Super Mario Galaxy 2 HD Texture Mod

[CDAMJC]

Thank you very much Bighead. I didn't create separate mip maps to save time and because Ishiiruka uses the builtin mip maps which are included in each texture in the traditional manner. But thank you for going through and adding mip maps in the Nintendo/dolphin format, that saves a huge amount of time for me

[Khronikos]

(06-15-2015, 04:39 PM)CDAMJC Wrote: Thank you very much Bighead.  I didn't create separate mip maps to save time and because Ishiiruka uses the builtin mip maps which are included in each texture in the traditional manner.  But thank you for going through and adding mip maps in the Nintendo/dolphin format, that saves a huge amount of time for me

Sweet, thanks for the update guys.

[Khronikos]

EDITED: Okay so basically here are my observations about the pack so far: Things look a lot nicer overall. Sharp and very nicely done UI elements.

There are a couple problems though not easily solved. I DL'd the Ishi build just released for this. I'm on an OC'd 970 and an i5 2500K right now. Brand new 7200 HDD. Things are running very well. I can basically get 59.1-60FPS on IRx5/MSAAx4 with this pack and there aren't too many stutters or any at all really so far.

I went up from IRx3 because there are some jaggies/shimmering from these textures that are very hard to eliminate. The rock texture on the beginning ship is very nasty at IRx3. IRx6 seems the sweet spot for these textures on a 1080p display, for performance and looks, and I basically advise everyone to play on that level. Otherwise the shimmering and jagginess of the image is a little too much to take. On IRx6 the game basically looks great to my eyes.

Fantastic job on the pack guys.

[Eviane]

I can't seem to preload the textures with 8gb of ram while everything is closed besides dolphin. Anyone have any tips?

[StripTheSoul]

hum? I think for me it was only a bit more than 1 GB RAM with this pack.

[Amon1995]

Eviane, I had the same problem, use Ishiiruka to fix it.

[razius]

(06-15-2015, 07:57 PM)Khronikos Wrote: The rock texture on the beginning ship is very jaggy at IRx3. I'm honestly thinking this doesn't even need a new texture or really just a flatter one like the original.

I think I prefer environment stuff off for right now as I cannot really pinpoint which ones I do not like and it is a little uneven at this point in time. The detailed dirt texture also gives off a lot of shimmering in the distance at this detail and that is actually impossible to eliminate without massive IR if even that, which I cannot afford.

Other than some rough stuff in the distance it looks good. I would have no problems just taking non-environment textures and playing through it. Just the updated UI alone looks glorious. Great job on that.

Again, the game generally is lovely to me and all the updated characters and UI is the most important thing IMO.

I feel the need to chime in because (most of) the problematic textures you're referring to (it's the grass ones that are the most "crispy") were made by me (because CDAMJC's aren't as grainy) and this shimmer/crispiness you're talking about is something i am well aware of and mentioned in many iterations of the original thread's OP (i think i removed that piece of info back in december, when i decided to wrap up the project).

The grass textures are extremely grainy so when those objects are far and they get downscaled, the result is... "the shimmer". Despite the fact i tested something more abstract for the grass (check the spoilers below) i went with the grainy files because they look way better at insanely huge resolutions (and they're closer to the original SMG textures). I always intended to make a pack that would look great at 8x IR some 10 years from now so keeping everything at least 8x the original size was one of the things i asked from CDAMJC. That means that even the HUD (being 8x the IR) will have some crispy edges when downscaled to IR lower than 8x (just crank up the AA to fix some of those crispy HUD edges).

These are 2 abstract grass textures i used in the SM64 project but not in the SMG one.

Spoiler: (Show Spoiler)

Spoiler: (Show Spoiler)

This is a type of stone i used in SM64, its kinda blurry (won't shimmer) but with a bit of soft grain (looks fine upclose as well). This is prob the best type of texture and i wasn't able to reach this kind of effect with the grass.

Spoiler: (Show Spoiler)

Suffice to say, some world textures will look just fine some 10 years from now... when 8xIR will be a thing.

[Bighead]

(06-15-2015, 07:57 PM)Khronikos Wrote: I went up from IRx3 because there are some jaggies from these textures that are very hard to eliminate. The rock texture on the beginning ship is very jaggy at IRx3. I'm honestly thinking this doesn't even need a new texture or really just a flatter one like the original.

