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Found a way to make contours on terrain textures trsansitions. What do you think? just looks not that flat

The blend factors for all terrain types should probably sum to 1, so it doesn't give light/dark bands.

Cyp wrote: ↑06 Jul 2020, 08:36The blend factors for all terrain types should probably sum to 1, so it doesn't give light/dark bands.

Just wanted to outline textures transitions or make it sharper.
UPD: now it only darkens transitions.

I guess the last one looks better than the original, as it makes it more interesting.

MaNGusT wrote: ↑06 Jul 2020, 15:31

Cyp wrote: ↑06 Jul 2020, 08:36The blend factors for all terrain types should probably sum to 1, so it doesn't give light/dark bands.

Just wanted to outline textures transitions or make it sharper.
UPD: now it only darkens transitions.
ezgif.com-crop.gif

This is more about coding, but for above post.

I'm not sure if correctly understood point of this post. It seems for me that it's about blending problem. I had some experience, while playing with cairo graphics, trying to solve some common artifacts, affecting any composited graphics, be it 2d or 3d. Some notes may be useless if those issues are already handled properly (I'm totally out of dev context here).

1. Unexpected transparency border between two stiched surfaces. Originaly I remember very sharp artifacts, appearing if antialiasing is not applied to some edjes (afaik, bilinear..anisotropic options are about texture filtering, which is not same as antialiasing).
But even if shaping AA is applied, uncareful compositing also leads to artifacts, though less visible. It is certain to happen in such naive rendering way, when objects are rendered one by one, with full antialiasing (including shape AA), then composited in mix blending mode. Reason - shaping AA is not translucency. If two surfaces share same pixel, their colors don't mix as with translucency. They sum. And that's not alpha-based additive blending mode. Alpha channel here is just another channel, like R,G,B, which must be summed - simply, without any multipliers (well - assuming, at least for premultiplied RGBA format). Exact shaping alpha values represent coverage for proper object.
In naive mode, when stiching in mixing mode, each color part is mixed with background, with final result getting unexpected transparency where it should not be.

I could propose following rendering sequence for solution, with not so deep required modifications:
- render shape into separate texture. Shaping AA must be disabled, but what is important - binary shape mask should include all pixels with any non-zero fulling, not just those with coverage >=0.5.
- draw shape surface to stiching surface in additive blending (as described above). If done correctly, overlapping pixels at edges will sum, forming what you need. Even for transparent materials, even if they have different translucency.

NOTE: any compositing, required by material properties (including translucency) must be done _before_ stiching. If stiched surfaces have dufferent transparency - breaking this rule will break some proportions.

I would also propose this way:
- detect all pixels, covered by any visible edges (not behind opaque objects). Add then to mask.
- render everything out of mask in whatever you like (naive) mode
- render pixels in mask in special mode, with shaping AA as finishing step, just before to _add_ to common result.

There could be cheaper solution for specific case when one of two stiched surfaces is opaque. Stack opaque surf above transparent and extend transparent one to at least one pixel at output device scale.

1.1. Not sure that uncovered, but still worthy to mention - if some point or line has width <1px, it should be cast to =1px, but with alpha correction, very similar to shaping (and of course with subpixel positioning with proper shaping AA). Well... I'm not sure, if such careful rendering is mandatory for games - at least some antialiasing filters easily negate such problem, though they also make picture somewhat blurry.

2. To above post. If textures fade one to other, they are better be opaque (without effects like shadows, light). For mixing mode bottom texture must be opaque everywhere, with above one fading via alpha. Probably additive stiching approach could be used too, but not sure whether such resource waste is worthy.

Edit: Ohh, I really did not get point of that post. If sharpened contours are intentional - more like art effect. I'm sure, that both sharp and soft transitions would be ok (sharpness also could be non-boolean ranged parameter). Or may be just transition distance.

nick87720z wrote: ↑07 Dec 2020, 14:16 Edit: Ohh, I really did not get point of that post.

I welcome such flow of thoughts
I think, the result I did want to get is something you have described above. 25%(or even less) of mixed textures should be overlapped with 50% transparancy.
As you can see, I failed. Mixed parts are darkened.

Finished another one scavs warehouse

Very nice.

Something like this

Warehouses look great. Can't wait to see the rest of the Scavenger stuff. I wait eagerly for a newer release

new model for crane adjusted according to Jorzi's wish list. Currently it has colors from Beta campaign.

Good stuff MaNGusT, really captures the old galvanized steel plate look. Are the textures unique for each building, or will you be making "trim sheets" to allow more reuse of textures between models, now that we have tangent space maps?

Jorzi wrote: ↑29 Mar 2021, 01:48Good stuff MaNGusT, really captures the old galvanized steel plate look.

thx, glad to see you here again.

Are the textures unique for each building, or will you be making "trim sheets" to allow more reuse of textures between models, now that we have tangent space maps?

Currently they are unique. I'm just trying to speed up my workflow. UV mapping for models like crane takes a lot of time(
But I had same thoughts as yours about repeated textures and I requested this feature.
Anyway, when a model is mapped, it will not take much time to split model to levels and repack uvw's. So I just wait. ^^
As for textures, I used about 2-3 real textures for these models. Primarily to add dust, scratches and rust. I can give you an access to my cloud with a small collection of textures I'm using, if you want.
Also, I use normal map plugin for gimp and photoshop to add same details to normal maps.

EDIT: there is also a new release of WMIT

Random Q... could you do a model for the artifacts that are dropped?

Tzeentch wrote: ↑04 May 2021, 23:26 Random Q... could you do a model for the artifacts that are dropped?

viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4245&start=750#p144400

Can be found in ARmod v4.0.1