No detail textures in CS:S or HL2?

[Lobster]

Half-Life 1 is capable of detail textures, why wouldnt HL2 be? it does require extra work, and when ur working with that ammount of textures, i can understand why valve would rather focus there time on more pressing issues.

 

[FictiousWill]

i have a card that is twice as fast as yours lol and as far as the detail issue if i was making a game and threw a beta at people for the first time i wouldnt have all the bells and whistles turned on for people to see or it wouldnt be as breath taking when it is in front of us when we first play the game, what do you guys think

I think that's stupid.

Half-Life 1 is capable of detail textures, why wouldnt HL2 be? it does require extra work, and when ur working with that ammount of textures, i can understand why valve would rather focus there time on more pressing issues.

Where were the detail textures in HL1? And detail textures are not a lot of work. You have one single sand, rock, metal, concrete and wood 256x256 detail tile that fades in when you get close. That's all there is to it.

 

[Risiko]

I don't know too much about it, but if it's as basic as you say it is, I'm sure it'll be in the game (as Valve has confirmed). Whether it's enabled in the beta now, we cannot know, but it doesn't appear it is.

Look at this screenshot for example: http://vakuum.mine.nu/galleri/24/351.jpg

The ground does lack a little grainy. In any event, I think someone should email Valve asking them if detail textures is in the CS:S beta right now.

 

[Lobster]

Where were the detail textures in HL1?

The feature was only added to the engine recently, Hostile Intent and Day of Defeat now use it in certain maps, the hostile intent map Alandalus is some of the best HL1 work ive seen, esspeacialy now there using Detail Textureing

Couldnt find a ss of that paticular map but heres hi_hotel.

http://forums.hostileintent.org/uploads/post-8-1085641438.jpg

 

[TheWart]

The feature was only added to the engine recently, Hostile Intent and Day of Defeat now use it in certain maps, the hostile intent map Alandalus is some of the best HL1 work ive seen, esspeacialy now there using Detail Textureing

Couldnt find a ss of that paticular map but heres hi_hotel.

http://forums.hostileintent.org/uploads/post-8-1085641438.jpg

wow!

That wallpaper loks better than the CS:S ground textures.

 

[Aphal]

Half-Life 1 is capable of detail textures, why wouldnt HL2 be?

The email from Rick Ellis says that it is capable, the problem is that there aren't any in the game.

 

[Moto]

EDIT: Nevermind.

 

[Speculator]

1. Ut2k4 does not support Bumpmapping of any kind
2. Detail textures are not textures that span at huge resolutions, they're multi-layerd textures(you apply 2+ textures upon a surface)that improve image quality upon the first. This isn't exclusive to OGL.

 

[FictiousWill]

yeah, I don't know why someone was talking about bump mapping. Thanks for additional clarification Speculator.

 

[Uh-Oh]

Detail textures are also in Natural Selection (well, the user has to download a texture pack, and enable it in the console).

The beta IS incomplete. We only have access to 1 player model per team, most sounds are the same as the original counter-strike, we have 1 map, and I do believe some textures are not final.

Also, if detail textures are as simple as you imply, then they will no doubt be implemented sooner or later. Why are they not in yet? Maybe lack of time, maybe there's a good reason? They might cause slowdowns on older hardware. I remember a few people testing a natural-selection map with and witouth the detail textures, and they did register a FPS drop (wasn't THAT big, but still...).

Time will tell, so let's all be patient.

Here is a quote from the Natural-Selection mapping forums:

_detailtextures (0,1)

according to what I could find from a quick google

r_detailtextures does the following

A detail texture is a very small, fine pattern that is faded in as you approach a surface, for example wood grain, or imperfections in stone. It will improve visual quality although it will cause a performance hit especially on older machines.

Here's a last quote of interest

Prsearle's Guide to Half-Life Detail Textures
To add detail textures to your map, you'll need two things:
The detail textures
A detail texture list file

Detail textures
Detail textures should be greyscale images. 128x128 is a good size to use. It's best to use 50% grey as a base colour and darken bits that should be highlighted.

