Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines (DX9)

[amber atlas]

meaning those windows would just be barren

so there might be many places it doesn't work as well

and its somewhat inconsistent across the game so they may use one of these textures elsewhere and simply not include the frame

meaning im SOL

lol

i think using the displacement can go A LONGGGG way though

so either way i think the result will be nice

whether i can do what im thinking or not

[neat spindle]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that there's a lot of them in SM and almost none in the rest of the game due to the development cycle, haha

[amber atlas]

yeah i think i saw much less in LA but some more in HW

yeah they handle windows a bit differently ground level in LA

frame models on only one or two types of variant

[neat spindle]

Most of Chinatown is flat textures too because it's either giant apartment buildings or pagodas

[amber atlas]

HW does have more but its a smaller map too

yeah

probably should stick to making the frames do nearly exactly what they do already and the textures still having those elements since its not conistent...

[neat spindle]

Alright, so anything that has a non-zero/one opacity value comes out looking like this

So to do any kind of transparent glass you have to do it "right"

As a consolation prize, though, here's a pretty new catwalk material

[amber atlas]

That's a real nice catwalk metal

Love the roughness variation and I think the subtle rime at the edge sells it really well

[neat spindle]

Thanks! I'm (slowly) getting decent at the process.

Bigger question about how we want to package assets for the game, what's best practice for material resolution? I've been exporting most things at 2k resolution, with the exception of one double scale material that I had to export at 4k so there wasn't a resolution mismatch.

Related: what are best practices for modeling? I've kinda been putting off making models because I don't even know where to start optimizing vertex count, etc. for a game.

[amber atlas]

Bro

the best practices for modeling!?!?

thats a TOPIC my dude

😄

[neat spindle]

Yeah, I know, hahaha. It's why I haven't gotten into it

[amber atlas]

i think with things like non organic props it can be a bit easier to get into for sure, when you get into more organic objects or objects that have odd surfaces running into each other, thats when things get hard

but for things like poles, lights etc

[neat spindle]

If at all possible, I'd like our mod to not be like 1TB because it's so poorly optimized, lol

[amber atlas]

you can usually stick to just low poly with a nice normal map bake

most of the size comes from things like textures

model files are much less impactful when exported

the 2 major things that bloat a games size are textures and audio by like... an order of magnitude

i have been sticking somewhat close to 2k for most everything, there have been a few 4k's slipping in there for various special needs

as far as tri/poly count goes, you can be a little loose with it, but i still lean on the side of lower is better, enough to curve a surface or show a shape, but not like... turbosquid everything in the world is modeled

also tri count optimizations at least in a raster engine work differently than most people think they do

so lower tri counts do help with speed but not for the reasons people think

but i dont know how much that applies to a ray traced engine or how the remix engine is doing things

i have a bigger question back to all of you...

i just realized, the inventory screen uses render textures, anyhting that shows up on a render texture is rasterized...

meaning anything that shows up on a security camera or in the inventroy screen simply won't be remastered visually, even if they have been replaced under the hood D:

the question i guess i have is... WHAT DO

[neat spindle]

So your fancy gun models don't show in the inventory preview? It's still the one from the base game?

If that's the case we should be able to replace them directly like how we do for those invisible car models.

[amber atlas]

still have not successfully compiled a model for vampire

myself and a few others have hit a bug with the compiler/converter setup

someone online has it working but sometimes it just doesn't work on certain machines

if i can get that working, every model not inculding viseme characters can be remasteres

so fps hands/guns etc

BUT

still will not fix the materials since those would revert to rastered versions as well

[neat spindle]

Bizarre. I'm guessing you've already hit up the folks on Planet Vampire then? It's fishmalk city over there so I try to spend as little time in that corner of the internet as possible.

[amber atlas]

would have new models, and an albedo, but no physically based rendering in the inventroy preview

yeah they tend to spend a lot of time getting... upset? but i did poke around there are some talented people in there

one of them is the one who built the converter but they've been missing since like... 2016?

or something

still at the end, none of that supports visemes

so no facial expressions

which we sure do want

[neat spindle]

Yeah, it's like a bunch of people permanently frozen in 2004, lol. Very strange place.

But getting basic models compiled without PBR for at least the inventory would be nice.

[amber atlas]

yeah i think that would be a... medium sized win 😄

it would also mean i could do fps hands and guns/weapons

which would just.. make me so happy lol

[cosmic spear]

From what I understand, path traced renderers can handle high polygon counts much better than raster renderers can and Remix is no exception. You could very easily give the game some modern day game poly counts or even higher. Obviously you don't want to go too overboard, but polygons are not going to be nearly as impactful to performance with Remix as you might be used to.

The main bottleneck I have found typically involves stuff that uses transparent textures. Usually stuff like foliage and the like, plus smoke, fire, most kinds of special effects. In those cases, you actually would get much better performance with modeled 3-D grass, leaves, branches, etc than with the 2-D billboards that games of this era used.

[amber atlas]

Yeah I think raytracers are doing things like batching clusters pixels into tiles now instead so it's a little nicer than a traditional renderer and the way it tiles it's render loop. So I suspect that's probably where some speed up is.

Can confirm, the transparency is absolutely the death of FPS in some of these scenes, was exploring doing exactly what you mentioned for some of the trees, though I wonder if that's mainly for alpha blended, or if alpha testing still can be fast? Haven't tested all those cases just yet.

Also hi!

[tame shard]

render textures are WIP in the runtime

expect that to be fixed...eventually

[amber atlas]

you bringin' me hope over here XD

[bleak barn]

I wonder if you can do what spider man devs did and add a parallax texture behind the window 🤔

[bleak barn]

I had it working, but I ain't at home right now and won't be for a bit.

[amber atlas]

Would love to hop on a call or talk through it with you at some point, I have hit a little dead end!

[amber atlas]

The parallax occlusion doesn't support the fake interiors the way it works in spiderman but I'm sure it would be possible to write a shader that does it

[bleak barn]

Sure, would be glad to do that sometime 🙌🏻

[tame shard]

hey - are there any updated instructions for the best way to run this thing? most up-to-date .conf file, any launch commands, etc?

[amber atlas]

https://github.com/CattoSalad/VTMB-RTX-Remix

Currently catto has been collecting and cataloging the base setup framework into this GitHub.

It does not include any art replacement, we are thinking that those would exist potentially as branches. The idea being that anyone could grab this main branch and start their own remaster.

So shared hash ids across the community

[tame shard]

the conf file here hasn't been updated in 4 months - is that still accurate?

[amber atlas]

Hmm that's odd it should have some more recent updates that fixed things like the weapon view models etc. @left grove did you end up getting some of the more recent fixes in?

Additionally King David has been building some fixes to the way source skyboxes can be handled, he manually sent us those files but he has an active pull request that should hopefully pull that into new official versions of the runtime.

[left grove]

hello, I have a temporary update on a branch, I can push what I have for now today, if that helps

Those definitely work, we have some improvements

My only issue now was with character textures, sometimes the hands would show, sometimes they wouldn't. I didn't have the time to figure out wether tagging the character model's textures as player textures was helping or not helping

I believe me and @amber atlas were playing different clans, which have different player model textures

[tame shard]

which clans are most functional?

[amber atlas]

I have been doing tests on multiple clans and had not been seeing that issue...

[left grove]

oh interesting

[amber atlas]

I also did not tag the characters as player textures

[left grove]

I see, in my local I had the tremere textures tagged. I can push all my changes in a few hours

[amber atlas]

The various settings for how I setup the view models handle when it renders etc.

[left grove]

I believe I kept all the changes you mentioned over time, that allow us to see the gun models and improve other things

[amber atlas]

But you are seeing some disappearing hands etc?

Even with those changes?

[left grove]

yes, I was seeing that. I did notice the affecting factor was tagging player models. Which makes sense now

I just haven't been around that much and haven't tested much further

[amber atlas]

Ah ok gotcha

Let us know when you push please!

[left grove]

I should be able to push it in about 3 hours from now

I'll shout here

[amber atlas]

Sounds good thanks

[left grove]

I was also starting work on capturing scenes so that we can all work off of that, I do have a few things locally that I should definitely push up

[left grove]

so answering your question, any clan is fine. Just make sure you don't have any textures tagged as player model and it's all good

[tame shard]

cool - lemme know when you push the update! basically just looking to see what the game is like without asset replacements but with all community fixes/rtx.confs setup

[left grove]

will keep you posted

[amber atlas]

things to watch out for: Biggest issues so far will be particle fx related. Looking into how to approach that recently. But that's the area that functions the worst the either don't show up or the don't show up correctly. Also you'll see some heavy camera flashing in certain areas of some levels where it's switching portals. Santa Monica rain particles can also kill fps.

Lights on guns and feeding are supernova bright. This might require actual modding changes to fix. The ids are not stable for those since they are spawned dynamically

[left grove]

So I got everything as latest as I can, however in 3rd person I don't see my character

which is confusing, I don't have any textures set as player model or as player model body textures

and it works now... hummmm, I just went in and out of the safehouse

welp

I had a branch for experimental remix runtime, which is where I was throwing stuff, I can merge that in

@tame shard all on main now - found here

[tame shard]

thanks!

[left grove]

no problem, should help everyone a little

I'll also update the docs a bit to reflect what Safe milk was mentioning

[amber atlas]

Side note @left grove when I launch with all those launch args you have listed I get a hard CTD

-game Unofficial_Patch -dxlevel 70 +mat_dxlevel 70 -window

that's all i launch with

• david's runtime he sent us

[left grove]

that's pretty solid

[neat spindle]

That's all I use too.

[amber atlas]

the only oddity i have is that sometimes the sky textures will 'untag' themselves depending on whether i load a save, or do a map command etc

not sure if either of you have seen that

[left grove]

I am currently on the latest rtx remix, just the experimental one, without david's fix sadly

[amber atlas]

hoping david's fix gets merged back because it really makes a world of difference

[left grove]

yeah honestly would be great

[amber atlas]

it fixes a massive percentage of the flickering, still a few spots in the maps where it happens, but overall sky is stable and looks great + flickering massively reduced

brings the sky elements into the actual play space as well so they can actually affect raytracing

[neat spindle]

I think it's been merged, but hasn't been released yet? Saw something about it in the Dark Messiah channel.

[left grove]

oh is that so?

