[MOD] Kuban Texture Mod v1.1

[PicksKing]

 

Hi guys,

as the title says, its a texture mod for kuban map. This mod contains texture replacements as well as color, contrast and brightness adjustments of standard textures.

 

Tell me, what you think or if you have hints, comments, suggestions, problems or bug reports, let me know. Thanks.

I bet, this wasnt the last version.

 

download v1.1:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EF1tA7REVm0rdhFTE1k7S4S2M--L5lmr/view?usp=sharing

Simply extract the archive into the main folder "C:\...\IL-2 Sturmovik\data\graphics..."

or into the designated mod folder of JSGME "C:\...\IL-2 Sturmovik\MODS\Kuban Texture Mod v1.1\data\graphics..."

 

Screenshots (gamma 1.0):

 

 

 

 

Edited February 2, 2020 by PicksKing

[Velxra]

I completely love it! Nicely done.

Just please do your best to make the file size small as possible because the ground texture is a constant load. 

[Avyx]

Looks good, thanks a million 

[LizLemon]

If you wanted to go crazy you could make them look more like fields instead of the palette brush look they have now. There is also the detail texture you may want to mess with.

[PicksKing]

Some new screenshots. Has somebody impressions to share? 

 

On 6/15/2019 at 5:29 PM, Geronimo553 said:

I completely love it! Nicely done.

Just please do your best to make the file size small as possible because the ground texture is a constant load. 

I guess, that lowering the texture file size wont help you fixing your performance problems, in case you have some. I would bet its more likely a matter of object management of big theaters. And the mod will have the same file sizes anyway so it will have the same performance. Even there is a noticable effect.

 

21 hours ago, LizLemon said:

If you wanted to go crazy you could make them look more like fields instead of the palette brush look they have now. There is also the detail texture you may want to mess with.

I did check the detail folder but they arent even more "detailed". Its just another (1 of 5) 4k field texture, split into 64 parts for some mysterious reason. 64 files. 64 damn files! puzzled together and reworked. Modding isnt very user friendly in il2
Fortunatly my software has very handy tools for such editing so I didnt become insame. Not yet. Summer is almost finished. Two more season to go.

Edited June 16, 2019 by PicksKing

[Velxra]

4 minutes ago, PicksKing said:

I guess, that lowering the texture file size wont help you fixing your performance problems, in case you have some. I would bet its more likely a matter of object management of big theaters. And the mod will have the same file sizes anyway so it will have the same performance. Even there is a noticable effect.

 

I have no performance issues. However a mismanaged mod which could double required memory because textures are not compressed will cause problems. Hence why I mention it as such a thing is often over looked. 

[LizLemon]

1 hour ago, PicksKing said:

I did check the detail folder but they arent even more "detailed". Its just another (1 of 5) 4k field texture, split into 64 parts for some mysterious reason. 64 files. 64 damn files! puzzled together and reworked. Modding isnt very user friendly in il2

Fortunatly my software has very handy tools for such editing so I didnt become insame. Not yet. Summer is almost finished. Two more season to go.

 

I meant the detail textures in the root folder of the map. For Kuban its detail.dds and detail2.dds. These textures are layered over the ground textures to make them look more detailed than they really are.

 

You can also double the resolution of the landscape textures and it will work fine.

 

1 hour ago, Geronimo553 said:

 

I have no performance issues. However a mismanaged mod which could double required memory because textures are not compressed will cause problems. Hence why I mention it as such a thing is often over looked. 

 

All textures have to be in dds format. Doubling memory use of land textures isnt a big deal with modern GPUs anyway.

[FTC_Riksen]

Great work! They look amazing!

[PicksKing]

A first version is online, which contains the summer textures. For test purposes. Give it a try and tell me how it looks like.

 

16 hours ago, LizLemon said:

I meant the detail textures in the root folder of the map. For Kuban its detail.dds and detail2.dds. These textures are layered over the ground textures to make them look more detailed than they really are.

So its multitexturing. I reworked the detail.dds and its looks better with higher resolution and more details but not good as I wanted to. This noise texture is only partially visible. Its not visible on taxi ways for example. There must be an alpha channel, which controlls that but I still didnt find the right one.
And the detail2.dds doesnt contain anything. No clue for what a grey texture might be.
 

[sevenless]

Looks convincingly natural. Thanks for sharing.

[JUSTPLANECRAZY]

Just tried it and it looks real good THANKS for the hard work , looking forward to the other seasons. 

[LizLemon]

4 hours ago, PicksKing said:

A first version is online, which contains the summer textures. For test purposes. Give it a try and tell me how it looks like.

 

So its multitexturing. I reworked the detail.dds and its looks better with higher resolution and more details but not good as I wanted to. This noise texture is only partially visible. Its not visible on taxi ways for example. There must be an alpha channel, which controlls that but I still didnt find the right one.
And the detail2.dds doesnt contain anything. No clue for what a grey texture might be.
 

 

Things like the taxiways are drawn on top of the landscape textures so they aren't affected by the detail textures.

 

Also the detail textures channels are applied based on distance. From what I can remember off the top of my head, R = close, B = mid and G = longer distances.

These textures also have a big impact on the brightness of the landscape texts - brighten up the detail and the landscape will be brighter too.

[PicksKing]

Well, its done. All 3 seasons are complete now. I edited the first post with a download link.

[JUSTPLANECRAZY]

Great work MANY THANKS.

[KpgQuop]

That looks fantastic. Thank you for sharing.

[FoxbatRU]

10 часов назад, PicksKing сказал:

Well, its done. All 3 seasons are complete now. I edited the first post with a download link. 

I like. It turned out beautifully. Super! Thank. ?

[=EXPEND=Capt_Yorkshire]

nice work. 

