hurleybird wrote: ↑Fri Feb 08, 2019 6:03 am
One could probably just make variations in Gimp or Photoshop easily enough given an appropriate base texture. Time consuming, of course, but not particularly difficult. Of course, if an automated process could be found that would be even better.
I'm not familiar with DF:U specifically, but I am with Unity. Depending on how DF:U handles geometry and materials, I'm guessing one would be looking at between a half day of work and the better part of a week to add support.
With regards to handling materials, I believe DFU can use any shader that Unity supports (this is barring asset injection which defaults to Standard shader), so from a shader standpoint there is nothing to add support for if we just make the textures 2x, 4x, or 8x bigger with variants.
With regards to automating the variant creation process, Nvidia has an AI program that can do it, but it is in closed beta so very few people have access, and I'm not one of them
:
https://gwmt.nvidia.com/
Also, it isn't clear whether or not the results are tile-able, so that would have to be fixed manually. Also bear in mind that adding variations would also require new heightmaps, new normals, new metallic maps, ect., which takes time if you want good results.
To me, the repetition keeps the textures rooted to their vanilla origins. If the variations aren't made
really well, I think the net effect would detract from the experience and I don't think
really good results are achievable with an automated process without considerable touch-ups from an artist.
My goal with this upscaling project is to maintain as close to 1:1 parity with the vanilla DF textures as I can. That is to say, if you were to scale the upscaled textures back down to the original size, the texture would be nearly identical to the vanilla texture. But that doesn't have to be others' goal. If anyone wants to tackle this challenge, believe me- I won't stand in their way! But it's far too time consuming for me to want to pursue. To your credit, it shouldn't be difficult, only time consuming; but for hobbyists to find spare time to do this
is difficult.
Just to re-iterate: I don't think it's a bad idea, I just have no interest in doing it due to the time and effort I perceive it would require to maintain the desired aesthetic. Someone else with the right tools and who is more knowledgeable than me on the topic might could make short work of it and make it look great, and I welcome it!