I'll find it and link it here

[neat spindle]

#1098843924602306601 message

[amber atlas]

yeah looks like its merged! but like you said just not released

[left grove]

that's fine tho, we can grab that from the workflows tab

I'll try one

I'll message back shortly

[amber atlas]

aight

[unborn tusk]

@left grove sorry. just don't mask the link

it's our filter to block spam that caused that

[left grove]

understandable, I was just trying to make it not look super long 🥲 learnt my lesson

[unborn tusk]

masking links is usually fine, i'm not sure what in particular set it off that time

[left grove]

I can see how it could be used nefariously

all good! I think it was because one of them linked direclty to an artifact, I wonder if that's what triggered it

I tried the latest dxvk-remix and the latest bridge-remix and that didn't seem to help I saw the PR itself is still open, so not sure where it's been merged (this one here https://github.com/NVIDIAGameWorks/dxvk-remix/pull/73)

[gleaming brook]

Looks like Kim already got to ya

[left grove]

thanks

[amber atlas]

sometimes when i digest a model... it just... gets wrecked...

im not sure if this is because it has a super low roughness value and a high metallic value and its just catching lots of reflections

or if something is going on with the normals on the actual mesh

it happens to SOME of my models and is usually fixable

i pre triangulate before baking the normal map and keep the same triangle direction into the USD export

so it's not the triangle direction that's messing it up

but it looks fine in toolbag4 and blender

but in remix/vtmb its just all messed up

[somber sundial]

I've been having a similar issue

Especially obvious on metallic objecst

[amber atlas]

Ok thanks I was going a little crazy. I did notice non metallic objects tend to look much tighter. Toolbag and blender display it perfectly. Another test I want to try is exporting the USD to toolbag and blender and see if the same issues arise

But it could be a remix rendering issue too...

I tried the same mesh as an fbx and it had the same issues

[somber sundial]

Yeah something just seems borked with normals in general

A while back I tried experimenting with custom weighted normals

And they imported ALL kinds of broken

Despite being fine in every other tool I tried

[amber atlas]

@somber sundial have you noticed it on every model? Or just some? Metalness levels high? Or no? When I put it into "white material mode" the normals/trianges seem fine.

[somber sundial]

Just some! Metalness seems to make it more obvious but not create it

[amber atlas]

Ok thanks, that's been my observation as well, it seems like it happens on any model potentially, but metalness isn't the cause.

[somber sundial]

Aye! And if you try to use custom weighted vertex normals it gets even worse!

[tame shard]

@amber atlas @somber sundial not sure if this has anything to do with it, but you guys should try opening the post-ingested USD in Blender - when converting to the Remix USD format, most of the faces split off from each other like you were using the edge split modifier

I think there's a reason the asset has to be ingested that way, but if that sounds like the root cause of this issue it would be worth setting up an issue report on github with this in mind since maybe an improvement can still be made to the ingestion process

[somber sundial]

I don't use blender

But I'll see if I can replicate the same behaviour in max ^^

[amber atlas]

I'll give that a shot. See what results I get. Thanks!

[amber atlas]

Triangulation is the same as well as normal

biggest difference is that for some reason the watch indicator normals are flipped

but it looks like it could potentially be the way that remix is rendering geo in it's final form i guess

Double checked and all the verticies are welded and the same

[hidden spear]

Anyone have an rtx.conf file? Just picked this up on the summer sale

Is there an .ini file to change the resolution? I installed the unofficial patch and use the steam launch options for it, but for some reason only see the 1920x1080 as the max resolution, tryna get to 2k

[amber atlas]

Oops haha

Copied the wrong link

Hold plz

[amber atlas]

https://github.com/CattoSalad/VTMB-RTX-Remix

catto's setup

and

-game Unofficial_Patch -dxlevel 70 +mat_dxlevel 70 -window

launch args (cattos readme has more but this is all you need)

step 3 has his current conf file as well

[left grove]

the one on the repo has been updated to be the latest, there are still some issues here and there, but it's getting better with each remix update

we still don't have any texture work on the repo

[hidden spear]

Thank you!

[amber atlas]

I only have like... ONE model left to do to finish all 43 something models that appear in the apartments in that map (excluding outside the window which bleeds into sm_hub_1)

but i'm SICK

and im like

dude

let me just finish this!!! AHHH

so close...

then it's on to doing an actual focused pass on all the textures

ive only catalogued the textures i've done, but i think i might have to really sit down and audit everything, there are so many textures though D:

[neat spindle]

Hell yeah, nice. Reminder that there's a spreadsheet with all the models and textures listed if you want to use that to track progress.

[left grove]

get well soon, and take good care of yourself

[amber atlas]

Or... hear me out... I could just keep working anyway and completely destroy myself ;3

[left grove]

not worth it

that's the sickness talking

it's ok take a little break, heal up

enjoy some hot chicken soup

[amber atlas]

I tend to make local trello's for myself because it's easier to glance and i can add resources and stuff to the cards, marking them done on the spreadsheet can still happen for sure though

i like being able to grab images and add descriptions and the cards themselves have more reference images as well and notes etc

oh also!

before i got sick, i did some model compiling tests, no luck so far

but

it did give me some clues on how remix might interact with UP vs UP+

if i interpreted it correctly, i did a model/texture replacement (failed) and it seemed to give it different hashes i think

which means... if model replacements happen, they MIGHTget different hashes than the default

which, while a little inconvenient, could be used to do some stuff like, separate out model replacement packs aware from just texture changes or something

but i need to do some more experiments

because i might just be misinterpreting

[neat spindle]

Yeah, no worries. Was just reminding you it existed in case it would be useful.

[neat spindle]

That makes sense. Is there a case where we would use a different model between UP+ and normal?

[amber atlas]

I think there are various foxes to default assets. Mac 10 some journals etc

The more likely case would be model recompiles for things like first person view models or animated assets

[neat spindle]

Oh, yeah, I know that there are changes to the models in UP+ (such as the one that made cars invisible). I mean on our end would we ever do anything other than replace it with the same high poly model?

[amber atlas]

I don't THINK so? Haha. However I am not quite sure but I know some models get changed in UP+ to different models. And some objects get moved or replaced. Which could change their hashes and what they are intended to look like as well? So I think on the whole it should be ok... But I certainly can't foresee the impact until I do some tests

[bleak barn]

https://tenor.com/view/get-well-soon-gif-9493427043876175735

[hidden spear]

Hmm for the unofficial patch, does anyone know a way to set a custom resolution in fullscreen? I have dual monitors, one's 2k and ones 1080p - it looks like the games only giving me 1920x1080 as the max resolution - anyone know a way to get 2k? I have the 2k one as my primary monitor, not sure why it's not catching igpu is disabled in BIOS

[amber atlas]

Actually not sure on that one. I have 4k monitors and it lets me set them to pretty much whatever. Only restriction right now is it is stuck on windowed which I think was mentioned that's getting fixed in an update (to the remix dll). Maybe it has something to do with that?

[left grove]

it should work fine with random resolutions as long as you have Unofficial Patch, I play at 3440x1440 at least

[neat spindle]

IIRC the Unofficial Patch just sets a resolution for you, it doesn't expand the options in the list. So if it chose the wrong one (say, because you have multiple monitors) there's not a way to set it to the correct one through the menus if it isn't an old low-res monitor.

[hidden spear]

Interesting, I did a clean install of the unofficial patch, it looks like it gives me 2k without remix, and 1920x1080 with remix, so it looks like a remix setting is hindering my resolution. Mine's windowed as well. I think I'll open a ticket on github, who knows, this might help solve something for other games out there as well 🙂 I'll get to the bottom of it - thanks guys!

In the meantime I'm happy to play at 1920x1080 - can't believe I haven't heard of this game until remix, this game's the perfect candidate for remix imo

[left grove]

it's such a good game

I hope a lot more people can experience it with remix

[amber atlas]

actually got this working for real with the F'd up skeleton that Remix makes

need to do a grime and grunge pass

but i also wanted to base the interior after what it looks like the fridge actually is

which is some really old frigidaire model

the skeleton is really weird, it looks like remix is only grabbing 2 bones, one root and one joint, in this case it works, because the fridge actually has like 3 or 4 bones in the mdl file but only uses 2

but in this case what remix thinks is the root operates as the door

so i had to weight paint it in reverse

door to root root to door

which for now, closes the sage of the refrigerator i started all those months ago D:

there are a few door handles that i think work this same way so i'll have to cross my fingers i can jank my way through them as well

[left grove]

ayooo that's looking good

[amber atlas]

thanks @left grove !

starting on the next big section of work D:

though im neglecting my hl2 remix duties so i need to hop back on those as well

being sick for a week im chomping at the bit to get back to everthing D:

[left grove]

oh damn that looks good too

I'd say don't neglect hl2 but this is more important (to me at least )

deffo do some hl2 remix stuff

hope you are feeling much much better tho

[amber atlas]

haha the hl2 stuff takes a bit longer because believe it or not, some of the hl2 props are even blurrier than vampires, so more discussion and resource hunting and back and forth needs to happen, some guesswork too D:

[left grove]

I can get you some captures for the entirety of Santa Monica

get that all ready on the repo

[amber atlas]

the other people on that team are STARS though, man

[left grove]

I am sure you are a star too haha

[amber atlas]

haha no way, im just trying to watch and learn 😄

[left grove]

VTMB had a lot of love put into it as it was

[amber atlas]

hl2 was determined to run well, vtbm was like, nah lets go nuts and use like 14 textures for one object woooo!

[left grove]

haha

[worthy bobcat]

hello guys ❤️ i can take a build for testing for u ? my gpu 4060

[neat spindle]

Honestly there's not much in the way of testing that we need done at the moment, it's just the long process of asset replacement at this point. We have our GitHub repo linked in the pins if you want to mess around with the base build that we have.

[worthy bobcat]

i spect find funny bugs kkkkk weak things kkkk

[somber sundial]

It's not in a proper playtestable state, there's nothing to test

[amber atlas]

If you follow the instructions from the pinned comment that goes to cattos git repo you can set up the game to be remixed. If anything, finding bugs or strange ux workflows with the setup is the biggest thing that we have right now.

But we don't have a final mod build that you drop in and use purely from a play perspective yet.

I will have a test one hopefully soon in the coming months as an initial proof of concept test. But I have a lot of materials to work through first!

[worthy bobcat]

yup

[ruby gull]

just wanted to say i'm really excited for all the work you've done on vamp!

[broken scaffold]

If anyone has the chance would you mind typing mat_info into console and getting me the output?

