Difficulty of adding new models, costume parts, and textures.

[Rigged]

How difficult is modelling for this game?

 

I'm asking because it seems that our devs have available pretty decent programmers but not as many artists. Which is a little odd considering modding communities for other games tend to have the opposite problem: lots of 3d artists making visual mods but relatively few actual programmers messing with the nuts and bolts.

 

It feels to me that 3d art is one of the roles where manpower is more scalable - more programmers does not scale that well due to bugs and interactions with existing code, but more costume parts, etc does not interfere with each other. Is the HC team really short on 3d art volunteers and the few art guys they have a crazy overstretched?

 

At the same time, I am wondering on the feasibility of improving some of the face textures, especially the oldest ones which were made for computers in 2004. Near the end of the game's life they added several new faces that have much higher resolution. Could we feasibly update the other faces and low-rez character textures using AI upscaling?

 

Am asking for a little background, since I am not familiar with this myself. Please do enlighten me.

[Snarky]

Do you have any artists willing put to put in a crap ton of time on an old game?

 

Then shaddup.

 

[Greycat]

Couldn't honestly say.

 

That said, (A) I recall the "high rez" faces being panned as being "odd looking" - and not in the same way as some of the classic faces. They're somewhat jarring (though I've used them in the past,) and (B) "High rez" textures when we still have blocky mittens for hands, well... 😉

 

Of course, there's also the issue of doing something like that changing how they look - and changing how an established character looks. Some people wouldn't care, granted, but others will get *really* annoyed if it looks like you've switched their Darrens without asking by doing something like this.

[Snarky]

1 hour ago, Greycat said:

Couldn't honestly say.

 

That said, (A) I recall the "high rez" faces being panned as being "odd looking" - and not in the same way as some of the classic faces. They're somewhat jarring (though I've used them in the past,) and (B) "High rez" textures when we still have blocky mittens for hands, well... 😉

 

Of course, there's also the issue of doing something like that changing how they look - and changing how an established character looks. Some people wouldn't care, granted, but others will get *really* annoyed if it looks like you've switched their Darrens without asking by doing something like this.

I was at least assuming you were suggesting an add on and not a replace.   Word to the wise….never take away someone’s construction pieces

[FupDup]

On one hand, many of the older faces do look a little too pixelated/blurry. 

 

On the other hand, some of the newer faces look completely uncanny and stick out from the rest of the game's art style like sore thumbs. I think that's a worse sin than the above. Any update to the older faces would need to be very careful to reduce the blurriness without going full derpface. 

[TheZag]

In the developers corner forum there are volunteer recruitment topics with quite a few people offering their services.  I cant say why they choose to be the size team that they are,  but if they wanted/needed more,  they have available offers.

 

More specifically in response to hi-res faces,  just add them as a new option with hi-res tacked on the name.  Face 1,  Face 1 hi-res.  Alien,  Alien high-res.  That gives high res options without removing anything.  It might not be something the devs are working on though.  But if a player with the ability took the time to make a set of high resolution faces and offered them to the team,  i imagine they would have a good chance of being used.

 

 

[nihilii]

I prefer the old faces and would hate to see them upscaled/updated. The ever present issue with "improving" lower resolution art is everyone is going to see something different in the original blurriness. Any improvement is necessarily opinionated - and that's even with human artists at the helm. When it comes to AI upscales, I very rarely see a result I don't find a downgrade from the original.

Sounds good as an optional thing, tho. Like TheZag says.

[Rigged]

 

16 hours ago, Snarky said:

Do you have any artists willing put to put in a crap ton of time on an old game?

 

Then shaddup.

 

 

Totally understand this, which is why I am asking on the background and info on how hard it is to edit the game. I want to know about the experiences of those who have tried.

 

11 hours ago, TheZag said:

In the developers corner forum there are volunteer recruitment topics with quite a few people offering their services.  I cant say why they choose to be the size team that they are,  but if they wanted/needed more,  they have available offers.

 

More specifically in response to hi-res faces,  just add them as a new option with hi-res tacked on the name.  Face 1,  Face 1 hi-res.  Alien,  Alien high-res.  That gives high res options without removing anything.  It might not be something the devs are working on though.  But if a player with the ability took the time to make a set of high resolution faces and offered them to the team,  i imagine they would have a good chance of being used.

