Unit textures from hipoly models

[Enrique]

Since @wackyserious mentioned he wanted some textures I made a while back as a test, I'll leave them here.

I thought originally that they differ a bit from the current artstyle of the game, but if you guys want to push it further, why not. I attached them to the thread.

 

The process I used to get the textures was to model/sculpt high-res meshes, using a human model from makehuman (CC0), then creating PBR materials, and using a "expanded" 0AD mesh as the cage for the baking into the standard unit:

 

This is the model from where it was baked:

 

Spoiler

 

 

This below is the "cage mesh" which is just the regular 0AD unit mesh, but expanded to cover all the hi-res model. Then the "real" mesh where it was baked to is in the same pose as the highpoly, and should have exactly the same topology/polycount of the cage. 

The cage is using when baking to avoid having to deform the standard mesh, and to have a direction in baking rays that would look good on the final mesh:

Spoiler

 

Finally this test was nice, but I thought it was just too much work to re-do all unit textures in this fashion, although as you can imagine, it has the best results: (good AO, perfect normals, much details) which by the way they're a bit innecesary on a RTS game (specially without LODs), even though it looks cool.

 

I must say I followed up a bit this as a personal project to learn about the PBR workflow of blender 2.8 and test the realtime EEVEE engine. Good learning experience:

 

Spoiler

If anyone interested I could upload the blender file with the setup for the baking showed in the first images, although textures and all, it is around 270 MB

The textures attached are from the original tests I made, they are in different resolutions and also different render pases, they may be used for achieving different textures if edited too. (Normalmap green channel is already inverted, so it is 0AD-engine ready)

 

Cheers!

0ad unit test hires.rar

[Alexandermb]

If model don't have more than 200k polys i can take a look on it, otherwise this pc couldn't handle it. Thats the downside of my pc.

[Loki1950]

Sure can see the makehuman derivation from your bake screen shot BTW we have released a new version in that we updated to Python 3 and the blender plug-ins have been tweaked for blender 2.8 some features not complete as 2.8's API settles down for final release.As I mentioned before I'm a moderator on the makehuman forums.

Enjoy the Choice

[wackyserious]

@Enrique You have a .png of this which was adapted to the current body mesh? Preferably a .png of each? 1.) Body 2.) Clothing 3.) Armor and Greaves

[wackyserious]

If you had this in mind before, we could slowly redo the textures. I could help you do so, just provide the modular .png parts which I could work on. I will do all the recolor and tweaks.

[Enrique]

1 hour ago, wackyserious said:

 

@Enrique You have a .png of this which was adapted to the current body mesh? Preferably a .png of each? 1.) Body 2.) Clothing 3.) Armor and Greaves

The textures you see on the .rar attached to the first post is all I have.

 

1 hour ago, wackyserious said:

If you had this in mind before, we could slowly redo the textures. I could help you do so, just provide the modular .png parts which I could work on. I will do all the recolor and tweaks.

I didn't have it in mind. IMO it is too much work for very little benefit. This is an isometric rts game with zoom option. Players zoom in 1% of their playtime, and in assets such small screen space are much better distinguishable by the handapainted textures you guys have been doing so far.

The reason behind this test I made was to check how metallic materials could be improved by faking reflections on the diffuse texture itself. (Focus was the chest armor)

The workflow I described on the first post is the basic art pipeline on any standard production that is realtime 3d based on realistic artstyle, nothing I invented at all. You guys can grab makehuman and in few slider tweaks you can have a cool basemesh to dress it for baking as I did, or I could upload the file where I did the bakes for the setup.

Bottom line is: I didn't like how metals looked in-game, did some tests on PBR bakes, and realized it was too much work for this approach. Implementing matcaps/cubemaps (which was already semi-implemented by wraiiti quite some time ago) would be the way to go imho

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

If there were ever any cut scenes for scenarios or campaigns, this method would actually be very nice if applied to "character" textures. Meanwhile, I'm stealing the test texture for Delenda Est!  Looks great, actually. 

 

 

 

[wackyserious]

Currently playing with the textures. It looks awesome, man.

[wackyserious]

A concept for Illyrian mercenaries using the new cuirass texture made by Enrique (Cleaned the reflections and added shadows)

[Enrique]

34 minutes ago, wackyserious said:

A concept for Illyrian mercenaries using the new cuirass texture made by Enrique (Cleaned the reflections and added shadows)

I thought the idea behind baking an all this stuff was to have metallic reflections in the texture to make a more believable metal look 

Here's the file for the baking setup. I tried packing into the blend all textures.

