This is a "beta" release of my Vivec bump map overhaul. It should be complete, but I might have missed a mesh or two. Also, I'd like to hear that it works from a couple of people before posting it on PES.
I think I'll edit this post accordingly once it's on PES.

http://img809.imageshack.us/f/morrowind46.jpg/ / http://img714.imageshack.us/f/morrowind47.jpg/

I tried not to go crazy on the effect, but you can see it pretty well on this comparison.

I didn't spend much time tinkering with the different maps, or with individual maps at all.
While I think that it already looks pretty good, future texture packs could make much better use of the additional maps.
Most time went into the tedious and annoying mesh editing, so more picky people might be better off considering this as a mesh replacer/modder's resource


Here are some more screens for you to enjoy:

http://img834.imageshack.us/i/morrowind36.jpg/
http://img830.imageshack.us/i/morrowind37.jpg/
http://img816.imageshack.us/i/morrowind38.jpg/
http://img832.imageshack.us/i/morrowind39.jpg/
http://img97.imageshack.us/i/morrowind40.jpg/
http://img7.imageshack.us/i/morrowind41.jpg/
http://img841.imageshack.us/i/morrowind42.jpg/
http://img231.imageshack.us/i/morrowind43.jpg/

Considering the fps hit: I enabled fps in MGE to show the difference in the screens just to see that there isn't any... I still think there is an fps hit (and there should be imo), so you better be prepared.


And finally, here's the download link:
http://www.mediafire.com/?i4pg56g386w2zwr
(v3 - added Molag Mar and some missing textures)



Please report any errors or "missing" meshes. I hope I got all the meshes and textures.

Credits go to AnOldFriend for his vivec/velothi retexture, which all my bump/gloss maps are based on

Good job, bet that was tedious in the extreme.
However, I'd expect you'll get better performance if you resize some of your textures down!

For example:
tx_vbase_02.dds is 342k.
tx_vbase_02_g.dds is 2731k.
tx_vbase_02_nm.dds is 2731k

The base texture should usually have the most detail. The others should be the same size or even smaller if it works. I start as small as feasible and see if increasing the resolution makes a difference, other than a reduction in performance.

Ps. Three things on closer inspection. Your NiTextureEffect node references a Vivec_reflection.dds which is not provided. Two, all my experiments indicated that bump trumped gloss (you can use this for mesh embedded no-glow mods), but you have provided both. Have you found both work? I'd expect the bump alone to be enough. Three, don't forget to give the required options in the code patch for it all to work. Nice work though!

Good stuff mang, I'm a bump map fangirl but I wonder why you picked vivec of all places, it's quite flat relatively. Brick type surfaces are probably the worst when viewed at an angle. The rest depends on whose textures they are, when people use sharp detailed photographs of something with obvious depth it looks flat as hell, like someone wallpapered the world with National Geographic pages. Have you seen Connary's cave textures? I bet that'd be amazing with bump maps.

Yup, in bethesda games with normal maps they're half the resolution of the diffuse. I think for objects with intricate details having a same-sized bump map is quite alright

You're right, how could I forget the reflection map -.- I'm sorry, I'll update the link asap. Actually, I'm surprised that it seems to work without it.

I'm puzzled about the rest though. Having only started to use "bump maps" with Morrowind, I was under the assumption that the gloss map defined where the fake bump should be applied. I read that you're supposed to put the alpha of the normal map in the blue channel, but I wasn't able to get any results without the gloss map whatsoever.

Anyway, I already said this might be more of a mesh replacer. Redoing the maps is a breeze compared to manually editing the meshes again, so if you could shed some light on MW bump maps (pun pun pun!), I'll gladly rework them.

@merunnin: Why I picked Vivec? Because it only consists of a handful of meshes compared to other places/cities. Editing the meshes is so much more time-consuming than making the additional maps. I hope I'll find a way to batch-edit meshes soon.

and another edit: Yep, I'll certainly halve the resolution of the bump/gloss maps before the proper release. It's not that I didn't know that before, I just didn't care, since it didn't make any difference in fps while testing. (I started in Balmora, and lower normal map resolution just looked worse without one more frame per second :/ )

and yet another edit: I should work on the compression as well, that's right

The blue channel is the gloss map. Since you said you put the alpha "into" the blue channel, I'm guessing you didn't get any results because the you turned the blue channel black? Yes the blue channel controls the specularity of the surface and by extension- which areas are bump mapped. Since the illusion is created by the varying shininess over the surface, non reflective areas will appear as flat as before.