[amber atlas]

Damn, I just stepped out for meetings at the office

If no one is able to do it before I get back I'll do it tonight for sure

Actually I'll be sneaky and while I'm at the office I'll install it and then do it haha

[broken scaffold]

There's no real rush

honestly trying to figure out some really stupid application related stuff

mat info is just for me to see how my system is registering compared to others

considering my bones are all dumb

[amber atlas]

Gotcha I'll get on it as soon as I can. Most likely this evening

[left grove]

I can do it

it's a little long so sending it as a DM (sent, King David was happy)

[hidden spear]

Got the latest rtx.conf on the github - but does anyone have an rtx.conf that fixes some of the common issues inside buildings? 🙂

[amber atlas]

That's related to the git hub not having @broken scaffold s sky fix i believe. We need to have a long term way of integration or providing it. I think the plan was for it to be PR'd into remix officially but I'm not sure where that is in the process

[broken scaffold]

It was actually pushed in but my dynamic fixes were not incorporated

I guess it was missed

you can still set the skybox scale to a fixed 16 which works for you guys

[left grove]

oh good to hear, maybe we do that

[left grove]

sometimes for me it happens and when I close and reopen the game it goes away, it's a bit strange

[left grove]

what's the rtx.conf property for that?

[broken scaffold]

Don't ermember honestly

It's in the settings for sure

[left grove]

I'll find it

I'll set it and save it then

@hidden spear would you like to try this? Under Game Setup -> Step 2: Parameter Tuning -> Sky Tunning -> Advanced -> Tick Reproject Sky to Main Camera and it was set to 16 already on mine

seems to help

[amber atlas]

Thanks, was trying to get back so I could show!

@left grove

[left grove]

np np, I am going to sleep now, so updating the repo may have to wait till tomorrow

[amber atlas]

yessss SLEEEPPP

[left grove]

1 sleep and 1 deadpool movie later, I'll be commiting those changes shortly to make sure new comers get the right rtx.conf

and honestly now that the main branch has working skyboxes I may capture the entire thing for the repo

at least for Santa Monica

[worthy bobcat]

so about movie ? its realy good ?

[left grove]

yes was really good may even have a treat for Vampire fans all I can say

[somber sundial]

Morbius showed up

[hidden spear]

Hmm, I wonder why mine's not behaving the same

[left grove]

ah I believe I am using a newer runtime too

I can't send the specific download links but let me try to guide you towards it

Go to
https://github.com/NVIDIAGameWorks/dxvk-remix/
and
https://github.com/NVIDIAGameWorks/bridge-remix/

go to actions on both and then to the latest green one

you'll need to login and then you can download the latest release ones

then you'll be able to extract those into the game's folder. Bridge remix goes straight into the game folder

the dxvk-remix one you extract into the .trex folder

those will be the latest ones

[unborn tusk]

(you can just link people to https://discord.com/channels/1028444667789967381/1144151168830939280 in the future btw)

[left grove]

Thanks!

but that does seem kind of ominous

[hidden spear]

Looks like even with the latest runtime it's still giving me the same result. Would you mind sending me your rtx.conf Catto? I wonder if there's a problem texture throwing off the scene somewhere

[somber sundial]

Yes, yeees, bringest thy souls to the unknown

[hidden spear]

Ahhh no wait I got it - I was using the unofficial patch .exe without the launch options

All fixed, thanks for the help guys!

[left grove]

yeah sure

ah right

[hidden spear]

Is anyone experiencing crashing when trying to capture?

[left grove]

what are you using to capture? that is strange

[hidden spear]

Just Remix. Going to do a clean install, wondering if switching the remix version may have done something, will report back

[hidden spear]

Bizzare, clean install with unofficial patch/latest remix, and a consistent crash I got crash logs, maybe I should open a ticket to see if there were regressions with capturing

[left grove]

oh strange

I usually just use the microsoft like windows + G capture

[unborn tusk]

oh, also the auto downloader in #remix-beginners-guide gets the latest builds without needing to do it manually. it also gets all of the conf files (dxvk.conf for example), and saves a txt file with the build names for filing bug reports

[unborn tusk]

do you mean a capture of assets? or a screenshot

[hidden spear]

Ahh, I'm meaning like capturing a scene, not recording gameplay 🙂

[left grove]

right!

what did you name your captures?

[hidden spear]

capture{timestamp} usually

[left grove]

that should be fine

[unborn tusk]

it's throwing an error about what i think is an unsupported texture format

[hidden spear]

https://github.com/NVIDIAGameWorks/rtx-remix/issues/565 Placed a ticket in, curious if anyone else is experiencing crashes

Love the new ticket system

[left grove]

I can capture just fine 😔 same place too

[left grove]

I am unsure what causes it for you, I tried having a clean folder for the captures and that was fine too

[broken scaffold]

I got another odd one: Can someone when they have the chance pass me the shaderapidx9.dll file?

[worthy bobcat]

ok

[worthy bobcat]

send for u bro

[left grove]

whatever magic you are up to, best of luck!

[worthy bobcat]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXdvLzEl6-c

? thats is u project ?

[neat spindle]

No, it's someone else using the toolkit.

[amber atlas]

Nice guy. He dropped by and helped us out with some questions.

[worthy bobcat]

The stuff are ptbr Texture or vanilla ? Look good

[worthy bobcat]

Just make mistake kkkk puts rtx from Github on game folder

Neveemind working now kkk

[left grove]

@amber atlas I may have some extra work for you, or not depending on how you see it

G.Gary_Voerman = 1; G.Velvet_Poster = 1; G.Gary_Photochop = 1; G.Gary_Damsel = 1; G.Gary_Tawni = 1; G.Gary_Imalia = 1; G.Gary_Blind = 1

didn't remember there being so many but hey

[neat spindle]

The pinup posters?

[left grove]

yeah

I think they can remain the same honestly

[amber atlas]

Lol yeah the plan I have is to use the actual replacement models I'm making to recreate these shots but as the actual 3d models

[left grove]

I was just trying to do a capture of everything and thought I'd include this

[left grove]

ok that is crazy

[neat spindle]

Those aren't even in the base game, are they? Or does Plus Patch just add more of them?

[amber atlas]

Haha they'd be internally consistent and look much more like in universe images

[amber atlas]

I believe at least some of them are in the base game

[left grove]

honestly yes, but that is above and beyond

yeah some in the bathroom I have never seen before

maybe I missed the quests

[amber atlas]

If King David can help us power through the skeletal mesh issues and we eventually have some way to solve the blendshape issues then I'll be rebuilding all those characters from scratch anyway

[left grove]

I believe in him, and I'll help with anything he needs

[neat spindle]

Oh, now I remember what Plus Patch does, I think it makes it a tracked quest that's marked in the journal and adds a few extras.

[amber atlas]

Same treatment as the Jeanette model I showed you before

[neat spindle]

Btw, sorry for being so inactive lately, my work has been super busy and I just haven't had the energy for extra projects when I get home.

[left grove]

for the meantime I am just doing the captures of every map, starting with Santa Monica, just getting those textures consistent on the github

[left grove]

no need to apologise, I have been around but not really myself

[amber atlas]

Dude I feel you. Been in the ER and also had to go out of town for a company retreat and next week I have to go out of town again for a family funeral. It's been a crazy few weeks so I've been lying low trying to sort all that.

[left grove]

you good? that does sound rough, hope all is well otherwise

quick one, shall I do a capture with and without the posters? or just with? or just without? (just wondering what's best)

[amber atlas]

I'm just taking each thing as it comes trying to power through but I'm definitely ready for stuff to stop happening for a bit lol

[amber atlas]

I think they are just objects that get turned on and off, so captures with them on should be fine I think?

[left grove]

life sure is chaotic... but everything will fall back into place. Wishing you and your family all the best

[amber atlas]

Wouldn't break anything when they are off. But would expose the asset for when they are on

[amber atlas]

Appreciate that! :3

[left grove]

no worries

had someone in my family get cancer treatment recently too, that has been stressful, but she's doing well, so all good. Exaclty like you said, we have to take things for what they are and well one day at a time

[neat spindle]

Shit, sorry to hear about that. Hope things settle down soon for you. I also had a family member die recently and even though I didn't know them well personally it's affected people I'm closer to.

[amber atlas]

Appreciate you both. Let's all get back to kicking ass on this soon 🙂

[left grove]

sure, I am able to get some captures going, I'll try and get something out relatively soon

slowly capture the entirety of Santa Monica

I am still annoyed we aren't allowed folders for captures, it's going to get very long

[amber atlas]

Hell yeah. I'm trying to squeeze time in for texture remastering. That will put me right at the edge of having the proof of concept done

[left grove]

oh dds

my bad

here

[bleak barn]

I had a plan for such mod, but yeah so far I decided to stick with PC models only since blendshapes are not something we can do for a moment

Also I read the rest of the messages. Stay safe everyone, hopefully those dark times are ending soon 🙌🏻

[amber atlas]

I've got Jeanette fully remodeled from scratch and she's just hangin' out until we can get through these issues (if it's even possible)

If I can power through some of the blockers I've mentioned on planet vampire + their discord, then I can easily do all the hand models/weapon model replacements, as well as all the dancers + PC characters

I have half the PC characters in various states of rework from an older projects I was planning before remix anyway

I'm CHOMPING at the bit to do the character + weapon work

[bleak barn]

That sounds awesome! I was thinking of creating a bit of a framework for myself to generate characters. Like creating basic body and head and then morph them to different characters, also I wanted to remade hairs so everything I make would have same UV, so users would be able to kind of customize their avatar. Like for example changing the hair colour by just taking the hair material from another character. Also that would make material editing for head and bodies so much easier. I also wanted to use same model/texture sets for arms, so they would look consistent in both 1st and 3rd view. I have it all figured out, I just don't have time to actually do it all 😅

[bleak barn]

Honestly, same. Characters and everything around them is what interests me the most, I started modding because I wanted to improve characters in various games

[amber atlas]

That's why I got into the industry in the first place, characters/weapons etc

Props and textures are fun, but my love is for characters!

[broken scaffold]

Alright I have a strong understanding of what's going on and I did manage to get bones at least from dark Messiah to reassemble

But the bad news is I think without source code access VTMB will need the type of work I do to dark messiah

Will make a post here later

But giving a heads up

Will try to find the shortest path for us

[left grove]

Thanks! Looking forward to it

[amber atlas]

Yeah this is my biggest worry. Anything you find out or any tests you have will be of great interest ofc

[broken scaffold]

Can you send me your version of studiomdl

Whatever you use for officially compiling models into Vtmb

[amber atlas]

Sure, it's really funky because we use the alien swarm version and run a converter on it written by a community member who went silent years ago

I'll find it when I'm back home and send it to you

It's a really wacky process

Also when we decompile it doesn't seem to define the bones in the qc but they do exist in the phys and smds

[broken scaffold]

Oh, if there's a converter in between I'm a little scared. Basically what I found was that my version of the compiler is the 2006 version but you guys are actually using the Half-Life 2 beta type compiler, like you're the 2003 version of the engine which is even worse off than I am huh

But, there is a flag that you can use to compile a model with a fixed function pipeline intended

And that makes the bones pretty consistent. The additional problem is that RTX accepts it from a batch perspective, so it needs to be transmitted as a whole as opposed to a batch and that's where the reverse engineering aspect comes in

[amber atlas]

Gotcha. Since we campile on alien swarm that should be post 2006 so I am hopeful that command exists? Not sure if it's relevant when it gets converted...