The texture should be saved as a 24-bit uncompressed TGA file. It should be placed in your ns/gfx/detail folder and named appropriately (e.g. "ground1.tga" or "shinymetal3.tga").

Detail Texture List File
The list file is what tells Half-Life which detail texture to use in your map. It is a text file and should be named x_detail.txt, where x is the name of your map. The file should be placed in the same directory as the bsp file. So if I was adding detail textures to ns_dust, then the list file would be ns/maps/ns_dust_detail.txt.

The list file should contain one line for each texture you want to apply a detail texture to. Each line should have four items seperated by tabs. The first item is the texture name; the second item is the detail texture filename relative to the ns/gfx directory and without the extension. The third and four items specify the x and y scale of the detail texture; larger values make it bigger. 10.0 gives a good result usually. If that all sounded a bit confusing, here's an example: say I wanted to use the detail texture ns/gfx/detail/ground3.tga wherever the texture out_pav3 occurs. I might use a line looking like this:
QUOTE
out_pav3 detail/ground3 10.0 10.0



Notes
The detail textures will only show up if the player has r_detailtextures set to 1.
Avoid using detail textures on random tiling textures (-0texname, -1texname); the detail isn't applied to any randomly picked textures.
Try playing around with different scales; 10.0 to 25.0 works depending on the textures involved.
If your making your own detail textures, make sure they tile well or you'll end up with a grid pattern. Also, it's important the TGAs are 24-bit uncompressed - Half-Life will not load them otherwise.

 

[lord finesse]

yeah hell Uh Oh that told me a hell of alot. Probably more then I would inquire into detailed textures, all I know is they're pretty! But yeah covered all the bases there, good info find. :naughty:

 

[Uh-Oh]

Here are a few exemples. An image is worth a thousand words.
exemple 1
exemple 2 (really good)

 

[Roland Deschain]

*Clear my throat*

WAIT FOR THE FRIGGING FINAL BUILD TO COME OUT, THEN COMPLAIN!!!!!!

 

[Kschreck]

That was my only complaint with Half-Life 2. Why was the textures so low res? I mean the graphics are pretty good, but the low resolution textures kind of hurt it. That would be nice if they added higher resolution textures in Half-Life 2 and Counter-Strike Source.

 

[FictiousWill]

Here are a few exemples. An image is worth a thousand words.
exemple 1
exemple 2 (really good)

I'm not sure why anybody would want to apply matching nontiling detail textures like that. I think those examples are just to simulate higher resolutions in the HL engine by using the detail texture feature that supports higher res detail textures.

Source already has high-res textures. But unfortunately high-res is never high enough. In stretchy areas (like the ground) or whenever you get close to a textured poly, they'll go blurry and pixelated.

Those "higher res through detail textures" linked above aren't really what I was talking about, though it uses the same principle. Detail textures as they're meant to be used are usually small tiling textures that provide extra detail when close enough for a texel to take up more than one pixel in the rasterizer.

Ideally they should be a part of a material. So if you apply a wood material in Hammer it sets the texture, detail texture, hit sound, hit decal, etc etc accordingly. The added detail textures in the HL1 engine is more of a hack.

EDIT:

*Clear my throat*

WAIT FOR THE FRIGGING FINAL BUILD TO COME OUT, THEN COMPLAIN!!!!!!

Wow. Now that's pretty clever. Valve releases a beta for testing, debugging and general reaction analysis. But hey, if we find something we think should be implemented, or find a bug or have suggestions/complaints/questions, we should keep quiet! Because Valve only released the beta for shits and giggles!
Wait until the final release for comments folks, valve can patch through steam or whatever the shit the argument is.

 

[ktimekiller]

umm *cough* i had beta *cough* and it looks flawless, it doesnt look like crap and i mean hl2 beta *cough*

 

[FictiousWill]

umm *cough* i had beta *cough* and it looks flawless, it doesnt look like crap and i mean hl2 beta *cough*

Do you have any idea what we're talking about whatsoever?

So we've established that detail textures are nowhere to be seen in Soure so far. That rather sucks. Supposedly the feature is implemented, but I'd like some screens, plz.

