Just an idea (Remastered models)

[prototype1479 63]

What about taking the original OFP models and remastering them? I don't mean change it completely like most of the mods do but it should have higher LOD and texture resolution

[-Snafu- 78]

Interesting idea.

 

If I remember correctly, this was going to be a feature of Resistance. BIS planned to updated CWC content to Resistance standards, but it was dropped at some stage for whatever reason.

[Macser 776]

A lot of folks will probably ask, "why bother?". There's any number of mods and addons out there to fulfill that role. But you could counter that by saying they aren't cohesive when cobbled together as a replacement package. The question is, are you prepared to have a go at it yourself?

 

If you're going to do it, you might as well go from the ground up. But it's quite a lot of work.

[prototype1479 63]

The reason I'm posting this here is because I never really felt like the other addons feels like remastered version just feels different and I'm not gonna go for it at all :D but just an idea for any modellers out there.

 

Yeah other mods and addons make it look different but making it look like a remastered version rather than making it look totaly different than vanilla is much better imo.

 

I have seen some arma 3 mods or bi's work that uses ofp's buildings but with better textures and LOD just like that thats the idea

[zulu1 145]

While the idea has merit, if it ever had a chance of being done it would have been done years ago. Except for a few modders remaining, like Macser, Prof.T, Spad and Lenyoga there are no others to take it on and they have their own projects.

 

So bundling un-related addons is all can hope to do.

[-Snafu- 78]

Back in the day, Silesian tried a similar project called OFP Retextured.

 

The goal was to retexture OFP's assets to provide a better looking game. Silesian released a few addons, some of which made it to ofp.info, and some didn't. If you search the ofp.info backup you should be able to find the Su-25, Apache, Cessna etc.

 

https://forums.bohemia.net/profile/751108-silesian/?do=content&type=forums_topic&change_section=1

[Marc13Bautista 59]

Have you tried out my mod pack? I haven't really gone and made a post on it though. A few of my friends tried it out, so this might be what you're looking for!

 

[Macser 776]

@prototype1479  The main thing stopping a project like that would be as Zulu mentioned. Getting enough people on board. I know from personal experience how hard that is. First off they need the skills. Then they need to have an interest in that era. Fighting with the original models is tricky, given the fact they weren't unwrapped in the way most people approach it these days. Almost all of them were planar mapped. Which is quick enough for the original author. But it's a nightmare for anyone that has to deal with it later. Largely because of all the overlap.

[prototype1479 63]

I guess you are right TBH

 

WW4 mod is the closest one i see but its still not good enough there are some additions that doesn't make it look like a remaster

[krzychuzokecia 717]

First off let's start with some definitions, because words have meanings afterall.

 

Remaster - remastering is a process of taking a source material of pre-existing work of art, and combining this source material in a way different from previous, original release. Examples are remastered music albums, or movies. In video games it usually refers to re-releases of old titles by either original developers, or new owners of intellectual property. This can only be done when developers still have acces to original source files, for example hi-resolution textures, which were downsized in original release due to technical limitations of old hardware. Without these source materials there can't be no remaster - afterall simply upscaling original textures won't change their look on the models at all, and will result in higher memory usage.

 

Then there's recreation which may, or may not, require an extensive work by 2D/3D artists. There's also a varying degree of how much new artists will follow the original art direction. For example: @-Snafu- mentioned retextures done by @SILESIAN which closely followed BIS style, and even adopted original models and mapping (which are not that good to put it nicely). Then there are hi-quality model replacement packs which required a lot of involvement from many artists. These usually have a way different appearance when compared to BI models, but still fit into the 1980 Cold War theme (and in most cases this custom work fixes many of BI mistakes like original AKS-74U which doesn't look at all like the real thing).

 

So, since BI are the only one who can make a graphically remastered OFP, and there's abundance of custom content already, is there a real need for such an effort? I don't think so. Problem with OFP original appearance is not restricted to just simple texture resolution. Whole OFP art is terribly dated, even when compared to Resistance models made just two years later - there's a lightyears difference in art quality between vanilla and expansion pack content. There is some salvageable stuff there - as already mentioned, some objects used in Armas 1/2/3 are evidently based on the same source material used in OFP (like specific burned down tenement house). But even in those cases, BI decided to make models, mapping and textures from scratch - they used the same reference photos/data (probably even the ones collected during OFP development), but it is evident that OFP source files (textures of various resolution, 3D models) were of no use.

