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]

@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)

[Dark Souls Model Improvement Project @DSMIProject]

@thunderba11r My tolerance for jank has always been higher than average so I was on the same boat. Didn't even mind Bed of Chaos, and by the same token I also enjoyed DS2/3 a lot. No amount of internet essayist snark is gonna change that.

[Dark Souls Model Improvement Project @DSMIProject]

@CarlosH00455849 Dark Souls 1 is much more basic by comparison. They use a lot of shortcuts and very limited sun shadowmap as the only source of dynamic shadows. They do a good job utilizing those shortcuts but they have clear limitation and show their age.

[Dark Souls Model Improvement Project @DSMIProject]

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)

[Dark Souls Model Improvement Project @DSMIProject]

@CarlosH00455849 It's a much more advanced version of the engine though. It has more complicated shaders to compute, particle effects, and features shadowmaps for some point lights and spot lights, plus most importantly it has much more dense meshes and more textures.

[Dark Souls Model Improvement Project @DSMIProject]

@fromsoftserve Thank you! One decent trick to avoid harsh clipping is to start with very low alpha values per texture card, then duplicate and displace it a bunch. Every window in this shot has like 16 cards next to it (varying their UV's also helps since the effect is too obv if not)

[Dark Souls Model Improvement Project @DSMIProject]

@CrestfallenYT Bro you have no idea. I fixed so many holes I've practically edited half the map's flvers. Still not as bad as Undead Berg's mesh holes tho...

[Dark Souls Model Improvement Project @DSMIProject]

I've watched te development of DS2LE's PT Mode from the sidelines and a lot of the complaints to PT seem to stem from a misunderstanding of how much control it has to offer. I recommend people pay attention as it can be made this faithful as one wants it to be, prime example:

[fromsoftserve @fromsoftserve]

on the left is vanilla dark souls 2 in forest of the fallen giants. on the right is how it looks after spending some time tonight on an unreleased (yet!) version of my second sin mod with pathtracing thanks to DS2LE PT. really trying hard to keep the original vibe

[Dark Souls Model Improvement Project @DSMIProject]

@biorr99 @AesirAesthetics I posted it in the rest of the thread https://t.co/KqHsaPxFNp

[Dark Souls Lighting Engine @DS2LightingMod]

Alonne's Arena had technical bugs which are now fixed. It had a bug where the skybox is not being detected and normal map tiling was wrong. I was able to fix the skybox detection issue, was well got a new roughness map made thanks to @TriviaTex , here are updated shots.

[Dark Souls Model Improvement Project @DSMIProject]

@AesirAesthetics (Personally I'd prefer it retain some of the greenery of the original for instance, a change I'd easily make in my personal use preset, but even without such a change it's still much better than the above screenshot)

[Dark Souls Model Improvement Project @DSMIProject]

@AesirAesthetics It's also very accessible to work with so I do recommend people give it a try if they want to make their own presets. Also it's still in beta stage and many things are subject to change. For Alonne's arena for instance here's how it looks right now https://t.co/KqHsaPxFNp

[Dark Souls Lighting Engine @DS2LightingMod]

Alonne's Arena had technical bugs which are now fixed. It had a bug where the skybox is not being detected and normal map tiling was wrong. I was able to fix the skybox detection issue, was well got a new roughness map made thanks to @TriviaTex , here are updated shots.

[Dark Souls Model Improvement Project @DSMIProject]

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.