Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines (DX9)

[amber atlas]

cant wait to remodel that urinal

lol

[left grove]

lmao

[neon portal]

how would one even go about that to be above board?#

contact their record label?

DM Cristina Scabbia?

:v

[amber atlas]

yeah not sure

if its under the context of remaster/mod maybe it's ok?

:/

[neon portal]

I presume it'd be different if it weren't in the original game and we just stuck it in there

if this cover made it into the game (along with a song), then it's reasonable to assume the publisher got a permission for it. So it should be okay for a Lacuna Coil album cover to be in this game.

We can also always pretend that the Kindred just has a shitty print of that cover and slap some normal/roughness/etc maps to make it look better 💀

[amber atlas]

i do have a plan to add normal/roughness etc to the posters that make them look like paper or folded shiny posters etc!

so that at least can make it look nicer and we just leave the albedo the classic

[bleak barn]

We can keep posters vanilla, so they look like old and low quality posters

[amber atlas]

first pass at new desk (left)

drawer works since it's a separate object

will probably do some more hand painting to get the paint chipping to be more like the original

[amber atlas]

https://imgsli.com/MjM3OTc0

here's an image sli of progress so far

open it up and you can scrub left or right

[wet atlas]

Great work safe milkman

The volumetric lighting outside makes it look almost foggy, kinda like looking out the windows in Silent Hill 4

Theoritcally, is it possible to add a deformation shader to the fiberous carpet via Remix?

ala footsteps in snow/mud, or otherwise grass. also a side effect of making the carpet look 3D is that those planks look like they're floating now

It'd be an overkill detail, but the thought of having something like that is kinda amusing

[neat spindle]

So I think I figured out what was causing my lights to not appear. If the position of your replacement light is the same as its parent light object the "Ignore Game Lights" runtime settings will hide it.

[neat spindle]

WIP

I went with a deliberately overblown look on the bar lighting, but I can't decide if it looks like an artistic decision or like I'm just shit at lighting

[wet atlas]

That's a lot of red

Looking good so far though

[wet atlas]

I thought vanilla already had it a little too red, but Remix amps it

at least it was duller in vanilla

[left grove]

looking good so far, also hype another Ultrawide user

also you guys just use window mode? I been using borderlessGaming to make the window borderless

this here

[amber atlas]

That would be cool! I think that falls more under the realm of modding since it's a new feature... the other part you raise though definitely is something I can address I think, you're right, it does feel like things are floating a bit. I think if I 'matted' down the carpet in general it might connect better with the props above it...

[amber atlas]

Didn't know about this... I'm gonna get it! Thanks!

[amber atlas]

I don't think it's too red, I think it has lost some contrast though? The one I posted yesterday is probably more intense in terms of it's redness, it's just that there are points of contrast breaking it up, so maybe that's what's throwing you off? I also did setup the windows which introduce greens back in, and the lights introduce more desaturated pops in there too. So maybe that's all it is?

also I had a really weird thought, but I think it might work, i need to test it

but

once they fix selecting transparency/decals in remix

those coudl have references added to them right?
SO
every decal COULD become a mesh, for instance the light switches, or the wall lights that are just decals

and you could conceivably replace them all in one fell swoop, obviously it would increase scene tri counts, but i could keep those down so it's somewhat negligable

for instance

[left grove]

oh yes! The wall plugs too, would look great if those were meshes

[amber atlas]

these decals would technically be a reference with a hash, so you could add a mesh/material reference to them and trash the og decal object (justl ike with the tv)

yeah!

i was looking at the sockets and stuff right now

like... wait could this get even more detailed?!?! i think it could!

i've modeled wall sockets before so i could dig those up 😄

[left grove]

yeah that'd be great

the other thing is for those static doors they have a flat texture for the handles, on the same coin I wonder if those could become meshes

[amber atlas]

i think doors are almost all brush based, the 'hardware' on the door is the mesh (non bsp) part

so that might be a bit more complicated

i'll look into that as well!

[left grove]

that's stuff for the project board, I'll get that going on Github Projects

[oak forge]

So how have you all dealt with vis so far in this project? Ive been working on another Quake based game and I'm having a lot of trouble getting stable hashes for brushes. Any luck stabilizing them or does everything need to be replaced with details and entities?

[amber atlas]

We were talking a little bit ago about this with the HL2 guys, and they said you just CANT get stable hashes for brushes, which is a huge issue 😦

With Vampire, they did a LOT more props as meshes then other contemporary games, so I'm kind of leaning in on that

So part of what I've been doing is trying to find things that are brushes vs meshes and remaster accordingly

[oak forge]

Darn, I was hoping r_novis would help a little bit. 😵‍💫 I read Mark's comment circa Portal but I was hoping there would be some magic solution since then. Thanks for sharing. I'll let you know if I can get any decent results out of adding extra details to the maps. 🫡

[stray whale]

is that bottom texture suppose to be a carpet?

[left grove]

think so, it doesn't have anything "under"

[amber atlas]

WIP. The og texture has missing patches that show sort of a fiber surface under it, I want to try and incorporate that as well and get the hues/luminosity closer to the og texture as well as mat the carpet fibers down more

But best I can tell the og texture was supposed to be patching missing matted carpet

[amber atlas]

Please do! Would love to hear how your experiments go. I think if you add meshes that are just anchored to the level origin or something you might be able to add details etc. but no collision :/

[oak forge]

I think if the original geo is there, the game I'm modding has a command r_drawworld that will let me hide the BSP meshes for only entities.

So I can just render a duplicate scene of details on top of that.

But we'll see 🙃

[amber atlas]

oh i wonder if that's secretly still in vtm since source > goldsrc > quake1 engine...

checking now...

[oak forge]

The game I'm working on is Anachronox which has a very very late fork of Quake 2 with cinematography tools and colored lighting. So unfortunately if that command is Quake 2 era it might not appear.

[amber atlas]

it works!

[oak forge]

I've been using ghidra to sift through the game EXE and DLLs for commands to use.

[amber atlas]

thanks @oak forge that's super helpful!

[oak forge]

I think I own Bloodlines somewhere so I'll check it out with Ghidra and see if I can put together some neat commands.

[amber atlas]

you're a king

much appreciated :3

[oak forge]

That's xoxor, I'm just a nerd with Ghidra. 🤣 Glad I could help!

[amber atlas]

also first thing i do in any source game, go to console and type
bind n noclip

[oak forge]

That'd be good, in my case though Anachronox shipped as a debug build with noclip already bound so once I added set developer 1 to the cfg I was set.

But I'll keep that in mind messing with this game.

[amber atlas]

oh nice, man i haven't played anachronox in AGES, what a great candidate for remaster

you have a thread for your work?

[oak forge]

I do, Anachronox-RT

I had to drop it last year for IRL stuff so I'm dusting it off and documenting how far I got, until I figure out a workflow for stable hashes it's hard to contribute anything useful for now it's more just automatic PBR textures with very placeholder and subpar results.

[amber atlas]

awesome I'll go check it out!

look at all the things that are meshes omg yes

those crenulations! we can actually get fancy with them

im going to FEAST haha

so excited

some stuff is going to be tricky because it CONNECTS to a brush

so those arches might be tough, might be possible to just go over the brush with a continuous mesh that connects and just cover it though

[oak forge]

Are you able to access the original map files through modding tools? Or are the BSPs still entirely as-is?

I'm thinking the ability to add a few more through Hammer would go a long way to restoring map geometry.

[amber atlas]

I think the philosophy is trying NOT to do that for now. We are wanting to see how compatible we can be with the Unofficial Patch AND eventually Unofficial Patch+ Content.
Essentially trying to see how the same I can keep it while also upgrading it.
It's possible long term I crack open the SDK and start enancing things in general but I think that would end up needing new captures as well, since hashes would change and that could undo all the work on the core?
Lot's to think about there apparently haha

[oak forge]

😬 My hope would be that the hash would remain the same since the object is in the same position and hasn't changed but it's hard to be sure. Totally understandable.

[amber atlas]

My suspicion is that it ties the hashes to something specific and it just becomes a static hash set, but it does it through means other than position since they are instanced throughout the whole game... so I can see it being something that gets completely shuffled if you make a new build or something. I might be over worrying, but it seems like it could be a 'touch anything and it might explode' kind of situation 😄

Though I updated to the new unofficial patch mid stream on this and everything seemed fine, though I don't think anything specific was changed map wise. Just prop wise... so who knows?!

