Progress post 20 (2022): Ground and Minimaps
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Black Rider
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Progress post 20 (2022): Ground and Minimaps

Post by Black Rider »

One other problem with the Solace ext. set is, that there is no real final ground texture in any of the HAKs. They vary from HAK to HAK, but I have the feel, that they were all “place holders” since they didn’t match up with the quality of other textures of that set (stucco walls, roof, bark, wood planks, rope bridge, …). My skills in creating textures from scratch are pretty basic (even though I know how to make use of layers) and I wasn’t really able to come up with a working ground texture for the Solace ext. set.
So a week ago, I decided to ask somebody for help and I got it! MerricksDad, though busy with countless other big projects, took the time an gave it a try. It didn’t take him long and he came up with some results. A ground texture for this set is not too easy to create, because it needs some green, but not too much, some dirt, so it’s a bit more forest like, but if green and dirt is to light, it gets “milky”, if it has too much red, like with some fallen leaves, the whole set gets quickly to heavy with all that reddish canopy. And the ground should have some detail (IMO), but not look too photo-realistic, so it fits with the other Solace ext. textures.
So MerricksDad took some free textures from textures.com, mixed them up and was able to lessen the realistic details, so it would fit. In addition to that, he took out details, which would show up as patterns, when the tiles are tiled.
Here is a IG-result:
Image

Image

After that, I dared to ask MerricksDad for a better dirt path texture, which leads up to the barn of the Inn and he created a 2nd texture for this set:
Image

So THANK YOU VERY MUCH for your support, MerricksDad!


Now with having a (IMO) good looking ground texture, I could finally take the step to create the first set of minimaps using Symmetric’s great Blender tool. Symmetric pointed out to me some details regarding the options for rendering the minimaps (check the readme and the settings.ini! ;-) - THANKS Symmetric). So after playing a bit with these settings and adjusting some of the major textures, so they give a clearer result in the render process, I’m quiet pleased with the outcome:
Image
As you can see, I “made the canopies invisible”. Otherwise one would only see leaves and it would be impossible to actually make out a group. And you can also see, that there are still some group tiles, which have issues. So I’m not through with the “project minimaps” yet…

And just a notice: Also did some good progress regarding the Mill group! Lots of detail work. Will post something, when it's finished.

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