X4 Graphics

[DerStratege]

Hello

I am playing the X-Series since X-2 (excepting X-Rebirth). While I like the game at all (still some buggy stuff),
there is an issue for me related to the graphics of the game.

While the Graphics become better in the 4.0 Patch/DLC, there are some stuff that
are either bad or without sense, mostly in the old stuff. For example metalic surfaces or surfaces without a
senseful UV.

I say this as a 3D Game artist. Right now I am thinking about doing a mod that fixes some
models and textures, replace bad ones with better ones and maybe make it
less performance hungry.

Anyway, I am not very familiar with the X Game engine or file, so if I do that I would need someone who can
explain that for me and help me with stuff not related to 3D.

I do not know if anyone has interest in this and it is very time consuming (at least for me), but right now I have the time.
To avoid starting a project that just survives one month or even less, some help would be fine.

I write this post to check if anyone has interest. If not, it is okay for me.
Kind regards,
Toby

[CBJ]

I've moved this over to the Scripts and Modding forum, where you're more likely to find people willing and/or able to help.

[DerStratege]

Thanks

[Mycu]

Hi Toby,
I'm not an artist and have zero experience in textures/models modding - but as a "consumer" I'd be very interested in such mod.
I remember fantastic mods of this type made for Fallout4 improving textures/meshes/maps - so hoping to see something similar for X4 in the future.
Good luck.

[Realspace]

Hi!
I extensively modded the textures of any iteration of this game since X2, changing its skyboxes, nebulae and planets bc I feel that the lack of a realistic space look spoils so much the immersion of a good space game such this. Take a look at the signature to download the mod as example.

Modifying surface textures is quite easy today, if you want to just replace vanilla textures there's no need of a material.xml anymore as in Rebirth. Well, it is needed if you add new materials but not strictly to replace.

You have to extract all the CATalogues from low to high number using the XRTool and decompress the textures that are in .gz format. Secondly use a batch to add or manually add the .dds extension to them (they are dds but show no extensions after).
You can then modify/replace them and export as .dds again using the same identical name otherwise they won't work.

After this use a zzip or such to compress them again in .gz but remember to remove the .dds in the name, so NOT filename_diff.dds.gz BUT YES filename_diff.gz

All files have to be put again in a .CAT file using the exact folder's root so f.i. assets\textures\environments\planets\TEXTURE_NAME.GZ using XRTool again.

The cat and dat files have to be named "subst_01" and so on if you add others later.

This is the basics for at least not losing hours only to see textures working ingame, hope it helped

[aurumgallente]

Take a look at this tutorial.
viewtopic.php?t=414274
it explains how to create assets and textures for ships, it works the same way for all assets in the game. X4 has some tweaks, for example, amount of blue color in vertex color channel defines rust on a surface, a single material uses many textures for different purposes and mix them in specified by materials.xml file quantities.

For you it's better to join Discord server of Egosoft.