For anyone who's ever made a texture in VTFEdit, I'm sure (whether you realized it or not), you've seen this:
[IMG]http://puu.sh/anunk/7dc298283f.png[/IMG]
And more specifically, This:
[IMG]http://puu.sh/anuo3/c0ec7ebad3.png[/IMG]
Now to get this out of the way, Mip Mapping is a process where it takes the resolution of the original image, and down-scales it at further distances resulting in smooth Images, as seen here:
[IMG]http://www.shinvision.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/mipmapping-egz.png[/IMG]
Just recently, I decided the play around with the Mip Map sharpen Filters in VTFEdit. I got some pretty interesting results, and some of them I think would yield even more results, if I were to make the texture transparent and look at an object through them. Anyway, Time to stop dressing up my badly written post with more text than needed; here are my results:
In the first set of images here, you can see the originals of each texture. I used one of the paintings from CS_Office:
[IMG]http://puu.sh/anuhN/10a0c26607.png[/IMG]
[IMG]http://puu.sh/anujT/f5de358e04.png[/IMG]
And here where the fun begins. The filters become stronger the further you get away, so I backed away til about only 10% of the original image remained.
[IMG]http://puu.sh/anuiP/9fbeed081e.png[/IMG]
[IMG]http://puu.sh/anuj0/8c091edcf3.png[/IMG]
There are 4 more Filters, Those being Contrast More, Contrast Less, XSharpen, and Wrap Sharp. The contrast Filters are almost identical to the effects of Darken, and Lighten. While XSharpen, and Wrap Sharp Crash VTFEdit while trying to process images with transparency.
Among all of these, for this texture, I'd have to say Unsharp Mask does a great job with preserving the color, and original image, while still blurring it well. The others I'd say have their uses, but I'm unsure how i could implement them yet. What I will try soon is making a Glass texture, and looking at objects through it with these different filters. Hopefully it isn't as disappointing as I think it will be :rolleyes: . Please keep in mind that For all of these textures, I kept the Mipmap Filter at 'Box', which is the default.
One other thing worth mentioning, since Mipmaps are based on distance, these effect would work on a horizontal plane, or even round objects to create a falloff effect.
Hope this helps!
Hmm, I wonder if I could use this to make textures smoothly fade to transparent when I walk closer to them.
This could come in handy for faking Volumetrics.
The Darken, and Contrast Less Filters Fade them out as you get further away if they are transparent if I remember correctly(perhaps I have it reversed). I did it with a broken glass texture before this, but due the the lack of colors, i found it a bad example.
I'll be doing some more tests when I wake up regarding textures that use DUDv Maps, and also try to apply these filters to the normal maps of textures.
Alternatively, there is a photoshop plugin out there that lets you specify each mipmap for a texture, so it's easy to create any effect you want with the texture as it gets closer/further.
People commonly use this to create sprays that animate as you walk closer to them, or sprays that disappear when you walk away from them.
[QUOTE=FelixDragon;45480881]Alternatively, there is a photoshop plugin out there that lets you specify each mipmap for a texture, so it's easy to create any effect you want with the texture as it gets closer/further.
People commonly use this to create sprays that animate as you walk closer to them, or sprays that disappear when you walk away from them.[/QUOTE]
Ah, i didn't know that, thanks for the tip :P
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