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[Panajev2001a]

Without Detail-Map:

With a Detail-Map (made simply of PURE NOISE: you could do a custom one to mimic the type of surface you want and obtain an even better result):

Credits go to Aths from Beyond3D's forums.

A detail texture is a very small, fine pattern which is faded in as you approach a surface, for example wood grain, or imperfections in stone. When you import a detail texture, you need to set its Scale value to a small number (typically 0.25nm) to specify its scaling relative to whatever texture it applies to.

Detail textures and macrotextures modulate (multiply) the surface they're applied to. By modulating, they have the ability to scale the surface's brightness up or down. Colors with RGB brightness values from 0-127 darken the surface; 128 has no effect; and 129-255 brighten the surface. Therefore, when drawing microtextures and macrotextures, it is important that you design them with their brightnesses in the proper range so they affect surfaces naturally. If a detail texture's average brightness deviates too far from 128, then surfaces will appear to brighten or darken as you approach them.

 

[Azih]

Either my eyes are defective or the two pics are practically identical.

 

[Zilch]

There's definitely a difference.

 

[joshschw]

not that big a difference, sure with the map it looks better, but I don;t know if it looks enough better to justify any sort of performance hit.

 

[Property of Jumpship]

Second picture is better, right?

What is the purpose of this thread?

 

[Lord Error]

It works better the closer you get to the object. Halo and Halo 2 are great examples of how important detail maps are in the games where you can get close to an object, especially given the memory constrains of today's consoles. I was surprised to see Area 51 uses this technique even on PS2. It makes the game practically look better than any other PS2 FPS by a long shot, when you are close to some surface.

 

[Ecrofirt]

I like the first better.

 

[RuGalz]

Almost looks like 2nd picture is dithered if you don't know what to look for.

 

[Rocket9]

I see the difference but I dont see why it's important :S

 

[Seth C]

I like the first better.

So do I. The unchanging noise added across everything just looks rather bad, in my opinion.

 

[pj]

I think American McGee's alice uses it, because the carpets look really good in that game..

 

[Blimblim]

It's funny cause I did almost the same thing on a Pariah topic yesterday, when mentioning that the detail textures where lacking :
Good detail texture :

Bad / missing :

 

[ArcadeStickMonk]

I think American McGee's alice uses it, because the carpets look really good in that game..

It certainly did, and so do a shit ton of other games in the 5 or whatever years since that game was released.

Also, for the people who submit that worrying about floor detail is pointless because nobody would notice, pj325is just proved us all wrong.

 

[Lord Error]

These pictures Pana posted are really poor examples of detail texturing btw. I agan refer to Halo or Area 51 for an example of good utilization of this technique.

 

[Zilch]

I really like/appreciate the effect, personally. I doubt it creates much of a performance hit.

 

[fallout]

Either my eyes are defective or the two pics are practically identical.

I had the same problem. I even downloaded them so I could switch back and forth. At first, I only noticed what I thought was a light difference. Then, after maybe 5 seconds more of looking, the second seems to be ... less blurred.

I'd never notice this at first glance though.

 

[FightyF]

Halo 2's detail maps are unreal.

This one is much like the detail maps used in Serious Sam, where noise was used as is. In Halo too, you got the detail maps looking very different. Wood, metal, rock...all had very different looks.

 

[PanopticBlue]

Seems kind of late to be posting something like this pana, since it is not a new technique, though it is still welcome. Definitely more games need it. Halo had awesome detail textures and that game was a launch title. Since then there are even a handful of ps2 games that have detail textures. When they are done right (Halo) they look very impressive. The example pic you posted wasn't the best example however.

 

[Panajev2001a]

Seems kind of late to be posting something like this pana, since it is not a new technique, though it is still welcome. Definitely more games need it. Halo had awesome detail textures and that game was a launch title. Since then there are even a handful of ps2 games that have detail textures. When they are done right (Halo) they look very impressive. The example pic you posted wasn't the best example however.

I wanted to give some props to the guy making the example and it was a good example of with and without: considering it was simple NOISE used as Detail-map, I think it is a nice effort .

 

[Tain]

Yeah, it does look nice for just being noise.

Deus Ex used detail textures pretty well, as did Tribes 2.

 

[Mejilan]

It's easier to see the detail mapping in the up-close portion of the pavement. From the middle of the screen on I can barely tell a difference.

Regardless, both pavements look like shit to me, imho.

 

[ImNotLikeThem]

It's easier to see the detail mapping in the up-close portion of the pavement. From the middle of the screen on I can barely tell a difference.

thats part of the point. detial maps only show up in close by textures, helping to eliminate the blocky pixely blurry mess you often see.

