the glowing effect. It looks good, but it is used repetitively. X1-Magic has too much “glow-stone” for my taste. I think the glow effect should only be used occassionally, not all over the landscape. Especially the glow effect would be better only on rocky parts of the track, not on on flat surfaces. If you remove the vegetation on X1-Magic, you clearly see how repetitive this can be.

Actually, the texture switch was in many places a good improvement (as far I can tell). But there are small details where the switch did not work out well:
D16-AsphaltJumps: This was a major change, and a bad idea. You changed the scenery from slightly rocky desert to sandy desert. While the landscape on its own works out well, it does NOT work out with the road at all. An asphalt road on sand is just … weird.
V4-Spikeland: This was a fail. Just look at the spikes, the textures transition sometimes very bad here. The spikes need a clear-cut transition, a smooth transition would destroy the spike effect. Also I mentioned the problem with the cracky texture.
W13-MtFog: Everything seems darker now. There are less bright colors. This really harms the track, as it makes it much easier to see the road. The choice of bright colors everywhere was intended, now. Especially the road is darker now, which destroys the purpose of this track.
W11-Glacier is better now, especially for the grassy part. But it decreased in quality at the larger snow-covered track part. It really looks more like an editing accident as the “snow cover” has a rocky texture now. The original snow cover was without rock, and thus looked more “believable”.

I have very mixed feelings about the textures how they are used in the volcano tracks. On the one hand, they are much more detailed. It looks so much different. I can’t decide which version to like more … It is difficult.

There are a lot of other tracks which I haven’t checked out so far.

Lastly: Do not forget to update the preview images before release.

[CryHam]

Uhm, ah, well.. Yeah I do agree with most of the issues.
We can talk more on IRC.
I did look at like IDK, 200? textures, this what we have is the best I could find and adapt.

I didn't find much to fit between the flat ground and rocky mountains.
See e.g. adesert_mntn4_d, adesert_stone_d, desert_mud_d, ground_dry_d, ground_dry2_d, ground_mud_d, jungle_mntn_d, those are probably close to be in the middle.

We have now emissive/glow, it replaces specular, and is constant on whole terrain, probably could have some noise, but I like those few track as they are. Maybe someday. I don't want to put a 100 of noise parameters everywhere or too many sliders which nobody will know what they do.
Few jungle tracks didn't change (only grass) since JungleDark already had new textures. But mountains surely did.
I'm not going to do anything about this, surely not now. I'd rather implement horizons, or better shadows, or fix tires and make simulation better, heh particles and road, ugh, really.

You have editor, check out if you can improve those tracks. I need to make a new video about Blendmap though, IDK if anybody catches the thing about it, it IS different. You can mix few textures (with alpha mask in Gimp) just be sure they repeat, use offset by half. Or you can find (I doubt it though) some new textures, see about for links to the packs), surely don't bother for anything that is blury, or below 1k. Normalmap can be done if it's not.
But I would really like an improvement to road textures or anything that is clearly bad, and not just bad in details.

[Calinou]

Also see this (slow loading). New terrain previews, higher resolution!

[CryHam]

Also shows the new blendmap's noise.

[Wuzzy]

Good to see the previews updated. But why the increase to 1024×1024 pixels? Actually this image is not shown in that size in the game and there is no way inside the game to show the image in its full size. So this is basically just a waste of disk space to me. :/

[CryHam]

God Wuzzy, you're complaining so much
Maybe it is a waste but surely is an improvement, the 512 previews were just pure jpg compresion crap. With 1k you actually see textures.
It's visible in: game minimap (it is a difference, especially using bigger zoom), terrain preview on tracks tab (is for higher screen res) and tracks browser (is when you have big screen too).
Old were, I dont remember, but total new terrain previews size is just 27MB, on average like 200kB, what is this to load, nearly nothing. Even through internet.
There isn't a size between 512 and 1k, so it is and will be futuristic 1k from now on.

[Wuzzy]

Oh, now this makes sense.