[oak forge]

Hehehehehehe. Found a good one, might be better than r_drawworld.

r_drawbrushmodels // To be documented
r_drawleaf // Unknown
r_drawentities // Assumed to affect character models and other non brush assets
r_drawdecals
r_drawworld
r_lights
mat_drawflat
r_drawskybox
r_drawlights
r_DrawPortals
r_drawstaticprops
r_DrawSpecificStaticProp
r_DrawDisp
r_DispDrawAxes
r_drawvgui // Assumed to be HUD related
r_showenvcubemap
r_lockpvs //This could help you make brush hashes stable but I won't know if you'll be able to see new portals until I test it
r_clipareaportals

[amber atlas]

ooh let me try

oh weird

that only hides one or two things in the map

so something must be categorizing brushes as 'brush models' in the editor

not sure what that entails

[oak forge]

I wonder if a brush model is supposed to be brushes used for extraneous details as opposed to walkable map geo?

[left grove]

oh interesting 🧐

[amber atlas]

odd, because in vtm all the models stay turned on and only one or two brushes disappear

draw world, almost everything but the actual meshes/models disappear

so it's possible they abandoned that workflow or didn't use it right?

[oak forge]

Yeah it's possible that's some custom debug command, or maybe a deprecated command from when they were using Source 2003/2002 and pulled from a newer engine version.

I think maybe there's some leftover/halfbaked stuff that never shipped in HL2, and if it did ship in HL2, it's long gone now since the engine's been updated to 2010/2013 with time.

All the goodies I found so far are in bin/engine.dll btw.

[amber atlas]

Makes sense...

[oak forge]

I'm not too shocked but not many of the other DLLs have much to offer. Maybe client.dll will have a few things but there's probably not much rendering stuff in there.

[neat spindle]

There are some yellow spotlights I need to add back in, but they're a pain to do since the current light tools don't display a vector showing what direction your spotlights are pointing when you have a shaped light.

Also, yeah, adding back in the emissives will help add some more colour contrast to the scene. I was more referring to the weird bright white spots on the bar surface, but that could be fixed by having a proper PBR material.

[left grove]

going on a tangent because having a mod inside of a repo gets git confused because of the symbolic link, they just go round and round

until git can't cope with long paths

just need to add some stuff to the .gitignore

[left grove]

Ok I may have overengineered something

so.... I thought it'd make our lives easier if I automated the validation of the rtx.conf.
so I do this in this order:

• sort every line
• sort the texture hashes
• validate there are no duplicate texture hashes (which is probably a mistake) - because you can categorise them as 2+ different things but do we want to do that?
• validate there are no duplicate keys

either way it runs as a git action and it auto commits the rtx.conf with everything sorted, it also fails with an error message if there are duplicate keys and stuff like that

did I overengineer it? yes
did I have fun? yes

[left grove]

@neat spindle whenever you have some time, could you review this PR please? thanks in advance

[neat spindle]

I'll check it out when I get home

[left grove]

thanks!

[amber atlas]

still some tweaks to do, but a good first pass

[neon portal]

jesus christ what does kindred do to that machine

great replacement as usual tho

are the key indents on the model or on the normal map?

[neat spindle]

That's definitely normal map, you can see that it's flat on the original

[amber atlas]

hehe

[neon portal]

i'm still doing the donut tutorial

[amber atlas]

i modeled the keys

damn look at those donuts

[neat spindle]

Oh damn, nice

[amber atlas]

i had it flat before and it just looked like not enough change from the og

and i figure, its a hero asset in a small room

go big

[neat spindle]

Oh hey, any chance you could drop me those emissives you made for Confession?

(and also teach me the process you used for recreating the game's emissives?)

[amber atlas]

all you do is open the albedo, and copy/paste the alpha channel over the rgb channels

then set it to multiply

it will mask out everything but the part that's supposed to glow

these were the only ones i did so far

that are specific to confession

looks like doors are models, but door frames are brushes D:

lol

[neat spindle]

Ah, so that's why they were invisible!

That's been bugging me for so long

[amber atlas]

yeah!

if we ever figure out occlusion fixes then doorframes should follow

[neat spindle]

Real quick ELI5, lol. I've copied the alpha channel and pasted it with the RGB channels selected. How do I multiply it?

[amber atlas]

the decals are disappearing when the brushes are turned off, so it's possible we can't consistently replace those all at once, maybe cover them by anchoring to something else

if you're in photoshop

you paste it into a layer above

and set the layer to multiply

also sorry what's ELI5?

[neat spindle]

Explain Like I'm Five

Basically "explain a technical concept without assuming prior knowledge"

[amber atlas]

HAHA

you had to explain ELI5 like i'm 5

very ironic

turns out it was ME who was 5 all along

what it looks like before

[neat spindle]

Okay, so I have GIMP which should be... close

[amber atlas]

basically the emissive should hide everything that isn't glowing behind black

yeah GIMP should be able to do that too

[amber atlas]

mode, im guessing

[neat spindle]

Hmm. It was displaying it like the end result before I pasted.

[amber atlas]

yeah it basically previews what the alpha looks like while you have that selected

so you can see

and edit it

[broken scaffold]

that looks really tasty dude

[somber sundial]

Really neat stuff! Needs more cola spills!

[amber atlas]

Yeah! I wanted to add that staining above the keyboard too, I bet that is soda actually now that I think about it

[somber sundial]

Oh 100 %! Unless someone has been pissing on their PC!

But this isn't silent hill so not likely

[left grove]

blood would also make sense 😂 but yeah likely soda

[amber atlas]

Trying to roughly mirror the wear and tear on the original but I am trying to pull it back just a bit, they had A LOT of staining on most everything, so I'm trying to clean it up just a tiny bit

Give it a wipe down and realize it barely cleaned it at all - kinda thing you know? Lol

[neat spindle]

@left grove I looked over the script you wrote and nothing immediately jumped out at me, but admittedly I'm not the most familiar with Python.

[oak forge]

Just a heads up with that drawworld command-- it might not be 100% fool proof. I was going through Anachronox and there's still a few faces that are doing unstable PVS nonsense.

[neat spindle]

Got some emissives set up and relit the booths with shaped lighting

[left grove]

Thanks! I am fairly confident in it, I wrote some unit tests, so it should work. I think it's a good base, and it automatically cleans our RTX.conf. I can merge it and if you want you could test adding your tagged textures to it on a branch?

[neat spindle]

Sounds good!

[left grove]

I'll do it after work, potentially, we want the functionality for it to merge texture hashes, as if you have dupes right now it'll fail I can work on that today

mostly so you can just paste your texture lines into the rtx.conf and then the github action magically merges them all for us

[neat spindle]

As in duplicates within your file or duplicates between the main branch and your local config?

[left grove]

as in to make changes on a branch for the rtx.conf you'd go:

rtx.uiTextures = 0x5B14D81FE1EC269F //Added this```
and it would auto change it to be:
```rtx.uiTextures = 0x3F1B8E8E71AE6D50, 0x5B14D81FE1EC269F```

so it would merge duplicates on the file

and scream if something is wrong. it would essentially clean up the file

mostly to make it painless for contributers

[left grove]

I got some more ideas, I'll keep adding, if it's useless I am happy to can it later

[neon portal]

@amber atlas is there anything in the SM haven you haven't redone yet?

Because I feel that redoing the kitchen meshes - like cabinet doors - would be a good start for a novice 🙂

[amber atlas]

the kitche doors are brushes 😦

so that would be texture only

[neon portal]

how can you tell a difference?

[amber atlas]

also my plan is to go through the entire haven level, so anything outside of that is fair game

r_drawworld 0

[neon portal]

along with the neighbouring flats and corridor? 🙂

[amber atlas]

should turn off all brushes

yes

im doing that whole 'map'

im holding off on touching anything else for the sake of focus on something encapsulated

so anything else i haven't really officially planned/touched

proof of concept for me will be to 100% that small map

[neon portal]

sure

[amber atlas]

ive scrubbed and planned the hallways and other apartments too and i have a pretty good plan i think

heavy focus on prop replacement first, then texture pass 2nd

lighting balance as i go

[neon portal]

is that a console command or an arg?

[amber atlas]

console command

r_drawworld 0
r_drawworld 1

anything that disappears is a brush and anything that stays is a model

in theory

[left grove]

oh console commands can go on the autoexec.cfg

[neon portal]

so you can't edit brushes or replace them with meshes, right?

[neat spindle]

We'd have to manually place model instances where the brushes used to be, but yeah, Remix doesn't detect them.

[neon portal]

is that why I can't select some things, like the outlet or rugs?

[left grove]

I am investigating about collaboration, it seems like we may need to use omniverse instead of just git for the mod files and stuff.
It's also recommended we use layers for different levels, like the HL2 guys are doing. So what do we think each "map" should be it's own layer?

List of all Maps

[amber atlas]

Interested in how layers work in general, I should probably read up on that...

Seems like we could use it to our advantage, but I thought I remember you mentioning that they aren't fully featured yet

[left grove]

I think we all should and need to

https://docs.omniverse.nvidia.com/digital-twins/latest/building-full-fidelity-viz/collaborating-sharing.html I was looking through this, as that's what someone shared on my help thread

[neat spindle]

Outlets and rugs are decals. You can't select them because once something is flagged as a decal it gets blended into the texture below it.

[left grove]

intriguing, what I do is enable categories and go to the decal category and find the one I am interested in a bit easier because it'll be highlighted in red

[neat spindle]

If you want to change that setting for whatever reason they're still accessible in the texture interface.

[neat spindle]

IIRC the legacy texture categories don't actually filter anything.

[amber atlas]

I also noticed they are considered part of the world geo, so im concerned we can't wholesale replace them D:

[left grove]

yeah, it doesn't get filtered, but only the ones with that specific category are highlighted silly workaround ofc

[amber atlas]

there is also supposed to be a patch coming that lets you select 'transparent' objects like decals but im not sure when it drops

[neat spindle]

Yeah, that's what I said. They're decal textures, there's no models/geometry associated with them.

We could always add dummy model instances using the SDK if we decide we want to add things, though.

[amber atlas]

sorry let me clarify, i think they are considered brushes, meaning their instances will also shift based on what vis leaf they are in

im not 100% but that's what i'm concerned it might mean

[neat spindle]

They aren't, decals are global. I flagged outlets/graffiti/etc. in the tutorial level and it applied to all decals of that type across the entire game.

[amber atlas]

ok that's potentially really good news then...

so my plan to add references to them that were actual models SHOULD potentally be global im hoping

i'll have to try it

[left grove]

worth the test yeah

[amber atlas]

yeah if it pays off then i'll be pretty thrilled

there are a lot of decals we can just magically turn into more detail in the world in general

[neat spindle]

Yeah, working on decals has been one of my main priorities when I'm not busy with more technical stuff.

I've flagged basically every decal in SM/Downtown, and since so many assets get reused that should mean most of the decals in the game.

[left grove]

nice

I am just overengineering the repo 😂

[neat spindle]

The eyes are particularly interesting, almost every model shares an eye white texture and then the irises are blended onto them as a decal. We could potentially do some fun stuff with that like adding emissives to Kindred eyes or something.

[left grove]

and investigating collaboration

oh shit 👀

that's briliant

I deleted that mod, but did you see my bathroom "rework" I just tried making a mirror a mirror and lowered the roughness of the textures in a bathroom and it looked quite good

[neat spindle]

Potentially. Eye textures might be shared with Kine too, though. But I know for sure that Sabbat all have unique eyes, so making them glow could be cool.

[left grove]

Worth a shot, but would definitely work for Andrei

[neat spindle]

Got a message link?

[left grove]

I can find it

#1095817237631348736 message This one

[neat spindle]

Very nice, I like it. Did you have to make a dummy texture to do that or could you add a roughness override just through the Remix interface?

[left grove]

point being I tried mirrors

no texture to anything there, just roughness set to 0

I tried a glass table too, but that didn't go super well

[amber atlas]

2 things that i think will give us the most trouble

1. glass
2. spawned in lights, like from feeding or shooting guns

[amber atlas]

There are a lot of unique pupils in the game but yeah they use the same sclera textures for sure, same with hl2, i think they only had 2 sclera textures for the whole game, but many pupils

Side note: I'm doing some fun stuff for work, but I'm like "WHO CARES" because I would rather be messing with VTMB remastering haha

this has ruined my enjoyment of my job lol

[left grove]

oh crap yeah, noticed that on some things too

guns/shooting does it, as well as some abilities

[neat spindle]

Yeah, that's definitely something I've just been putting off, lol. Presumably there's a way for us to edit them and create new settings that will translate better when captured by Remix?

[left grove]

[amber atlas]

not sure what the fix is, but i know hl2 has the same feature, so maybe we could get some insight from the hl2 guys, or we might need get capture that has those objects in there... not sure how haha, capture while feeding

capture while shooting the gun though...

[left grove]

surely there's a pause console command

surely...

anyone has an old keyboard around with the pause button?

[amber atlas]

i was looking for something like timescale -

but i didnt find anything

pauses when you do certain things like open inventory

maybe thats a way?

so hacky 😄

[left grove]

console open -> capture?

maybe

[neat spindle]

You can enable light anti-culling

Should give you enough time to capture it.

Can see if the spawned light always uses the same hash. I doubt it, but it's worth at least checking.

[amber atlas]

Yeah good point it might just be a new instance every time

In the end it might be that we need to build a sort of "compatibility patch" mod or something...

[left grove]

feeding is like

[amber atlas]

Yeaahhhhh

[left grove]

I can try to change this light

and see if that applies next feed

yeah doesn't work like that

[neat spindle]

Didn't think it would. Also, should we disable physical muzzle flashes entirely? With DLSS being mandatory for RT, the amount of ghosting from a light flash isn't viable, I feel.

[left grove]

yeah probably

damn, what we could have

oh damn and it stays there too 😂

until you next feed

[amber atlas]

romantic sims3 shot

[neat spindle]

Whicked Whims type vibe, lol

[neon portal]

Right, so I figured - it won't hurt to do a little blender cabinet door exercise. Simple mesh, banged it out in 10 minutes. Why not give it a go?

That's why 💀

[left grove]

oh what's wrong with it?

ok good news we can use the gitrepo just fine, I just needed to get the gitignores just fine

[neon portal]

Replaced cabinet door on the left side just disappeared

The crooked one

[left grove]

oh no

you are right 😭

[neon portal]

Heck

[left grove]

I don't see images in my head 😂

[neon portal]

I wouldn't have noticed if it weren't for the fact I've stared at this corner of the map for the last week xd

[left grove]

haha

understandable

[neon portal]

if only someone experienced and specialised in this field warned me about this exact thing

oh wait, they did

anyone redoing the prosthetics lab?

the murder den thing

[left grove]

Don't think anyone is

as far as I have seen

[left grove]

I am finishing up my script to clean up the rtx.conf files and I'll probably setup the mod for the repo, and start working on captures
Got some instructions on how to do it #1204491696067444777 message

[left grove]

I am so close tho, I have an action on github that checks exactly which hashes changed and from where and comments that on the PR, just need to figure out how to parse that correctly 😂

  Added: 0x39592E302C417B1C
Changes in rtx.uiTextures:
  Removed: 0x39592E302C417B1C```

some test output 👀

[neat spindle]

#1165264083554148482 message
Found the culprit for the ghosting. For now, we can just toggle off Eye Adaption and that should make muzzle flashes suck less.

[left grove]

ayooo sick!

[neat spindle]

Doesn't fix the spawned lights being way too bright, but that's something we might be able to change via different methods.

[left grove]

yeah

[left grove]

ok, just merged my stuff.
It now should:

• sort out the rtx.conf lines alphabetically
• merge any duplicate keys with any texture hashes - to ensure keys are unique
• ensure per key that each hash is also unique - to make sure we don't have the same texture hash in there twice
• for every line that contains texture hashes - sort that alphabetically
• Comments on the PR what changed in terms of the rtx.conf file in a digestible way for us

---

@neat spindle if you could at some point:

• create a branch - call it something like decals contribution test
• copy your rtx.decalTextures and paste into the rtx.conf file on the repo (without replacing the other rtx.decalTextures)
• push that to your branch and create a PR
