Inglorious Adventures of S3DSpy Texture Modding

knowom · #1 10-09-2013, 12:05 AM

This is just a thread I decided to pop up show off some of my texture modding I'm toying around with. These few screen shots are all of Unrest with some textures replace with either Nexus textures or Katta textures or a bit of both. If you notice it's white in places it's because I messed something up not sure if it's to do with a renamed extension from .bmp to .dds that I forgot to rename back or a missing texture. The graphics engine will default it to that flat white color under certain conditions is all I know for certain.

Here's a list I wrote down as I did it of the textures used from which .s3d files and the files they were used to replace.

Code:

katta.s3d to unrest.s3d katta_hrock01.dds replaces entryway.bmp
katta.s3d to unrest.s3d katroof03.dds replaces roof.bmp
katta.s3d to unrest.s3d katroof03.dds replaces 1roof.bmp
katta.s3d to unrest.s3d katcathwindow_s.dds replaces interiorwall.bmp
katta.s3d to unrest.s3d kattagrass.dds replaces xgrasdir.bmp
katta.s3d to unrest.s3d kattagrass.dds replaces xgrass1.bmp
katta.s3d to unrest.s3d kattower01.dds replaces floor.bmp
katta.s3d to unrest.s3d katta_hrock03.dds replaces newbrickwall.bmp
katta.s3d to unrest.s3d katvampfloor01.dds replaces block.bmp
katta.s3d to unrest.s3d katvampfloor02.dds replaces stoneblocksn.bmp

nexus.s3d to unrest.s3d nexfloor301.dds replaces sidewalk.bmp

Use S3DSpy extract your .s3d file to a folder by zone name for each zone that you'll be working with. Find the texture you like and want to swap it's a little hit or miss figuring out which textures go where in game. After you have your files rename your new textures to that of the ones they'll be replacing click add in S3DSpy and select add the files you renamed to add. You'll get a prompt asking to overwrite the current textures with the new ones hit yes on all of them and then your done copy your newly modded .s3d file to your EQ directory and test it out.

You'll want to turn of texture caching in the game options or delete the old zones texture file first in order to see the new changes. The code I listed is just the .s3d files used and the textures swapped. Just to give you a example. Some came out pretty nice others didn't look so great and didn't go in the spots I thought or intended them to.

A PHP editor like Akkadius made for other customizing would be handy. I believe you can isolate individual textures by simply deleting them in your .s3d file. As a result the zone will be white except for the texture or textures you swap in if you did that for each texture file name and took a screen shot in game of where the textures went you'd have a intuitive idea of where each individual texture file name in a zone belongs in game. It would be time consuming doing so especially as some zones are bigger than others, but it would be handy once completed. It would be the kind of thing to work on a zone at a time and maybe have a few different people each working on different zones starting with the classic zones most likely.

knowom · #2 10-09-2013, 04:18 PM

A few more just showing off Unrest and swapping a particular texture with different ones these ones came from Akeva and Crypt of Decay I like the top and bottom textures most though they both clash a bit with the other textures in Unrest used currently.

knowom · #3 10-09-2013, 06:31 PM

Here a example of another texture to go along with the sidewalk.bmp file and texture I chose for it above. The texture below are to replace entryway.bmp.

knowom · #4 10-11-2013, 03:36 AM

More texture modding screenshots this time in Grobb using textures from the famed Skyrim 2K texture pack. I used GIMP for "small tiles" on the wood floors in a few screenshots. It made the boards smaller was trying to fix the unaligned texture glitch. It's like that with default textures as well, but just harder to notice or rather care when it's low resolution and blurry to begin with.

Another thing I used GIMP for was on the boards as well is to tweak the saturation and hue on them was trying to get a worn stained bloodied looked on them I have to say it came out a bit more like cedar somewhat, but still looks all right. Anyway enjoy some more **** to look at it if you feel inclined.

knowom · #5 10-11-2013, 03:38 AM

Yup there is more!

knowom · #6 10-11-2013, 03:47 AM

Two more for Unrest this time was with the 2K Skyrim ground texture with low resolution original version of Unrest .s3d as Grinkles was curious to know if renaming a .dds file and file extension to .bmp worked. I knew it worked for the higher resolution retextured .s3d files, but hadn't bothered trying it with the old lower res .s3d files so I tested it out and naturally it works as expected and in case anyone is wondering the ground texture used was fieldgrass01.dds from 2k Skyrim texture pack I think it really fits naturally with the vibe of Unrest gives it that nice spooky Halloween vibe that the zone itself feels like it was modeled in mind after. The high and low res is more than a little odd looking, but hey it works!

Here's some of Grobb I used a Skyrim wood flooring texture and took a blood texture pack and layered that on top for the desired blood splatter effect that part I had to customize to taste manually a bit. All of this was done with GIMP then saved to .dds DXT1 compression though it can save it to DXT3 or DXT5 as well, but it takes up more file space and judging from the file size the 2K Skyrim texture were saved in DXT1 initially anyway. The grobb textured replaced was bloodwood.bmp the results were pretty satisfactory.

knowom · #7 10-11-2013, 10:55 PM

Anyway here's some more as well of Grobb showing off some of the new wood work throughout the zone. There are maybe 1-3 more wood textures within Grobb that I need to do to finish the wood textures conversion for the zone overall where I need to take the same wood texture basically and then Add a sign to layer on top of it. I could just keep it blank to save time, but it would be nice for aesthetics to keep the signs in tact. There is a signs texture mod pack as well for Skyrim so on Nexus so should be pretty pain free to do so just a time consumer. Enjoy the screenshots feel free to use them as a wallpaper if you wish.