 

 

 

10 hours ago, nihilii said:

I prefer the old faces and would hate to see them upscaled/updated. The ever present issue with "improving" lower resolution art is everyone is going to see something different in the original blurriness. Any improvement is necessarily opinionated - and that's even with human artists at the helm. When it comes to AI upscales, I very rarely see a result I don't find a downgrade from the original.

Sounds good as an optional thing, tho. Like TheZag says.

 

Yes I agree on not removing the old faces. I would simply like to have an additional upscaled face as an option. My favorite faces are those from the early issues or the vanilla release, but they are very low-res, especially compared to the costume pieces that came later which I am very fond of. But also, several of the tights patterns are low-res enough to show right through even the simple geometric designs; the pixelation is that obvious.

 

If it is merely a matter of editing the pattern textures with a higher-res version, I think I could even do that myself (not an proper artist, but I have experience in and can do texture editing and AI upscaling). But I suspect it is not so simple to put into the game, otherwise one of the servers would probably have done it already. 

[UltraAlt]

20 hours ago, Rigged said:

I am wondering on the feasibility of improving some of the face textures

 

I can see upgrading textures on costumes, but the faces are pretty much only going to take much scrutiny in close up RP.

 

That is to say, a majority of the player base will be zipping around a majority of the time not looking at other players or their own face.

 

Knowing what programs can be used to adapt and create costume parts (and faces) could be very useful to the community.

[Paradox Fate]

I'd be for updating/upscaling older costume pieces/patterns as well as some cape patterns.

 

Some are just straight up blurry and could use a touch up.  

[Tiger Shadow]

11 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

Knowing what programs can be used to adapt and create costume parts (and faces) could be very useful to the community.

 

Seriously, I'm not going to spend time in Blender if it turns out to be useless for CoH purposes.

[Ruin Mage]

The person to ask, I believe, would be @Naomi.

[Sakura Tenshi]

On 3/22/2023 at 4:40 AM, Snarky said:

Do you have any artists willing put to put in a crap ton of time on an old game?

 

Then shaddup.

 

 

Let’s ask the TES and Fallout mod communities.

[Luminara]

On 3/22/2023 at 5:45 AM, Rigged said:

How difficult is modelling for this game?

 

That depends... are you familiar with the casting couch?

[Captain Fabulous]

To the best of my knowledge the game's textures are just 2D bitmaps that the game wraps around 3D models. So upgrading to higher-resolutions versions requires no 3D modeling. It's also fairly easy to extract the current textures from the PIGG files, change them to whatever you wish, and then place them in the override folder for the game to use. Tho you're the only one that will see the changes. The difficult part is figuring out the names of the textures you're looking for.

[Mariposa]

I wish they would port over costume parts, faces and hairstyles from NPCs. Desdemona, Penny, Mother Mayhem, everything from Going Rogue on, looked amazing.

They can make all that available for players.

[Techwright]

On 3/22/2023 at 11:37 AM, Greycat said:

That said, (A) I recall the "high rez" faces being panned as being "odd looking" - and not in the same way as some of the classic faces. They're somewhat jarring (though I've used them in the past,)

 

 

Bear with me please...by "high rez" are you referring to the OP's suggestion of using A.I. or of the faces that were brought into the game later?  I've heard of negative reactions to A.I. clarified faces.  Trying to recall where, though.  Warcraft?

 

As to the latter, I thought the faces brought in on the gold side Praetorian robots were clearer and pretty good.  They didn't seem jarring in context of the whole.  I realize Going Rogue wasn't near the end of the game, but by example, if the oldest faces could be improved to that standard, I'd be agreeable to seeing that.  However, @TheZag is right, best to mark improvements as a second option, or tag old looks as a legacy option.  @Snarkyis also spot on: removing pieces stirs ire.  I've seen that recently first hand in another game I play.

 

 

[Sakura Tenshi]

7 hours ago, Mariposa said:

I wish they would port over costume parts, faces and hairstyles from NPCs. Desdemona, Penny, Mother Mayhem, everything from Going Rogue on, looked amazing.

They can make all that available for players.

 

it's unfortunately not that easy. Desdemona and Mother Mayhem's costume pieces are designed explicitly for their bodies and to be used as a whole. I messed around with them in DevIcon and you can see a lot of geometry holes if you don't use each piece. On top of that they don't color very well either. A funny example though of weird NPC modeling tricks is that Reichsman is missing most of the top part of his head due to his cap being so flat at the top, I think it was also done so the brim of the cap would almost completely cover his eyes. But really its funnier to say Marcus Cole needed a lobotomy to join the Column.