[broken scaffold]

Is the converter open source?

[amber atlas]

No I think the guy just wrote it, released it, and then vanished

[broken scaffold]

It's not a command, in fact it's pinned as false all the time

[amber atlas]

Huh weird

[broken scaffold]

I have to go in there and hex edit the flag back in

The Half-Life 2 beta has DX7 capabilities so the fixed function pipeline ends up being used for those

I'm asking for your compiler to find out where I can patch it for you, but also hopefully it's already there

However if you're not even compiling with it as it stands that kind of sucks

[amber atlas]

Well it's setup as using crowbar, running studiomdl

But with some special stuff

But yeah the converter part could make that fall apart for sure

[broken scaffold]

If the converter just changes the model format, it may be okay. But yeah send me whatever you use. Go fish at the alien Sworm studio model as well just to have it all in one

Swarm

[amber atlas]

back

looking through the files now to see

@broken scaffold sent with a small explanation of the files i sent

[broken scaffold]

Received it, I'll look at it later tonight

I still have to get my fixed working in dark Messiah

I've only done the studio model part

The second part is having stable hashes and actually transmitting the bone data in one batch

I know how to do both of these, but I need to find out how to get them in the game lol

[amber atlas]

cool let me know if you need anything from end to continue testing, i have to go out of town tomorrow for a funeral so i'll be gone a few days, but i'll do what i can when i can

i guess the solution i envision working (just in my wildest dreams) would be that we are able to have stable hashes and the bones are all one cluster, then i can weight paint my new models to those transmitted bones and re export as usd and just remix from there

the final part of that being, is there SOME way to get blendshapes to translate to something useable for vtmb

meaning i can actually avoid compiling a model in general

and just bypass that

so if the hex edit fix happens on the compiled model, we can actually test that easily, because we have access to all the unpacked compiled models in the folders

so potentially > hex edit fix an already compiled model > capture it as one contiguous skeleton + stable hash mesh > use from scratch remodeled character and weight paint it to that capture > export as USD and replace in remix

if that makes sense @broken scaffold

[broken scaffold]

Pending what I see in the studio model output from what you sent me, you may not even need to hex edit anything. I might be able to do the patch in such a way that it still works with the old models

Dark Messiah specifically stupid because it never compiles the bone listeners that is needed, so it only ever produces one bone in the entire batch when it should produce the entire skeleton

The rest of the workflow makes sense

[amber atlas]

I'll cross my fingers because not having to do any compiling would be ideal

odd

also i'll try not to get my hopes up too much haha

cautious optimism only

[bleak barn]

https://tenor.com/view/fingers-crossed-sofia-vergara-america's-got-talent-keeping-my-hopes-up-looking-forward-to-a-positive-result-gif-7410302319671131543

[frail heart]

💚 Hello Project Leads! 💚
Are you leading a Remix Mod Project? I'm eager to hear all about it! Please feel free to send me a direct message so we can discuss your project in more detail.

[left grove]

We are certainly collaborating here, we even cross pollinate with the other source games 😂

[amber atlas]

Heya! Right now there are a few initiatives.

Catto has a repo he's building that we hope to use as the standard framework for community remasters of vtmb. The idea being if someone wants to remix a remix it will all be compatible if everyone starts from it.

Freedom is doing some rework on one of the confession maps focusing on lighting and some texture work.

On my end I'm doing a proof of concept where I remodel all models and redo all textures for the haven map sm_pawnshop_1

As it stands we have not officially organized a long term approach or concept of a project.

My intention regardless is to go through every asset possible.

But I honestly think the catto repo framework is sort of how things get set up for the community to start branch mods and contribute in general.

That's the high level state of things so far.

Sorry for the long reply time I'm in Tennessee for a funeral unfortunately!

[left grove]

As for me, lately I was trying to capture every level, just for centralized captures allowing people to not only get started but to start creating with remix. It's all on a branch

[neat spindle]

How would y'all feel about trying to put out a basic playable version without new assets? Might help get more people on board for the long haul.

Just a quick lighting pass plus tuning materials settings for all the vanilla assets. Would probably be easier for people to contribute to as well since it's just editing settings and not full material authoring.

[somber sundial]

Just for the record

Ya'll can count on me helping out with meshes and textures/materials

[left grove]

I am doing a sweep of captures at the moment

only did like 3 maps yet. Because some still have some random issues

[amber atlas]

This is what I was suggesting back in the day, when I made those charts in figma we met sbout. This was like the premise of what I was suggesting with Catto's Framework.

[left grove]

I am down for that

[neat spindle]

Oh, haha. I think all the stuff about releasing it as a foundation for other people to make their own Remixes threw me off, because as a basic stepping stone this makes more sense.

[amber atlas]

My point is mainly that it's open source. So by its nature it IS a foundation to work from. Anyone can branch etc or just download it in whatever state it is and use it however. But yeah as it's own thing it will have its own base pass of how it looks etc.

[bleak barn]

And I'm just vibing here atm, but would be happy to put my 3d modelling/texturing skills to use once I have some free time

[neat spindle]

Oh, yeah, I think we're all on the same page about keeping everything open source.

[broken scaffold]

One more request from anyone if possible: The studiorender.dll file

Please send me that binary!

[left grove]

I am away all weekend 🥹

[broken scaffold]

that's great news

enjoy your holiday!

[left grove]

But vampire 🥲

[broken scaffold]

go bite someone

https://tenor.com/view/im-doing-my-part-serious-stare-gif-11979677

[left grove]

Hopefully anyone else can assist, may be a few hours until they do

[broken scaffold]

No prob

It's my lunch now so

No doubt I wouldn't look atit till a few hours anyway

[broken scaffold]

So I'll BUMP this request here so it can cut our minglage

[amber atlas]

sorry @broken scaffold was in a team wide test of our game, it went... ok... lol

let me get that for you

i have 2

one in the bin folder

and

one in the SDKBinaries folder

sent them both

[broken scaffold]

Are you guys still having that issue where when you walk through that apartment all the textures kind of reload or something

[left grove]

I believe it still happens

[amber atlas]

Yes right in the same spot. Essentially it seems to cull almost all the level for a small amount of time and then it all comes back. I'd have to look at the decompiled level file but I suspect it's crossing a vis leaf or something

[left grove]

Another occurance is at the Santa Monica hub at the car park, there's a spot in there that does the same

[dawn ivy]

Quick question for anyone out there... If I want to learn to start working with things and I am not worried about the software cost I would think I would be better off learning 3ds Max versus Blender. Also, I really do not like watching videos to learn and will take walls off text with necessary images whenever possible, anyone know any good learning material? Thanks, any opinions are appreciated.

[somber sundial]

If money isn't an issue then 3Ds Max is DEFINITELY my go to modelling tool, big thumbs up from me.
As for reading material they used to publish official learning books, I have several of the 2008 versions haha

Not sure if those are still made

[dawn ivy]

Good to know, I will have to see if I can dig up some pdfs. I figure having done some 3D sheetmetal design in inventor a decade plus back might come in handy if I can remember any of it(doubtful). Now that I think about it I think I pretty much learned all that straight from Autodesks documentation and it was quite good.

[somber sundial]

Autodesk has very solid documentation yeah, it can get you very far

Polymodeling is quite different from CAD software like inventor though, just as a heads up! The base workflows and considerations are very different

[dawn ivy]

Good thing I don't remember them then 😁 well I probably should get some sleep and I can find out if I have any ambition left after that 🤞

[somber sundial]

https://tenor.com/view/anya-forger-anya-spy-x-family-anime-salute-salute-gif-okey-dokey-gif-25700022

[amber atlas]

oh ps, I'm not dead, just side tracking to work on some assets to test KingDavid's fixes for characters. Want to be ready to have some stuff to test it with.

[left grove]

Thanks for the update. All good, always good to help out our fellow source friends

[amber atlas]

Oh trust me he's the one helping all of us out XD

[left grove]

I mean I'd do anything he says given how much he already has helped us

[amber atlas]

LEGALLY BINDING

;3

[neat spindle]

Yeah, been following the Dark Messiah chat closely. Most of it is waaaaay over my head but I'm excited to see progress toward character model swaps.

[broken scaffold]

I'll be looking into the VTMB integration sometime tomorrow

Also to be clear be isn't making assets for ME he's doing it for VTMB, ergo, you are guinea pigs

[amber atlas]

Haha yes, this is VTMB character and skinned mesh tests for VTMB!

[bleak barn]

Wait, what is it about character models? I have to look to the Dark Messiah channel right now

[dawn ivy]

Just a note, not sure if it's just me but symlinking the rtx.conf file doesn't work for me and I have to actually copy that to the directory, you may want to update the repo install guide to just do it that way as I tried multiple times and could not get it working...folder links fine just not the file

[neat spindle]

The rest of us have it symlinked and it works, not sure why it's not working for you

[dawn ivy]

Okay was curious if it was just me, thanks...

[left grove]

I tried it a few times and I have had instances where it didn't work, I can try and help

But it's just a workaround for not having to copy it back and forth

[dawn ivy]

Don't worry about it, copying it into the directory was no big deal.

[left grove]

Sure, do shout if you need any help and/or want to discuss anything

[spice hemlock]

@amber atlas You told Wendy about an issue where some lights get interpreted as being way too bright. Do you have more info or a github issue written up about that?

Trying to track down some details

[neat spindle]

@spice hemlock I know of a few places where it happens, is there anything in particular you want to know?

[amber atlas]

I don't have a github issueopen on my own, but I can try and find some examples to help open one. I'm not sure what hammer editor values correspond to the over bright lights, but they jump up to literally around 921301293010.0384284 etc.

It also does it on some spawned lights.

I might be able to decompile the maps that had them and see their values in the editor for more data

let me poke around and get a screenshot for an example

[neat spindle]

The abandoned hospital is one of the most egregious examples, it has those big fake lights since there's no "real" light sources in most of the map.

[amber atlas]

Yeah Abandoned Hostpital, The trainyard for the astrolite mission, the ventrue tower at the end of the game etc. I have some examples I can snag

[amber atlas]

But for context, those are fixable in the tool. The ones I'm really worried about are the dynamic ones the game spawns I can't get hashes foror at least know how to. Which I'll find examples of. They happen on gun muzzle flashes and when feeding on an NPC etc. they are like supernova bright.

[spice hemlock]

Those are the sorts of details I need. A github ticket with repro instructions would be ideal, of course

[amber atlas]

Gotcha, I've never done a ticket before so I'll poke around and see how that's set up and make one and then tag you? Does that sound like thes best approach?

