Improved Sky Textures

Post » Thu Jun 30, 2011 8:08 am

Sorry, if somebody already came up with this, I didn`t find anything on the topic. However, the uploader writes:

"There were no new textures used to create this mod. Only the original textures from Bethesda were reworked. The textures were left in the original resolution, but were saved in an uncompressed file format, so the files are somewhat larger." http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=7694

Under these circumstances, is an improvement even possible? The uploader says he could get rid of compression artifacts, but I`m skeptical. See the comparison screenshot in the image section for yourself.
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m Gardner
 
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Post » Wed Jun 29, 2011 11:51 pm

He ran a filter(s) on the textures to eliminate the original artifacts and then saved them uncompressed, apparently.

You'd think an improvement wouldn't be possible, but take for example InsanitySorrow's hi-res armor textures. All he did was take the original textures, double the size, then ran filters and whatever else and the resulting textures do show a subtle improvement. I wouldn't have thought it was possible until I saw it.

So I don't doubt you could subtly increase the quality of sky textures, especially since clouds are probably more suitable for blurring to eliminate the artifacts like he did. I guess in that case InsanitySorrow's work is another level of skill, heh.
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Mike Plumley
 
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Post » Thu Jun 30, 2011 12:09 am

He/she probably ran a remove noise filter with some subtle settings and remove artifacts in Photoshop.

I can see an improvement in the comparison screenshot. It's less blocky and less noisy. It's really easy to do, but the result can be quite nice.

In case you're interested... I'm currently working on sky textures :P
Made three new so far. Might upload some images later.
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Claire Jackson
 
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Post » Wed Jun 29, 2011 6:53 pm

I guess in that case InsanitySorrow's work is another level of skill, heh.


Thanks for the info, but what do you mean by that?

@ hlvr

Of course you can show me your textures but I cannot guarantee to use them because in my opinion the vanilla sky textures are perfect.
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Richard Thompson
 
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Post » Thu Jun 30, 2011 12:38 am

I just mean, running a blur filter on clouds won't really affect the image negatively because clouds are, uh, cloudy, there aren't sharply defined lines or anything. But with armor meant to represent different kinds of materials, I imagine you have to take great care when scaling them up like InsanitySorrow did, or else you'll end up with something of lower visual quality than the original lower resolution textures. So whatever he did wasn't as simple as scaling up and running a sharpen filter or something, I imagine his process was more involved than the process the guy went through for the improved sky textures. Removing artifacts like that and scaling a texture up like InsanitySorrow did are two different things of course, but I was just further emphasizing how what InsanitySorrow did must have been more complex. It seemed like magic to me, anyway, heh.
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sara OMAR
 
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Post » Wed Jun 29, 2011 6:30 pm

I just mean, running a blur filter on clouds won't really affect the image negatively because clouds are, uh, cloudy, there aren't sharply defined lines or anything. But with armor meant to represent different kinds of materials, I imagine you have to take great care when scaling them up like InsanitySorrow did, or else you'll end up with something of lower visual quality than the original lower resolution textures. So whatever he did wasn't as simple as scaling up and running a sharpen filter or something, I imagine his process was more involved than the process the guy went through for the improved sky textures. Removing artifacts like that and scaling a texture up like InsanitySorrow did are two different things of course, but I was just further emphasizing how what InsanitySorrow did must have been more complex. It seemed like magic to me, anyway, heh.


Thanks for clearing up. Can you provide a link to InsanitySorrow`s stuff on TES Nexus?
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Stacy Hope
 
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Post » Wed Jun 29, 2011 10:43 pm

http://tesalliance.org/forums/index.php?/user/378-insanitysorrow/
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Charles Mckinna
 
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Post » Wed Jun 29, 2011 11:27 pm

http://tesalliance.org/forums/index.php?/user/378-insanitysorrow/


Ah, that`s the reason I didn`t found it on TES Nexus. Thanks!
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Trevor Bostwick
 
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