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Modern Super Mario Texture Pack (512x) - How it's donesettings
I am David Richard, author of: Modern Super Mario Texture Pack (512x)
Discord Server (invite if not available, just message and I'll make a new invite): Official Discord - David's Gamer Area
(this is my first server on discord so I will probably adjust here and there on the way, you are welcomed and free to share this link)
Hello everyone! A long time ago, I thought to make my own take on a Mario Bros themed texture pack. I never loved the retro style "à la " Super Mario Bros 3 or the classic SMB1. I wanted something fresh, new, modernized but still Mario-ish. Little did I know that there was just SOOOOOOO many textures in the game. So, I stuck with the basics and started with the most common textures.
I wanted nothing less than 512x512. Anyways, smaller than that looks a bit pixely or blocky and higher than that, well, I only have a GTX 980 TI AMP! Extreme 6Gb. So no need for bigger. Minecraft is also a very fast paced game where you don't really take time to look for long minutes at what you are doing so 512x give a very good HD feeling even at 1440p and 4k.
Have you ever wondered why it takes me so long to release new versions? Probably not seeing that the pack is less than 400 downloads at the time I am writting this. BUT, being in the Artists section, maybe you are curious to know the process of creating texture packs, so here are a few images and explanations on how the textures are chosen and created.
1 - I need a base texture that will serve as my main game vibe, something that another creator did . I need a pack I love that changes pretty much everything in the game, all done and makes me less irk on the 16x graphics. LB Photorealism has been and always will be my base texture pack.
2 - Another little extra texture pack to fill in some holes that LBPR does not cover. The winner was AAK 1024x HD PE.
== With these base textures, I have a vibe of how my Minecraft world will look like. Shout out to those 2 excellent authors who did an excellent job with their texture packs and trying to maintain it for so long. Now it's time for me to create my OWN pack "à la" Mario style. I DO NOT use the previous packs in my textures, they just give me the vide for how I should make my textures look like to blend in the game without looking awkward.
3 - I needed some real HD textures from original Mario Games. Not being the inventor of Mario, I need to try and keep the original Mario vibes to the textures without loosing my current installed texture packs vibes. I also wanted a somewhat modern game but still old enough to get that grungy feeling of the classic Mario games. I remembered that Mario Sunshine had those mini levels which were very basic but still provoded good HD graphics. AND, I knew of a 4k project that was going on for the game so hey, why not. 4k pack it is. I extracted everything and now I have a good base to start with textures. Here's the grass texture sample:
4 - 4k textures are not all. I need the basic references, that is, the original Mario games reference. Luckily, Google has a good image search engine so I got a few nice HD textures of popular Mario items from my search. Here's the all popular Brick block.
5 - Unfortunately, some of these images, even if they look OK, are NOT seamless. This means that when you stack them up side by side and one over the other, you can clearly see the cutouts of where the blocks end. In any Mario game, asside from the question blocks and other obvious items, most ground textures are seamless, you can put many side by side and you still cannot notice that the pattern repeats. Therefor, if one texture is not right, I need to find another one. So a stack test is done. I use PAINT.NET as my app to create the textures. I place AT LEAST 4 of them to form a 2x2 square and in some cases, I do a 3x3 square to check weather the texture is obviously repeating or if any obvious parts of the texture become too redundant when repeated.
6 - Once I have done this, I am now down to the actual texturing. Yep, it's not all to choose a texture, now it's time to Modernize it. You see, Mario textures are usually very bright and striking in colors. With my current texture packs installed giving me by base vibe, it needs some toning down and some more personality. Asside from being bright in colors, often, Mario textures don't have much texture to them, it's mostly a few colors making it look flat with simple designs in them. So it's time to make those textures have some personality and integrate them into Minecraft. So I need to repeat the process #6 above for a few other textures that I will then super-impose to make 1 brand new texture. One very common and defining detail about Super Mario's textures, most off all grass and ground textures, they have this very unique lines going through them. Take this for example.