[spice hemlock]

BTW - have you tried messing around with the settings in Game Setup -> Parameter Tuning -> Light Translation?

[neat spindle]

Is there a way to hard cap brightness on translated lights? Most of the translated lights look correct with the default settings.

[spice hemlock]

There isn't currently any way to cap the brightness, but some of the light handling is exponential, so tweaking the settings might have more impact on the super bright lights than the normal ones. Mostly I just want to know if messing around with those can fix the lights that cause problems for you

[amber atlas]

I think I have messed with them, I'll double check but I've clicked on almost every control in the panels during runtime and many different contexts, wild how many issues I was able to solve just by setting things up a certain way.

light translation value changes did not mitigate these kinds of light

this is one i can fix with the tool

[spice hemlock]

This is purely coming from a bright light? that almost looks like it's a photo negative or something...

[amber atlas]

haha yeah it does XD

this is from one point light

i'm loading the capture to get the value its set at

ive done these fixes on a few maps, its not every map

makes me think the light value in hammer is set ridiculously high and its maybe not even a translation issue

"43326089030770795824746895522136064.0"

These are definitely not the ones I'm as worried about because I can literally fix it right now. It's the dynamically spawned ones that come in during gameplay.

[neat spindle]

Does Hammer have separate scale and luminance values? Something I've been thinking about is that the way RTX translates scale might result in much brighter lights.

Like in the original workflow maybe they had very large, very dim lights to provide some sort of background lighting and that breaks in the translation.

[amber atlas]

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

this is the hammer resource for point light

it has a few controls

and the Constant, Linear, Quadradic attentuation has in the past really changed the way it calcs intensity, outside of just regular brightness (HDR Brightness) didn't exist when this was released

So depending on what Remix is grabbing and translating, some of these lights could have different falloff settings through things off

@spice hemlock

Here is the situation I was mentioning before. This is a dynamic light with a hard falloff that gets spawned when you feed from an npc

same thing with muzzleflashes

It's possible the falloff values are getting translated oddly as multipliers? Or it's possible in code these are set to soooo bright that Remix just says, "Fine if that's what you want." and throws a massive value at it.

[spice hemlock]

Hmm... having a shot falloff distance should actually make the light dimmer, so I'm really unsure what could be causing that

[amber atlas]

Yeah if they translated fine in Portal, then it's gotta be something else. I'm going to poke at Hammer and see if I can find a clue.

For the world lighting issue, the dynamic one I don't know what to do about, if they don't have stable hashes...

[spice hemlock]

well I'd hope those are also configurable through hammer, but right now I'm mostly trying to get enough info for someone to actually dig into this

mostly about repro instructions and whatnot

it's easy to just implement a cap on possible light intensity, but it'd be better to understand why the heuristic is returning such a crazy value

[amber atlas]

@spice hemlock
Gotcha, the repo for these runtime issues would be (in rough plain speak):
-Install Vampire
-Install Unofficial Patch
-Install The Runtime for Remix
-Run Vampire
-Start a new Game with RTX settings on
-Then play through the intro (theatre scene will have massively bright light in it for example)
-Accept Jack's help afte theatr scene to follow tutorial
-In the tutorial, approach the NPC you are instructed to feed from and use F to feed on them
-The feed mode should activate and then a massively bright runtime light will spawn, blowing out the screen.

But if I do a ticket, I can also add screenshots and stuff, do you already have a ticket going I can add to? Or should I try and do one from scratch?

[spice hemlock]

Do a github from scratch and we'll link it to our internal ticket

[amber atlas]

awesome, let me look into doing that now

@spice hemlock should I do this as a Runtime Bug, or as a Runtime Feature/Improvement Request
Additionally, should I open 2 issues, one for the dynamic lights, and one for the captured world lights?

[spice hemlock]

Just one ticket, and I'd say it's a bug

[amber atlas]

Ok cool thx

@spice hemlock here is the issue, please let me know if it's too unclear or if its not helpful and I'll take another pass to provide more info
https://github.com/NVIDIAGameWorks/rtx-remix/issues/609

I decompiled the theatre level and am opening to look at that light and see if it has any specific values that are making it do what it's doing.

[spice hemlock]

thanks, that looks good.

[dawn ivy]

Always fun skimming through 6 months of old discord posts 🙂 Really appreciate the work you guys are doing and would love to get skilled enough to contribute. Been learning a bit of 3ds max, I have adobe suite access and I can stumble my way through photoshop. Just installed substance trial to play with that. Surprised at how small of a group it is in here, I thought there would be more die hard vtmb folks out there. At this point about all I can offer is probably menial grunt work like filling out excel sheets 😄 I do have a DSLR Canon and a tripod if anyone needs random reference photos hunted down. The inside of my house has a variety of grungy textures scattered throughout in the rooms where remodeling was procrastinated over the years 🙂

[broken scaffold]

@amber atlas do you guys have a test map for a single character?

or something of that sort

Basically your standard orange map, box, make the origin somewhere visible above you

and then spawn an NPC

I think I've got a good bead on it

The functions you need on the shaderapi are not quite the ones I need

it's actually wholeistically simpler

since VTMB is using the HL2 beta code mostly, they already had fixed function avenues well engrained

The problem you have is STRICTLY the size of the transform stack

which is very easy to fix

and to anyone who reads this, I recommend you create that box map if you may or may not 🙂

[amber atlas]

Sorry was asleep. I can make and compile one.

I already built a test map to contain all props and characters. I'll build one with just one character in it.

[broken scaffold]

Yeah, very important you also make the origin of the map visible within the space

when we test the skinning, we want to verify it isn't going up there to know the matrix operations are correct

[amber atlas]

Gotcha. Additional question, if the transform stack is a factor, does that change based on the bone list? Vtmb has bipeds and squids and rats and werewolves etc

I think even among human rigs they have additional bones for jiggle bones for hair and stuff does that cause any hiccups

[broken scaffold]

I have NO IDEA about the jiggle bones tbh

all I know is we'll be using hardware stuff

the transform stack is a factor on a memory sense

I think we mostly want to make sure the matrix that we are using as our modeltoworld makes sense

since it is a crucial part of the operation

[broken scaffold]

studiorender.dll
R_StudioDrawGroupHWSkin = sub_1BCF0
g_pMemAlloc = NONE -> USES sub_6334B as MALLOC!
R_StudioBuildMeshStrips = sub_143C0
R_StudioCreateSingleMesh = sub_144D0
R_StudioBuildMeshGroup = sub_13FA0
R_StudioRenderFinal = sub_1A690 (can maybe use layer down for points since beta has ICLientEntity)
Mouth Lighting on Materials = Within sub_1BF50 (R_StudioDrawStaticMesh)


shaderapidx9.dll
CShaderAPIDX_SetFixedFunctionStateSkinningMatrices = Must use set skinning matricies
ForceDXCaps = sub_17750
MaxBlendMatrixIndices = sub_18D80
MaxBlendMatrices = sub_18D50
DECLSPEC = sub_2C1F0

We got em all

Now I need to operate

admittedly I am nervous because what was usually dedicated to a function is now potentially in more than one place

and it's inline, meaning all points need to be edited

[amber atlas]

@broken scaffold I'll try and get that level setup in time for this. Hammer is deciding not to open anymore of course.

[amber atlas]

PSA:

Hammer was not working no matter what I would do.

Crashed on start.

Catto had the same issue.

I recently upgraded to 64gb of ram

Catto tested on 64gb and had same crash

he tested on his laptop with 16gb and it loaded

so i took 2 sticks out and launched hammer just fine

so if you go over 32 gb of ram Hammer just WILL NOT load

at least our version we have to use of hammer for vtmb modding

[neat spindle]

I think I might have 16GB of RAM, I can give it a test when I get home

[left grove]

Yeah it was such a silly thing

[broken scaffold]

phase 1 done

all the right D3D settings

Phase 2 is the model information and matrix stuff

shouldn't be so bad

game will crash with the above which confirms that the array size is clamped just like dark messiah

so FINGERS CROSSED that detouring only the one function will be enough to fix that

[broken scaffold]

I think it evry much will

I ran some stress tests

seems to work

so I will now have to implement the studiorender side

but I'm taking a break for the day, milk and I spent way too much time just getting this running because the Unofficial patch decided to update today in the morning lol

[amber atlas]

would love that data, taking the sticks out let me use hammer, but man i want those sticks IN my pc

[amber atlas]

We are both FRIED mentally.

Great work, KD! You're a beast.

also @broken scaffold Catto and I have started calling you KD, fyi ;3

[neat spindle]

Just a thought, but if you want to avoid physical hardware changes you could try launching Hammer in a VM with different memory allocations.

[amber atlas]

You'll never guess what I was just setting up ;3

[neat spindle]

32GB of RAM and it seems to run just fine. I remember it being a bit unstable when I was messing with it before, but it's able to run.

[amber atlas]

Nice, thanks for checking, I'm guessing over 32 and its going to start acting up...

[dawn ivy]

just want to verify I am doing this vaguely correctly before I spend any more time (probably should have checked earlier) grabbed the vague details from safemilks moddb post. I am creating a new texture for this random garage door in tutorial area. I modeled a 3d version of it in 3dsMax first, now I am painting it in Substance Painter. Once I finish that I need to flatten it down into a PBR texture, correct? Would I do this back in 3ds or should I be able to do it in one of the substance programs possibly? I know SM is using blender but assuming process is vaguely the same. Also, nobody has already done this texture yet have they?

[neat spindle]

I don't know anything about 3ds, unfortunately, so I can't help you there. I used Blender to generate a heightmap by rendering an orthographically projected version of the model with its height data turned into grayscale. If you check out the Github repo linked in the pins you'll find a few different spreadsheets for tracking progress, including one that has every texture in the game listed.

[dawn ivy]

Okay yeah I have the sheet just wasn't sure if it was up to date. And you answered my question just by saying you render heightmap in blender, thanks. I am pretty sure I can do it in either 3ds or substance suite. It will be a bit, trying to replicate the bloodstaining properly at the moment 🙂

[neat spindle]

One issue I've run into with my method is that the baking adds a single-pixel wide bevel around the entire edge that you need to manually fix. It's not too difficult, but it is annoying. Thankfully most textures should be easy to make just with material creation tools and won't need to be modeled and baked.

Oh, also if you want to avoid having to give Adobe money for SD/SP InstMAT is a cool free alternative. It's pretty new so there's not much in the way of tutorials though.

