BZ2 Large Textures Pack, v1.0

[APCs r Evil]

I've only just figured out how to use Gimp's airbrush, and not very well at that. Let's not get too hasty, here.

[MrTwosheds]

I didn't use the airbrush at all. Layers and Texturizer are most useful for this sort of thing, texturising the upscaled with the original can produce a nice effect.

[Cyber]

I've downloaded and tested it.
Again, a significant change. Not trained eyes will just think there is *something* different, because there are new textures. The textures are not detailed enough imo, but I'd also like to see the original one's, maybe its BZ2's fault.
Is it possible to add a graphical effect which is sort of 'texture anti-antialising"?

[Zero Angel]

I've only just figured out how to use Gimp's airbrush, and not very well at that. Let's not get too hasty, here.

Manually cleaning up edges is always labor intensive -- especially when you factor in that there's probably about 100 or so textures that are prominent in game (all unit/building textures as well as terrain, sky, dome and prop textures)

If I was really interested in making high res textures this is what I would do.

1) Put the images all together in a folder structure that can be easily read by DXTGen
2) Set dxtgen to use upscale things by 2x and use HQ2x algorithm or 4x and use HQ4x algorithm BUT instead of generating the dxtbz2's directly, to output the highest level mips in a format that's editable by a graphics editor.
3) Now browse through the created mips and find stuff that the scaling algorithm butchered and consider deleting those if its too much work for too little gain to fix that (maybe put them into a temporary folder so you know to resize the source textures a different way)
4) Now move to the hard part, methodical checking and 'edge cleaning' of the salvagable stuff

for this a graphics tablet and the smudge tool (Photoshop) will be useful. Graphics tablet is not necessary but it makes things a lot easier (probably even halving the amount of time you spend cleaning up edges). I would then create a macro to

1) Duplicate original layer
2) Set blend mode on duplicated layer to 50%, set opacity to 75% (this just makes it easy to compare your modified version with the original to check for discrepencies)

[Edit Manually with the smudge tool]

Then to close off

1) Set blend mode on duplicated layer to back to 'normal', opacity to 100%
2) Save normally or using Softimage PIC export filter.

From there you can then build the dxts using the edited stuff.

* HQ4x doesn't really do the best job at scaling stuff it seems, so maybe it's just better to scale it up by 2x and use HQ2x instead. You use less than half the space and the quality hit isnt that bad.

[MrTwosheds]

The textures are not detailed enough imo

They are made from 1024x1024 images. You will probably only see the full size mipmap image close up, as a pilot, or deliberately pointing your ship at the ground, at least that's what happens on my pc. Making the textures even larger will not alter the general appearance for normal game play circumstances for most people, Personally I don't see any need to go larger as close up examination of the terrain isn't really what I play bz2 for and my screen resolution is currently 1280x1024, so I would probably have trouble getting bz2 to display a 2048x2048 terrain image, without deliberately filling the screen with a really close up view of it.
I don't know what hardware you have, but if its like mine, when you sit still in your scout, you will probably see the 512x512 mipmap infront of you and the 1x1 on the horizon, the 1024x1024 will not appear until your looking right at the terrain, making them bigger would not alter this, buying a huge monitor might.

2) Save normally or using Softimage PIC export filter.

Why go to all that trouble only to re-trash your work with .pic. Use .tga.

I used "a process" to create a structured detail for each image based on what it is supposed to be, If anyone fancies hand drawing individual pebbles or blades of grass, be my guest.

Gimp has 2 ways to rescale an image one is a plugin called HQ upscale, the other is called step resize. Hq upscale is better for preserving detail. Step resize is better if you would rather the "detail" did not survive. I used step resize for the terrain to get rid of the pixelation upscaling causes. On the other hand I would use hq upscale for a unit type texture to avoid losing detail.

If anyone fancies a challenge...take a look at the core terrain textures. I have no idea where to start.

[Zero Angel]

Why go to all that trouble only to re-trash your work with .pic. Use .tga

I haven't had the greatest amount of luck getting TGA and PNG to properly do transparency (e.g. for glowskins).

[TheJamsh]

It's always worked fine for me, I prefer PNG personally wherever possible for the smaller filesize (and lack of difference in quality from what I can tell).

I usually export straight out of Photoshop as .PNG and maybe re-save it with XnView.

[MrTwosheds]

Got no problem doing either with photoshop (6) png does transparency really well.
.Pic was useful before dxtbz2. But now you can convert the tga and its alpha channel straight to dxtbz2
Still haven't quite figured out how to paint directly onto the alpha channel in gimp...annoying.

[Nielk1]

I still use PIC personally for BZ2 stuff. PNG is nice though. Better than other options.

[MrTwosheds]

Pic is an optimised format, dxtbz2 is an optimised format, the extra layer of optimisation will not improve an image, and make no difference to the size of the dxtbz2 actually used, only its quality will be slightly worse than one made from the original unoptimised format. (psd tga etc) Same goes for png, however png's transparency ability is superior to most other formats.

[TheJamsh]

Still haven't quite figured out how to paint directly onto the alpha channel in gimp...annoying.

To be honest, the ONLY reason I have GIMP even installed is because of the handy-as-hell Colour To Alpha function, and maybe at a push the 'Make Seamless' filter. The first is amazing for changing a modulate particle texture to a blend one or vice versa. Works so well. The Make Seamless is a bit dodgy, but you can get good results for it occasionaly..

I still can't believe no-one has properly replicated GIMP's colour to alpha function in Photoshop... even as a script.

[Nielk1]

TGA is optimized... And its **** for Alpha when it comes to conversions. Use PNG.

TJ, that sounds like a basic lack of understanding of PS. You can just go to your channel list and duplicate one of the color layers and you get instant alpha channel.

[TheJamsh]

TGA is optimized... And its **** for Alpha when it comes to conversions. Use PNG.

TJ, that sounds like a basic lack of understanding of PS. You can just go to your channel list and duplicate one of the color layers and you get instant alpha channel.

I know that, but it's never as good as GIMP's results, or as easy.

[MrTwosheds]

I still can't believe no-one has properly replicated GIMP's colour to alpha function in Photoshop... even as a script.

Photoshop does not use scripts, it uses plugins, there is a far wider range of them than scripts for gimp, down side is people usually want money for them, the upside is that they do actually work. I have loaded quite a few scripts for gimp, quite a few of them do not work at all. Flaming pear do an excellent tessellation plugin for photoshop, for creating seamless textures, much better than gimps make seamless, which often does not do just that.
My very old version of photoshop has select by colour range...
I believe its actually older than bz2 , thought about upgrading a few times, but for some weird reason every time I try a newer version, they run really slowly, and have less features, so I don't do it. Photoshop 6 is great, Just like bz2 you can just copy it from one pc to another without any of this installing, activating, licensing nonsense.

[Zero Angel]

Twosheds, I think you are confusing 'optimization' with 'lossy compression'. Bink movies and JPGs use forms of lossy compression that reduce image quality but make their filesizes very small. PNG, PIC, and TGA use losseless compression or are capable of compression (e.g. TGA's 'run length encoding' compression) and are capable of 24-bit (full RGB color) and 32-bit color (full RGB with alpha) but because these image formats retain all the colors and accuracy of the original image their filesizes arent as small as JPG for complex images.