As you can see, the ground has some wavy design to it. Minecraft is just land and stones, hills, mountains and prairies. It's basically LAND. So this needs to be replicated. It turns out that my Mario Sunshine pack has such a thing.
You will notice immediately that these lines are NOT horizontal, they are vertical. I also know that Mario games have a very strong tendency to give you strong cues on the environement by how these details look like. Mountains are high, majestic, this is perfect for rocks and other rock like textures. That's where the soil and sand got themselves a different texture. I found another HORIZONTAL texture for anything that is sand and soil because this is harvestable and interactable in some way with the exception of gravel. This means I can also define the environement in the same way Mario games do by giving different lined textures to the elements providing a visual feedback on the player while still reminding them of the Mario world.
== Little note asside: Color blind people can actualy relate to those textures too. If they cannot see colors properly, they can at least have some visual cues on how the defining details of the textures look like. It may not be perfect but it helps diversify the textures for them too.
7 - Once all of the textures are found, it's creation time. Time to open PAINT.NET and do some work. Paint.Net has, like many other similar apps, layers which you can use to blend and super-impose textures together to make 1 texture. To sum it up, I place all textures in a layer and fiddle around the colors, changing hue and saturation if needed, change the opacity, brightness and blending mode until I get a perfect blend of visual quality that gives me that Mario vibe that fits my base packs. Here is one of my simplest textures to help you see visually what's done to create the texture. This is the TUFF texture.
As you can see, there are 5 images forming the Tuff texture. When you super impose them together, it creates the final texture to be used. Here is a gif showcasing the activation of each layer.
These 5 layers are actually just 3 textures. The original colorful rocks texture, the defining lines for the rock and finally the little hint of granular pebbles to add a touch of depth to the final texture. TWO of these are highly contrasted to make some elements popout like the small pebbles and make the cracks more prominent giving depth to the texture. In the end, everything is merged and saved as a PNG file to put in the pack.
8 - This step consists of testing the texture in the game, making sure it fits well within the environement, checking to see if any detail is too dominant or not much obvious. Checking the colors and make sure it has a texture that defines that block in a way that players will recognize. If anything is out of place, it's back to the drawing board, touch up brightness, colors, etc. In some occasions, like the numerous ore blocks, a complete retexture is required to make the blocks feel alive but still seem integrated in the game. They also needed a special treatment to make the world have obvious Mario vibes. Since these ores are the main minerals to help you build your world, it was an easy choice to make them look like question and exclamation blocks which in Mario gives you usefull items and in minecraft, gives you usefull ores.
As an extra little challenge, some of these blocks are ANIMATED. This means that I need to touchup the textures slightly differently for each subimage of the animation which in the end must match logically the blocks element and look seamless...
Can you take a guess which ores the above ore blocks give you?
9 - Once everything is tested and working, time to pack it up. I create a folder of the pack which holds an exact replica of the folder paths of the vanilla textures. This means that I need to find the exact location, file name and path of the textures I am replacing. Once I have put all of the files together, I use NanaZip to compress my pack's folder contents in ZIP format, rename the file's extension to ".mcpack" and DEPLOY!
Some of these can use up to 10 different layers, one example of this is the diamond ore block. Diamonds have this cristal like texture but having a cristal texture as a flat image is challenging so many different images need to be blended together to add the crystal touch to the ore block, make it feel like a raw ore and not like a pure diamond, add some diamond-ish color and reflections all that without making it look too much out of place when you find it. ALSO, Mario games are about exploring and searching for these valuable resources which is why these blocks were given the special Super Mario treatment with question and exclamation block textures to add to the Mario vibe, it adds color and excitement when digging through repetitive stones. A special attention has been given to make them have a sort of 3D feeling to it because we do not all own RTX graphics cards and some of us play on laptops. This permits to have a good 3D feeling, look professional made texture without compromizing on quality.