[dawn ivy]

I already had Adobe CC and on free trial for substance but I will probably keep it and just activate when I use it (I should do the same for CC, pay monthly and go 6 months without using sometimes...) At least getting my base reference for this blood spatter is using photoshop where I am semi-comfortable, gives my head a break,

[neat spindle]

Cool, no worries. I just try to spread awareness of free tools for people to make modding more accessible.

[dawn ivy]

Yeah definitely a good thing, I have special access to some discounts on a lot of stuff that I like to put to use. I still will probably have to check out instamat as I have read a lot of positive stuff about it.

[left grove]

oh nice, have fun! and good luck

[dawn ivy]

So I really wanted to keep the asthetic as original as possible on this and I know it was agreed not to do straight AI upscaling. I painted the door in Substance after I finished the model and was having trouble with the staining on it. I ran the original texture through an upscaler and then used it as an overlay layer in substance and I really like how it turned out. I am thinking this is an acceptable use of AI upscale as I did still model and paint the door beforehand.... This is what I have so far, would appreciate any feedback you guys have.

[somber sundial]

AI :/

[left grove]

Hey it does look pretty good! The thing is here we try and make everything by hand, pretty early on we agree that we'd spare no hard work to make this game look amazing, even if it does take the extra work when texturing etc. I honestly think you did pretty well, but the aim of this project has been to use fully handmade textures to re-embrace this game

I should possibly document the more rigorous process for this

but I just don't know about layering the AI upscaled one and using it as inspiration, not sure of all the implications

[dawn ivy]

Gotcha. Fair enough, slippery slope type of thing. Well I think after upscaling I should be able to create a better mask as I was struggling to create it from the low res texture but I really don't think I can pull off a better job than the original for these stains....

[left grove]

Honestly think you did pretty well. To some extent in some cases due to the low Res you will need to make some guesses and then it becomes a bit artists' interpretation

[dawn ivy]

My plan was actually to upscale so I could create a better mask as I was having a hell of a time getting one I liked after hours and hours of multiple masks. After I upscale I remembered that I had matched the panels 100% to the original on the 3d model so just for the hell of it I dragged the png into substance as an overlay and it looked damn good over the metal door I had in there.

[dawn ivy]

Coming along... I have to refine the mask a bit more....lots of zooming and erasing in photoshop

[broken scaffold]

there are some unexpected difference still working on

but at least al the detours are captured

trying to make sure the mesh is assembled as once piece first

They are still sliced up in this state, I believe there is another D3D function that is overwriting my stuff

workin on finding that

[amber atlas]

Nice progress!

Can't wait to throw some of my characters at it when you're ready to test 😄

[broken scaffold]

@amber atlas do you know if the models contain a .sw equivalent?

i can't extract the VTMB VPK for some reason

so I can't validate

but basically I expect a .dx80, .dx90, .dx7 and .sw

[amber atlas]

let me double check

none of the source files I've unpacked so far seem to have .sw @broken scaffold

many of them do have vtx

Non decompiled and decompiled files

no sign of sw or anything similar

though we do have phy and vtx

are the vtx files maybe related?

[broken scaffold]

Alright

just wanted to confirm

the way the verticies index the model is different due to the way they are pooled there

the DX7 models are fully fixed function

so gonna have to do some slightly different stuff

[amber atlas]

gotcha, tag me again if you need me to look at any of the extracted files etc

[broken scaffold]

yeah no problem

Sorry this is taking a bit

it really is modified off the beta

I had to work to get the structures going, thankfully crowbar peeps had already worked out how to decompile these

so I just had to reverse those into workable headers

and now that I ACTUALLY have the model rendering from my own code

I need to work the rest of the rendering in

The fully fixed functio nis a problem because usually in sw, the index pool is just the bones directly IE bone 1, 2, 3 == bone 1, 2, 3

but in a fully fixed model from the HL2 Beta, the hardware bone and bone IDs are different IE bone 1, 2, 3 == bone 44, 23, 35 in the index

So I'm thinking i need to form the thing first, get the min max hardware bones, and push that in the correct order

[bleak barn]

https://tenor.com/view/jfk-clone-high-i-like-your-funny-words-magic-man-jack-black-gif-18659433

[amber atlas]

i wonder why they changed the order in which they built the hierarchy (if that's what you are saying)

also

we out here

more to do but this is a rough pass

though i gotta run!

[dawn ivy]

Took a break today to play the game for a bit instead.... well I decided to do it with rtx remix on for the hell of it, and then I decided I wanted fullscreen which led to me having to recompile newer version of dxvk which led to reinstalling visual studio etc. etc. etc.... And I just now realized I should have just switch desktop resolution on this 4k monitor to run windowed without 4k....

[grave flower]

You don't need to compile it

[dawn ivy]

thought I did for latest versions, following git instructions

[grave flower]

You can download it off actions...

[dawn ivy]

Not sure where to do that, already compiled it at this point anyway

[dawn ivy]

It was because I wasn't signed in to github facepalm

[dawn ivy]

new dxvk got me my fullscreen 🙂

[amber atlas]

1st pass on outlet decal

using POM to fake depth

need to do another pass on grunge etc

[left grove]

damn looking good!

even the little rusty bits are on point

[bleak barn]

The outlet "faces" looked more surprised in og. Now they look confused

[amber atlas]

hahaha the grunge on it does look like a furrowed brow!

[dawn ivy]

Ahhh you beat me to the outlet! 🤣 It's okay I spent my day attempting to model the arch over that bloody door.... It will probably be a few weeks or months more of me figuring out what I am doing to finish my first pbr replacement😅... Outlet looks good 👍

[amber atlas]

Still have some small textures here and there to replace, after that it's just the plaster walls and the rug and stairs

so I'm getting pretty close to the proof of concept haven fully remastered

after that it's gonna be a tightening pass 2 for everything and feedback etc

[left grove]

woah that's stunning

[amber atlas]

thanks! it's finally starting to come together

[left grove]

it really has!

[amber atlas]

big issue i need to figure out is, the POM messes up some of the texture seams, so i might need to modify how i approach them

[left grove]

well keep it up

oh

[amber atlas]

Here's a good example

since the wood paneling texture is used for vertical beams and trim etc

any height map value thats less the 1 on the texture makes it sink back, and the way Remix's POM works, it won't distort as much at the edges, it just reveals more of the texture

so you get these odd bits

[neat spindle]

For my material work I've been using a standard where .5 is flat to avoid issues like this. Gives me more control over when I want things recessed/protruding.

[dawn ivy]

If that's the worst issue you have you are doing well. Looks great and I really had to zoom and look to notice it.

[amber atlas]

The issue there is that it only indents, so anything below white will go "inward" meaning the edges/corners all kind of need to flow back to full white, otherwise it will sink the whole thing down.

Meaning I can't get TOO fancy with the crenulations etc, like I need to bring that bottom frame back up to full white in the heightmap to keep that seam from happening essentially

because the way their shader is written it's actually 1 is flat, and everything below that value goes back

some engines have a bias where you can shift it to 0.5 but this one is default to 1

Might be a fix that could be built into the shader but POM calculations are a bit above my knowledge D:

[amber atlas]

Thanks! I'm going to see if I can minimize it because it sticks out like a sore thumb to me haha!

[neat spindle]

Yeah, I know it only works by recessing things, but IIRC if both sides of a corner are recessed the same amount it still looks fine, there's no weird floating seam. I used this for the catwalks in Confession and didn't have any issues.

[amber atlas]

wonder how it would play if i recessed the wallpaper the same value, might be ok? would need the exact grayscale value

[neat spindle]

It's a bit difficult to see because it's dark but I think the corner on this was .75 or something with the top of the rivets at 1:
#1095817237631348736 message

[neat spindle]

Personally I'd have it pushed in a little below the trim so that the trim pops more. Since it's a dark texture the tearing from the displacement shouldn't be too noticable.

[amber atlas]

yeah looks like it lines up super well

[dawn ivy]

I know how that goes, when you make it you see every flaw magnified. Just letting you know from an outside perception it isn't nearly as glaring of a flaw. Probably wouldn't have noticed if it was t pointed out, granted I am on my phone but I did zoom in.

[somber sundial]

Looking fantastic ❤️

[cerulean wagon]

reminds me of P.T. hallway

[dawn ivy]

anyone know what I dicked up here. new mesh and texture seems to work when the stage lights I forgot in the level are hitting it and disappears otherwise.

[amber atlas]

i have no earthly idea what is happening there actually, i've never seen that before...

what are your sky settings?

[dawn ivy]

turned out I had some of my run arguments typed into my shortcut with pluses instead of dashes. after I fixed that my hashes are stable. redoing a scene now to see what happens as it didn't appear after.

[dawn ivy]

Here is what I have gotten so far if I ever get it working. its not perfect but not bad considering I just picked up substance and 3ds a couple weeks ago. Actually really happy how this door is coming along, glad you guys gave me the virtual slap upside the head on the upscale overlay 😄

[left grove]

That's looking good

Does it look good in game?

[dawn ivy]

When it isn't disappearing.... Going to have to do some more troubleshooting on it today. Got too tired to continue at 3am or so last night....

[amber atlas]

Hey @dawn ivy this is an excellent start! I think the shutter doors look dead on! I think the frame setup you have is reading more like metal or concrete? Might just be because the light isn't really hitting it in the shot you setup.
I'd say my read from the original image is a bit different, a while back before I started focusing on the haven, I was messing around with this texture setup and I made myself some resources to tackle it, maybe you'd find them useful?

I broke down the door frame and shutters into their actual texture names using mat_crosshair in the console which is where I'm getting thos random names

and then I did a bit of poking around and found a nice shot of those weird flaps, they are a type of bumper for semitrucks when the connect with the loading dock

so i think you are super close with the frame, they just are coming off a bit more concrete

here's my super rough old file i dug up

so you can see what i mean with the flaps

like i said, i think you NAILED the shutters, but the material for the frame is little off

really enjoying watching your progress and really looking forward to seeing more!

[dawn ivy]

Funny you say that. I was studying the frame in and out of game and I was like wtf is this, did they just have a time crunch and randomly throw a concrete frame here that makes no sense at all? So yeah that explained ns that. The frame was more of a modeling practice session than anything else so not too bummed on that. I am very happy with the shutter though and think I just need to play with the mask and smart material on the blood a tad and it's perfect. I actually kind of like it better with the more visceral fresh blood on it. Assuming I can vary it and change the rust and blood patterns for the set of six in a row on the tutorial area as well. Still trying to figure out my unstable hash issue. On vacation but spent a few hours doing some side gigging today and just getting back home.

[amber atlas]

Haha dude I had the same moment back when I was doing this. I was like... are those... SHINGLES?!?! And then I did some googling and I was like... oh uh... yeah they kind of are?

Oh also, bad news! You CANNOT change those shutters, they all have to be the same texture 6 times. Unless you go and decompile the map, and then change them and add textures and then recompile, THEN go into Remix and remaster them.

