Cyan's texture gallery

General debates and discussion about the Guild of Writers and Age creation

Cyan's texture gallery

Postby Sirius » Sun Mar 07, 2021 9:54 am

Hey all.

I was reading Korovev's AGM summary, and was really excited when reading this:

The third announcement was that Cyan released a set of images for textures used in Uru and Myst, available to be used in fan contributed content. The number of files was overwhelming, more than 8000. Rarified set up a browser on the OpenUru website where they can be viewed. It may not be up forever, but it will be kept up as long as possible.


Now, I have a few observations:
  • This is absolutely awesome, thank you to everyone involved ! This needs to be said. Cyan's textures are really well made despite their low resolution, so this will enhance fan Ages quality a lot.
  • Textures from one of the realMyst games (the original one I think ?) are included in the package, which adds a significant amount.
  • Some textures cannot be found ingame - for instance, the Gira fossils, billboards from the old daytime version of Todelmer, etc. I expect some DiRT stuff to be there as well. This is interesting for people who enjoy digging up cut content.
  • Textures are sometime higher-res or less compressed than their ingame equivalent. EDIT: this only happens for smaller textures. Apparently the textures browser contains no texture above 450x450 ? Is that normal ? Uru certainly has textures up to 1024x1024.
  • Currently no license is mentioned anywhere. I guess it's the standard license/guideline Cyan gave us about fan content in general. Adding a link to it in the browser might be a good idea, just to make the legal aspect clear.

Now, I have a small question. Does anyone know the URL to the archive/repo where all the textures can be downloaded at once ? I would love to browse all the textures on my computer to see which ones are new. (I'm also kinda obsessed about collecting and archiving things ;) )

Since some of those textures are higher-quality than the ones found ingame, I'm tempted to try putting them back in the game uncompressed or using less compression (modern computers can certainly handle it). This would also be a good opportunity to remove this optimization for higher-quality visuals... Worth a shot.

Anyway. Once again, this is awesome news !
User avatar
Sirius
 
Posts: 1506
Joined: Mon Jul 26, 2010 4:46 am
Location: France

Re: Cyan's texture gallery

Postby Aloys » Sun Mar 07, 2021 3:03 pm

Gosh I'm so out of the look. It took me 10 minutes to find it..

For those wondering: This is the link to the texture gallery. And this is the link to the AGM summary. (I had totally forgotten those meetings still existed.. :? )

Also, I went to the OpenUru site for the first times in ages, and boy that site this is not user friendly. I couldn't make head or tail of it. All pages link back to that minimalistic homepage. Who is in charge of this?


The original files are available on both the Guild of Writers’ and OpenUru’s repositories.

That is a good thing. But what it the repository? Do we have like a Git repo for textures?

All complaints aside this is great. But to follow up on the legal part I'd also assume the usual Cyan fan made content policy still applies; but this part as always been a little fuzzy to me. I just took the time to re-read the whole thing (here) and I still don't find it clear. "You may create fan content based on Cyan, Inc. or Cyan Worlds (Cyan) Intellectual Property (IP)" I read that as 'anything coming from the games, including textures'. Also: "! We want to encourage fan-made creation and other transformative works" so we can take game assets, transform them and use them in our game. But then comes paragraph 2 "You may use the names of characters, plot points, and depictions of scenes" and that doesn't mean game assets. So..? What's the official word on this? Are these assets a free for all or not?

[edit]
I just browsed the gallery and it seems that all transparent textures have been saved as JPGs which make them essentially useless. :( Or is it just for the online gallery? I see a path under each textures, sometimes referencing a PNG file;
Last edited by Aloys on Sun Mar 07, 2021 3:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
Aloys
 
Posts: 1968
Joined: Sun Oct 21, 2007 7:57 pm
Location: France (GMT +1)

Re: Cyan's texture gallery

Postby Paradox » Sun Mar 07, 2021 3:19 pm

Aloys wrote:
The original files are available on both the Guild of Writers’ and OpenUru’s repositories.

That is a good thing. But what it the repository? Do we have like a Git repo for textures?


We do have a git repository for MOUL assets (although I notice the textures haven't been officially included yet): https://github.com/H-uru/moul-assets

However, it uses the Git Large File System extension to manage versioning of the binary files (PRPs, blends, and images), which means you pretty much need to set up a local copy of it for it to be useful. Trying to view file details on the web version will just say that it's a binary file with its data stored elsewhere.
Paradox
 
Posts: 1290
Joined: Fri Sep 28, 2007 6:48 pm
Location: Canada

Re: Cyan's texture gallery

Postby Aloys » Sun Mar 07, 2021 3:34 pm

I did not know that. (or I might have and then forget it; sounds more likely). Using a repo makes sense for a lot of work, but for a texture repo, something that will primarily be used by artist unfamilliar with Git, that may not be the best choice. I don't know how big the thing would be (8000 textures , I'd assume, at least several hundred megabyte, maybe a giga or three.) But if at all possible it would be preferable to host it as a single compressed file linked on a web page. Think of the artists. :lol:
User avatar
Aloys
 
Posts: 1968
Joined: Sun Oct 21, 2007 7:57 pm
Location: France (GMT +1)

Re: Cyan's texture gallery

Postby Sirius » Sun Mar 07, 2021 3:45 pm

Aloys wrote:Gosh I'm so out of the look. It took me 10 minutes to find it..