 

[Mejilan]

thats part of the point. detial maps only show up in close by textures, helping to eliminate the blocky pixely blurry mess you often see.

Yeah, I figured as much.

 

[aoi tsuki]

Yes, it adds details, but in both examples the "details" make it look worse. i'm assuming it's just a poor application, because the first example looks like someone took a layer of noise in Photoshop and laid it on top of the tiles. The second screen from Pariah doesn't look like the texture of rock at all.

 

[border]

Also, for the people who submit that worrying about floor detail is pointless because nobody would notice, pj325is just proved us all wrong.

But doesn't the fact that he only remembered it in some game from half a decade ago (and none since) kind of prove that it's not that important or noticeable? =P

 

[jett]

Using Detail Maps in Unreal(the very first one) made a big difference...I've always wondered why pretty much NO games use them.

 

[MightyHedgehog]

I've still yet to see a game with an overall better use of detail maps outside of the first Halo. Still looks damned good and was the first game I could see the real benefit to detail maps.

 

[ArcadeStickMonk]

But doesn't the fact that he only remembered it in some game from half a decade ago (and none since) kind of prove that it's not that important or noticeable?

Not necessarily. He might not have played another game in half a decade.

At this point we really don't know.

 

[Fafalada]

Yes, it adds details, but in both examples the "details" make it look worse. i'm assuming it's just a poor application

Indeed they are poor examples, the first one really looks dithered more then detailed, like Ruggie said.

Thing is there's nothing saying detail map has to be just colormap noise detail - you can use anything for it - for instance, a normal map, giving you actual lighting detail which sells the surface a whole lot better then any of the above examples.
One pretty nice example of that approach was the asphalt in Apex. Though the problem with that one was that while it looks really nice when you're stopped, it breaks down in motion (the high repetition of detail normal map tends to give the illusion of not moving at all when you look at it at higher speeds).

On that note - a lot of racing games use multiple layered levels of detail for road colormaps, we often used around 3.

 

[Crazy Harry]

We need of these sort of threads which highlight the practices in game development.
Ofcourse not only on the graphics part but also on the other parts like game design, programming, story writing and so on...

 

[ninge]

There used to be a lot more in the way of technical discussions like this around the time of the DC/PS2 launch but it trailed off a long time ago..

You really need to go elsewhere if you want to discuss the technicalities of game dev these days.

 

[maharg]

haha ninge, fafalada, and pana all in a thread together. Where's deadmeat?

 

[ninge]

heh - let the good times roll

 

[Panajev2001a]

Indeed they are poor examples, the first one really looks dithered more then detailed, like Ruggie said.

Thing is there's nothing saying detail map has to be just colormap noise detail - you can use anything for it - for instance, a normal map, giving you actual lighting detail which sells the surface a whole lot better then any of the above examples.
One pretty nice example of that approach was the asphalt in Apex. Though the problem with that one was that while it looks really nice when you're stopped, it breaks down in motion (the high repetition of detail normal map tends to give the illusion of not moving at all when you look at it at higher speeds).

On that note - a lot of racing games use multiple layered levels of detail for road colormaps, we often used around 3.

Faf, faf... I already said why I posted that: was browsing on B3D, saw that some guy is working on his Thesis and made a nice application while researching how to make tiling of photo-realistic textures appear as random and not patterned as possible: he also posted some simple with/without screen-shots and I wanted to give him props while also taking advantage of it to show the effect here and get some people to talk about it: the thread is still alive which kinda makes me happy .

The original poster did not say it was the best that could be done with Detail-Maps, but he was surprised that even using pure NOISE the result was noticeable.

IMHO it looked better with the NOISE detail map than without, but tastes are tastes .

Still, I got you to post something good and learnign worthy... so I win .

 

[Panajev2001a]

heh - let the good times roll

Just a few weeks, just a few weeks .

 

[DemonCleaner]

bad art

 

[Ignatz Mouse]

This thread illustrates why I no longer argue abotu gfx in games. I just can't tell the difference about most of the things people complain about.

Low poly-counts, really blurry textures, and bad framerates are all things I can see. But generally the current gen of systems doesn't have those problems anymore.

I'm so easy to please...

 

[epmode]

First time I noticed detail maps was in Serious Sam. Looked great, even on my shitty video card.

 

[ImNotLikeThem]

First time I noticed detail maps was in Serious Sam. Looked great, even on my shitty video card.

Bingo, i was waiting for someone to mention Sam. I remember how cool it looked to be able to walk up to the wall and not have it go all blocky/blurry like Quake and even Unreal and Half-Life seemed to do. More games seem to have dropped detail maps for bumpmaps now, although the two aren't really for the same reason. I can't think of where I've seen both being done noticeable, either..