Essentially this texture is one hash ID, so anywhere in the game it shows up it will use your remastered one

I know exactly the 6 door lineup you are talking about too D:

Some of what I've been doing when I have been remastering this is trying to minimize the recognizeable patterns just a little when situations like that happen. Still trying to keep the 'character' of the textures, but trying to make the 'tiling' less noticeable.

but hey it was like that in the OG so no one can fuss at you for it if it's accurate ;3

[dawn ivy]

Oh gotcha. So when you replace something like this are you just replacing the texture then? Because I was trying to replace the mesh so maybe that's where my hash issues were coming from

[amber atlas]

oh!

im glad you mentioned that!

one of the things I used is "mat_wireframe 1" in the console

anything that is blue is a mesh

you CAN replace that and the texture wholesale

[dawn ivy]

I seen that shot from your mod db

[amber atlas]

anything that is yellow is a decal - just the texture

anything that is gray is a bsp brush

ONLY texture

in this case, the door shutters and frames are all brush work

so you can just bake this to a plane

[dawn ivy]

Okay i was wondering if it was a bsp brush, didn't know that cmd line

That explains everything lol thanks.

[amber atlas]

it goes NUTS when you have raytacing on, so turn it off then use that cmd

of course!

looking forward to more of your progress :3

[dawn ivy]

So I how do I go about getting that texture ready for the bsp then. I loaded it onto the original in remix for the hell of it yesterday and of course the uvs don't match and it goes all nutty

[amber atlas]

that's the trick with these

you have to bake them to a plane, since that's how they are applied to a brush in engine

[dawn ivy]

Surprisingly my ocd uv layout was close so it actually was pretty good on 2/3 the door lol

[dawn ivy]

Oh right I remember reading that in your dB post now. Perfect.

[amber atlas]

it makes it super easy to get a result though!

uvs for models take a lot of time but this is just ez pz

[dawn ivy]

Just out of curiosity what area of the game are you currently working with? Still the apt area? UVs are the devil 🤣 Just don't want to work on anything your already on, figured the tutorial area was an easy start.

[amber atlas]

Yes, the plan is to finish the entire apartments. I have done all the meshes in the apartments and hallways, now I'm powering through the textures.
Once that's done I'm going to release it as a proof of concept demo.

Then I'm going to scrap that Remix project, and get onto Catto's framework.
Re apply all my art back, and then be on what we are hoping will be the standard framework.

That means you should be able to combine mods and override stuff if we all work from his framework. Since we will all share the same Hash ID's for textures/objects etc.

Means someone could download my mod, then say, 'I don't like the apartment carpet texture!' and download someone elses mod and mash em up.

OR

I could make overrides for things I want alternatives for etc.

Lot's of potential flexibility/compatibility

[left grove]

Catto mentioned joking asside, yeah I can merge some of the stuff. I am back to my 4080 this Saturday. The captures for the haven are on a branch, also happy to merge that into the main branch for you Safemilk

and I'll echo it some more, good work Kunzinator keep going, you are pretty good at it

[amber atlas]

Oh no so I'll have to restart my project entirely. I'm still on my test from when I started this wholeeeee thing...

haha

[left grove]

that sucks to some extent, but hopefully it'll get more hype around this

but single handedly doing the entire haven is no joke

[amber atlas]

I have been planning for this pain in the butt XD

[left grove]

please backup your files

[amber atlas]

but it's good too because I finally got the new version of Remix working with VTMB using the symlink stuff, so I can just clean everything up, be on the latest, and then build from the framework!

[amber atlas]

I gott em' backed up noice

[dawn ivy]

👍 Yes your home decor taste is terrible, alternate carpets are definitely in the must have mod on top of a mod list 😉 I seen there was a spreadsheet but not much in it lol I will probably end up hopping around finding things that I can work on that are still easy on the modeling side. Or anyone just point out things that they absolutely do not want to do and send me to hack job it.... I have been wanting to help with a VTMB project like this for so many years and with Remix it is finally possible.

[amber atlas]

Haha well I'd replace the carpet too if it looked that shaggy and dirty...

[left grove]

Should be good, I believe I'll be a bit busy most weekends going forward but always down to collaborate on anything even if you just need me to go and look for reference images for stuff let me know 🤔

[amber atlas]

We may want to do a pass on figuring out what versions of bridge and dvk... whatever, as well as double checking the process. I think some of it has changed?

But that's not ultra high priority jusssttt yet 😄

[left grove]

I think we just link to that tool that's somewhere out here, that makes it way less painful. The only pain point is knowing what King David's bits have made in it and which haven't

[dawn ivy]

I am using latest version of dxvk and latest runtime 5.4 I think, without issue and fullscreen works with new dxvk

[neat spindle]

We shouldn't have to use the same captures, right? The whole toolkit would be basically useless if different machines assigned different hashes to the same things.

[amber atlas]

A good portion of them have, but one of the drop downs for the sky thing has not, but it MOSTLY works. I am seeing the sky wobble/disconnect just like you were now Catto

[neat spindle]

Also I tried upgrading to the latest DXVK and bridge and it won't launch, so I'm going to have to figure out what I'm doing wrong since other folks were able to get it working.

[amber atlas]

I am not sure how it would decide globally for every install what hash was assigned to what random piece of data from a game.
I think it's far more likely that is why the options for "Edit" and "Remaster" are in the Remix tool when you go to open a project. So you can easily open someone else's thing and inherit their hashes.

[neat spindle]

Couldn't it just use the file structure of the game itself to generate hashes? Texture name -> hash

[amber atlas]

right but what's it's base of reference for that? it doesn't 'know' anything about the game other than different asset types exist

if it's iterating, how does it choose to start? there's no 0 asset, there are just assets of a certain type

so whatever algo they have for hashing everything doesn't have a frame of reference for a starting point NOR a reference

I mean being wrong on this would be fantastic, because it would make everything else easier

we can check right now actually

6E8B9F793CB9E6D9

search in your texture captures

tell me what that one pops up as

for me it is metal/doordb

[dawn ivy]

I didn't update bridge, I think that caused me not to be able to launch as well when I tried.

[dawn ivy]

I am using the git repo for remix and that matches my hash

[amber atlas]

if @neat spindle is right then this is realllyyyy nice

I can't imagine how they do it, but that would be excellent

it seems like he's nailed it...

[dawn ivy]

perhaps it generates it from some property of the file, equivalent of liek generating a checksum etc

[neat spindle]

I'm on mobile right now but I can check when I get home. Do you know where that texture appears?

[amber atlas]

Texture appears in the sp_tutorial_1

map

@neat spindle if yours is the same I'm a very happy boy

lol

and yeah @dawn ivy maybe there's some property of the file it's reading consistently

[dawn ivy]

oops i named my captures sm_tutorial lol well I was close and I did debate on whether to use sm or sp

[amber atlas]

i dont want to get to excited because that means i don't have to do like... months of rework 😄

[dawn ivy]

Oh the fun you will miss out on

[amber atlas]

XD man I'm crossing my fingers hard I'll miss out on that fun

[neat spindle]

I'll take a capture there when I get home and check the results.

So my theory is based on the fact that hashes are generated when a capture is made by the Runtime, that is, while it's reading data directly from the game's rendering pipeline.

I've noticed that changing material settings in one captured scene gets forwarded into other scenes (say, replacing the door knob) which means a stable hash of some sort must be created.

[dawn ivy]

that is what I am guessing as well

[amber atlas]

I've never been more excited to be wrong on something! That's a good theory. My theory was that it captures that hash and ties it to a peice of data on initial capture with the file. So then it would be instanced later, but I didn't have any theory for how it would be consistent across projects by different people.

I wonder if there would be a difference based on whether UP+ was installed or not? Or if it also would account for that and just have extra hashes that went unused and stayed default

[neat spindle]

So if you take a capture of, say, Chinatown, the street texture that is shared with Santa Monica should have the same hash.

[dawn ivy]

If you need confirmation I can create a fresh remix project and take a capture quick if you would like, just sitting back at my pc now

[amber atlas]

yeah i mean as i remaster it allll gets remastered

all the props and textures ive done show up in many other maps and that holds true

my surpirse is just about different initial projects having the same hashes

but also my delight XD

[neat spindle]

Yeah, I could totally be wrong here, but that's my inclination. I think the only thing that needs to be shared is the actual core project file itself since that's how changes are assigned.

[left grove]

bit late to the convo but I do think the hashes would be the same as they are the same assets and the same thing is being done to create that hash, so it should be the same as long as it's the same game

[amber atlas]

I mean just based off of Kunzinator's result I'm hopeful. We can always ask someone from NV if we still have doubts. But it's looking like you hit the nail on the head with this one.

I wonder if there is significance in the hash NAME itself

like does that string actually mean something specific

[neat spindle]

Oh, I missed this, haha. Yeah, that seems like clear confirmation.

[amber atlas]

Yeah since I'm not on that AT ALL

[neat spindle]

My assumption is that the hash is generated using the game's files. So whatever internal texture name (or maybe a more complex assembly of material properties) it has directly translates to the hash value.

[dawn ivy]

Kim — 09/21/2023 3:51 PM
He was asking about converting file hashes so we can identify the name of the texture from remix's capture and just streamline the process but since it's generated from raw data as Mark said, that's not possible.
if i understand this correctly, you want to generate hashes of the textures, the same way Remix would name them in captures? if so, there's code for that here:
https://github.com/Kim2091/RTXRemixTools/blob/0b011098a41468e69b90cc519b4d3cce3ed7f67a/MagicUSDA/MagicUSDA.py#L9

did a search for hash generation in the discord channel

[neat spindle]

If this is true, that means most of our work should port over directly to Plus Patch, potentially barring assets that get replaced on a Hammer level.

[amber atlas]

yeah

damn

this is exciting

[dawn ivy]

now that you mention it before I did my fresh install troubleshooting because I was trying to replace bsp with meshes like a dope, I am pretty sure I had plus patch on or possibly the install before that and it didnt seem to cause any issues or confusion in remix

[amber atlas]

thats great

i have plus patch on and i was worried i might have to grapple with that but maybe things will be less of a problem?

[neat spindle]

Okay, so this means we won't have to have captures in our repo (and by extension literally every texture in the game) which should make down/uploading much faster.

[amber atlas]

That's really good...

[neat spindle]

Our repo should have all our replacement assets in it, though... So it'll get slower as we get further along in the project.

Oh, question for you, Safemilk, are you replacing all the stuff visible from the apartment window too?