  then 20 seconds later you should have a comment on your PR about what changed

That's my ted talk for today

[neon portal]

impressive

[left grove]

overly engineered lets be honest

but this is what we should see

even tho the first line is redundant now

[neon portal]

look what just dropped

[left grove]

[neon portal]

they fixed the scene being captured upside down yay

[left grove]

yay

even tho that usually is fine with turning on rtx.zUp = True

[neon portal]

in the console?

also how do you know that

[left grove]

on your rtx.conf file

because I use that, and the captures are right way up now 🙈

Milk mentioned it once

let me open the game, I can show you the option on the runtime menu

[neon portal]

I'm impressed with your skills and your patience with my novice ass

thanks

[left grove]

no no, don't worry, it'll be me learning textures next

the coding was the easy part

[neon portal]

I can do basic models and textures now, so I should hopefully be able to contribute

[left grove]

that's great, honestly, you'll be contributing more than me for the next while

texturewise, but if you feel like you can add to the repo please feel free

[neon portal]

so far - no idea what to do with it, although I could try to tinker

have you got a save file by any chance with that prosthetics dungeon already cleared?

[left grove]

already cleared? hum I could make one for you quick

what am I am saying ofc I do

let me find it

[neon portal]

thanks

[left grove]

I played this a while ago

I'll walk there

so you don't have to

[neon portal]

that's great, thanks so much

[left grove]

having some trouble bringing the save accross

but I'll keep trying

taking a little longer than expected 🙃

oh, it's locked

when you finish the quest it gets locked 😔

but map sm_basement_1 + noclip should help you get captures if you want them

[neon portal]

great, thanks

[amber atlas]

whew busy day of meetings at the job

let me catch up

[left grove]

take your time

I been trying the new remix runtime and welp, all captures have the lights messed up now. I was trying to set up a mod for the repo but seems like that'll have to wait until tomorrow now

[amber atlas]

i was going to hold off since it looks very... beta-y

[neon portal]

I tried capturing the basement waiting room and it doesn't get captured, only the downstairs dungeon gets partially captured

i'll check if this happens with 0.4 runtime too

[neat spindle]

In what way? Is the orientation off?

[left grove]

It's just lights. It captures all of them outside the haven but not any for the rooms and such. On rtx remix I just see a bunch of light sources off in the distance and my whole scene is dark

[neon portal]

going back to 0.4 solved my issue

[left grove]

Wonder if any of the settings need updating 🥲

[neat spindle]

Dumb. Might hold off on updating, sounds like there are quite a few issues, judging from #general-remix

[left grove]

Some settings menus did change slightly, from what I could tell at a glance

But I am off to bed now, tomorrow I should be able to continue work on it and pushing stuff into the repo

[left grove]

Did you see this @neat spindle ? Didn't see any acknowledgement so just checking

[neat spindle]

Yeah, I did. Been a busy day at work so I haven't looked at my phone as much, sorry.

[left grove]

Don't mean to dish out work or anything, just would be nice to test if I did improve the workflow going forward

[left grove]

All good! Just wanted to make sure, today or tomorrow is fine! Nothing to be sorry about

[neat spindle]

Nah, dish it to me, haha. I'll get to it when I get home.

[left grove]

We can start using the GitHub functionality for Kanban and make some tickets for what needs to be done and at least the short term problems as well as things we can work on

Ok I better sleep for now

[sonic steeple]

Hey this project is really cool, it got me playing VTM:B for the first time (without RTX REMIX) and I would love to see how this game looks after some TLC. I’m familiar with git and I’m starting to learn how to use RTX remix. I’ve captured all the Santa Monica scenes, is it ok to share this on the repo on a new branch?

[neat spindle]

I think we're still trying to figure out the best way to handle captures right now, depending on our workflow. For now it basically seems to be people choosing individual scenes to work on, so there's no need to distribute captures since they're only used locally.

[neon portal]

That was supposed to be an easy one :v

feels not even halfway done

[turbid thunder]

How do I see the pinned messages?

I want to download the configuration file

Nvm, found it

[stray whale]

im going to keep on saying this

the assets should be left be until all graphical glitches and lighting is worked out

[neat spindle]

You are welcome to keep saying it

[amber atlas]

yeah you must be real put off but what i've been up to then

[amber atlas]

I've found that translating their pretty low res muddy textures is pretty difficult. The lowe res muddiness of it actually looks pretty great, and I'd like to capture that in the remasters. I think separating things out into low/medium/high frequency details and color groups might help? But it's definitely hard to bring that same feeling forward from the og textures

[stray whale]

i like what youre doing and i know how hard it is and respect it

personally i think the best process is lighting and bugs are 1st priority since you want to get the lighting as close to the original while also making it an improvement

then do assets because then you can make a better comparison between assets with matching lighting

[stray whale]

this sounds like a weird idea but maybe try taking the two textures over each other with some sort of difference layer effect to get a sense of details needed

[neat spindle]

Okay, so Eye Adaption is just a garbage setting entirely, if we're configuring lighting for the game we should have it disabled when we do so. It cranks your exposure if it thinks the image is too dark and blows out all the lighting in a scene

[somber sundial]

All my homies hate eye adaptation

[neat spindle]

I was wondering why everything looked like shit by default, lol.

Time to redo all the lighting in Confession

[left grove]

Ah @neat spindle just saw it broke on your PR, I'll investigate 🤔

[neat spindle]

Sorry about all the flailing, still getting used to using git

[left grove]

Oh no worries, I am just sad it gave no output 😂

And all good, I had like 9 commits for my other PR 😂 I can teach you how to use it no problem

[neat spindle]

For some reason it keeps opening your test branch instead of mine so I accidentally copied my decal settings into yours

[left grove]

Oh, are you using the git desktop app?

[neat spindle]

I've been messing around with different ways of using it. Realized that since it's plaintext I can just edit it on the github page directly

[left grove]

Oh yeah, you can do that, it's flexible in that regard

[neat spindle]

But I've also set up a test directory and cloned my branch locally using git like a real adult

[left grove]

Perfect, we can discuss it, I assume others here won't have an extensive knowledge on git, so I can give a crash course and write it up on the wiki or so. My primary aim is to facilitate people to contribute

[neat spindle]

So did it fail just in that it didn't describe what it did or did it fail in that it deleted the line I added without adding its contents to the list?

[left grove]

probably the first, the fact it just deleted it without merging the contents is concerning 😬

I am going to check the logs, but I just started work, so will have to look at it on breaks and stuff

and thank you for helping me test it

[neat spindle]

No worries, I'm in no rush. About to sleep anyways.

[left grove]

sounds great enjoy your sleep

[amber atlas]

The values I had work in most conditions, it is stilted on the dark side but when you go in really dark areas i lightens up a little.
Eye Adaption in general is a funky setting, and it takes a lot od screwing around with to get right, but I'm actually a fan of it in general if it's set up well.
My issue with it in this is that sometimes when you aren't looking in certain directiosn the lights just shut off or down pathrace, causing some flicker in general, and the eye adaptation seems to respond pretty harshly to it

also, im getting something funky, some of my captures aren't showing some of the objects in the remix viewport, but when i open them in blender, the objects are there :/

meaning i can't replace them D:

specifically the shower head and handles aren't visible in my remix project view

which is definitely odd because ive seen them and clicked on them and changed their material values before...

wtf

[oak forge]

It's possible some element that's marked as either World Space UI or UI is now making them rasterized, that one always bogs me down while working on games that don't have a clear UI implementation. Granted Source has VGUI but I think with some of the in-world UI stuff it has it's still a possibility.

[amber atlas]

that was my first theory too, i checked and it's tagged the same as it was, it's just... gone this time on load D:

still in game, still enhanced

but just not in the capture on remix

[oak forge]

Now that's weird 😶

[amber atlas]

yeah sucks because its literally the thing i went to replace haha

[oak forge]

If you know what map it's on and what area I'll try to take a look at some point on Friday, I have the game all set up now.

[amber atlas]

it's just the bathroom in the safe house/haven after the tutorial D:

map sm_pawnshop_1 i believe

these little sneaky boys are just gone on remix! where did they go!?

[oak forge]

I just reread what you said and... yeah what? So it's in the USD but not present in the toolkit?

That's... weird

[amber atlas]

yeah haha im a bit confused :3

restarted a few times

randomly, they have re-appeared

but not the first restart

haha

hoo boy

[left grove]

oh

[neat spindle]

Yeah, I normally like it in games, but this implementation is absurdly aggressive. I think lighting around it being turned off and then tweaking its settings afterwards might be better.

[left grove]

I have had it where sometimes select walls will be invisible, and reloading or opening the game again will fix it

[amber atlas]

yeah im starting to see that over here i guess D:

[left grove]

Almost as if where you load in exactly affects RTX Remix a bit

[amber atlas]

hhahaha

[left grove]

that'd suck a little bit but oh well. @neat spindle did mention before with confession where he loaded did have an effect on some of the missing floor textures

[left grove]

more like invisible floor? idk how to describe it anymore

[neat spindle]

I've noticed that it seems to only happen in interiors (it can also happen if you teleport to a map). To be safe, load into a hub map and then make a save outside the door leading to a map.

