Grimrock

19. Add a separate texture for the top, slightly improved textures

The altar is basically done at this point, but I am not really satisfied with the way it looked. The build is okay, though I think I could have extended the stalks past the top a little more, but the textures are still not very good. So I went through and made some changes to the textures which involved loading up the model back in blender, playing with the UV mapping and the .dds files.

To start I opened up the stalk texture in paint.net, then in a separate layer opened one of the exported UV layouts from a stalk. Fortunately I got luck and the one I randomly picked had all the leaf parts on one side and the stalk parts on the other. Using the UV map as a guide I went through and played with the stalk texture and made it two part, one for the stalk and one for the leaf.
That worked fine for one stalk, it gave a little separation between stalk and leaves, but it did not work for the other three stalks as the UV layouts were not the same. SO I had to go back into the UV editing mode for each of the other three stalks, pull up the UV map and rearrange the parts so the leaf portions fell into the correct area and the stalk portions fell into the correct area.

I didn't do much to the moss area other than opening the UV map and making the moss top larger to put more of the texture in the image.

For the base, again I made the pieces as large as possible to get more of the texture in and I just played with the .dds file in paint.net a bit more. I tried to give a bit more depth to the texture by playing with the relief effect.

The most work intensive part of the upgrade was making a new texture for the top (remember the top and base share a texture file). I didn't do much to change it, but I wanted to make the channel along the edge of the top darker to give a bit more detail to the top. All I did was make a copy of the base texture, opened paint.net and in a second layer I opened the UV map export for a reference and used the curves RGB function to darken the recessed strip along the edge of the top.

While that was simple enough, it meant I had to open the top in the UV editing, create a new material called top and under the new material make a new texture for the diffuse and specular textures.
Then I had to export the OBJ. Next I copied the new .dds files over to the asset pack folder, write a new definition in the materials script for the plant_altar_top material. Open the model in GMT, re-scale and rotate it on the Y axis, apply the materials using the node select and set materials, recalculate the tangents & normals and save the model. In my test dungeon folder I had to make sure it had the updated .dds files and I had to write a new definition for the top material. Load up the game, test it (had to re-scale it again) and check it again. All that to add a dark line along the edge.

Anyways, here is the rendered and in game pics of the slightly updated plant altar (without grey stalks)
I think I am at the point I am going to consider these the final textures, at least until my skills in that area improve.

Next I want to go over how to package the asset so others can use it. Then I will consider the tutorial done other than updates, or to answer replies. (Beside I want to get onto learning normal maps, and get the couple items I'm working organized.)

When I made my mod I wanted to use some of Akroma's retextured monsters but I could not figure out how to make them work. I knew nothing of textures or .dds files and the who .tga .fbx etc made my brain hurt. Eventually I found assets by germanny and Leki and Kuningas and Phitt, and they all came nicely packaged in folder with easy explanations on how to install the assets. I did my best to mimic the work of those listed here and put my files on grimrock nexus.

http://grimrock.nexusmods.com/mods/294/ ... D294&pUp=1

If someone could take a few minutes and download and let me know if the file works I would be much appreciative. Then I will finish the tutorial with how I packaged it for use by others. (I put the altar and a urn in the nexus file)



Thanks for everyone's help.

Hi,

I have just downloaded it, well it works great!

good works!

I think that it will be better a little bigger (the altar)
but it's just a personal opinion

Glad you like it.

I learned a bunch making it and since then I've learned much more. My textures are starting to slowly get better and I have learned some more advanced modeling techniques that would have made creating it much easier now than when I did this one. For instance I now know the basic use of Bezier curves that would have allowed the vines to be done in a couple minutes instead of the hour or so I spent on these ones.

It could be a little bigger but the height needed to be as it is so I didn't have to rescript the altar aspect, and I could figure out how to just scale the width and depth in GMT, so it ended up being just as is.