[PatCartier]

Great, thank you !

 

[PicksKing]

Ideas for v1.1.
Normal mapping is a really powerful tool
Its just a bit tricky to find the right ratio. Too much and it looks like jungle tiles. 

 

Reality:

Edited June 23, 2019 by PicksKing

[EAW_Titan20MM]

Really good work there, thank you!

[PicksKing]

More stuff for v1.1. The north caucasus hasn't that much grey rock and bright grass but more brownish mountains with smoother contours and barren grasslands.
I am pretty happy about how much better it looks already. There is still a lot to do but I'll try to finish it within the next week.

 

Edited June 28, 2019 by PicksKing

[sevenless]

Man that Looks almost photorealistic. Great mod!

[Missionbug]

Looks truly amazing, great work, thank you very much, really appreciated.

 

 

Wishing you all the very best, Pete.

[LizLemon]

Are you just editing the textures or are you messing with the cliffs variables in textures.tini?

[PicksKing]

On 6/29/2019 at 8:09 AM, LizLemon said:

Are you just editing the textures or are you messing with the cliffs variables in textures.tini?

 

I tried to. I tried to set a bigger size for some textures to minimize the tiling effect and be more flexible with the details. Especially the snow blanket would benefit from it because the standard snow looks a bit like whipped cream ? 
But I wasn't able to manage this. Not to mention some "cliffs variables". I dont even have a clue what it is.
Until now I just did texture replacements.

 

Edit: A few weeks ago I tried to manipulate the tini-file and failed. Now I tried again and it was suprisingly easy. But there may be 2 problems:
1. How often do the devs change such tini-files. Maybe such a mod lasts only until the next update because the tini-file was totally rebuilt.
2. Some small textures (512x512) need to be replaced with 4k-textures. I have a RTX2080, so I cant even check any possible performance loss.

 

Edited July 1, 2019 by PicksKing

[LizLemon]

3 hours ago, PicksKing said:

1. How often do the devs change such tini-files. Maybe such a mod lasts only until the next update because the tini-file was totally rebuilt.

 

For older maps pretty much never, and when they do its one or two line changes.

[FoxbatRU]

11 часов назад, PicksKing сказал:

Very cool!

[may-bug]

Thank you PicksKing . Good work! That's exactly the stuff that  this  (already beautiful) map needed. Well done, keep up the good work!

 

(For the textures replacement, I had a try with 2048 textures instead of 256 or 512 and didn't notice fps loss on this map (I7 7700, gtx 1070, ram16GB).

[Avyx]

WOW

It looks AMAZING.

Thank you so much, PicksKing

[javelina]

What a great mod!  thank you.  I installed it yesterday and really enjoying it.

[PicksKing]

Update to 1.1. First post edited with new a download link and some screenshots.

-fields reworked once again

-complete new mountain textures with higher resolution,

-(felt) hundreds of tiny adjustments and corrections, like reducing LOD "jumps" or the noticable edge between close and far rendering of forest...

 

If you have problems or something looks shitty, post it please!

 

Btw I recommend to install the "old sky color" mod by Ungern-Sternberg. Its works together very well:

 

Before and after comparison: 

Edited July 2, 2019 by PicksKing

[Avyx]

Thank you very much much, PicksKing

 

[watermanpc]

thanks a lot man, you are a real genious!!...btw, I think it looks beautiful with the new sky color, which honestly I think looks better than the old one.?

[MrNoice]

Hey, 

I haven't tried that out yet. But is it possible to use these textures without mod on? 

 

Greetings

[PicksKing]

17 minutes ago, MrFies said:

Hey, 

I haven't tried that out yet. But is it possible to use these textures without mod on? 

 

Greetings

 

Unfortunately not.

The standard textures are in encrypted archives. The only way I would imagine is to get the modded textures into these archives to bypass the "mod on" mode. Decrypting is easy with the right tool but encrypting back is something else. So I have no clue how to do this and possibly some kind of file integrity check might kick in.

Edited July 3, 2019 by PicksKing

[LizLemon]

If you have tons of patience you could do it with 3dmigoto.

[KpgQuop]

19 hours ago, watermanpc said:

thanks a lot man, you are a real genious!!...btw, I think it looks beautiful with the new sky color, which honestly I think looks better than the old one.?

 Seconded. If you too like the new sky colour, then install this mod with confidence. Thanks for taking the plunge Watermanpc and thanks again for sharing PicksKing. Stellar work.

[Marianggello]

Beautiful work, my friend. My favourite map will be even better. Hat down and thank you.

[Bullets]

Looks amazing but Im getting pretty bad performance drop spikes when flying over the mountains (don't know if its just that area its just where i am flying right now) FPS drops from 110~ to 20/30 with bad stutters as textures are struggling to load.

[PicksKing]

36 minutes ago, Bullets said:

Looks amazing but Im getting pretty bad performance drop spikes when flying over the mountains (don't know if its just that area its just where i am flying right now) FPS drops from 110~ to 20/30 with bad stutters as textures are struggling to load.

 

I feared something like this. But after a while I began to think this wont happen. Here's why:

The mountains were just made with 5 different textures of 512x512px. So very small! I replaced them with 1K, 2K and 4K textures. And even 4K textures are no big deal. The planes have them and the field textures too. The load is a little bigger for sure but you have a 1080ti with 11GB. Even more than my 2080 and I dont feel anything of a performance drop. Never below 60fps on WQHD. Even not with the cloud mod with a sample of 1024.
So the problem might be somewhere else. I'd like to think, that you use a SATA-SSD or NVMe-SSD ? 

But maybe I botched something with a tini-file.
@All. Can anybody else in here confirm a significant performance drop? 

Edited July 3, 2019 by PicksKing