[left grove]

I see, that makes sense, as to why it happens, no clue

thanks

[left grove]

did I miss something? I had a ping but it's gone

[amber atlas]

didnt see anything on my end

[left grove]

weird, anyhow, maybe I'll try and setup the mod again today. I need some captures to do so

captures with 0.4.1 are a bit rough, so I wonder if we should use older captures

more like I need to recapture a lot of it, and it's all going into the captures folder

[neon portal]

I had to go back to 0.4 because of capture issues

[left grove]

apologies @neat spindle if you got git emails enabled, you may be slightly spammed as I try to resolve the issue. I am aware of the problem, so I'll get it fixed now

It's fixed, but formating is a little off now

[left grove]

look who I saw today

[neat spindle]

Send feet. For @amber atlas

[left grove]

The lighting there is a bit tooo much

yhup, one for milk alright 😏

[neat spindle]

Was too tired to post screenshots, but I'm almost done lighting Confession.

Made a quick and dirty emissive map to slap on the Celtic knot pattern trim. Don't think that'll make it into the final because it's used all over the map, but it was a fun experiment.

[left grove]

oh nice, I'd be down if you'd like to share your learnings, especially because I have no clue how to make an emissive map

[amber atlas]

AHHH!!!

[amber atlas]

would love to see if you find the time!

Deviated a bit on this, might try another variant for the handles, but I was going for that awful old hotel room handle vibe, wheras the OG seems like they just slapped something together a bit.

also first rough pass on bathroom tiles

[neat spindle]

I'll drop some when I get home. Have you had some success making the original textures transparent again by any chance? I tried messing with some of the alpha and translucency materials settings in the Remix toolkit, but I can't figure out how to get the opaque parts to stay and make the glass translucent.

[left grove]

daaaamn, that looks good

[neat spindle]

If you're trying to fix up an existing texture's emissive map it's pretty easy.

I use GIMP, so I just set my background colour to black and then hit "Remove Alpha Channel" on the layer before exporting to a new texture. Then you ingest that emissive map using the Remix toolkit and add it to a material under the Emissive tab.

Some of the emissive maps have parts that are emissive but aren't true light sources (bits of reflection that they baked in, mostly) so you might have to delete those sections before you remove the alpha channel.

If you want to make one from scratch like I did for that trim it requires a bit more finesse, but most of the principles carry over. Take the part you want to be emissive (usually a highlight, so select by colour is good for this) and delete everything else, then tint the texture to whatever colour you want the light to be.

[left grove]

Thanks! I'll have to try it out at some point

I'll try and get a mod and some captures up on the repo today. I also intend to make a folder for our textures, assets and such. We can match the structure to the spreadsheets

[amber atlas]

One thing I'd caution is that with Remix, emissive maps aren't multiplicative with the texture underneath like they are in some engines, so you will lose texture detail unelss you specifically keep it. Which is why I use the 'multiply' layer workflow

[left grove]

also, imagine redoing all textures in here

[neat spindle]

With the emissives I'm making by removing the alpha channel, as far as I can tell it's still just the actual texture, so no data is being lost.

[amber atlas]

Yes I agree, kill the alpha map on the albedo, it goes completely unused in remix for emissive.
I'm saying if you use solid colors in your emissive map, then it will wash out the underlying texture.

[neat spindle]

Ah, yeah. When I made my emissive from scratch I was working from the base texture and then tinted it, no solid colours.

[amber atlas]

Sweet, I'm not sure I'm 100% loving the way remix does emissive mixing, but that's the way around it haha

[amber atlas]

i was poking around there today to think about it, seems fun 😄

[neat spindle]

There are a bunch of options in the alpha blending section when you select a material in the toolkit, including some stuff with emissives. I don't have the technical knowledge to know what any of it does, but might mean more to you.

[neon portal]

Would you be so kind to make a quick tutorial for this for GIMP or Paint.net? Substance subscription is as far as I can go with expenses for this for now

[amber atlas]

@neat spindle uses GIMP to do it, I use Photoshop, so he might be better suited to take a couple screens for it.
I can do one for photoshop though.

[neat spindle]

#1095817237631348736 message
@neon portal is there anything specific you'd like clarified? I can make a quick doc with pictures later if necessary.

[left grove]

I'd like that too

👀

all my captures come out funky, I have no idea why

even 0.4.0 doesn't fix it

[neon portal]

is there any specific mode that's best to be used while changing background colour?

in blending options

[left grove]

works fine now

I changed nothing, just restarted the game

[neat spindle]

I didn't touch the blending modes or anything, just stuck to whatever the default was when it loaded the DDS.

You just need to make sure your background colour setting is set to pure black because otherwise when you delete the alpha channel it will fill with colour and it won't function as an emissive mask.

Well technically it will become an emissive mask where everything is lit up.

[neon portal]

it looks like it worked

[neat spindle]

Yeah, it's pretty simple. I exported as PNG, but I don't think it really matters.

[left grove]

show the end result

[neon portal]

how it looks in remix

[left grove]

looking good

[neon portal]

how it looks in game :v

[left grove]

oh 😂

might need to change that specific light 🥹

[neon portal]

like looking directly into the sun

retinas ruined

[left grove]

flashbang

[neon portal]

instensity is set to 0.8

no idea what i'm doing wrong lol

[left grove]

that's strange

you ever just take up 6GB of RAM?

[neon portal]

I tried disabling random settings in remix and it's still happening

@amber atlas @neat spindle

[left grove]

play with this but it won't fix your problem

oh yeah forgot to mention but eye adaptation alone, is like 15fps for me for having it on/off

also memory leak? wtf

ok it was git, not remix

I think I sorted out all the ignorable files and symlinks

[neon portal]

that lamp in Gimble's Prosthetics is an accidental masterpiece

[left grove]

oh damn, nice

[somber sundial]

Add an SSS map to the shade! Will let the lamp light pass through it! Should look awesome

[neon portal]

now I have to figure out how to do it 🙂

[somber sundial]

I'd suggest making a replacement mesh first, but once that's done an SSS mask is usually just a black and white texture

Black = No light passes through
White = Light passes through

Unless remix wants it to be coloured, I haven't actually set one up for this specific rendering pipeline yet

@spice hemlock Do you know the exact breakdowns of the SSS textures? Are black and white fine or do they expect to be coloured as well?

[neon portal]

it doesn't seem to be doing much, sadly

[somber sundial]

Have you tested in game?

Could be that the toolkit isn't rendering them correctly

[neon portal]

no visible changes

[somber sundial]

Aaah that's a shame

Mark halp

[neat spindle]

Does toggling "Enable Opacity" change anything?

[neon portal]

nope

I'm having some reverse midas touch today :v

[spice hemlock]

There's a bunch of discussion about that around here:
#general-remix message

[somber sundial]

Aaah okay right! So looks like a black and white mask is all good, the rest is defined in the material itself?

Sweet

Curious why this isn't working though

[spice hemlock]

well, read over that discussion (it goes on for a while). If you're still having problems, you could try pinging Bei. I really don't know how to set it up myself.

there are some docs here, too
https://github.com/NVIDIAGameWorks/dxvk-remix/blob/main/documentation/FoliageSystem.md

[somber sundial]

Coolio! It's Slavoid who's trying to get it to work so I can't personally poke about, but I'll look it over for sure ^^

[spice hemlock]

Maybe once you figure it out, consider making a thread in the asset-creation channel or something that'll be easy for people to follow.

and if you think more info should be in the doc I pointed you to, you can either add it yourself as an MR, or make a github issue about it

[somber sundial]

Yeah I was writing a guide on general asset guidelines a while back, maybe it's time to get back to it

[spice hemlock]

If you do, consider writing it as a .md file and submitting it to the github 😛

[somber sundial]

Mark, my man

What on earth is an MD file

[spice hemlock]

this:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/NVIDIAGameWorks/dxvk-remix/main/documentation/FoliageSystem.md

it's a simple format that turns into decent looking web docs

the link I posted is the raw form of the link I posted earlier

[somber sundial]

Aaaah right, gotcha

[spice hemlock]

All the docs hosted on github use that format, you should be able to find tons of guides for writing it. i.e. here's the raw for our main readme on dxvk-remix
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/NVIDIAGameWorks/dxvk-remix/main/README.md

[somber sundial]

I've just been writing it in a google doc 🙂 Webstuff spooks me lol

[neon portal]

I definitely have no idea how to apply this in my situation :0

[spice hemlock]

fair enough, it's just a lot easier to make it a permanent and shareable part of remix if it can go on the github

[somber sundial]

Judging by your screenshots you sent earlier you SHOULD see something

[neon portal]

I just hoped I'll slap an extra black and white texture and call it a day

[somber sundial]

I don't know why it's not working :/

[spice hemlock]

is SSS enabled in your rtx.conf?
rtx.subsurface.enableThinOpaque

you could also ask tadpole3159 - he made and shared a killer lamp very similar to what you're working on.
#1099591203768504421 message

you could download his example and see how it's set up

[neon portal]

changed it now

still nothing

[somber sundial]

Ah nuts :/

Haha I'm sorry I've sent you down a wild goose chase!

[neon portal]

is it because i'm using vanilla model and texture?

[somber sundial]

As long as the texture is in the right place in the mod structure that should be absolutely fine

[spice hemlock]

did you actually turn on the SSS feature in the runtime options?

you might also just need to make the light brighter

[neon portal]

now the game crashes 2 seconds from loading a save file

[somber sundial]

Ooooh that's not a good sign

[neon portal]

and yeah, subsurface scattering has been on all along in the runtime options