 

And even if we'd all agree that we are OK with all the problems with original game art, just bring us higher resolution, please, the community is the last person who would provide such a remastered release because of the lack of source material. Again - we can only recreate, and this takes a hell lot of a time, even if we'd do just retextures. Now I agree that some simple visual-only replacement mod would be very nice to have, but with current state of community (which @zulu1 described) I'm not crossing my fingers. And in fact, if there is no mod/replacement pack made during last 17 years, which would satisfy your requirements or sense of aesthetics, then there's a high probability that it will never be made.

 

And now I log off for another year to take care of things which are unfortunately really important...

[Macser 776]

As Krzy said, the original models are an "acquired" taste. If you want the textures to look as good as possible it would definitely mean a new unwrap for each of them. But more than likely that would show up the models for how rough they really are. And that would just be the vehicles. Which would be the best place to start.

 

I don't mind collaborating with people, once I know they're serious enough about getting something done. Getting them interested in the first place is the hard part. I wouldn't bother with something like that on my own. I've been down that road before......

[prototype1479 63]

I have a question to everybody : why you all thought I am going for modelling or I'm a modeller? :D

 

Some people even outside forums thought I was a modeller and asked me to help them with their project

[Macser 776]

I can only speak for myself, but I didn't assume you were. Otherwise you would've put something up to give people an idea of what you had in mind for this thread. People make assumptions all the time. But I couldn't tell you why. 

[prototype1479 63]

Speaking of textures what's the OFP's original models max resolution for soldiers houses etc.

[zwobot 19]

The *prefernces.exe gives 8192x8192 as maximum setting so this should be the maximum?

[krzychuzokecia 717]

Just when I thought I was out... They pull me back in!

 

5 hours ago, prototype1479 said:

I have a question to everybody : why you all thought I am going for modelling or I'm a modeller?

Well, for one I don't think anyone assumes that you're a modeller. Even more - it's pretty clear that you don't have a good grasp of what you're asking for. I mean - taking original textures and upscaling them just like that? That's not how this works! 

 

However, because this is indeed a task for modeller/texture artist, and you seem to be quite excited by the idea, the only answer you can get on these forums is: great idea! Go get 'em tiger! These days nobody's going to do it for you (and for anybody else really). Why? @zulu1 said it - everyone have it's own projects. It's just lucky coincidence that everyone here is nice and kind for you - somewhere else you'd be labeled a good idea fairy and bluntly told to go have a sexual intercourse with yourself.

 

Once again: a visual remake/model replacement of original OFP content? Great idea! So great, that several teams have tried to do just that during last 17 years. Have they achieved their goals? Probably. Am I personally satisfied with their work? Well, to some extent. Would I take up this task once again, to achieve what I think is important? Possibly, somewhere during next 20 years. Will I do it now? No way, you silly!  Maybe these answers are not exactly what you hoped for, but I bet you won't get different ones here...

 

2 hours ago, prototype1479 said:

Speaking of textures what's the OFP's original models max resolution for soldiers houses etc.

256x256 for objects (vehicles etc.) and 512x512 for land.

[JdB 151]

47 minutes ago, krzychuzokecia said:

Well, for one I don't think anyone assumes that you're a modeller. Even more - it's pretty clear that you don't have a good grasp of what you're asking for.

 

However, because this is indeed a task for modeller/texture artist, and you seem to be quite excited by the idea, the only answer you can get on these forums is: great idea! Go get 'em tiger! These days nobody's going to do it for you (and for anybody else really).@zulu1

 

I personally always assume that someone putting forward an idea without showing any work that has already been done doesn't have the ability to make something themselves or they'd have at least started working on something already to see if their ideas are feasible and to show potential helpers that they are serious about this. Countless people have made countless suggestions since even before the game was released. 99,9% didn't go anywhere because the people that came up with the ideas were only visionaries that come up with ideas, and not the people that would have to put in the countless hours to make it a reality. Besides instantly making people biased against the person putting forward the idea for perceived lazy attitude (getting someone else to do the actual hard work) that also means that most of the time their ideas lack realism due to a lack of experience. Either it would take a professional gaming studio months of full time work (and therefore hobbyist modders years) or the ideas are actually technically impossible without access to source code. And again making or editing configs and scripts is something a fair number of people in this community could do, but actually developing a game engine is reserved for the very few like Kegetys or Fearsumenjin.