I showed you blocks, but there are also items such as the infamous pickaxe and flowers, these also get special treatment in the same way blocks get. Here's a few examples.
SO - Why is is soo long to release?
1st, there's a heck of a lot of textures to create. 2, I have a family and life, things that need to be done in priority with my children and wife before fun time. So I do this on my spare time. I also have other interests than just Minecraft. I love Skyrim and the casual Carcassonne board game against AI.
How long does it take to do the texture of 1 block or item?
It can take between 10 minutes, for easy ones like the diamond or when I already have a base like the pickaxe. Or up to 2 hours for blocks to get the right consistency and match for the surrounding blocks. For example the Cobble Stone and all those around. The Cobble Stone is pretty much the base reference so this block was the first one to be created. Once the Cobble Stone was to my taste, the little Mario-ish lines on it gave the cue for their intensity and color for the surrounding blocks. Even though the different stones have different colors and a clear cut is visible in the game, those lines add a sense of continuity which makes them feel blended together. So using the Cobble Stone as a reference, I can work the other textures and make sure that these lines are not too dark, light or faded, they have this perfect balance to make it look seamless even with the different textures and colors of the stones. It must look like it's all part of the mountain while still having a different color to know what you are digging through.
I hope you find this interesting and that it gives you an idea about the adventure of creating a pack. Although some of us just draw, mix and matching is also a talent and I have shared to you my passion about Super Mario Bros, my desire for quality and plain good enjoyment.
Discord Server (invite if not available, just message and I'll make a new invite): Official Discord - David's Gamer Area
(this is my first server on discord so I will probably adjust here and there on the way, you are welcomed and free to share this link)
Hello everyone! A long time ago, I thought to make my own take on a Mario Bros themed texture pack. I never loved the retro style "à la " Super Mario Bros 3 or the classic SMB1. I wanted something fresh, new, modernized but still Mario-ish. Little did I know that there was just SOOOOOOO many textures in the game. So, I stuck with the basics and started with the most common textures.
I wanted nothing less than 512x512. Anyways, smaller than that looks a bit pixely or blocky and higher than that, well, I only have a GTX 980 TI AMP! Extreme 6Gb. So no need for bigger. Minecraft is also a very fast paced game where you don't really take time to look for long minutes at what you are doing so 512x give a very good HD feeling even at 1440p and 4k.
Have you ever wondered why it takes me so long to release new versions? Probably not seeing that the pack is less than 400 downloads at the time I am writting this. BUT, being in the Artists section, maybe you are curious to know the process of creating texture packs, so here are a few images and explanations on how the textures are chosen and created.
1 - I need a base texture that will serve as my main game vibe, something that another creator did . I need a pack I love that changes pretty much everything in the game, all done and makes me less irk on the 16x graphics. LB Photorealism has been and always will be my base texture pack.
2 - Another little extra texture pack to fill in some holes that LBPR does not cover. The winner was AAK 1024x HD PE.
== With these base textures, I have a vibe of how my Minecraft world will look like. Shout out to those 2 excellent authors who did an excellent job with their texture packs and trying to maintain it for so long. Now it's time for me to create my OWN pack "à la" Mario style. I DO NOT use the previous packs in my textures, they just give me the vide for how I should make my textures look like to blend in the game without looking awkward.
3 - I needed some real HD textures from original Mario Games. Not being the inventor of Mario, I need to try and keep the original Mario vibes to the textures without loosing my current installed texture packs vibes. I also wanted a somewhat modern game but still old enough to get that grungy feeling of the classic Mario games. I remembered that Mario Sunshine had those mini levels which were very basic but still provoded good HD graphics. AND, I knew of a 4k project that was going on for the game so hey, why not. 4k pack it is. I extracted everything and now I have a good base to start with textures. Here's the grass texture sample:
4 - 4k textures are not all. I need the basic references, that is, the original Mario games reference. Luckily, Google has a good image search engine so I got a few nice HD textures of popular Mario items from my search. Here's the all popular Brick block.