[Mariposa]

5 hours ago, Sakura Tenshi said:

 

it's unfortunately not that easy. Desdemona and Mother Mayhem's costume pieces are designed explicitly for their bodies and to be used as a whole. I messed around with them in DevIcon and you can see a lot of geometry holes if you don't use each piece. On top of that they don't color very well either. A funny example though of weird NPC modeling tricks is that Reichsman is missing most of the top part of his head due to his cap being so flat at the top, I think it was also done so the brim of the cap would almost completely cover his eyes. But really its funnier to say Marcus Cole needed a lobotomy to join the Column.

I know, I noticed that when they released the costume creator only before HC leaked.

But I think some things could be working around. Im desespered for new hairstyles and costumes!

Specially the Talons hood with hair and loincloths.

 

[UltraAlt]

I  used to do a good bit of costume and skin texture mod'ing in another game I played, but it was easy enough to do with with .pdfs.

I know that there was a CoH proprietary graphics type and that means that there is limited ability to mod those files, but I have run into groups that have done it, so the programs have to be out there.

I'm not sure what the harm is of letting someone know what programs can be used to alter the costumes even if the devs don't want us to self-load costume parts in the game. We could submit them to through support and let the DEVs judge what is allowable or not.

 

I've even done some animating so knowing what animation programs are used for the game might be helpful as well. I know that they may not be a advanced as the animation tools that I used for the game that I mod'ed, but it would be cool to check it out anyway. 

[First Player]

I’d rather they add stuff than change stuff personally.

[Zep]

I'd love to see 1k/4k textures for everything.

 

Realistically the only way that is going to happen is if someone sets up batch processing and has an AI do it all. 

 

I'm happy to lend cpu/gpu power to the project but am not knowledgeable of textures, ai/ai upscaling, etc.

[SwitchFade]

On 3/25/2023 at 9:19 PM, Sakura Tenshi said:

 

it's unfortunately not that easy. Desdemona and Mother Mayhem's costume pieces are designed explicitly for their bodies and to be used as a whole. I messed around with them in DevIcon and you can see a lot of geometry holes if you don't use each piece. On top of that they don't color very well either. A funny example though of weird NPC modeling tricks is that Reichsman is missing most of the top part of his head due to his cap being so flat at the top, I think it was also done so the brim of the cap would almost completely cover his eyes. But really its funnier to say Marcus Cole needed a lobotomy to join the Column.

Sad, because....

 

Desdemona costume, please!

[Rigged]

On 3/26/2023 at 12:19 PM, Sakura Tenshi said:

 

it's unfortunately not that easy. Desdemona and Mother Mayhem's costume pieces are designed explicitly for their bodies and to be used as a whole. I messed around with them in DevIcon and you can see a lot of geometry holes if you don't use each piece. On top of that they don't color very well either. A funny example though of weird NPC modeling tricks is that Reichsman is missing most of the top part of his head due to his cap being so flat at the top, I think it was also done so the brim of the cap would almost completely cover his eyes. But really its funnier to say Marcus Cole needed a lobotomy to join the Column.

 

See, this is why I asked about the difficulty of modelling and texturing for this game. Since NPC outfits are already created, it would theoretically be much faster to edit the models to fill in the various holes etc than to create new ones. In the very least it might be possible to rig some costumes that people really want. But it really feels like there might be something much more complicated than just firing up blender and moving some polygons!

[UltraAlt]

11 hours ago, Rigged said:

See, this is why I asked about the difficulty of modelling and texturing for this game. Since NPC outfits are already created, it would theoretically be much faster to edit the models to fill in the various holes etc than to create new ones. In the very least it might be possible to rig some costumes that people really want. But it really feels like there might be something much more complicated than just firing up blender and moving some polygons!

 

The other game that I did costume and skin texture mods for had the costumes a flat artwork. 

The flat artwork for costume parts and skin textures are applied to the character model.

If you examined how the flat artwork fit on a character, you could then modify the shape, texture, color and also if it was metallic(reflective)/transparent/etc. of a costume part. It would essentially be the same costume, but with the characteristics modified within the boundaries of the existing costume part.

 

I'm unsure if the costume parts in CoH are 3d modelled and/or have a layover art pattern on top of them.

 

Can Blender even utilize the art file type that is used for the costuming in CoH?