 

Regarding the original texture size for OFP it should be noted that a model's textures are not on a single uvmap (texture), but are spread out on a handful to up to hundreds of separate texture files. I did the April Fools joke with the T-55 and that involved 147 texture files. Many modders use less texture files (but larger resolution) than BIS did. So saying "256x256 for objects" can be deceiving if you're not experienced with modding original files. With Invasion 1944 we did a test where we had initially done the same as BIS did, to break up the textures into a number of smaller texture files because that was just what was learned from looking at the original files and so people just went with it, but during the test we used a program to merge textures together into larger files (so for example merging four 512x512 files into a single 1024x1024 file). This had no noticable impact on performance, but this was around 2006-2007, so it might be that when BIS did the limited amount and speed of RAM and cache available circa 2000 meant that caching larger files was too much of a strain at the time. There is a limit to the ability to do this just because of the age of the engine. I remember someone did a very high res (2048 and 4096 IIRC) retexture of an original island and that wasn't a success (4096 especially) imo in terms of performance even though our PCs are all considerably more powerful than anything BIS used during development. Even modern games don't use files that big (4096) for just everything, except for core items (more on that below).

 

Someone who was studying game development told me that his teachers said that using very high resolution textures was pointless because a screen can put out only a limited amount of pixels anyway. Like a run-of-the-mill screen has a resolution of 1920x1080. An object with a 4096 texture would look just as good as a 2048 texture one except when viewed up close but would be more taxing on the system. Essentially wasting resources. With 4K screens that same would be true for 8192 textures. Yes there might be a barely visible improvement in image quality, but it would be far outweighed by the impact on performance and having a game that looks great but can't be played at a good FPS won't sell very well. There is also the size of the object to consider where size of the intended object (physically speaking) dictates the size of the texture file. So not using a 2048x2048 texture for a bucket no matter how many times it will be shoved into the focus of the player's view. Some studios can't be bothered to optimize their files or compress them properly leading to overly large installation requirements and poorer performance than is necessary. There might be hundreds of artists working on a game, but the installation is made by only one person who brings it all together. And he is the only one that cares about the size of the game, the artists primary focus is about making their art look as good as possible and smaller texture sizes and good compression are detrimental to that.

[Macser 776]

If you take the average armored vehicle, as JDB mentioned, you'll find they're comprised of many different textures. Sometimes numbering in the 100s. With 256x256 seeming to be the most common. I can see why they might've taken that route at the time. Speed. It's far easier to just planar map a texture onto a surface than take the time to properly unwrap it. But it does lead to a hell of a lot of draw calls and split verts. Or what BI call sections. Sections don't just apply to textures though. They also include other properties. Proxies or other unmapped objects count as 1 section. A texture assignment counts as one section. Also "materials" used in hit detection for displaying damage. And alpha ordering. Move top, move bottom etc.

 

On top of that, if you've done any copy pasting that will also potentially add sections. None of which will show up in O2light. If you bring the model into O2PE for example you should see a match between the proxies/textures and the section count. But sometimes they don't. And it won't tell you why. Even after sorting there can still be a mismatch. Sorting can break alpha ordering by the way. So you'll have to redo those.

 

High section counts will affect performance especially without res lods. So fewer, larger textures should offset that. To be honest, when you consolidate the textures in some of the models they can actually add up to 2- 4 1024x1024 maps. Only it's done with far more drawcalls potentially.

 

I think if you keep the section counts as low as possible you can up the resolution and the geometrical complexity, without a significant impact. At the very least it won't be any worse than the defaults. A few 1024s would seem to be the best option. It's easier to manage for edits.And I believe the mac port may have problems displaying 2048x2048 textures.I'd remove the damage materials personally, and consider replacing the vehicle with a destroyed model, when killed. Using less geometry and a low res texture.I always thought it was gimmicky and just a neat little cosmetic touch. It's not the kind of feedback you'd have in a real situation. And maybe use a very small texture for the lowest res lod. No point in having anything over 256x256 for what's essentially a blob of colour at a distance.

 

That's a fair bit of tinkering, and applies to just one model. I sometimes haven't even followed those guidelines myself in the past. It's a lot to remember.

[prototype1479 63]

I don't know :D 3 people actually thought I'm a modeller one was on facebook other one PM'ed me on this site and last one was from steam even though title says "Just an idea" :P

 

At first I really didn't thought anyone would have thought about remastering the original models this entire 17 years because just like I said before none of them really felt to me like a remastered model but now reading all of these I was absolutely wrong and if I gave a little bit of thought I might have figured that out.