5 - Unfortunately, some of these images, even if they look OK, are NOT seamless. This means that when you stack them up side by side and one over the other, you can clearly see the cutouts of where the blocks end. In any Mario game, asside from the question blocks and other obvious items, most ground textures are seamless, you can put many side by side and you still cannot notice that the pattern repeats. Therefor, if one texture is not right, I need to find another one. So a stack test is done. I use PAINT.NET as my app to create the textures. I place AT LEAST 4 of them to form a 2x2 square and in some cases, I do a 3x3 square to check weather the texture is obviously repeating or if any obvious parts of the texture become too redundant when repeated.
6 - Once I have done this, I am now down to the actual texturing. Yep, it's not all to choose a texture, now it's time to Modernize it. You see, Mario textures are usually very bright and striking in colors. With my current texture packs installed giving me by base vibe, it needs some toning down and some more personality. Asside from being bright in colors, often, Mario textures don't have much texture to them, it's mostly a few colors making it look flat with simple designs in them. So it's time to make those textures have some personality and integrate them into Minecraft. So I need to repeat the process #6 above for a few other textures that I will then super-impose to make 1 brand new texture. One very common and defining detail about Super Mario's textures, most off all grass and ground textures, they have this very unique lines going through them. Take this for example.
As you can see, the ground has some wavy design to it. Minecraft is just land and stones, hills, mountains and prairies. It's basically LAND. So this needs to be replicated. It turns out that my Mario Sunshine pack has such a thing.
You will notice immediately that these lines are NOT horizontal, they are vertical. I also know that Mario games have a very strong tendency to give you strong cues on the environement by how these details look like. Mountains are high, majestic, this is perfect for rocks and other rock like textures. That's where the soil and sand got themselves a different texture. I found another HORIZONTAL texture for anything that is sand and soil because this is harvestable and interactable in some way with the exception of gravel. This means I can also define the environement in the same way Mario games do by giving different lined textures to the elements providing a visual feedback on the player while still reminding them of the Mario world.
== Little note asside: Color blind people can actualy relate to those textures too. If they cannot see colors properly, they can at least have some visual cues on how the defining details of the textures look like. It may not be perfect but it helps diversify the textures for them too.
7 - Once all of the textures are found, it's creation time. Time to open PAINT.NET and do some work. Paint.Net has, like many other similar apps, layers which you can use to blend and super-impose textures together to make 1 texture. To sum it up, I place all textures in a layer and fiddle around the colors, changing hue and saturation if needed, change the opacity, brightness and blending mode until I get a perfect blend of visual quality that gives me that Mario vibe that fits my base packs. Here is one of my simplest textures to help you see visually what's done to create the texture. This is the TUFF texture.
As you can see, there are 5 images forming the Tuff texture. When you super impose them together, it creates the final texture to be used. Here is a gif showcasing the activation of each layer.
These 5 layers are actually just 3 textures. The original colorful rocks texture, the defining lines for the rock and finally the little hint of granular pebbles to add a touch of depth to the final texture. TWO of these are highly contrasted to make some elements popout like the small pebbles and make the cracks more prominent giving depth to the texture. In the end, everything is merged and saved as a PNG file to put in the pack.
8 - This step consists of testing the texture in the game, making sure it fits well within the environement, checking to see if any detail is too dominant or not much obvious. Checking the colors and make sure it has a texture that defines that block in a way that players will recognize. If anything is out of place, it's back to the drawing board, touch up brightness, colors, etc. In some occasions, like the numerous ore blocks, a complete retexture is required to make the blocks feel alive but still seem integrated in the game. They also needed a special treatment to make the world have obvious Mario vibes. Since these ores are the main minerals to help you build your world, it was an easy choice to make them look like question and exclamation blocks which in Mario gives you usefull items and in minecraft, gives you usefull ores.