okay, so messing with any of these options causes crashes

aside from volumetric anisotropy

[somber sundial]

Oh 😮

Sounds like it might be time for a github report?

[spice hemlock]

they really shouldn't...

yeah, if you have a reliable crash from those, definitely worth a github issue

subsurface_measurement_distance = 0.21
subsurface_single_scattering_albedo = (0.75, 0.75, 0.75)
subsurface_transmittance_color = (0.4, 0.5, 0.7)

try just setting those values

with no texture assigned to transmittance Measurement

[neat spindle]

While you're here, Mark, do you have any idea what might cause Remix to not detect certain world geometry if you load a save in an interior?

I've noticed that certain floors in interior maps will be properly captured if you load outside and then enter through a door, but if you load a save or teleport to an interior map they'll fall back on rasterization and have a weird hazy look. The rest of the scene will still be rendering with RT as normal.

[somber sundial]

It's a common issue with source engine BSP

Gmod and other source games are seeing the same thing

[spice hemlock]

huh, first I've heard of it. maybe something with draw order, if they're drawing after something marked as UI?

[somber sundial]

Was spending some time a while back in one of the voice channels showing a Gmod guy the ropes

Experienced the same issues there

[neon portal]

still looks like this

[somber sundial]

BSP was generally extremely instable, would dissapear and reappear seemingly randomly and it produced unstable hashes

[spice hemlock]

make the light brighter.

[neat spindle]

Sounds like Traggey has a better handle on it than I do, I just noticed when it does and doesn't happen.

[spice hemlock]

that lamp actually looks like it's getting some SSS, but very dim.

[somber sundial]

For those reading who may not be familiar with source engine itself, the environments are not done the way they typically are in modern games, they're not meshes per-se, instead they're constructed out of geometry brushes also called BSP

[spice hemlock]

do yall know if there's a github issue for the "teleport inside room gives bad behavior" ut?

[somber sundial]

Meshes in source seem very stable, they were in the Gmod testing that was being done

But things built from the BSP, like buildings, stairs, floors etc would show odd behaviours and not produce stable hashes

[spice hemlock]

we had some trouble with BSP geo in Portal, but nothing like you're describing where a given patch would sometimes work and sometimes not based on how you approached it

[somber sundial]

Not sure if VTMB has the EXACT same issue, but it sure does sound like it

[somber sundial]

I think that might jsut be the bloom?

[neon portal]

set intensity to 250

[spice hemlock]

sure looks like you've got a bit of SSS to me

[neat spindle]

Was about to ask what that was. We've noticed that most details with brushes (mostly door frames, etc.) don't appear at all. There's also misc. objects that are built with them like some cabinet doors.

[spice hemlock]

you may need to tweak the transmittance color or something to let more light through

[somber sundial]

Yeah doors are often just brushes in source engine labled with the func_door entity

Makes perfect sense that they'd be unstable

[neat spindle]

250 is a really dim light. Do you have Eye Adaptation on?

[left grove]

we had established Eye adaptation should be off but I haven't pushed that to the repo (yet)

@neat spindle is it cool if I merge your PR? I fixed it I can talk you through it at some point

[neon portal]

I can't seem to find that option

[left grove]

I'll find it 1 sec

[neat spindle]

Think it's Game Setup -> Parameter Tuning -> Lighting?

[somber sundial]

Transmittance colour is the one at the top

That's currently set to orange

OH you mean eye adaptation

[left grove]

here

[somber sundial]

Ignore me X)

[neon portal]

found it, it's off

the lamp is brighter than the sun, still no visible sss

[neat spindle]

Didn't the script delete all the decals I added to my rtx.conf? I'll have to readd them now that everything's working correctly.

[somber sundial]

Yeaah I think that "SSS" looking thing is just bloom

Doesn't look to me like anything is actually happening

[neon portal]

it looks more like it should in the toolkit, just not in game

[somber sundial]

Oooooh curious

[left grove]

I think it just missreported the output, and for some reason there was a commit from your end adding it and another removing it (not sure how that happened). I copied your changes back in and updated the automated code. It now merged them and reported it fine

[somber sundial]

Odd, this looks like fresnel effect to me haha

Could be the DLSS or something messing with it

[neat spindle]

That was just me flailing, ignore those commits, haha.

[left grove]

all good, we can squash it, so that only 1 commit shows up on main when the PR is merged 👌

[neat spindle]

That's because the toolkit exposure is basically the same as with eye adaptation on. Haven't figured out how to adjust it.

[somber sundial]

I believe the toolkit is set to use the settings that you originally made your capture with

[neat spindle]

That makes sense.

[neon portal]

aaaand we're back to crashing

[neat spindle]

Shouldn't explain slavoid's problem then.

[left grove]

damn, so close

[neon portal]

walls are gone :v even with enhancements off

I give up for today

[somber sundial]

Yeee that's BSP instabilities for you

[neon portal]

ah, so that's because I teleported into that location

[somber sundial]

So source engine uses something called area portals to kind of "Separate" certain areas of a map into zones that can be loaded/unloaded

I'm wondering if perhaps the area portals aren't behaving nicely and is causing the BSP to do this kinda stuff

[neat spindle]

Yeah, I've noticed that happening in a few places, it seems to consistently happen in the SM parking garage, but not when you take the alleyways between the two streets.

[somber sundial]

Could very well be the portals then yeah

[neat spindle]

So something with how Remix intercepts the game streaming level data is unstable, and it specifically seems to be tied to certain "fast" transitions (initial load/portals/teleporting) but not when transitioning between maps the proper way when it has to unload data first then load the new map in.

[somber sundial]

It's possible, although really I'm just speculating

I've done a fair share of source modding over the years but it was quite a long time ago

[neat spindle]

You said you noticed this in other source titles, did you file a ticket? If so, I'd like to add onto it rather than starting a new issue.

[somber sundial]

I didn't no, was just something I noticed when looking at someone else working on Gmod

[amber atlas]

Was doing some door tests, and I don't think it's going to work with model replacements. Other side of the door is still the other mesh/brush face

also inconsistent door knob placement across doors

remastering the texture itself and using the height map funcionality will be a safer bet i think

[amber atlas]

Nice you went through the whole thing! Dang!

[neat spindle]

Only thing I wasn't able to get was the office, it's lit with these wall lamps that have modelled bulbs inside them. The bulbs intersect with any sphere lights I place and cause subsurface scattering to sample really inefficiently and flicker, and it completely breaks if I apply an emissive to the bulb.

How do you like the glowing trim?

[amber atlas]

very demonic 😄

[left grove]

I suppose these are where it diverges from the other source games
source

[amber atlas]

as far as features yes, but from what i can tell even just most data and the way it's handled diverges too, source engine updates historically have always broken lots of formatted data, when i was on eternal silence we were looking at just updating the mod to like... one version up and we determined it would take FOREVER just to do it, so I imagine that when they branched off of source and stopped taking engine updates, even at a high level feature differences were the least of the concerns in terms of everything under the hood that started diverging in small ways that would create a very different (under the hood) version of source

mostly just waxing philosophic here haha

nothing actionable 😄

i guess the biggest thing being... all the sdk tools are incompatible and even SMD format stuff is incompatible as well, meaning the SDK we get with UP is really the only way to do anything with VTMB, all the excellent wallworm tools for blender I don't believe end up exporting things in a way that VTMB can even decipher anymore even though it's the same file format, just super different versions 😦

[left grove]

I think they branched off because of their agreement with valve, they were not allowed to release before HL2. Valve also was focusing more on HL2 and supporting other studios was not their priority. With accounts of everytime that valve did change something they ended up having to redo a bunch

[left grove]

yeah good shout there, we may probably have to piggy back off of UP to fix stuff/add stuff we need for this to work

[amber atlas]

I tried messing with the door knobs last night and hit A LOT of roadblocks D:

since doorknobs are technically skinned meshes, with one bone being the base plate, and one bone beign the know that rotates

i tried replacing them and they ended up just going to the origin so i was doing something wrong

then i accidentally replaced the lock instead, maybe they were meant to be one piece?

[left grove]

hum that isn't great

[amber atlas]

and now im in a weird state where i can't get the doorknobs back :3

[left grove]

oh them being a one piece would make sense in all fairness

[amber atlas]

i need to open up the sdk and find an example to double check

[left grove]

oh 😂 yeah we want those doorknobs back

[amber atlas]

yeah they are pretty integral to operating the doors...

actually they aren't technically but visually lol

[left grove]

lol yeah, I am more concerned about the unusable doors with the fake doorknobs as part of the texture

[amber atlas]

i think their convention is, if the door can't be opened it doesn't even have a doorknob on the texture?

[left grove]

also I got a PR for a branch with "the" mod file on git, so we can technically start work on the shared mod. We can make a layer per map

[amber atlas]

though i can't confirm if that's concsisten across the whole thing

[left grove]

it does have the texture, just no mesh

[amber atlas]

have you gotten into layers more and how they interact?

[left grove]

they seem to create new mod files, and we seem to be able to load them all inside the 1 mod to package it

is my current understanding

[amber atlas]

i had hoped there would be more of a scene hierarchy for each capture but i haven't been able to find one in the tool yet

the most i see is the layer stack

and then whatever i have selected

