Yesterday, Lyralei presented us with a great retexturing pack for The Sims 3! Nothing like a good Upscaling you might imagine... Well, me too Haha However when it comes to The Sims things are not that simple. And almost always, logic creates its own path. Different from what we are used to seeing.
For example, this is a screenshot taken by Lyralei of their 4K retexturing package
And here is the same photo taken by me, but with textures of only 1024x1024. The big difference is that these textures are the result of overlays using GOOD textures from the game itself.
As I always say.. The flaw of The Sims 3 is the mix of hard and soft textures. There is no aesthetic standard. Using rigid textures overlaid with transparency on soft textures and adjusting their colors, we have a really harmonious result. If we take bad textures and apply an upscaling, not even artificial intelligence will be able to guarantee us a quality result. Most of the time it's the opposite.
AI augmenting a default texture gives us this. Recreating the texture from scratch gives us greater control over definition and balance:
Maybe you say: Clearly the quality is different because of the PC. But here we have another example, the two images taken on my computer. The first with 4K package and the second with ProjectEden's retexturing 1024x1024
Discarding the fact that the tones are not identical to the base game, since the Eden Project seeks to create a greater harmony between color and texture, the main difference between the two images is in the Tiling. While the 4K texture can be perfect up close, when we pull the camera away we can see the pattern repeating itself. And this flaw does not mean that the texture is not good, on the contrary, it is just extremely demarcated. The way I found to minimize this effect was to adjust several layers of overlapping textures to make them as smooth and sharp as possible. That way we guarantee a perfect result from afar and even better up close!
The definition quality is not linked to the size of the image, but to the texture itself. The big job of making Ts3 more beautiful is in rebuilding its textures from scratch. Using current textures as a reference or starting point. Never as final destination or conclusion
This is the only way to find the balance between Quality and definition.
This post is not to criticize Lyralei's work, because the fact is that The Sims 3 is a relatively messy game! What she did was a miracle. Finding ALL textures is not easy. And the worst part is when we start the work and the flaws in the terrain painting of the neighborhoods, as well as its modeling start to become more evident, as in the lower right side of this image:
The Sims has an extremely captivating look, it just needs the right textures to be represented at the level it deserves.
I'll point out, because it doesn't follow the logic of other games, when we increase the texture size, what we are doing is increasing the tiling, even if the texture is good. Here's a great example, even with Project Eden's retextures, the flaw is subtle but it shows: (2048x2048)
Again I would like to congratulate Lyralei for the excellent work. Next to everything we've had in the last decade, this update was without a doubt a key highlight. I'm curious to see how her projects will progress and I make myself available to be a great competitor Hahaha and also, of course, a great collaborator if one day she wants to create something together with me.
I'll be back in the future to talk more about Project Eden and share new information! Until then!!