Sorry yeah, I should have put those links there...

Aloys wrote:(I had totally forgotten those meetings still existed.. :? )

That used to happen to me all the time. Grouping the RSS feeds for various Uru websites into a dedicated app on my phone solved it :) Buuut I still occasionally forget to write replies when something interesting comes up, haha.

Aloys wrote:I just browsed the gallery and it seems that all transparent textures have been saved as JPGs which make them essentially useless. :( Or is it just for the online gallery? I see a path under each textures, sometimes referencing a PNG file;

I'm suspecting this and the resolution limit are "optimizations" performed by the tool used to generate the online gallery. Hopefully it shouldn't affect the repo itself.
(Oh, and I also noticed the various layers for some textures are "uncombined" into several other images. So cool !)

Paradox wrote:We do have a git repository for MOUL assets [...] you pretty much need to set up a local copy of it for it to be useful.

The Git repo would be a good place for those textures I guess. It appears the whole repo can be downloaded without a Git client by clicking the green button Code→Download ZIP, in case anyone needs it.

I'm excited about this stuff ! But if uploading those textures require time then I'll patiently wait :)
User avatar
Sirius
 
Posts: 1506
Joined: Mon Jul 26, 2010 4:46 am
Location: France

Re: Cyan's texture gallery

Postby Aloys » Sun Mar 07, 2021 4:12 pm

Sirius wrote:Sorry yeah, I should have put those links there...

No problem, it was a good occasion to check that many of my Uru bookmarks were still up to date. :)

It appears the whole repo can be downloaded without a Git client by clicking the green button Code→Download ZIP, in case anyone needs it.

That would work, but it would zip up the whole branch. (then again, still a quick and easy way to get a local copy. Unless anyone does it first I'll see if I can get that and put online a zip containing only the textures.

What I am a little afraid of is the folder structure. I hope it's not a single folder with all 8315 files in it. :o

I'm excited about this stuff ! But if uploading those textures require time then I'll patiently wait :)

It is exciting. :) It's too bad Cyan didn't do that years ago, back when the Age building community was more active.
User avatar
Aloys
 
Posts: 1968
Joined: Sun Oct 21, 2007 7:57 pm
Location: France (GMT +1)

Re: Cyan's texture gallery

Postby Paradox » Sun Mar 07, 2021 4:23 pm

Aloys wrote:What I am a little afraid of is the folder structure. I hope it's not a single folder with all 8315 files in it. :o


Currently, it is. That's how Chogon provided then to us, as a single zip containing all the textures.

However, someone's been working on splitting them into age-based folders and converting from TGA to PNG for easier previewing.
Paradox
 
Posts: 1290
Joined: Fri Sep 28, 2007 6:48 pm
Location: Canada

Re: Cyan's texture gallery

Postby Aloys » Sun Mar 07, 2021 4:27 pm

However, someone's been working on splitting them into age-based folders and converting from TGA to PNG for easier previewing.

Ouch. That will be a lot of work. Heck,from a quick glance at the gallery there are many texture I could not even identify.
User avatar
Aloys
 
Posts: 1968
Joined: Sun Oct 21, 2007 7:57 pm
Location: France (GMT +1)

Re: Cyan's texture gallery

Postby Korovev » Sun Mar 07, 2021 6:32 pm

There’s a discussion about the textures here.



Why are the forum versions of the posts used so often instead of the actual posts? Corrections or additions are not reflected.
Deep Island #194197, MOULa #46116, Gehn #137074, Minkata #132812.
Gahreesenomee biv keneet pishoeet b’set!
My macOS wrappers, Fan Age Expeditions, tools and other stuff.
User avatar
Korovev
 
Posts: 317
Joined: Sun Jan 27, 2013 5:18 am
Location: Europe

Re: Cyan's texture gallery

Postby Tsar Hoikas » Sun Mar 07, 2021 7:27 pm

The preferred repository for the textures can be found here. You'll need to use an actual git client to fetch them, however. GitHub's green "Download ZIP" button is really expensive (for me) when using large files. Note that this repository is the only canonical source of history for the MOUL-compatible data files and their sources. Any change submissions or defect reports should be routed there ;)
Image
Tsar Hoikas
Councilor of Technical Direction
 
Posts: 2180
Joined: Fri Nov 16, 2007 9:45 pm
Location: South Georgia

Next

Return to General Discussion

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 0 guests

cron