but no scene hierarchy in general

[left grove]

hum, yeah I don't think there'll be a scene hierarchy, but I can check the docs and try to find out for you

[amber atlas]

i should also be a responsible and non lazy person and look as well 😄

[left grove]

you are work, I finished work for the week, we are not the same

[amber atlas]

haha you right you right, but this definitely interests me more than our monetization meetings D:

[left grove]

(it's that meme)

just saying I got the free time

[left grove]

you have to stay vigilant during those and shoot down any attempts at gatcha, silly DLC and such

[amber atlas]

haha true

[left grove]

oh I see

nice

[amber atlas]

door frame is NOT the regualr door

[left grove]

I need to set up the SDK properly, I keep not using it

[amber atlas]

its this bad boy

[left grove]

oh so those that keep going invisible, well some of them do

[amber atlas]

:/

door knob office

also a mesh

ah!

doorknob_round_brass

it includes the lock

[left grove]

oh

[amber atlas]

tricky

[left grove]

that's interesting

[amber atlas]

remix splits it up in it's captures sometimes

could get tricky

trickier i mean

[left grove]

hum wonder if we can lock it (pun not intended), but highly doubt

[amber atlas]

haha

yeah not sure, got into a weird state with the doorknob last night, going to keep messing with it and see if i can get it working again, or working across the game

there are texture variants but those are easy to handle, same model reference setup, just saw textures

[left grove]

could be the unstable BSPs issue

but no clue

[amber atlas]

i dont see the regular doors or doorframes in here as meshes so far, so they probably are in fact bsp

so a door is probably a bsp set to func_door or whatever it's called and then there's the knob as a model

opening up hammer to double check

func_door_rotating with attached prop_doorknobs

so all doors are brushes

[left grove]

oh good old brushes

I see

[left grove]

so I added a layer per map...

only for Santa Monica, but it's already quite lengthy

[amber atlas]

i'm wondering, if you change something in one layer of one map and it shares an asset in another layer, does that now sequester the change? or does it inherit the change from a different layer?

since they dont have 'load order' or something along those lines i wonder if it just takes any changes unless it has changes itself maybe?

so change a doorknob on level 1, level 2 gets the change, change the doorknob on level 2, now both levels have their own doorknobs?

[left grove]

I can push this to github and find out 😂

it does let me hide layers, I wonder if that can prove a point

but I'd think it would affect other instances, surely?

[neat spindle]

Yes, in fact it's the encouraged best practice to have all of your assets replacements in a separate layer from everything else because it makes version control easier.

[left grove]

does anyone else have this

[neat spindle]

https://docs.omniverse.nvidia.com/kit/docs/rtx_remix/latest/docs/howto/learning-bestpractices.html#layers

[amber atlas]

that should be a bone

[amber atlas]

i'm still curious about how layers interact level to level or scene to scene D:

[left grove]

ohhhhh so we could do

               - > sm_asyllum_1
LA -           -> la_...
               - > la_...```

thanks discord 😔

[amber atlas]

yeah im guessing its not based on scene or anything like that, more just is the asset different or not

[left grove]

yeah I'll have to find out for you

gonna try on a specific layer change say the TV

and check other TVs in other maps to see if changes

I think breaking down the hubs and then mod files may be a good idea

hopefully folders work in this case

let me figure out the structure and like maybe do that layering where I have 1 layer per folder and each of those layers then have a children layers (1 per maps)

[neat spindle]

So basically asset replacements are handled, and then the data for placement within a scene is handled separately. All instances of lights/models/etc. are give unique hashes which are what we edit, but for models and textures those also have a shared hash that reads the asset replacement.

[left grove]

ok.... I got all of them, ready to go, with sub folder mods/layers

1 layer per map per hub

only down side is it slightly lags things

so perhaps I'll just commit this to a random branch, and we can idk create them as we go

happy to discuss

[amber atlas]

oof it slows down the remix program?

also

mat_wireframe 1

everything in blue is a prop/mesh

everything in gray is a brush

yellow is decal

green is a particle/sprite/lightglow

[left grove]

yes possibly my OC is unstable (more likely option)

[left grove]

ohhh useful

I might need you to send me over some of the comands you do use, so I can document them on the wiki

[amber atlas]

https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Console_Command_List

was just poking around in here and trying stuff

some things work, some things dont do anything but are commands

and some just dont exist in this version of source

[left grove]

I see, I have done the same, but not gone much further than what's useful for going around quickly

yeah seems like that'd be because of the whole branched version of source

[sonic steeple]

My wireframes aren't wireframing?

ah Remix needs to be off for that

[amber atlas]

yeah remix doesn't know what to do with that D:

sorry in longgg ass meetings today

[sonic steeple]

You're good, i'm learning RTX Remix and source modding in general for the first time

[left grove]

oh fun

and I guess same, most of us here have been playing around with RTX Remix

new to source modding myself too ig

[sonic steeple]

this is also keeping me busy while unemployed 😆

[left grove]

oh fun well good luck on job hunting

I am sure this fun won't be going anywhere in the next few months mostly because there's still lots to do and to figure out

[sonic steeple]

Thank you! And for sure. Right now I’m on your latest branch just seeing how everything links up in RTX Remix. I added a section to the wiki on another branch documenting some of the launch arguments but I haven’t pushed yet cause I’m still figuring out how I should contribute 😂

[left grove]

oh sure

want me to check those?

[sonic steeple]

ye ill push

[left grove]

I do need to update this, I have some stuff that's important on this branch like disabling the adaptive eyes and such, as well as some textures that were messing up

[left grove]

any knowledge is contribution right

I need to update this, I'll get around to it this weekend, we have found out a lot and did quite a bit

[neon portal]

question to Blender users - why does the subdivision modifier mess up my model?

it seems to have kind of folded on itself in a few places

[somber sundial]

Not a blender user, but am an experienced modeller

These issues can commonly happen if verts aren't welded in some places

Are you sure there isn't an accidental split there?

[neon portal]

This was made from an extruded circle, there weren't any splits

I think

This is like a third thing i'm doing in blender

[amber atlas]

try selecting all your verst and pressing m and then 'merge by distance'

see if maybe some verts got disconnected somehow

another thing it could be is an internal extusion

[somber sundial]

I do find the results of the Subd to be very interesting though

it seems like mesh smoothing is off when doing it? At least to some degree?

Because it's still retaining the polygonal shapes?

Which is, somewhat mindblowing ngl lol

[amber atlas]

its def not supposed to do that

unless you have 'simple' turned on

[neon portal]

merging by distance resolved it

now we're back to smooth

thank you!

[left grove]

@sonic steeple I duplicated the wiki into the main repo, if that makes it easier to make changes and raise a PR. I am going to sleep but feel free to raise a PR with any changes you'd like and we can go through them tomorrow, and when we are both happy we can merge them in

[somber sundial]

Hecc yess, turns out my non-blender knowledge aint' useless after all

[sonic steeple]

Forked and PR'd 🙂

[amber atlas]

prototyping the sink

went through a few different handles and faucets

trying to find something that translates early 2000's modeling to intention...

also this appears in multiple spots, so i'm wondering, does a dirty porcelain come off right? or does a dirty metal come off better

the OG texture is like 50/50 down the middle to me on whether it's porcelain or metal lol

trying to decide if i want to do a low poly and texture pass to see if it fits

[sonic steeple]

metal would definitely give a grittier look but I wouldn't blame you for using porcelain

the apartment is pretty dingy though so yea it should be filthy

I'm updating blender from like 2.x to the current version to open the bathroom tiles and see what I can figure out

[wet atlas]

keep up the good work

[somber sundial]

That's 100 % porcelain

Although impressively enough that thing is more grungy and fucked up than the SIlent HIll sinks

What do these people do to their poor sinks 😭

[left grove]

Too many years neglect?

[left grove]

Looks great, I accepted it, feel free to merge (I hope I configured it right and you are able to)

[somber sundial]

ALSO! Sink does look great

But I'm noticing you've changed the silhouette a fair deal, both in the bowl and the height of the outer rim

We can't edit the collisions of the models, so just be aware that if you deviate too much you'll get odd issues in-game where things are colliding with invisible bits

[left grove]

The sink is amazing

Hopefully I can make models that detailed

[somber sundial]

There is also the discussion how much you as a group are willing to deviate from the original art direction. Probably an important discussion for you all to have

Because whilst it does look fantastic, it doesn't look like the original sink, especially the tap

[left grove]

And yeah too much deviation would indeed cause other issues in terms of collision and such

We did agree we'd have to hand author everything opposed to using AI. Using the AI upscaler would only be a matter of getting the gist of what it should look like, but we'll do the actual modeling ourselves

In terms of deviation, slight is probably ok

[somber sundial]

Yeah just important to decide on an artistic direction for the group!

For my SH2 project for example I'm aiming to stay as true to the original as I can, so I'm not redesigning anything really, which helps me retain the original game feel but also does limit me in certain ways

Because sometimes I'll be like "Oh I could add more detail here" etc, but I've blocked myself with the art direction I've decided to go for

Just as a heads up for ya'll so that you stay within the same line of thinking when remaking assets 🙂

[left grove]

Yeah current milk is doing the haven as an example of what we can do for the whole game, so we can share that to hopefully recruit more people into this