 

[ktimekiller]

ya, but i am answing to kschreck =]

 

[FictiousWill]

Your post is still irrelevent. Did you mean that there are indeed detail textures in the HL2 beta?

 

[ktimekiller]

.... he said that hl2 didnt look that good, so i answered i had beta and it looked just fine

 

[FreemanHL2]

Detailed textures are just bump-maps without the specularity.

In other words they both do the same thing except bump-maps are effected by light.
(they look shiny and can sometimes have shadows).

So bump-mapping is better but puts a MUCH larger strain on the good ol' GPU. So you can have plain texture, detail texture, or bump-mapping. Having both would do nothing, unless the detail texture and the bump-map were different textures? I don't know if that is possible.

Anyway I have experience with 3D modeling so I do know what i'm talking about. It's obvious that VALVe haven't put any detail textures into the maps, maybe they just want to get it out and fill in the details later. After all ppl are saying that shaders are not included, and detail textures will probably come in with the shaders.

Using bump-mapping on large surfaces is very unconvential. It is impossible to bump map your entire map, this just isn't possible with current hardware unless you use a very low res texture, in which case detail textures would undoubtedly become the most effective method. I doubt that we will be seeing this kind of technology being implemented efficiently until Unreal 3, which uses Bump-mapping on almost all surfaces. VALVe however may be able to create an effective method of large-scale bump-mapping on current hardware, and soon as bump-mapping is a shader we will not see this untill the full-version.

 

[ktimekiller]

Detailed textures are just bump-maps without the specularity.

In other words they both do the same thing except bump-maps are effected by light.
(they look shiny and can sometimes have shadows).

So bump-mapping is better but puts a MUCH larger strain on the good ol' GPU. So you can have plain texture, detail texture, or bump-mapping. Having both would do nothing, unless the detail texture and the bump-map were different textures? I don't know if that is possible.

Anyway I have experience with 3D modeling so I do know what i'm talking about. It's obvious that VALVe haven't put any detail textures into the maps, maybe they just want to get it out and fill in the details later. After all ppl are saying that shaders are not included, and detail textures will probably come in with the shaders.

Using bump-mapping on large surfaces is very unconvential. It is impossible to bump map your entire map, this just isn't possible with current hardware unless you use a very low res texture, in which case detail textures would undoubtedly become the most effective method. I doubt that we will be seeing this kind of technology being implemented efficiently until Unreal 3, which uses Bump-mapping on almost all surfaces. VALVe however may be able to create an effective method of large-scale bump-mapping on current hardware, and soon as bump-mapping is a shader we will not see this untill the full-version.

um when i looked on the new unreal engine cid, it looked like EVERYTHING had bumb mapping, it was insane

 

[FictiousWill]

---see above---

Detail textures are not bump maps. Bump maps are not specular maps. DeusEx 1 used detail textures all over every one of its maps.

ktimekiller, you don't have a clue.

 

[ktimekiller]

umm, i aint talknig about deusex 1.......

 

[ManHacks]

ooo so thats what detailed texture means lol. :dumbfounded: i sure hope that it has this. Does turning it off increase FPS greatly?

 

[FictiousWill]

OK, ktimekiller, friendly clueless HL2 beta player, here's the deal:

Detail textures. Are they (by they I refer to Detail Textures) present in the source engine. Please confirm (read: by playing the HL2 beta and looking), or stop making stupid obvious comments that elongate the thread.

I do not approve of any HL2 beta playing in order to confirm detail texturing. Don't do it! ... WINK NO NO NO!

edit:

ooo so thats what detailed texture means lol. :dumbfounded: i sure hope that it has this. Does turning it off increase FPS greatly?

No, it doens't hurt fps that much. Sure there's a hit, but we're talking a single frame hit or something. That's why I keep bringing up old games with detail texturing, such as deus ex 1.

 

[FreemanHL2]

um when i looked on the new unreal engine cid, it looked like EVERYTHING had bumb mapping, it was insane

THAT IS WHAT I SAID, perhaps you read it too fast?