[amber atlas]

I actually was going to look into doing that

I had done the street texture as a prototype and liked the results, had done the sidewalk as well

props would be pretty simple since its mostly lights and signs

the building facades would be more involved

Every day I get closer to just pulling the trigger on those

[dawn ivy]

If there is any issues you guys have with cloud storage space etc. just let me know, I have an unlimited webhosting account that I can create a storage space on with ftp access for anyone who needs it.

[neat spindle]

Catto set up our GitHub repo with LFS so we should be good

[dawn ivy]

that way if you want you can create the repo itself without bloating it too badly and then just download what you need. I do have valid ssl certs etc so it can be made accessable for downloads.

[dawn ivy]

Oh just seen that, I know I skimmed some discussion of that from the past and wasn't sure if that was sorted. Well if any webhosting is needed I got you guys covered, multi ssl certificate so I can reissue it for any domain name and give dns ips

[neat spindle]

Okay, cool, this is exactly what I was wondering about. Was eyeing some stuff in the Chinatown hub and then I figured I should check if you had already done the street textures since they're shared on all the maps.

[dawn ivy]

Random thought I had when thinking about watermarks followed by hiding faces in blood splatter(I have the attention deficiencies) There needs to be a Malk playthrough texture submod.....random oddball texture replacements 😄

[amber atlas]

Would be funny if there was some kind of mod Malk randomizer you could download for remix and stuff just... wasn't what it was 😄

[neat spindle]

That probably would be doable with Remix, yeah. Especially if we manage to get character model replacements going that could be used for some really fun moments (like how terrified you get when you first meet ||Cain||)

[amber atlas]

I really hope we can get characters working, I have so many of them decompiled and prototyped and a few close to being done. I'm really crossing my fingers on that.

[neat spindle]

I know there are some actual visual changes for Malks, so we'll have to do a pass on that anyways. Things like the dancing chains in Confession, etc.

[dawn ivy]

Hmmm why is this shutter framed in a giant monolithic rock face......must be a Malk thing.....

[unborn tusk]

just ping me if you're wondering about stuff like this btw. i don't mind pings

that hash generation will work as long as the textures you're dumping from the game are the exact same as the ones Remix dumps. if it is, you're good to go

[dawn ivy]

That has made Safemilks year for him 🙂 Oh my disappearing items the other day were me trying to replace bsp with meshes so it was a durpy moment, thanks again for the attempted assistance on that👍

[amber atlas]

That's excellent news... saves me a ton of rework!!!

[heady magnet]

My brain has questions that need your brain's answers.

[left grove]

oh yes? feel free to post them on here, I am sure we'll all try to help as soon as we can

timezones

[broken scaffold]

I think I know why the skinning is borked and I'll be looking at it this weekend

Something to do with the way VTMB makes bone controllers by default

[left grove]

Thanks King David! Once again anything you need feel free to ask

[broken scaffold]

Just really want to get the damn skinning thing working already lmao

Having to partially reverse engineer VTMB is killing my time !

[left grove]

Hopefully it's relatively quick now

Appreciate you want to get back to dark Messiah

Thank you for your time and effort

[broken scaffold]

https://tenor.com/view/hot-fuzz-greater-good-evil-funny-gif-5283257

[dawn ivy]

I can't imagine the amount of times "reverse engineering vtmb" has been bitched about, by many a person, over the the years since it's release.

[broken scaffold]

I have a leg up because ironically VTMB is more like an older brother to Dark Messiah code wise

but we're talking code that is comprable to the HL2 Leak here.. plus whatever activision did to make it go forward when there weren't really standards even for the SOURCE ENGINE

I empathize with the guy that made the unofficial patch for this

[neat spindle]

Or hell, more accurately what Activision did to make it not go forward. Apparently they made it go gold early and as a result a bunch of engine functionality that was in HL2 didn't get implemented in VTMB.

[amber atlas]

I wonder how different the way the handled visemes is going to be?

I feel like Dark Messiah had visemes in it, like in game characters def made facial experessions and lip synced right?

It's been so long

part of me thinks it might have only been in cutscenes lol

[amber atlas]

Yeah if he is able to solve this, then remix would be the only real easy path to getting custom characters etc in vtmb since... forever

[dawn ivy]

That would be amazing but, to be honest I really am not bothered by older original character models and I think they have a charm to them. The game itself really doesn't look bad considering it's age in my opinion but if worst case scenario comes down to a remix with original character models and everything else redone I still will die a happy man.

[amber atlas]

Haha well then you wont like what I'm workin' on

[dawn ivy]

I didn't say I am opposed. The only one I really am going to be picky on is Jeanette / T. Younger me found that character to be very ummm..... Inspiring.... And Other than a poly upgrade I like her just the way she is 😁

[amber atlas]

haha yeah i have her mostly done but her face isn't quite right, feel like people are going to blow me up for that so i gotta be careful

got 3 or 4 characters in various stages of complete right now for future testing

[neat spindle]

Don't worry, our design goal for this remaster is to stick to vanilla aesthetics as closely as possible. So keeping stylistic deviations as minimal as possible while giving ourselves room to realize things that might have been restricted by technical limitations.

[amber atlas]

I mean to be clear I'm rebuilding them from scratch, I'm not just throwing a sub d modifier on them and calling it a day

and there will be changes and 'fixes'

Characters especially are going to suffer from the imprecise nature of how people talk about what's on screen visually

difference between art style, design of character, overall aesthetic etc

people tend to use those things interchangeably but they are all different and all compete with each other to end up with a final piece

[dawn ivy]

That face isn't perfect and you are getting fired from this unpaid job 😅 what time zone are you btw? May have a few questions on how your are doing your bake to plane later after I get done mowing the lawn

[amber atlas]

Hehe my 401k!

I'm in Arizona

and we dont do daylight savings?

for some reason

it's 3:12 pm for me right now

[dawn ivy]

Haha MN here and we all wish we didn't. So just a couple hours ahead of you then.

[amber atlas]

yeah if you're up later on, i'm down to hop on and talk about the plane baking stuff, i think i should be around tonight

[neat spindle]

Yeah, it's going to be interesting trying to get the characters right. Their original styles are definitely a bit cartoony and exaggerated because of the technical limitations of the time so they'll look pretty different if we try to bring them to a more realistic style.

[dawn ivy]

I'll just type it out now quick then finish the lawn. So on the one I am working on after I textured in substance I imported back to 3ds max and imported pbr texture export and projected plane with cage over model and baked textures. Height map came out great but it looked like all the other maps like roughness and metalness etc were just being baked as albedo copies. I found a sneaky trick and just removed all the layers but the one I was about to export and then ran the bake for each one and that did the trick. I am guessing I need to set up those individual PBR layer bakes as how they should be like grayscale etc. I am assuming when you bake your metalness and roughness files are not being shot out as full color albedo looking png's? Otherwise I was wondering if I am better off just grabbing the height map in 3ds and then importing the plane back into substance and baking there. I am just using standard 3ds max rendered at the moment but if anyone has a better reccomendation I don't mind paying monthly on a renderer VRay was too much but some of the others seemed reasonable in a $20-30 range.

[amber atlas]

Honestly I'd just bake in substance

[dawn ivy]

I know you are using blender but I should be able to translate whatever you say from one to the other enough to make sense

So just get the whole thing onto a plane and the just rock it in substance. That what I kind of was thinking.

[amber atlas]

I'd bring the high poly and low poly into substance, bake the hi poly down, then use all the masks you get to texture in substance

yes

absolutely the approach i'd take

I use toolbag4 which has texturing tools a lot like substance painter, but before that i used substance painter and its the same workflow

bake in substance and texture, then export

[dawn ivy]

I am talking on the bsp flat ones, on the full mesh stuff I wouldn't have to go back into 3ds and bake

[amber atlas]

you technically only need 2 meshes, the plane, and the high detail one you are using to fake the shape from the original texture

no bsp flats needed

[dawn ivy]

Yeah the plane. So just project my high poly to plane and render the height map in 3ds and then bake in substance, right.

[amber atlas]

you can get a height map from baking in substance as well

so you only really need to model in 3dsmax/blender, then as part of your bake, include a height map

[dawn ivy]

Only part I am getting lost on is the whole rendered to a plane part as the 3d bake from Substance bake isn't going to match after I render to a plane but, if I import as a plane into substance it would need the height map beforehand. So that's where I am getting lost.

[amber atlas]

so when i bake, i do it all in the painting and baking software

i set the plane directly in front of the high poly mesh

and when i bake the maps, i bake all of the ones i need to texture

those become the input maps for texturing in toolbag/painter

so i actually dont generate or bake any maps in blender/3dsmax at all

just the raw geo

if you put the plane as the same size over your hi poly, it projects straight back

and if its the right dimensions, you now have a 2048/2048 texture, or whatever res you want

also you infected me yesterday and i couldnt get that door out of my head lol

so thx

but same exact principle

[dawn ivy]

Okay gotcha. Sorry. I did get it into remix but remix decided to start crashing on me after so I wasn't able to get screens. Probably going to work on that frame tonight after I finish my multi interrupted mowing

[amber atlas]

yeah if you want to hopin one of the voice channels to go over it i'd be happy to

it sounds like you are just giving yourself an extra step in there that you could optimize out

i mean later on

when you aren't doing chores etc

[dawn ivy]

Happy wife... Less miserable life 👍

[amber atlas]

haha well if you're on later tag me and we can hop on

[dawn ivy]

Think I may have figured out what I was screwing up. I will harass you later if it turns out I am wrong.

Turns out the nonvideo instruction manual / tutorial from 3ds max 2011 is much better than the current issue one

[dawn ivy]

I was projecting to the plane incorrectly, baked just fine in 3ds max. So process is Model in 3ds > paint in substance > bake to plain in 3ds > Remix easy enough. Well I guess now that I have that figured out I will have to get back to working on my modeling skills, which are very bad.

[dawn ivy]

@amber atlas quite happy with these flaps that I spent way too much time on. They will end up getting a dirt layer along with the rest to fade and brown them up.

[amber atlas]

Nice! Much flappier!

[heady magnet]

Is the mast sunken or the ship sailing on?

If it is indeed still sailing, when may it hail the harbor?

[heady magnet]

Like brain flaps! 🧠

xD

[left grove]

The ship is still here what help do you require?

[heady magnet]

That makes my voices very happy! I am no longer here. ❤️

[left grove]

Well anything you need, I have access to my RTX capable machine until about Thursday 😂 then I'll be back next Sunday

[heady magnet]

I would like the shiny modification, please. The moon is melting unreflectingly.

The ocean is not reflecting the moon!

[left grove]

ohhhh I don't think we have gotten to the ocean working just yet 💀

it's still a dark abyss for the time being

I believe it was to do with how DX7 handled water. I can check on the latest remix runtime, but I don't believe it's anywhere near fixed yet