Editing grass-textures? (dds)

[IchWillDeinRegal]

Editing grass-textures? (dds)

Hello,
i tried to edit the grass textures (grass_common.dds and grass_marsh.dds) and everything seems to work fine during the process of modding. The textures seem to get repacked and cooked with properly with modkitchen but i don't see a difference ingame. I also tried changing the grass's colour to completely red, so i would see if it worked, but the game is still using vanilla textures. Now i am wondering if i am doing something wrong. Maybe i need to do something different with dds-textures than modding .tga-textures. Or maybe the speedtree-models just refuse to use modded textures instead. I hope someone with knowledge about texture-modding can help me! If i remember it right @HalkHoganPL retextured the spruce-branches for his mod, so theoretically it should be possible for grass as well, right?
Cheers!

EDIT:Forgot one additional information that might be relevant: The grass texture atlas (and all other foliage/vegetation-related textures) got extracted as dds even though i selected "tga" as texture format when uncooking my game files. Not sure if this is normal so i thought i should mention it.

 

[IchWillDeinRegal]

Is there really no one who can help me with this? Modding other textures (for example character-textures) works for me through modkitchen, but those got exported as .tga. I have a suspicion that when building the mod i have to prevent the .dds file from getting packed into .xbm format, but i don't know how to do this.

 

[linaswas_001]

Is there really no one who can help me with this? Modding other textures (for example character-textures) works for me through modkitchen, but those got exported as .tga. I have a suspicion that when building the mod i have to prevent the .dds file from getting packed into .xbm format, but i don't know how to do this.

Modding grass texture is impossible afaik, don't know why tho. If it was possible, we would already have many texture mods on this. I hope that someone with knowledge will tell us why is it really impossible.

 

[ZAEL94]

Maybe HalkHoganPL tell you something. He already editing tress bushes in he's mod HD Reworked Project. But i think that trees it's diffrent than grass.

 

[IchWillDeinRegal]

@linaswas_001 That's unfortunate. Yeah, i would also like to know what makes modding of grass-textures impossible compared to foliage of trees for example , which has been done before.

@Jurek1994 I already messaged him a few days ago , still waiting for a reply though. Chances are he probably doesn't know what to do about the grass texture-atlas either.

 

[jack91]

After change texture dds files , just put files in uncooked folder
example:
Uncooked\environment\vegetation\grass\grass_common\grass_common.dds

 

[IchWillDeinRegal]

After change texture dds files , just put files in uncooked folder
example:
Uncooked\environment\vegetation\grass\grass_common\grass_common.dds

Dude, you're the man. I turned the grass-texture red for testing and this works!



So i guess my problem is solved then, thanks for the hint!

 

[jack91]

If you want just change color, you can change color by env files in m_speedTree

 

[IchWillDeinRegal]

No, that was just for testing. I actually wanted to replace some textures and it seems to work now

 

[Ancient76]

No, that was just for testing. I actually wanted to replace some textures and it seems to work now

How do you plan to do this? Will you use grass from B&W and mix with vanilla, or you have completely new grass textures?

 

[IchWillDeinRegal]

How do you plan to do this? Will you use grass from B&W and mix with vanilla, or you have completely new grass textures?

Well first i am trying to do something different, but i am not sure if it will work as well as i am imagining. I will post it here as soon as i made some progress.
Then i also may try some new textures. I am just experimenting with textures and replacing .srt files to find out what is possible with grass at the moment.
If you want B&W grass there is a way easier way than replacing textures, since you can just edit the grass-brushes.

 

[Ancient76]

Well first i am trying to do something different, but i am not sure if it will work as well as i am imagining. I will post it here as soon as i made some progress.
Then i also may try some new textures. I am just experimenting with textures and replacing .srt files to find out what is possible with grass at the moment.
If you want B&W grass there is a way easier way than replacing textures, since you can just edit the grass-brushes.

I was thinking to mix B&W and main game grass. There is a mod which replace main game grass with B&W, but main game needs more variety grass.
Also B&W grass only works in Velen/Novigrad, it's this mod: http://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/m...3/ajax/moddescription/?id=1836&preview=&pUp=1

 

[Ancient76]

But since you started first with this, it's your responsibility to make it. But it must be professionally done

I will only assist you if you want, cause i have a lot of experience with this. I just hope you won't have more problems.

 

[IchWillDeinRegal]

Hm i am not sure if there are limitations to how many grass types can be used at once per region but there might be even ways to add "new" grass types to the game. Since replacing grass meshes with others existing in the game works, and the textures can be edited too, i might have actually an idea how to make this work. First i want to try something a bit different though. You can pm me if you want to know more , because i don't want create false hopes with posting my plan in a public forum.

 

[Ancient76]

Meshes from B&W work, but only in Velen/Novigrad. But it should be enough to change only textures.

 

[IchWillDeinRegal]

Actually you can put .srt files in newly created folders and edit their textures. That way you can change the textures of some grass models and add the grass to the game IN ADDITION to the original grass. So the texture of the original grass models remains unchanged but the new, edited grass can be added by editing the .vbrush files.
I managed to replace the normal grass used in Novigrad/Velen with some of the swamp-grass and edited the texture to get back the grass-translucency from the E3-demo:

The only drawbacks are that the wind effect looks different than the normal grass and the draw-distance is slightly reduced. However i may be able to compensate for this increasing the grass draw-distance in the user.settings file.​

 

[Ancient76]

Grass translucency is wrong in this game, it's too intensive. How did you edit translucency?

 

[IchWillDeinRegal]

As i already wrote, i used the mesh of the swamp grass (which still uses translucency) and edited the normal grass texture on it. I did this using separate folders so the original swamp grass remains unchanged. I may have found a better way to do this however...
Not sure what exactly you mean by "it's wrong" btw. The grass actually looks a lot better with it, at least in my opinion. The brightness just depends the normal map/the settings in the used .env file and could be adjusted pretty easily i think.

 

[Ancient76]

As i already wrote, i used the mesh of the swamp grass (which still uses translucency) and edited the normal grass texture on it. I did this using separate folders so the original swamp grass remains unchanged. I may have found a better way to do this however...
Not sure what exactly you mean by "it's wrong" btw. The grass actually looks a lot better with it, at least in my opinion. The brightness just depends the normal map/the settings in the used .env file and could be adjusted pretty easily i think.

It does look better when it's implemented properly. In this game grass and some bushes are too much translucent. In reality grass is never completely red or yellow during sunset like in this game.
Look how grass is yellow in this case: https://i.imgur.com/2rcxt9k.jpg

 

[GMSBS_Ghost]

Awesome, wouldn't have thought translucency can be brought back without using Speedtree directly! Nice idea to use swamp grass for this, as well. Thank you very much and good luck moving forward!