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About this mod
For OpenMW-
I've wondered why dark and detail maps have not been used by modders until I learned tens of thousands of texturing properties need editing. Well, here they are with complete Parallax, Specular, Dark, and Detail mapsets--merged into one download. For vanilla Morrowind use the Core Complete; you will need MCP to use this mod.
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
These dark and detail maps were made to add ambient occlusion to the game and to make the onscreen image more photorealistic. This is the only 'improvement' available from this mod for vanilla Morrowind and is very subtle. Parallax maps often look 'soft' in the game, but not always. The ones that look good are the most photorealistic, so I made the dark and detail maps add photorealism to the image coming out of the mesh.
Source textures for the maps are blends made from MET1.0, MET3.0, IT1.2, IT2.1, and MWGigapixel3.0, resized as needed for the maps. Textures from any of these mods should work well with this mod although it was designed to be used with the BSA textures. The maps are not resolution matched as I tried to bring all aspects of the game textures to appear equally resolved in-game. I recolored the two gold coin, the metal key, and the index master textures, and added an alpha channel to the robe tassel textures.
Dark maps are a blend of an AO map (its settings adjusted to bring out fine detail) and a color-specular map sourced from an albedo map. I used a 'glow' detail input blend to bring the brightness of the color-specular map to near what an AO map brightness would be, and a 'phoenix' blend in the color input to add a color ambient occlusion-like effect when blended with the grayscale AO map--a true RGB dark-map.
Detail maps are also color-specular with an albedo map source. This allowed me to be able to control grayscale contrasts using the shadow and highlight settings in the albedo map. I use a 'normal' input blend to the color-specular color inputs and a difference blend to the detail inputs. These maps bring out color contrasts as well as adding subtle hue shifts that the eye sees as shape, perhaps because these hue shifts mimic those caused by Fresnel.
The parallax maps use a heightmap with its contrast reduced 54% and its mean brightness at 92.5(of 255) or about 36%. This eliminates visible upward stretching distortions and aligns the vertical to the shape of the dark and detail pair which cannot be adjusted to change the scale of the shape. That heightmap was made by blending 4 heightmaps with increasing blur and portion in the blend. This results in the contouring so obvious in some ground and rock textures and properly scales the sizes of shapes. As of version 3.0 the parallax heightmap (in the alpha channel) has 15% increased contrast added post everything else--found a way to vary the intensity without destroying the focus for the normal--and now has better focused parallax effects. This is all done as a work-around to avoid using outside editors and keeps things totally true to the base texture.
I used color-specular maps for the specular maps. As of version 0.46.0 SPEC maps have been optimized for color-specular with gloss alpha (in the WIKI gloss is called 'shininess'--ever heard of a shininess map?). So having deciphered that and finally found the correct focus for the parallax maps, a version 3 for these is done.
A set of 2x textures is now up. I had originally intended to mix other resolutions in to further my work toward an in-game balance between the resolutions of all textures onscreen. The final version I intend will do this without 1x textures, and all of those which need 4x or 8x are among the planned replacements, so only 2x are needed now to fit future plans.
A partial set of 1209 4x-textures is now up as well as a complete Core containing these, along with 2x textures to complete the set. All meshes, dark, and detail maps also included in this complete core. This will ensure that all textures that need higher resolutions will have them in case I do not find suitable replacements. An 'FWIW Complete' version containing all maps is also now up.
Future plans include releasing a set of replacement textures with maps for those textures that still do not measure up or a set of maps for replacement texture mods made by others as patches. This will require permissions for some that I want to use so those may be delayed. Those that are available without direct permission will be published when ready with proper credits. Patches for these replacement textures can be found in the miscellaneous category. They require their source mods (see the respective readme included with each).
Some of these files contain large textures that do not render at their best with dds dxt3 format for parallax and specular maps so I upgraded them to dxt5. These files are labeled as version 3.1. The image quality is much better especially close up.
Source textures for the maps are blends made from MET1.0, MET3.0, IT1.2, IT2.1, and MWGigapixel3.0, resized as needed for the maps. Textures from any of these mods should work well with this mod although it was designed to be used with the BSA textures. The maps are not resolution matched as I tried to bring all aspects of the game textures to appear equally resolved in-game. I recolored the two gold coin, the metal key, and the index master textures, and added an alpha channel to the robe tassel textures.
Dark maps are a blend of an AO map (its settings adjusted to bring out fine detail) and a color-specular map sourced from an albedo map. I used a 'glow' detail input blend to bring the brightness of the color-specular map to near what an AO map brightness would be, and a 'phoenix' blend in the color input to add a color ambient occlusion-like effect when blended with the grayscale AO map--a true RGB dark-map.
Detail maps are also color-specular with an albedo map source. This allowed me to be able to control grayscale contrasts using the shadow and highlight settings in the albedo map. I use a 'normal' input blend to the color-specular color inputs and a difference blend to the detail inputs. These maps bring out color contrasts as well as adding subtle hue shifts that the eye sees as shape, perhaps because these hue shifts mimic those caused by Fresnel.
The parallax maps use a heightmap with its contrast reduced 54% and its mean brightness at 92.5(of 255) or about 36%. This eliminates visible upward stretching distortions and aligns the vertical to the shape of the dark and detail pair which cannot be adjusted to change the scale of the shape. That heightmap was made by blending 4 heightmaps with increasing blur and portion in the blend. This results in the contouring so obvious in some ground and rock textures and properly scales the sizes of shapes. As of version 3.0 the parallax heightmap (in the alpha channel) has 15% increased contrast added post everything else--found a way to vary the intensity without destroying the focus for the normal--and now has better focused parallax effects. This is all done as a work-around to avoid using outside editors and keeps things totally true to the base texture.
I used color-specular maps for the specular maps. As of version 0.46.0 SPEC maps have been optimized for color-specular with gloss alpha (in the WIKI gloss is called 'shininess'--ever heard of a shininess map?). So having deciphered that and finally found the correct focus for the parallax maps, a version 3 for these is done.
A set of 2x textures is now up. I had originally intended to mix other resolutions in to further my work toward an in-game balance between the resolutions of all textures onscreen. The final version I intend will do this without 1x textures, and all of those which need 4x or 8x are among the planned replacements, so only 2x are needed now to fit future plans.
A partial set of 1209 4x-textures is now up as well as a complete Core containing these, along with 2x textures to complete the set. All meshes, dark, and detail maps also included in this complete core. This will ensure that all textures that need higher resolutions will have them in case I do not find suitable replacements. An 'FWIW Complete' version containing all maps is also now up.
Future plans include releasing a set of replacement textures with maps for those textures that still do not measure up or a set of maps for replacement texture mods made by others as patches. This will require permissions for some that I want to use so those may be delayed. Those that are available without direct permission will be published when ready with proper credits. Patches for these replacement textures can be found in the miscellaneous category. They require their source mods (see the respective readme included with each).
Some of these files contain large textures that do not render at their best with dds dxt3 format for parallax and specular maps so I upgraded them to dxt5. These files are labeled as version 3.1. The image quality is much better especially close up.