Travis Cobbs Wrote:I agree that this would be very useful. Having said that, some textures won't have any vector artwork associated with them at all. For example, the jungle wall in the samples probably doesn't have any associated vector graphics. And while it could certainly use cleanup, it seems good enough as-is to be used in a "Needs Work" part. I don't think it would be a good idea to require that all textures have vector-based source artwork.
The jungle wall just doesn't have artwork YET. ;-) Someone just has to sit down and trace it out, to give the best possible source material. But we did find that a quick scan and some background removal gave EXCELLENT "needs work" results in a very short time frame, and the quality was at or exceeding that of design-by-archiecture approaches in most cases. I recall having great fun finding a Space Police set on the shelves a couple months (November, prior to official January launch) prior to official release, and that night I had the entire figure: head, torso, legs decorated and in LDRAW ready to render. It was of course not up to the highest quality standards, but it was instant gratification and certainly up to released parts standards.
The jungle wall was an example of how a scan looks as opposed to a prepared vector-to-bitmap texture map from the initial examples pool, but the plan was ALWAYS to try to get it vectorized, to get everything vectorized. I redid upper part #5 (the original blue suit-and-tie) with vector art because even those simple shapes look much more true-to-life when vectorized-then-output-as-bitmap than the DbA version.
EDIT: fixed timeline