@Alexandermb @Stan`

I warn you it is quite poly heavy (+1M polys) (blender 2.7x file)

https://we.tl/t-iZj9Gz4110          (one week expiring link)

I hope it is useful

Cheers!

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

3 minutes ago, Enrique said:

I thought the idea behind baking an all this stuff was to have metallic reflections in the texture to make a more believable metal look 

 

Yeah, that's why I took the cape off of that Alexander infantry dude.

[wackyserious]

28 minutes ago, Enrique said:

I thought the idea behind baking an all this stuff was to have metallic reflections in the texture to make a more believable metal look 

I mean I blended it a bit and enhanced the shadows which were somewhat affected when it was resized to 256 

[Alexandermb]

3 hours ago, Enrique said:

I warn you it is quite poly heavy (+1M polys) 

[asterix]

4 hours ago, Enrique said:

I thought the idea behind baking an all this stuff was to have metallic reflections in the texture to make a more believable metal look 

Here's the file for the baking setup. I tried packing into the blend all textures.

@Alexandermb @Stan`

I warn you it is quite poly heavy (+1M polys) (blender 2.7x file)

https://we.tl/t-iZj9Gz4110          (one week expiring link)

I hope it is useful

Cheers!

 

3 hours ago, wackyserious said:

I mean I blended it a bit and enhanced the shadows which were somewhat affected when it was resized to 256 

 

28 minutes ago, Alexandermb said:

Time to make something like this but for 0ad  https://www.moddb.com/mods/hyrule-conquest/downloads/low-poly-patch

[Alexandermb]

4 minutes ago, asterix said:

Time to make something like this but for 0ad  https://www.moddb.com/mods/hyrule-conquest/downloads/low-poly-patch

my pc can't handle in blender 400k-600k+ polys or it will stutter a lot and will waste a lot of time loading each mode.

Doing that for 0 ad is good idea if we ever have two configurations LOD and 3D Low Poly model in settings and the prop render issue mentioned in another topic.

[wackyserious]

@wowgetoffyourcellphone Should I use the new greaves on these textures or keep using the old ones? I am planning to replace the cuirass that I made with the ones that Enrique provided, I will work on these once Alexandermb has committed his new helmets.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

The ones in Enrique's texture are pretty fancy. More for heroes. And not every set of graves need to look identical. 

[wackyserious]

I will keep the old ones for standard units.

[wackyserious]

I am planning to replace the recently commited lorica musculata with this one which I tweaked a little from Enrique.

Uploading it here for testing and feedback.

[Lion.Kanzen]

Check this...

[Enrique]

20 hours ago, wackyserious said:

I am planning to replace the recently commited lorica musculata with this one which I tweaked a little from Enrique.

Uploading it here for testing and feedback.

Wouldn't make more sense to keep the baked environment fake reflections in the texture, and leave the specular higlights to be done by the actual realtime specular effect that the game offers? (using the textures "bakes with no sun")

I haven't seen them tested in-game properly, so my comment is directly based on these textures you posted. Also don't forget to use the whitest possible map as the specularmap.

@wowgetoffyourcellphone @wackyserious

Here I'm attaching some texture variations (specially gold hues). I also cleaned up the body part texture, which in wow's test screenshot turned out specially dark.

 

Zip contents:

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

texture variations and masks.zip

[Enrique]

If you guys really want to push the visuals further for metals without having to re-create every texture and having to bake from highpoly, you should actually implement this:

This is how reflections were faked before PBR in games (and it is still used). IIRC the reason not to implement it was due to "reflections not being accurate enough" which is a bit presumptuous since this technique is actually for faking them.

Making the reflected environment texture very generic and quite desaturated will work perfectly for all kinds of metals. And if you want to go even further, wraitii mentioned that the reflections could be affected by fresnel, which is basically all you need to fake the reflections in both dielectric(non-metal) and metal materials. (you could do subtle reflections on marble, vases, rooftiles, whatever) In top of that, the performance hit is very low.

Here's how stuff can look with this technique:

 

 

If any artist want more information this tehcnique, is a nice in-depth tutorial of faking such reflections witha more complex setup on a non-PBR renderer (despite the title)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jb_Xf4SWljs

 

Cheers!

[imperium]

Woow! Hoplite's texture is magnificent!