TechAngel85 Posted June 22, 2013 Posted June 22, 2013 It is nice to see to original mod authors for the mods I use around these parts.It is nice to see to original mod authors for the mods I use around these parts.No kidding, I am really enjoying these forums. Lots of cool and knowledgable people to talk with. :) We have quite a few authors here on the STEP forums and I agree. It's always nice to have the authors present when we're testing their mods, etc.
vfxninjaeditor Posted May 18, 2014 Posted May 18, 2014 Hey guys! I have updated! Complete overhaul. Throughout the past year my texturing skill has evolved. I have gotten much better. I decided to remake my HD Ivy mod. More detail, depth, vines, etc. I have also provided my original 4K file for those who want it. I won't be making any color option right now. I used real photographs of real ivy in my yard. The colors are as real as it gets. In the future a more vanilla looking option may become available. Like I said in the sticky, this is based off real photographs I took. The first version was as well, but I was basically pasting one ivy leaf over and over with different shades of green. This one uses an entire ivy branch (actually 3 of them. I used various pieces). It took me about 10 hours of tedious work masking all the pieces out...it was nuts. Masking small details like that hurts your eyes. Anyways, I made sure to remember feedback. This has much more detail to it. The normal map is way better. I am hoping you all approve. Even if you don't, there isn't much else I can do seeing as it's based off a real ivy plant. p.s. Please don't mention anything about coloring. ;) lol. I know it's not vanilla color. It doesn't necessarily have to be. It's the color of the ivy in my yard. Slightly dead/yellowish because we just got out of winter, which really should be the same with the ivy in Skyrim because of how cold it is. 1
Aiyen Posted May 18, 2014 Posted May 18, 2014 As long as you got good contrasts/tonemapping then the colors are easy enough to alter! Will have to take a look at it! Also wow... 10 hours of masking, I feel your pain! This was the reason why I decided to just stop messing with foliage altogether!
torminater Posted May 18, 2014 Posted May 18, 2014 Your ENB makes your textures very blurry, perhaps for the sake of comparison you could upload a triple compare with vanilla, your previous version and the new version :-)
vfxninjaeditor Posted May 18, 2014 Posted May 18, 2014 (edited) As long as you got good contrasts/tonemapping then the colors are easy enough to alter! Will have to take a look at it! Also wow... 10 hours of masking, I feel your pain! This was the reason why I decided to just stop messing with foliage altogether! oh, yes. Never said the color couldn't be altered easily. ;) I just don't want to do any more work, if you get my drift. lol. 10 hours is too long and that was just the masking. Your ENB makes your textures very blurry, perhaps for the sake of comparison you could upload a triple compare with vanilla, your previous version and the new version :-)I assure you, with ENB off, the texture doesn't look much different. It's also sharp. I am going to say it's the normal map that is giving it a softer appearance. I wanted the leaves to have a bigger fall off in the large detail. Since the ivy meshes are flat 2D you need something to give the textures a slightly more 3D look. The normal map does that. If I did my regular method for normals (ground and rock method) the texture would me much sharper because the normal would be making all the small details in the ivy (leaf veins) harsher. Kinda unrealistic if you ask me. (Take a look at the full res image. You can see the normal map detail in the morning light. The highlights it's creating on the vine and ivy. Hopefully this will let you see what I was trying to do)Comparison coming btw. Edited May 18, 2014 by vfxninjaeditor 1
vfxninjaeditor Posted May 18, 2014 Posted May 18, 2014 (edited) Comparison: Vanilla Original Green Original Vanilla Color Scheme 2014 EDITION Something to note. I noticed how awful the vanilla ivy mesh is. Most of it is flat except for a few exceptions where one or two leaves lift off the surface. This looks really bad with a ton of leaves like in my first iteration of the mod. That why I had so many users complain about depth looking worse than vanilla. While true, vanilla fakes that depth by having baked shadows in the texture. The only reason they do this is because it also has the same pitfall my original version had. To many leaves for the 2D mesh. I don't do baked lighting. I avoid it at all costs. Bad habit to fall into. My new version has a lot of leaves still, but I opened up more holes in the texture allowing details such as the actual vines to show through. It helps make it look less flat. Plus, if you are using ENB, shadows and AO make depth look even better. All that aside, I think it looks good. Edited May 19, 2014 by vfxninjaeditor
Aiyen Posted May 18, 2014 Posted May 18, 2014 That just looks funky... looks like you have two images next to each other in most cases. Partly due to the huge color difference between left n right, and that the rock texture also have a seam near the middle.
vfxninjaeditor Posted May 18, 2014 Posted May 18, 2014 (edited) That just looks funky... looks like you have two images next to each other in most cases. Partly due to the huge color difference between left n right, and that the rock texture also have a seam near the middle. It is doing the same thing is vanilla. It's lighting, that's all. The right side is correct. I doubt that is a seam on the rock texture. That texture is fully seamless. It's probably mesh placement issue where the two stone wall meshes are pushed to close together. Why do we care though? Edited May 18, 2014 by vfxninjaeditor
Aiyen Posted May 18, 2014 Posted May 18, 2014 I just anticipate that when you have an comparison image where half the image looks different from the other half someone is going to get confused! Considering that the comparison is between the different images and not on each one. I can appreciate that you have an image with different lighting captured on it. Quite nice really. As for the rock.. you are probably right there! My bad!
vfxninjaeditor Posted May 19, 2014 Posted May 19, 2014 I just updated the comparison images. Whatever was going on in the original images was some weird lighting issue (probably ENB). I honestly didn't edit them that way. lol.
DoYouEvenModBro Posted May 22, 2014 Posted May 22, 2014 I think I like vanilla HD DLC better :-/ I never really saw the need to improve upon it. I'm sorry man.
Kelmych Posted May 22, 2014 Author Posted May 22, 2014 The ivy textures are in Skyrim - textures. There aren't any ivy textures in the High Res DLC.
DoYouEvenModBro Posted May 22, 2014 Posted May 22, 2014 Ok then I meant vanilla ivy, not HD DLC. Thanks for the correction.
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