**Drajor** · #8 10-11-2013, 11:16 PM

Love your work!

knowom · #9 10-12-2013, 04:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Drajor

Love your work!

Thanks nice to see someone likes it. Originally had the idea to use zone_points to delete a bunch of zones I don't particularly care for and reconfigure things without them to neighboring zones, but ran into problems with texture mismatching with that idea quickly and tried to configure around that the best I could which lead to more and more mangling of zone_points. Then I thought damn this has absolutely huge and implications and near infinite possibilities if I can get around the texture problem breaking immersion. This thread explains a bit of the zone_points stuff and general plans based around it.

http://www.eqemulator.org/forums/showthread.php?t=37360

Here's a few examples continent reforming from a map hub point perspective. A few problems with these types of zone_points changes is you can experience mismatching textures between zone lines the severity of which ranges on a case by case basis, but is something texture customizing could remedy. In certain cases the geometry shaping between zone lines has noticeable differences a narrow entry way into a much wider one can look wrong. In some cases your able to set the target location further ahead or behind to give the illusion of correcting that snafu however, but not always.

I'd like to get back to the zone_points configuring more in time, but for now zone texture conversions is going to take up a lot of time for the foreseeable future.

knowom · #10 10-13-2013, 12:07 AM

Guess what time it is? Guess what time it is?!? It's bashin time trollolloll!! Woot!! Woot!! With that out of the way more screenshots of Grobb now with more high definition bashin!!

In the first picture I tried to use DXT5 YCoCg scaled compression in GIMP and it made it look really screwed up. It's better to stick to DXT1, DXT3, or DXT5 in my experience. On a site note DXT5n can give a really interesting look at times so it's fun to experiment with to see how it will make the texture look same with DXT5alpha. It's important to check the texture you do compress after exporting just to ensure it looks as intended. In some cases using DXT1 can mess up the looks a lot, but it's file size is the smallest when it works it's great for keep the file size smaller, but when it doesn't it looks like hell. I haven't really encountered the same issue with DXT3 however the file size for DXT3 and DXT5 compression in my experience is the same anyway so I don't even see a reason to use DXT3 over DXT5 currently and uncertain what DXT3 offers or doesn't offer in comparison.

Now speaking of file size I scaled the resolution down to 2048 (2k) to 1024 (1k) for both the floor grcagr.bmp and ceiling grinnerca.bmp textures I changed here, but I plan to put them back to 2k textures to keep it as consistently as I can. I did it really just for testing purposes to see noticeable 1k vs 2k resolution textures would appear it's a lot less apparent than going from 512k or lower textures up to 1k or higher textures.

knowom · #11 10-13-2013, 12:16 AM

Enjoy the new screenshots. The floor was bit too yellow I tried to give it some slight yellowish/greenish hue colorizing, but it came off too strong. I'm either going to try to lighten the saturation impact of it or whatever a bit or I'm going try skip that effect. It was really just to try it out and see what the results would be like with it.

I have another variation with that texture I'm going to try in game first though that was the result of using DXT5n compression instead of DXT5 in GIMP that might be pretty sweet I'm hoping!

knowom · #12 10-13-2013, 01:27 AM

I took that base dirt floor texture that I tried to hue yellow earlier without the hue applied and exported it as DXT5n and it looked interesting so I tried it in game and it came out looking more extreme than I anticipated for Grobb, but it would look neat in Sol B perhaps.

Also decided I'd try it with the ceiling texture as well for the hell of it and it's even more absurd unlike the with floor texture I don't think would look too good in another zone personally at least without some tweaking with small tiles would have potential to look nicer possibly because it would blend better in fact a hint of blur could probably help it too. Really neat effect, but not something I want to use in Grobb.

There is a lot of experimental fun to be had with texture editing as you can see there is a ton of things you can do with texture editing you can swap textures, but you can also enhance textures as well with programs like GIMP which is free open source and cross platform as well in many types of ways so enjoy experiment drink mead eat cake and be merry and above all else do sum gud froglok bashin demz frog legs tasty!!!

knowom · #13 10-13-2013, 07:09 AM

Some more screenshots with a new texture replacement. This one is to replace oggmount2.bmp which is for the the actual entrance rock wall texture. The results weren't quite what I was going for, but at least I isolated the texture that goes to it which can be a bit of the tricky part sometimes.

It's a bit more algae then I was trying for need to get a better mix between rock and algae look a little algae wouldn't hurt though for the zone and would even fit in with the swampy vibe of Grobb itself. Despite not being quite what I wanted to blend with the other textures it was neat enough that it was worth showing off a bit, but it was fairly neat regardless.

knowom · #14 10-13-2013, 08:45 PM

Some more messing around with textures. I'm finding a lot of texture glitches with the game the more I mess around with it. Something that occasionally happens is textures for no apparent reason get rotated horizontally or vertically when they shouldn't. Another thing that happens and it seems to happen a lot more frequently is surfaces are incorrectly textured. It's rather aggravating to have a few small glitches spoil things aesthetically as badly as they do. I think if your willing to use a bit less texture variety within the zone you can at least in some cases get around the wrongly textured surfaces issue. Texture modding is a lot of fun, but EQ wasn't designed to support it from a player standpoint so issues defiantly occur that are pretty much beyond your control.

knowom · #15 10-14-2013, 06:30 AM

Added a bunch more textures though most are place holders and need some of the environmental objects added to them later. I did it just to clean things up and speed things along. The first 3 screenshots are showing off some of the various cosmetic texture glitches with Grobb.

The following 3 are just showing are the place holders that could use the environmental objects detailing touch ups for things like signs, weapons, and armor things of that nature that normally would hang on the walls.