Ennedi plays Shosaloza

[Neofita]

Brown granite is the best.

[Pat]

Adam wow!!! I like that last one and have you thought of a name for it yet if not what about "Red Rock"

[art128]

I prefer the Brown granite one ! 
Looking forward to more,

Arthur. 

[mightygoose]

i would definately use the grey version of the brown granite, you experimentation is always appreciated

[Rayden]

... and this was just an appetizer  Just wait for the main dish being cooked.

[io_bg]

Oh my God... These mods are superb!!! (the first one is my favourite)

[MAS71]

What a beatiful they are !!     

Hello Ennedi san. 
I love your creations of the Natures so much in every works.
They always heal my heart that tired in my RL.

Thire "Rocks" you made are really great and beatiful a nivce harmony with grasses and trees. 
Especialy, I like "Mossy granite(1st)" and  "Glay granite(3rd)" rocks so much !!

I think that these should be used with people of the World !
When you upload these beatiful MODs in a LEX ?? 


Thank you.
-Mas'71

[FrankU]

Ennedi,

All these rock textures are completely useless for someone who plays flat areas, but they are so beautiful that you almost make me want to play a mountainous area! Really stunning. 
The red-grey rock looks like some kind of granite that I have seen in kitchen shops: almost the only place where we can find rocks in The Netherlands

In the meantime I see that you made the small rocks as a beach mod... That's the way we can avoid the green water edges in seaports. At the moment I have switched to an area without even one drop of sea and with only the basic Maxis texture, because I aim at covering the area (16 medium tiles) completely with lots. One big city without natural items. The way Maxis has thought we all would use the game... I guess....

[tooheys]

Very nice, Adam and Silvio you have created some great looking rock mods there. I could find a use for all of them, but Adam I have to agree, the last one is superb. Well done guys 

[Rayden]

Is this any good? 






Row 1 - Zoom 0 and 1
Row 2 - Zoom 2 and 3
Row 3 - Zoom 4 and 5
Row 4 - Zoom 5

Shiiuuu! Adam still doesn't know about this one yet

[io_bg]

It's not good, it's wonderful! I wonder what's next... A high-def terrain mod maybe?

[kimcar]

  Excellent this one too. What i like is it`s not a repetitive texture ... i guest so 

[mightygoose]

dang silvio thats beautiful

[Rayden]

Thx Guys! Do you believe that from the 3 rock mods I did tonight, that one above is the crappy one? You'd better because it is, the other two are bond to, along several other mods being cooked by several members of this community, to turn this game upside down and transform it into SimCity 5.

[mightygoose]

new terrain mods, water mods and rock mods.... i assume, but i cant wait

[MAS71]

That's a quality so good !!   

Hi Silvia(Rayden) san !! 
Yeh yeh yeh!! That's really beatiful and I mislooking for your rocks seems a True Real Pics. 
I'm looking forward to time when I can use them in my cities.

[Ennedi]

Hello my friends, I'm back again with a short report from the landscaping studio 

I prefer the mossy granite one

Thank you, there will be a few versions of it

Oh Wow very good looking   I don`t know wich one look the best but you done a great job both of you. As for the last rock mod , it`s look like a lava rock who still warm  ...no but look superbe. It`s gonna be very hard to choose one for doing MD . Too bad them we can`t mix 2 or 3 mod in the same time. Thanks for your work mates

Thank you kimcar! We would like to make  a set of various rock mods, so you will have a choice. Sorry, I didn't find a way to use more rock mods in the same city, I must work better 

Brown granite is the best.

Good. It will be released for sure. Thanks!

Adam wow!!! I like that last one and have you thought of a name for it yet if not what about "Red Rock"

Thank you Pat! Very nice to see you again!

I prefer the Brown granite one ! 
Looking forward to more,

Arthur. 

OK, here are more 

i would definately use the grey version of the brown granite, you experimentation is always appreciated

I want to release it too. But I must tweak it a bit, the texture lost some contrast and shadows when I changed its color.

... and this was just an appetizer  Just wait for the main dish being cooked.

Hehe Silvio, thanks for promotion! 
That's great to cook together with you!

Oh my God... These mods are superb!!! (the first one is my favourite)

Thank you Ioan! Your vote will be counted too!

What a beatiful they are !!     

Hello Ennedi san. 
I love your creations of the Natures so much in every works.
They always heal my heart that tired in my RL.

Thire "Rocks" you made are really great and beatiful a nivce harmony with grasses and trees. 
Especialy, I like "Mossy granite(1st)" and  "Glay granite(3rd)" rocks so much !!

I think that these should be used with people of the World !
When you upload these beatiful MODs in a LEX ?? 


Thank you.
-Mas'71

Hello Masuda san! Its always a great pleasure to see you visiting Shosaloza! 
I'm very glad my nature pictures can give you some relax, I feel the same when I create them (even if it is a bit difficult sometimes  )
Good to hear you like these rock mods, I hope they will harmonize with your beautiful new water mods too  I downloaded them and I like them very much!
Of course rock mods will be released, but now we collect your opinions and we have much more work to do to make these mods really good  We must check them on various terrains and we will probably ask some people to test them.

Ennedi,

All these rock textures are completely useless for someone who plays flat areas, but they are so beautiful that you almost make me want to play a mountainous area! Really stunning. 
The red-grey rock looks like some kind of granite that I have seen in kitchen shops: almost the only place where we can find rocks in The Netherlands

In the meantime I see that you made the small rocks as a beach mod... That's the way we can avoid the green water edges in seaports. At the moment I have switched to an area without even one drop of sea and with only the basic Maxis texture, because I aim at covering the area (16 medium tiles) completely with lots. One big city without natural items. The way Maxis has thought we all would use the game... I guess....

