Dark Souls Model Improvement Project

One thing that always disappointed me about DSR is how they did nothing to address the flatness of the trees in the game. I didn't quite model individual branches in my approach but I gave them much more needed "volume" on top of applying the wind animation shader on em here.

I actually did attempt this initially with the floral patterns, projecting a UV onto them from view and placing it on the original texture's. It looked decent but stood out from the rest of the model. I want the mod to be compatible with the base textures so I can't add one.

Decided to put this asset side by side to better showcase how much it changed. The old asset relied on a flat edited photo. I modeled the whole thing from scratch and I'm happy with the results.

The niches that the statues sit in I sourced from DS3's iteration of this mesh, wherein the niches are empty and lack the statues. Here's a front view and the 2D texture they use, and some stock photos I found of the irl original statues I found online.

Yet another example of assets that were made in 2D which I've manually created 3D versions of. This time the source for the original textures are real life statues of Benvenuto Cellini as well as Saint Antoninus. Very happy with the result with poly counts kept within reason.

The music for that area also adds a lot. Such a serene experience youtu.be/FxaNt-NVo1c

While I love working on grand and transformative details, there's also a lot to love about adding small details that players normally don't even pay attention to. This lever object cost me a couple hours but felt well-worth the effort (2nd pic is how it originally looks)

Still a work-in-progress but here's to one of my favorite parts of this mod, making proper models out of flatly-textured (seemingly from a real life photograph) decorative reliefs for Anor Londo. As always the 3rd and 4th pic are how it originally looks like.

You may have also noticed the Painting's frame looks more detailed now. I added such embelishments inspired by the texture and the normalmap, which are both excellent and imply a lot of details. Proud of the curves I was able to produce with it.

Dark Souls Fun Fact of the Day: In a rather funny oversight, the painting of Ariamis floats in the air. They modeled no supports for it to sit on nor anything for it to hang on. For my mod I modeled both metal beams to hold it up and 3 sets of chains on which it hangs (pics 3+4)

While Dark Souls 1 lacked means of rendering proper volumetric shadows, it still did a decent job faking volumetric lighting using alpha cards all over the place. I'm currently replicating that technique in places I feel benefit from it. (Work in Progress, might tone effect down)

Using the right material setup and method of subdivision, I can give such withered trees a lot more details and vertex animation support. With careful setting up I am able to make the thinnest parts sway the most and that gradually transitions to the rest of the branches.

I might tone down the swaying as it is in-doors, but I'm still very proud of the frills as the base game mesh was rather flat. The wooden panels were also flat and the chandeliers were very low poly and missing wooks. Here's what they all looked like in vanilla for those curious.

Anor Londo is undeniably a fan favorite for a good reason. In giving it some love, I sought to give it geometric detail that is in-line with what is already there in the textures rather than replace it with something that isn't there. The video clip shows off swaying on bedding.

In gaining mastery over Dark Souls' model materials, I am able to bring to life static elements of the scenery, such as the two giant trees above Firelink Shrine. I might tune the effect down but for now this is a good demonstration of the details one could expect.

In a fascinating twist, I managed to figure out how to apply cyclical vertex animations to meshes that previously lacked them. Dark Souls Remastered uses this technique on vegetation a lot, and I managed to it onto these ragged cloth meshes found throughout Undead Berg.

More fancy roof action.