The Tiling in some zones is unacceptable

Hello. I have no funny screenshots for this post.

I was gathering for crystals today, and it made me realize how horrible some areas look with the new textures. The tiling is just incredibly distracting. It doesn't look like an environment, it looks like a game from 30 years ago on N64 or PlayStation...

Northern Thanalan (Square pattern):
https://imgur.com/rWTWzt6.png

Coerthas Central Highlands (Weird line of rocks):
https://imgur.com/E8oEIsJ.png

Mor Dhona (It's just lanes):
https://imgur.com/pSSqXbC.png

Southern Thanalan (Repeating craters):
https://imgur.com/DdbauOL.png

Southern Thanalan (Square pattern):
https://imgur.com/RX449G8.png

It's not because it's old areas, or even because it's Thanalan. La Noscea and The Shroud present some tiling, but it's nowhere near as noticeable, and other areas in Thanalan look just fine:
https://imgur.com/K3gRvnW.png

I know the texture update has been a massive undertaking, but some of these need to be revisited once again, because it just looks really bad.

Why do I have a feeling that when YoshiP sees this post, he'll have the entire dev team working on the tiling than.... say, the rest of the game?

P.S: Hope you get the throwback reference

To be frank, it may not be the issue of the graphic update, but the shadows overlaying those textures. Such an issue seems to exacerbate based on the distance in relation to your character, and if you were to turn softening off, then it would be even worse.

Reusing textures saves tons of ressources. This is propably a "must run on a PS3"-remnant.


Cheers

As an ex environment artist, this hurts my soul on so many levels... Like one of the main rules of ground texturing on big maps is that large filler backgrounds cannot use defined features or features that stand out, else they'll immediately tile to death, but instead require smooth uniform textures with no element sticking out, nor variations in hues or luminosity. The actual features like small rocks, sparse gravel, cracks, whatever, is generally added with what we call "stickers" and that you stamp over manually here and there, specifically to get around said tiling (which the XIV maps also make us of by the way).

First picture for example: the small rocks and gravel stand out and it's very possible the biggest culprit is the normal map (bump map).
2nd pic: bothers me a lot less tbh it's decently hidden by the cut transitions to snow
3rd pic: luminosity issues, dark patches are tiling, and the bright cracks as well
4th: same as first pic
5th pic: darker edges of the texture are tiling into a grid
6th pic: i'm not sure where is the problem? I should learn to read

Was this updated last patch?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Valence

Was this updated last patch?

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I haven't seen any Graphics Update the last few patches, and the ones before they just updated Relics, mog station and MSQ NPCs. They don't seem to mention the Graphics Update anymore, and Western Thanalan seemed to be the only one they showed as having updated in ARR - which might explain why it's not being seen there as much.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Valence

6th pic: i'm not sure where is the problem?

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Oh no, as I said on the post: Even Thanalan can look well, and then used Pic 6 as an example :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kranel_San

Why do I have a feeling that when YoshiP sees this post, he'll have the entire dev team working on the tiling than.... say, the rest of the game?

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DON'T SUMMON IT!!

Even in brand new zones it's horrendous. These shots are from Occult Crescent. They look like something you'd see in someone's low effort map maker project in another game where they just selected the texture brush and swiped it across the ground a couple times. Certainly not something I would expect to see after they made such a big deal about the graphical update.

https://i.imgur.com/vZVUZGc.jpeg

https://i.imgur.com/3vRlFnD.jpeg



For comparison here are some shots from World of Warcraft. If there's tiling happening here it's at least much more difficult to spot.

https://wow.zamimg.com/uploads/guide...jpg?1590686518

https://bnetcmsus-a.akamaihd.net/cms...3545862978.png

https://gamingtrend.com/content/imag...3-26-42-29.png

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DiaDeem

Oh no, as I said on the post: Even Thanalan can look well, and then used Pic 6 as an example :)

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I'm sorry, I read this yesterday night with a migraine and I must have skimmed over that particular bit, apologies.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Valence

As an ex environment artist, this hurts my soul on so many levels... Like one of the main rules of ground texturing on big maps is that large filler backgrounds cannot use defined features or features that stand out, else they'll immediately tile to death, but instead require smooth uniform textures with no element sticking out, nor variations in hues or luminosity. The actual features like small rocks, sparse gravel, cracks, whatever, is generally added with what we call "stickers" and that you stamp over manually here and there, specifically to get around said tiling (which the XIV maps also make us of by the way).

First picture for example: the small rocks and gravel stand out and it's very possible the biggest culprit is the normal map (bump map).
2nd pic: bothers me a lot less tbh it's decently hidden by the cut transitions to snow
3rd pic: luminosity issues, dark patches are tiling, and the bright cracks as well
4th: same as first pic
5th pic: darker edges of the texture are tiling into a grid
6th pic: i'm not sure where is the problem? I should learn to read

Was this updated last patch?

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Valence you're cool. I hope you get a functional aoe machinist kit for christmas.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by CidHeiral

Even in brand new zones it's horrendous. These shots are from Occult Crescent. They look like something you'd see in someone's low effort map maker project in another game where they just selected the texture brush and swiped it across the ground a couple times. Certainly not something I would expect to see after they made such a big deal about the graphical update.

https://i.imgur.com/vZVUZGc.jpeg

https://i.imgur.com/3vRlFnD.jpeg



For comparison here are some shots from World of Warcraft. If there's tiling happening here it's at least much more difficult to spot.

https://wow.zamimg.com/uploads/guide...jpg?1590686518

https://bnetcmsus-a.akamaihd.net/cms...3545862978.png

https://gamingtrend.com/content/imag...3-26-42-29.png

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Yo Cid, thank you for proving im not crazy about how bad the textures on oc look. I love the ff5 references and green aesthetic of OC but the buildings being recycled HW and ARR textures is ROUGH. I didn't really notice the wilderness tiling till you pointed it out. Lets hope north horn is something closer to pyros or anemos because I haven't been a fan of the countless wasteland tile sets. We got both bozja zones and 2 cosmic exploration zones besides Phaenna that feel like rock fields. Sorry about that heated moment in the tank forums by the way.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Reginald_Cain

Yo Cid, thank you for proving im not crazy about how bad the textures on oc look.