 

And I was just hoping to get lucky and someone to do it anyways since I do actually see people still making models this game (But few) and I thought why not even if there is a possibility of no one doing it I'm not losing anything anyways and if you think I actually do lose something then LETS DEBATE ABOUT IT >:).

 

Okay now back to the textures - why there is a setting thing to change textures quality anyways is it for mods or was it just planned and dropped? And can OFP support 8K textures? I heard it doesn't.

[Macser 776]

I don't know to be honest. But I doubt it.

 

Not that I'd want to use it anyway. For general usage you wouldn't really see the benefit. The highest I'd go is 2048x2048 for a single addon. But I often just use a set of 1024s.

 

You're not losing anything, and neither is anyone else. The replies are just pointing out the fact it's not likely to happen, and why. There's nothing wrong with throwing ideas around. But people generally respond better to something backed up with an attempt from the thread author. Otherwise it's basically an addon/mod request. I'm sure some people thought about "re-mastering" the game assets over the years. And the various replacement mods are essentially an attempt to do that. But they were often done by people more interested in a modern setting.

 

Apart from making it yourself,  the only other option,  is to wait around for somebody else to create the exact thing you had in mind. But that's unlikely to happen. 

[prototype1479 63]

Here's an idea : Lets post a picture (or name) of what model we think is close to a remaster or is a remaster of an addon

[krzychuzokecia 717]

Remaster examples: modern re-releases of classic games such as Alien versus Predator or Turok. Remasters usually bring following features: higher texture resolution and support for modern screen resolutions (incl. widescreens). Some titles also include modern post-processing effects (Turok). Remasters don't require much work from art team (the whole idea is to use old art anyway), and new engine features often use 3rd-party-provided backends (SMAA anyone?). Many of these remasters were made by current IP owners as a bonus addition to new game in the franchise (AvP or Sid Meier's Pirates!).

 

Once again, remaster is not something which community can make (unless game source files were released by developer as an open source). So what we have in OFP world?

 

Retextures: @SILESIAN work is best example. New textures are created using the same 3D model and the same mapping. It still requires a lot of work, by talented 2D artist. Personally, I once attempted to make a retextured variants of BIS M16 model. Naturally, I'm not a 2D artist, and can't make a nice looking texture at all, but even my effort was hindered by mistakes done by BI in the past - prime example being overlapping mapping.

 

Re-maps/re-wraps: truth be told, there's only one in existence that I know of. Macser's AH-64 model for Command & Conquer mod. Same model as BI, and even same 2D art. However it used new mapping/wrapping which actually make sense. With something like that you could then make a beautiful texture for an old model.

 

Custom art in addons: the big question. If you're talented, and have enough of free time, why waste that time on making retextures of BI models, when you can make a high-quality model of particular piece of equipment? We've already have enough of custom content, to replace every vanilla model - US infantry and weapons by HYK, LSR, SJB, STGN etc., Soviet infantry and weapons by RHS and ORCS, vehicles such as Combat! Bradleys and HMMWVs, several Abrams addons, Soviet armour by RHS, ORCS and many others. The list goes on and on. Granted - when used in one model replacement pack (FFUR anyone?), they lack cohesiveness. But this cohesiveness went out through windown anyway, when Resistance was released in 2003 with it's high-quality art (compare Resistance models and textures with CWC ones - the difference is clear).

 

At this point, either someone takes up on this idea (and that someone ain't me, sorry!), or this thread will die like many similiar (identical?) threads in the past. Because, well, you're not the first to came up with this.

[Macser 776]

Let me ask a question of you prototype1479. Have you seriously considered learning how to model, or texture?

 

I think I already know what you're first response will be. But most, if not all the people you'd consider decent modders are not professionals. And would never claim to be particularly talented. I'm certainly not. We learned the hard way. As I said earlier. If you want something, the best way to get it is to make it. You don't need a diploma or art classes. There's plenty of resources still available that deal with modding OFP. And I'd certainly have no problem sharing what I know. If you're interested. And that applies to anyone else reading this thread and pondering the same question.

 

Like the old saying goes. Give a man some food, and he eats for a day. Teach him how to fish and he eats for a lifetime.

[prototype1479 63]

Well I didn't think that much of modelling or texturing too seriously but I got a question for you : why did you asked me that question ? :D I think its obvious

[prototype1479 63]

I mean I already clarified that I understood so I don't get why you posted this