Source already has high-res textures. But unfortunately high-res is never high enough. In stretchy areas (like the ground) or whenever you get close to a textured poly, they'll go blurry and pixelated

I don't think resolution is the issue, the res is definetly high enough. Bump-mapping is most often applied to make a texture appear 3D. This effect is achieved by giving the surface depth and specularity, tricking our eyes into believing it is a raised material. If you look side on, you will see that it is actually flat.

The resolution is quite sufficient, we are just not satisfied with a "flat" surface. We want to see more depth in our textures. This is only achived by creating a layer of depth with detail textures or making it looked raised through bump-mapping.

 

[ktimekiller]

ok i give up, i will officially stop arguing about this

 

[FictiousWill]

I don't think resolution is the issue, the res is definetly high enough. Thus ensues shaded bumpmapping (possibly normal mapping) 101.

Resolution is the issue. Bump maps etc are great, whatever, but they don't add magic resolution to a texture. You can give a texture all the bump and specularity you want. It won't go any higher res. Detail textures make it look like higher res the closer you get. And we can even see pixellation in CS:S when standing up, let alone fallen down or right up against a wall or other surface.

ok i give up, i will officially stop arguing about this

Thanks!

 

[poseyjmac]

yea i want to see the gritty grains of sand on the floor in dust.

 

[FictiousWill]

yea i want to see the gritty grains of sand on the floor in dust.

When it's such an old technique, makes it look so much better, doesn't hit performance much, requires a tiny amount of textures, and our alternate option is blurred yellow pixels - yeah I want the gritty grain detail overlay too.

 

[Uh-Oh]

Okay, since my exemples clearly didn't show off what FictiousWill wanted to express (although they look great for the half-life engine). See the 2 attachments.

 

[FictiousWill]

The detail texture is independent of the texture. The detail only shows the surface type of the material. The first pic is just a useage of detail textures to fake high-res textures.

The second one looks good. I may be wrong, the player's still a distance from the wall.

 

[Risiko]

Thanks Uh-Oh, now I have a better idea of what detail textures are. In fact, I think that's why the Half Life mod "The Specialists" looked so good to me compared to other Half Life mods - detail textures.

Now, here's what we need. Someone email the correct Valve person and ask if detail textures are currently in the CS: Source beta, and if not, when they will be implemented. I'm really interested about this, and I greatly appreciate anyone willing to do this.

I'm not exactly sure which person to send it to or I'd do it myself.

Thanks!

 

[FreemanHL2]

Send it to rick. And the answer is NO, we have a number of people here that know what they are talking about, I think we'd know if we were seeing detailed textures.

Also, Resolution is important, but from what i've seen the res is high enough. We just need detailed textures to give it that extra depth, or those sandy grains that everyone wants to see. Resolution is not a key issue in this debate, we are talking about giving already high-res texture depth and quility so that we can see details we would otherwise not be able to see. A grainy effect would not be achieved very well by bump-mapping, unless it was insanely high-res. It would be better attained through detailed texturing.

VAVLe have already said it supports detailed texturing. They will probably not add detailed textures to old maps, you might have to wait for new ones to be created.

 

[Risiko]

They will probably not add detailed textures to old maps, you might have to wait for new ones to be created.

What do you mean 'old maps'. You mean the source remake of Dust they won't put detail textures in? I can't think of why not. Detail textures do make quite a difference up close and I'd be a little dissapointed if this wasn't implemented.

 

[FreemanHL2]

I'm only thinking of reasons why they haven't included detail textures. Perhaps they will only include them in new maps, not old ones like the remake of Dust.

 

[Ghost Freeman]

I'll be upset if CS:S and HL2 aren't as nice as they said it would be back during E3.

 

[FreemanHL2]

Well, HL2 definetly has a lot of bump-mapping throughout the game, I have seen several tiles that are clearly bump-mapped. So HL2 will definetly have quality graphics, CS:S will also have full access to all of these source functions. Weather Valve will let the community create new maps with detail textures or will be including them with current maps is another thing...

 

[SunshineRecorder]

Any official reponse about latter implementation of this yet?