I didn't touch the normal maps If anything, messing with the blue channel seemed to achieve the same results as a corresponding gloss map.

edit: I really might have missed something big here. I hope getting it right doesn't involve redoing all the meshes again -.-

Well yes that's what I was trying to say. I think I misunderstood you, what was the question again? Oh and I never mentioned normal maps? :confused:

http://i56.tinypic.com/2iuyl2b.png

Running on an ATi Radeon 4850 with the required MCP fixes enabled.

I think I'm just as confused now. I thought:

Bump map -> Gloss map -> Environment map

...so:

"How bumpy" -> "Where it's bumpy" -> "How light reacts"

@Enzo Dragon: That's interesting...why does one building show up properly? (Though without bumpmaps apparently) I'm pretty sure I got all the big ones.....
Try to re-download with the additional environment-map tomorrow. I need to get some sleep now

No that's right. Bump map is the height. Blue channel is how shiny it is, AND because of that, whether an area is bumpy or not(no shine = no bump). Environment map is the "picture" that is seen in the surface, a fake reflection ie. if you use a picture of clouds, it will look like it's reflecting the sky. Like other have said, you can also use it to control how shiny something is, but I'm not very good at this.

Enzo Dragon's shot looks like the glossiness is set to maximum, which is what happens when there isn't a gloss map. I'm guessing the nif is ignoring the blue channel because you gave it a separate gloss map, which is missing.

I updated the OP, the environment map is now included.

I'm not sure about Enzo's screen. If it was a missing gloss map, there would be at least 5 meshes and about the same amount of textures involved. I think hat's too much for me to have missed. I'm puzzled

Great work, do you have to use AOF's latest vivec/velothi retexture raplacer?

You don't have to. It's just that other textures would need new bump maps or it will look strange.

@merunnin: So you're basically saying I could replace the gloss maps with a 1x1px dummy and noone would get hurt?

Actually, you don't need the mesh to point to a gloss map at all, as long as you are using a reflection map, then the surface will display the bumps just fine without a gloss map, my waterway mesh does not have any gloss maps referenced in the NiTextureProperty node at all.

Yeah, well I already figured that, but I'd love to avoid going through all the meshes again (although this one would be far less painful)

A low resolution, all black map is the classic way to suppress an unwanted gloss map. I tend to go for 32x32 pixels myself.

I think i will give this one a try this time, looks really good on the Screenshots.

I like AOF's Vivec textures a lot, so i have to ask...will you be doing his other Vivec texture packs some day in the future to?

Link is broken, I think

Yes, but that would disable the bump completely.

Biont it's okay, Bahamut uses seperate gloss maps too, it's easier to work with than the blue channel since you can use layers etc. I'm not sure a 1x1 image is a very good idea, but try it out, you never know! The gloss map is generally a desaturated version of the diffuse, adjusted so the shininess suits your liking- ie. copy the blue channel to use as your base, then play with it. Alternatively, maybe deleting the glossmap from the nif isn't so bad? Because otherwise every texture would probably need its own gloss map anyway, quite a bit of work if you've set them all to use the same one currently.

Huh? No, every texture has it's own gloss map now. It's the environment map that is shared among all the meshes. Now you got me confused again.
But in general, the way it is now seems to be okay, right? (at least as in: not wrong)
The 1x1 map would certainly be only an option for textures that don't (really) require a gloss map at all.

@Jermex: Mediafire seems to be down entirely. I hope it comes back soon

No nothing's wrong, I said IF you've set them all to the same one because it sounded like you did. The 1x1 should be fine then. I'm not sure what you mean by "don't (really) require a gloss map" but just remember that the bumpiness depends on the gloss, so no gloss = no bump.

I was talking about textures that are meant to be fully bumped, without any areas to exclude. Sorry for being so cryptic

@Illius: I don't have any plans for that. I might start extending my replacer to the interior meshes, although this looks like a huge project. Someone's gotta do it, though.
making the new maps based on other texture packs doesn't involve much more than running the textures through crazybump or similar software and naming the results properly, so I'd rather focus on the meshes.
(to be honest, I have a hard time seeing the point of doing AOF's other vivec packs anyway. Judging from the screenshots, they look pretty similar and it looks like they're different states of the same project, the textures in this mod being the most recent.)

Understood.

'sup Biont. Is there a new version up? I can't tell.

Did you catch the update with the included reflection map? Mediafire seems to have a bunch of problems as it's been down all day.
I hope I'll get to resizing/reworking the bump and gloss maps tomorrow so there should be an update soon.

Does it still look so weird on your machine? I'm a bit nervous since you're still the only one who has actually reported back if it works or not. And I can't say I'm too happy with the way it looks in your game XD.
I hope it doesn't look that way for everyone (except me, apparently )

EDIT: I added a zshare download link to the OP. At least one of them should be working -.-