Fortunately we don't need to do everything what Maxis provided for us 
Yes, a couple of beach mods will be released too

Very nice, Adam and Silvio you have created some great looking rock mods there. I could find a use for all of them, but Adam I have to agree, the last one is superb. Well done guys 

Thank you Dave, please visit Shosaloza more often!

Is this any good? 


Row 1 - Zoom 0 and 1
Row 2 - Zoom 2 and 3
Row 3 - Zoom 4 and 5
Row 4 - Zoom 5

Shiiuuu! Adam still doesn't know about this one yet

Yes, it is quite good 
Great work Silvio!  I guess you used some new secret techniques to create this mod, am I right? 
I saw it earlier, but I was horribly busy in RL all the week so I wasn't able to comment it 

It's not good, it's wonderful! I wonder what's next... A high-def terrain mod maybe?

Maybe...

Excellent this one too. What i like is it`s not a repetitive texture ... i guest so 

We have some special methods to avoid repetitiveness 

dang silvio thats beautiful

You are right, I like this rock a lot too 

Thx Guys! Do you believe that from the 3 rock mods I did tonight, that one above is the crappy one? You'd better because it is, the other two are bond to, along several other mods being cooked by several members of this community, to turn this game upside down and transform it into SimCity 5.

So... where are these less crappy ones?... 
Yes, it's about time we created a new game   
I must add I'm very glad of making this work with you. I think none of us would have so much motivation if we wouldn't do it together 

new terrain mods, water mods and rock mods.... i assume, but i cant wait

Unfortunately it is a lot of work  but as you see we go ahead 

That's a quality so good !!   

Hi Silvia(Rayden) san !! 
Yeh yeh yeh!! That's really beatiful and I mislooking for your rocks seems a True Real Pics. 
I'm looking forward to time when I can use them in my cities.

Thank you very much Masuda san for your compliments! We will try to make everything as soon as possible 

I haven't much time this week, but I played a bit with rock mods and here is a short report.
Rock mod textures are probably the most demanding ones. Amongst other problems it is very difficult to choose a texture which will look good on steep slopes. All details are heavily stretched and it is really hard to imagine how will look the texture in the game when we look at the flat image. So I'm not quite satisfied, but at least I know what should be improved.

Grey, heavily eroded limestone. The first picture is made in Z5 ie. the closest zoom (we say Z0 - Z4 as in the Reader, other people say Z1 - Z5 and in this case it would be Z6 - anyway this is the closest, pixelised zoom which some people want to improve by using HD textures and props). Look how blurred are terrain textures. We will need to improve them too in future 



Z4 (the closest normal one)


Z3


And some general views (Z0 - Z2)






After making this mod I put some grass onto the rock and here is a result:






More about this mod later.

Now I want to explain you something (and reveal a little secret  ):
1. We use HD textures. Normal terrain texture has 256x256 pixels, we use 512x512 pixels in all zooms. The difference is slight but significant, I will demonstrate it at another occassion.
2. Using HD textures opened another possibility too. Not only we are able to increase the textures quality. We also found a way how to avoid (or at least minimalize) the repetitiveness of our textures. We found a method of increasing an area covered by the single texture tile. We experimented with various parameters and finally we came to conclusion that we are able to increase each side of the texture by 1,67, so an area covered by our texture tile is about 2,8 times larger (1,67²) than the normal one. At this texture size its quality is still satisfactory, and repetitive details are almost completely eliminated.
Of course we would like to have both larger textures and better quality, so we will make experiments with 1024x1024 textures too 
We can't change the size of only one texture. We must increase or decrease all terrain textures. As a result, other terrain textures become a bit blurred (look at grass on pictures made in Zoom 5), so the logical consequence will be making new terrain mods consisting of HD textures too. It has a few difficult aspects, but there are also very nice side effects, all of them will be discussed later, when we will make our first terrain mod. It will be presented here too.

Now let's compare two pairs of pictures.
The first pair:
The granite texture in Z4 (the closest normal one)


And the same texture but 2x larger (a bit more than in our new rock mods)


The second pair:
The same granite texture in Z5 (the closest zoom unused till this time)


And the same texture but 2x larger in Z5 too


Do you see the difference?

Here are a few random shots of the Mossy Granite rock mod - enlarged texture.







As you can see, there are not many repetitive details 

Now relax a while and see again a few shots of the grassy limestone rock:











And now compare two pictures:

The same texture as above, normal size


...And enlarged size


And how does this enlarged texture look in various zooms? Let's see:













Maybe it would be good to make another rock mod, even more grassy one - what do you think?... 

If you are interested in this work, please comment it. If you don't like any texture in any zoom, if you see any imperfections or another things to improve, please infor us. We will try to make our best 

Adam

[mightygoose]

holy awesomesauce dude, i cant decide if i like the graassy one or the none grassy one more, the grassy one looks soo realistic and blends really well, but i really like how bleak the bare rock looks, really menacing...

[Rayden]

Do I see a new texture on the terrain mod? Nice work Adam, specially with that rock mod which you added some grass. I would like to have a look at it.

So... where are these less crappy ones?... 

You asked for, you got it!

 

And here a region view. Note how the detail is still visible.


Here is 2 more pics of a new rock mod done.
 

[Ennedi]

Silvio, this rock mod is the best till this time!!!     

I will send you the rock mod I presented, both source texture and its modifications. I used a new technique to make it, I'll explain it but it needs a really large texture (this one is 3488x2616). I think mods presented by me can be improved.
I think we should talk tonight 
Edit: I'm playing with bright granites now , they are promisive too

Adam