I think I prefer environment stuff off for right now as I cannot really pinpoint which ones I do not like and it is a little uneven at this point in time. The detailed dirt texture also gives off a lot of shimmering in the distance at this detail and that is actually impossible to eliminate without massive IR if even that, which I cannot afford.

Adding IR won't help here. The fault lies in this game not using mipmaps for many of its environment textures. For example, tex1_128x128_951d4c672173f470_14 custom texture is 1024x1024, and it is not a mipmap texture, or it would be tex1_128x128_m_951d4c672173f470_14. There is no way to force a texture to be a mipmap that I know of. So let's look at it in game, with a red border to determine how often its tiled, and keep in mind these numbers are approximates.

Spoiler: (Show Spoiler)

Even when the texture is "in your face", it's still not using the full range of pixels (1024) at 1920x1080 so its down scaled (720). Up close this actually has a nice down sampling effect. Further in the distance (looking at the screenshot), something closer to 192x192 would be ideal, which would be about mipmap level 3 and a 256x256 version of the texture. Instead, it's crunched down from the 1024x1024 texture and creates a glitter-like effect. This is not the fault of the texture authors, and there really isn't much they can do about it. "Flatter" textures would help but there will always be some level of shimmer. At 4096x2160 that same texture will also now be slightly blurred when in your face in the situation in that screenshot, because the pixel density is double that of 1080p, and the 1024x1024 texture will have to stretch to fill a 1440x1440 pixel gap. But in the distance, it will still be smashed down to 384 pixels still resulting in this "shimmer". The effect will be less noticeable at ultra high resolutions because there is less down scaling, but not eliminated. Obviously none of this is a problem on the Wii due to the much lower resolution, mipmaps weren't really needed because this texture covers a large surface, and isn't tiled all that much.

The best thing you can do is to try to rescale the textures to better match your display resolution, and experiment until you find a level of "shimmer" that doesn't bother you. Bigger doesn't always mean better, for 1080p/1440p, 3x-5x should be more than sufficient depending on the texture.

This explains it better than I can:

Spoiler: (Show Spoiler)

Take a look at the Mip mapping example above. The left part is done without mipmapping. You might think that it looks sharper in the screenshot here. It is, but without mipmaps all textures flicker with a large amount of noise - this looks awful when the scene is set in motion. Simplifying the Mipmaps are different versions of one and the same texture that is available in various sizes to fit it in a proper place (depth) inside 3D graphic environment. Just try to imagine that you are standing in a long highway and you are focusing on the road texture beginning from your legs to the all way to the same horizon. To secure as much realistic appearance as it possible. The middle lines on our highway which are closer to the viewer must be generated in high details, higher resolution. If you are moving your sight closer to the horizon, the textures gets smaller and smaller. There are situations where details which are closer can be lost due to scaling problem because your graphic card driver doesn’t know which are the most significant details in the texture - it can be avoided by installing a newer driver or lower the level of MIP mapping.

Source from an old graphics card article on: http://www.shinvision.com/

[Eviane]

(06-17-2015, 01:01 AM)Amon1995 Wrote: Eviane, I had the same problem, use Ishiiruka to fix it.

I'm having the same problem with Ishiiruka 374

[Khronikos]

Okay hold the phone here. I just tried 4K resolution in Dolphin and I am basically getting near perfect FPS with basically very little shimmer. Was looking at my FPS and it seems almost better than 1440p was, or at least the same. Crazy. I did clean out and defrag some things so that may have helped too.

WOW. The game I think is now completely playable in 4K on Ishi.

You said IR does not help much but I disagree with that a little bit. It has solved the problem very well going to 4K. Not totally but MUCH improved. Like you said it blurs a little but I notice only tiny shimmering now. I'd say a 60-80% reduction in shimmering from IRx3. Damn. Nice job on the textures guys. I honestly didn't even think I could play at this level. After doing a full defrag and optimize--not sure if this mattered or not--it seems to be working quite well with the new Ishi build. 4xMSAA too.

As far as mip maps I thought they were added in with the last release or was that just something for the CD to add in at a later time? Anyway, I think I will enjoy this very much when the pack gets a little more consistent across the board. I am blown away I can play in 4K tbh without drops LOL.

Edited my first post for clarity. I can see why you make the pack for the future. That is always the best idea. And hey I have no problems either way. The game looks amazing even without a texture pack and just a lot of IR even. Now it basically is just looking gorgeous beyond belief. I hope CD can get to some of the grass textures at some point in a couple of the levels. I think I will still hold off playing for a bit.