Dark Souls Model Improvement Project

A mod project that aims to fix errors and surpass limitations of Dark Souls models to achieve a look closer to what the developers intended.

[Dark Souls Model Improvement Project @DSMIProject]

Dark Souls Model Improvement Project is a mod that seeks to fix faults found within meshes in Dark Souls Remastered. This includes mesh holes, floating objects, and more interestingly adding back details that the developers had to strip back, e.g this skeleton pile.

[Dark Souls Model Improvement Project @DSMIProject]

@HkonMk At the time I had only played DS1 and became a FromSoft fan from it, but hearing about Bloodborne from its marketing, I thought it'd all about warewolves which I thought would be lame. The Lovecraftian horror aspect shot my interest through the roof once I got there.

[Dark Souls Model Improvement Project @DSMIProject]

@HkonMk One aspect of this that is unfortunately lost to time and underappreciated is the fact that on release WE HAD NO CLUE ABOUT THIS. FromSoft basically decided to shoot their own marketing in the foot to preserve the surprise for it and not spoil it. I experienced it firsthand.

[Dark Souls Model Improvement Project @DSMIProject]

@Keyecomposer Usually I edit the existing meshes and add details to them to preserve the existing lightmap UV's rather than make meshes in a vacuum tbf so it'd be more helpful if you have recommendations for plugins and whatnot tbf.

[Dark Souls Model Improvement Project @DSMIProject]

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.

[一富士二鷹サウザンドキメラ @thousand_chimer]

復讐者サンド

[Amirah @AmirahOfMirrah]

I was given the opportunity to make an official preview and install guide for the Dark Souls 2 Seamless Co-op mod, which is coming out September 22nd. Please give it a watch!

[fromsoftserve @fromsoftserve]

I wanted to share some really excited wip pics from the @DSMIProject "Dark Souls Model Improvement Project" which aims to update DS1's models to be so much more geometrically dense, something I attempted poorly in my re-remastered mod. but here, the work is extraordinary!

[Dark Souls Model Improvement Project @DSMIProject]

@birsy_ 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.

[Dark Souls Model Improvement Project @DSMIProject]

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.

[Dark Souls Model Improvement Project @DSMIProject]

@fromsoftserve I always assumed they have shadows with very low opacity or in this case disable shadows entirely to better portray the bright skylight of an overcast locale, in which sun shadows would be overwhelmed cuz of all the atmospheric refractions.

[Dark Souls Model Improvement Project @DSMIProject]

@downbeef_ Yes that is the plan, and that'll involve Darkroot Garden, Duke's Archives and Painted World trees as well. I also plan on giving them the material type from vgetation allowing them to animate with the wind.

[Dark Souls Model Improvement Project @DSMIProject]

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.

[Dark Souls Model Improvement Project @DSMIProject]

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.

[Dark Souls Model Improvement Project @DSMIProject]

@fromsoftserve Seems like they mirrored its UV onto the other door to ommit the modern-looking handle and keyhole lol. Unless those appear on the other side which would be rather awkward.

[Dark Souls Model Improvement Project @DSMIProject]

@fromsoftserve The music for that area also adds a lot. Such a serene experience https://t.co/OCynBQEKJq

[Dark Souls Model Improvement Project @DSMIProject]

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)

[Dark Souls Model Improvement Project @DSMIProject]

Side note, if anyone knows where this relief was photographed originally, and could maybe share higher resolution photos, that'd help my work a lot in modeling more details into it.

[Dark Souls Model Improvement Project @DSMIProject]

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.

[Dark Souls Model Improvement Project @DSMIProject]

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 Model Improvement Project @DSMIProject]

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)