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The whole zone seems very quickly and haphazardly designed. The tiling is awful, the props have little variety and are haphazardly scattered around, the stone wall around where you first zone in is just a very small section duplicated numerous times which doesn't line up properly, etc. It all looks very amateur which again is quite surprising given that the graphical updated was a main feature of the expansion and the regular outdoor zones actually improved quite a bit from previous expansions.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Reginald_Cain

Sorry about that heated moment in the tank forums by the way.

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No worries, we're all passionate about what we think is best for the game and things can get heated sometimes. :)

For all the unacceptable issues XIV has, this is one of them.

I guess if this is something I ever noticed, it just slipped out of my mind personally.

This has been something bothering me for forever too. Even though the same tiling existed pre-7.0, I swear it was way way way less blatant before the graphics update (and while I am in general somebody who dislikes many parts of the graphics update, I promise I'm not trying to be biased here--I like taking screenshots so it's something I've happened to notice here and there and got bummed out about). Of course, I don't know enough about environments to understand why that is? Still, I keep hoping one patch the majority of these areas will get fixed...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by UNDEAD10000

Reusing texture tiles is very common thing in games but problem with FFXIV is that they reuse same very small ground texture tile in row which then makes ground on many maps look horrendous.

Even reusing same very small ground texture tile is all about saving time and resources but they should made the ground texture tile lot bigger and have at least 4 different variations of the same ground texture tile to make ground texture look bit better and don't have this low effort copy & paste look.

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I won't get too much into details but from my experience what I've seen done is usually on two layers:

- Background fillers: they're essentially filling the whole basic textures of the map and cover large surfaces. Requirements for those are generally soft textures with very little variations so that said variations can't really be detected immediately when it tiles over and over. It's also possible to add systems that do blend multiple background textures into the same surface filler according to a texture map you feed to the system, for example the most basic being a greyscale map where one texture is assigned to the whites and one to the blacks, and everything between gives you a blend of both depending on the level of grey you have. Having such systems can allow you to get more details that stick out because all the perlin-type noise given by the greyscale map will hide a lot of the tiling... until you zoom out way further enough so that this map tiling can also start showing patterns (which should usually be hidden by LOD rendering taking over and blurring textures past a point in zoom). I do not know if they use those in their map making pipeline, which from what I've seen on their game editor and processes they showed like 2 expansions ago during a fanfest keynote, was extremely old school and basic.

- Sticker textures: they're essentially where you put all your nitty gritty details, like rocks, metal pieces, gravel, motes of grass, etc. Level builders and environment artists generally place those manually on the map precisely to avoid repetition and tiling and to have them where it enhances the whole thing. They're generally enough in tandem with 3D items to cover for all the "blandness" you'd get otherwise with just the background.

You can of course complexify this a lot more by adding color maps instead of greyscale to assign more textures at once to backgrounds, you can generate groups of items and stickers built by the environment artists that you can then use as lego blocks to build up (bottom up) to bigger and bigger ones that can be re used around and that can flesh up the map even more. There is a lot that can be done on that front but at the cost of resources and time.

Thank you for listening to my TED talk.

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Originally Posted by Doopliss

This has been something bothering me for forever too. Even though the same tiling existed pre-7.0, I swear it was way way way less blatant before the graphics update (and while I am in general somebody who dislikes many parts of the graphics update, I promise I'm not trying to be biased here--I like taking screenshots so it's something I've happened to notice here and there and got bummed out about). Of course, I don't know enough about environments to understand why that is? Still, I keep hoping one patch the majority of these areas will get fixed...

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Because unfortunately the more a texture is a sludge of pixels, the more it blurs everything into a single piece. The more you crank up the resolution, you end up doing the exact opposite which is similar to sharpening the textures. By doing so all the details start coming up and don't get drowned into the sludge anymore. This means you do need to also update the processes and sometimes even the environment builds you already have when upgrading.

I have a feeling the texture tiles' images are far too small to save up on memory space, but holy hell this would get you a shitty grade at art school if you handed that in.

Guys please, small indie company SE doesn’t have the money or resources to *checks notes* properly implement literally the most basic of graphical processes.

I mean I don’t know anything about game development but that’s not gonna stop me criticising them. That sign can’t stop me; I can’t read!

congrats you realized developers reuses assets to save time & space, if you open your eyes you'll notice the same in most games to a degree

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Originally Posted by Deejudanne

congrats you realized developers reuses assets to save time & space, if you open your eyes you'll notice the same in most games to a degree

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Bruh I've known they do this and it's fine to a degree. Reusing enemy models from ff12 and ff11 is cool to me. Wanting to reuse textures from old areas wouldnt be so bad of they upscale the ones from ps3 era. The walls in the machi area of OC look so bad compared to some of the other areas because that they are ripped from dunscaith and placed next to dawntrail grass and forest textures. The resolution contrast is really noticeable

Devs should prioritize content over graphics but let's hope that we have beautiful exploration zones in the future like pyros

Also did you guys know a bunch of the bozja robots are ripped models from ff type zero? I thought that was cool

Look at Gabriel for example
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/fi...20150606124800

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Originally Posted by CidHeiral

https://i.imgur.com/vZVUZGc.jpeg

https://i.imgur.com/3vRlFnD.jpeg

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https://imgur.com/JuzWsqD.png