As an extra little challenge, some of these blocks are ANIMATED. This means that I need to touchup the textures slightly differently for each subimage of the animation which in the end must match logically the blocks element and look seamless...
Can you take a guess which ores the above ore blocks give you?
9 - Once everything is tested and working, time to pack it up. I create a folder of the pack which holds an exact replica of the folder paths of the vanilla textures. This means that I need to find the exact location, file name and path of the textures I am replacing. Once I have put all of the files together, I use NanaZip to compress my pack's folder contents in ZIP format, rename the file's extension to ".mcpack" and DEPLOY!
Some of these can use up to 10 different layers, one example of this is the diamond ore block. Diamonds have this cristal like texture but having a cristal texture as a flat image is challenging so many different images need to be blended together to add the crystal touch to the ore block, make it feel like a raw ore and not like a pure diamond, add some diamond-ish color and reflections all that without making it look too much out of place when you find it. ALSO, Mario games are about exploring and searching for these valuable resources which is why these blocks were given the special Super Mario treatment with question and exclamation block textures to add to the Mario vibe, it adds color and excitement when digging through repetitive stones. A special attention has been given to make them have a sort of 3D feeling to it because we do not all own RTX graphics cards and some of us play on laptops. This permits to have a good 3D feeling, look professional made texture without compromizing on quality.
I showed you blocks, but there are also items such as the infamous pickaxe and flowers, these also get special treatment in the same way blocks get. Here's a few examples.
SO - Why is is soo long to release?
1st, there's a heck of a lot of textures to create. 2, I have a family and life, things that need to be done in priority with my children and wife before fun time. So I do this on my spare time. I also have other interests than just Minecraft. I love Skyrim and the casual Carcassonne board game against AI.
How long does it take to do the texture of 1 block or item?
It can take between 10 minutes, for easy ones like the diamond or when I already have a base like the pickaxe. Or up to 2 hours for blocks to get the right consistency and match for the surrounding blocks. For example the Cobble Stone and all those around. The Cobble Stone is pretty much the base reference so this block was the first one to be created. Once the Cobble Stone was to my taste, the little Mario-ish lines on it gave the cue for their intensity and color for the surrounding blocks. Even though the different stones have different colors and a clear cut is visible in the game, those lines add a sense of continuity which makes them feel blended together. So using the Cobble Stone as a reference, I can work the other textures and make sure that these lines are not too dark, light or faded, they have this perfect balance to make it look seamless even with the different textures and colors of the stones. It must look like it's all part of the mountain while still having a different color to know what you are digging through.
I hope you find this interesting and that it gives you an idea about the adventure of creating a pack. Although some of us just draw, mix and matching is also a talent and I have shared to you my passion about Super Mario Bros, my desire for quality and plain good enjoyment.
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SOME MORE INFORMATION on how it's done!
Did you know that some textures are just not available in HD? When that is the case, I need to personally REDRAW the texture myself. SOmetimes AI Upscales just don't make a good job. One example of this is the Vine.
The vine is not available in 512 x 512, biggest can be 32 x 32. This means that I had to trace the low res blurred image and make it as close as possible like the original Mario style. This takes a while because of all the try and errors to get the colors and the shadings right. Another item that will be hand drawn will be the ingots which will be based off Luigi's Mansion gold ingots with a tiny twist to make it fit within the Minecraft context.
Have a nice weekend everyone!
Did you know that some textures are just not available in HD? When that is the case, I need to personally REDRAW the texture myself. SOmetimes AI Upscales just don't make a good job. One example of this is the Vine.
The vine is not available in 512 x 512, biggest can be 32 x 32. This means that I had to trace the low res blurred image and make it as close as possible like the original Mario style. This takes a while because of all the try and errors to get the colors and the shadings right. Another item that will be hand drawn will be the ingots which will be based off Luigi's Mansion gold ingots with a tiny twist to make it fit within the Minecraft context.
Have a nice weekend everyone!