[somber sundial]

I'd be really excited to lend a hand but I'm already doing NFSU2 and SH2 haha, might hop in from time to time if there's a specifically fun asset that needs doing though 🙂

[left grove]

After that we can realign, on the source controlled mod. I think our main idea is to mostly maintain it the same but to make it look how we think the Devs wanted it to look. As we now have the technology to make it darker and such

I mean silent hill 2 is great, when I get good at doing textures I'll contribute a bit myself

As of now as well, I have been setting up the repo and experimenting with the layers and I think we are nearly ready to kick off the actual remix project. Even tho there are still numerous engine issues. We have some hope that HL2 will bear fixes for most source engine games but perhaps we will be left in the shadows by having a much older version of it

[somber sundial]

Yeah honestly this project seems to be in a very healthy state, SH2 still is barely playable

Outside of the BSP and some unstable meshes, this game at least appears to be playable for the most part! Which is very encouraging for the future of the project!

And let's be real, getting to call VTMB "Playable" is a luxury even outside of the remix circles XD

[left grove]

Oh I see, I did peek at other threads on here and yeah not all games are as playable as this one, which is a great thing. But I suppose each project will face various challenges, we have all the source limitations, and we are lucky to have a few other games we can learn from. HL2 should also come up with solutions to shared problems we have

[somber sundial]

There's also a huge advantage in how moddable source itself is!

If we desperately need to change something in the levels for example, that's very doable!

[left grove]

well... we are on the other end of the stick, we do have the Unofficial Patch we can piggy back off, but Troika Games implemented a few things into the engine and we aren't on the latest version like HL2 is. That said tho we can definitely make some things work by piggybacking off what we have yes

[somber sundial]

Aaye! But you mentioned there's a community supported level editor too right?

Most game don't have that luxury! So that's awesome

[left grove]

we have an SDK, I haven't played too much with it myself 😂 but I should probably go take a look

yeah, Vampire fans are eating good (in a few months )

[somber sundial]

Damn right!

[amber atlas]

Catching up with the discussion! Very productive!

As far as deviation goes, I think that's pretty tricky, you're right to bring it up! And it is something we are continually experimenting with and discussing. Growing up making levels for HL1 and 2 and vtmb... There's this shirt hand we'd use when either there wasn't a prop for something or the prop would be too high poly etc. I got so used to building with that short hand growing up that I can see tell tale signs of it all over vtmb and I'm like, oh yeah they wished they could have done something more detailed here or... This has to be bsp so they used that sort of approximated look.

So when I see that I have been sort of using that as a queue to try and re interpret a bit and add detail that wasn't there or that was implied through that source engine level editing shorthand.

As far as collision goes, I'm trying to be really careful to keep it within the volume of what it was previously so there is no super obvious player clipping. Also close enough that bullet collision makes sense. Vtmb ballistics and decals are really only precise when it comes to brushes so I think a small amount of flex is ok, but testing each thing should reveal if it went too far.

As far as big stumbling blocks, replacing skinned meshes like players and the refrigerator and handheld weapons is going to be complicated, I've yet to successfully export and get a skinned mesh to work correctly or even be in the right location or parent to a current skinned mesh. Going to do more tests on those.

Sorry for wall of text just wanted to react to the awesome convos you guys had while I was sleeping in my Arizona time zone heheh

[somber sundial]

WALL AWAY FRIEND

[amber atlas]

:3

[left grove]

All good, I just wanted you to verify that your intention was to put out the redone Haven for now as the quality standard, take our learnings from there (we may need you to teach us some of the tricks). We can then work on "the mod" that's on the repo, you can bring all your changes over and we can roll with everything you already got for now/update them later (or keep them, honestly think they are fine)

the repo needs a few branches merged, I'll get that done today. Update the wiki too, I made it easier for people to colaborate

[somber sundial]

Doing wonderful work here you two ❤️

[left grove]

Thanks!

[somber sundial]

Big respect

[left grove]

I am just trying to find stuff that works for now, and open to feedback since I want people to be able to come and go and contribute however they can

also feel free to take anything you want from the repo. I may have overengineered some python scripts to validate the rtx.conf. Merge any duplicate texture hashes per line, as well as comment on the PR what changed so it's an easier time for us to be able to tell

[amber atlas]

@left grove Yes that's still the intention! I'm just going through and getting the modeling done first since I'm better/faster at it. Going softer on the materials, I have a plan for how I want to approach them, and every once in a while I'll do one just because I'm compelled or the blood of Caine bids it (bathroom tiles or carpet for instance) I actually setup my folder structure for my source files to already be sorted with my folders I always use for constructing stuff and baking things, as well as reference pics. I have isolated all the props to complete the haven/apartment hallways and other rooms as well. So it should be picking up steam so to speak.

cool thing of note, some props have more than one variant, that appear elsewhere in the game, meaning they'll get different hashes!

so the 'fancy' version of this sink just being one that's recolored... it can be a whole new model with different handle styles etc

meaning we can add better variation to the game as intended rather than a color swapped propr

again being careful not to stray too far XD

[left grove]

yes! I noticed this with some carpets

[amber atlas]

those radiator heaters show up in a lot of places too haha

also i was auditing their furniture, and some of it gets used in mercurio apartments and oceanside etc

it's cool that they were able to get away with it and make it convincing

like as a first time player i didnt even notice

hell as a 5th time player

[left grove]

yeah, I feel like a lot of it is reused, and in very convincing ways, I think Troika games did well with most Source Engine limitations

[amber atlas]

yes!

agreed

[left grove]

and oh for your workflow and stuff, I guess workflow is personal but you could have some recomendations for people starting out? that'd be quite useful I feel.
Do we also want to keep all the original assets on the repo?

[amber atlas]

As far as workflow goes... I definitely have a structure and approach for my source files.
One of the things that I've noticed people do starting out is they just put everything in one folder and don't name anything, they'll leave all files generated as the default.

That's the best way to get super confused

this is how i usually set up a prop

meshes has a subfolder for hi poly and low poly

and textures has subfolders for bakes, and final outputs

blender and zbrush files go on the top

makes finding stuff later super ez

[left grove]

yhup, similar thing with people starting development too it's too easy to name things inappropriately and lose them later on.
I am down for structure, if we can make things easy to find and access it's the best approach

[left grove]

yeah that sounds great in all fairness, I am down to follow that structure

[amber atlas]

the structure i have is definitely different than vtmb's structure

so that's something to be aware of

[left grove]

I see, that shouldn't be a huge problem, but if we do want to track what is done, having some form of 1:1 comparison would be helpful

[amber atlas]

they don't setup things by location

they set up by type

[left grove]

ah I see

[amber atlas]

since things show up in more than one location

though they throw SO MANY things under these folders

[left grove]

yeah that's a point

[amber atlas]

it actually becomes hard as shit to find things haha

[left grove]

that's a lot of furniture

yeah most definitely, so the question is, should we split it into hub/type/prop (as the dir)

[amber atlas]

also sometimes they give a prop its own folder, and sometimes they put multiple super different props under one folder

[left grove]

the only issue is the repeated assets, would be harder to sort by map/hub map

[amber atlas]

yeah, i had been naming the files themselves like... SantaMonica_Safehouse_TV

but

that doesn't make sense

at all

lol

[left grove]

lmao

[amber atlas]

it made sense for my little proof of concept, but not for the long run

[left grove]

yeah yeah understandable, I am trying to come up with a naming for now

[amber atlas]

so now ive been setting them up to have the same name as the actual prop it's replacing

like...

bed2

[left grove]

and it's already a challenge

[amber atlas]

lol

yeah

[left grove]

because if we work on things from say end of the game towards earlier maps, we will name things as if they are originally from the late maps, while those may also show up on early maps

making it a mess

[left grove]

I mean safehouse is sm_pawnshop_1 🥹

[amber atlas]

haha yeppppp

i think it would make the most sense to mirror their file structure not what i was doing off the cuff when i started

[left grove]

yeah possibly

I am up for either, I do think it'll get big and scary as we go

and we shouldn't be scared of the assets folder

[amber atlas]

haha im always afraid

also

never realized lol

[left grove]

he's part of an ending

massive spoiler ||Smiling jack is bad and ends up with him and that fellow watching the city from afar||

it's one of the alternative endings

[wet atlas]

Smiling Jack and Grimacing John

[amber atlas]

haha no i mean i never realized he was just a modified version of the dude you find on the gimbal mission

and that he has cargo pants

also 'bad' is a relative term ;3

[left grove]

wait on the gimball mission

ayo what

[amber atlas]

the dude you are looking for who is already dead in gimbal's place

same mesh, just they added the headress and stuff to him and turned him gray

[left grove]

never realised that, that's crazy

[amber atlas]

haha yeah that's the part that messed me up 😄

[left grove]

understandably so

[amber atlas]

i love how they leave a lot of stuff unsolved about all the ancient lore