Well... now it looks even better!
I present you Better Rayman 3 HD!
But what is ecxactly? Well, as the name suggest, this is a better version of the HD texture pack for Rayman 3 on PC made by TRJTA that I created.
But now you'll probably wonder why there was the need to have an even better HD texture pack than the one made by TRJTA. Well, because, even if it is true that TRJTA's texture pack have a lot of improvements, it also have a lot of imperfections and textures consistency problems. For exemple, since that texture pack was made using the 4K texture pack made by Hakyra as a base, with a combinations of improved textures made by TRJTA and a lot of other textures taken from the official Rayman 3 HD, the end resoult is generally good, but there are . To be short, Hakyra's 4K textures are most of the times better than the official Rayman 3 HD ones, but other times they look like shit due to the technical limitations he had at the time he made his 4K texture pack. Combine this with a lot of poorly upscaled textures from the official Rayman 3 HD and a lot of... "questionable" textures edits by TRJTA and the resoult it's... very hit and miss.
In any case, I'm happy to announce that I fixed most of the problems of that texture pack.
I basically checked every single texture of the game in all the texture packs available to choose the best looking ones (or the less shittiests ones, in most cases), and also tried to ensure some consistency between certain types of textures, but I'll explain it better in a moment.
The texture packs I used for this project are:
- Rayman 3 HD for PC (made by TRJTA)
- Rayman 3 HD official (made by Ubisoft)
- Rayman 3 4K (made by Hakyra)
- Rayman 3 for PC (the original textures from the PC version)
The only two textures I took from the original PC version are the orange spikes texture (that appears when Rayman charges his fist), and the red spikes texture (that appears when Rayman takes a hit), because the game doesn't scale those two textures, so if they're bigger than theyr original resolution they will appear incorrectly in the game.
Other than that, what is really "better" in this texture pack than TRJTA's texture pack? Well, a lot of things.
First of all, not only did I choose the best textures from every texture pack available, but I also made sure to make a level of consistency between the textures. For exemple, most of the environmental textures, like the rocks, the plants, the grass, the snow and the woods (both as "forest environment" and "material") were taken from the official Rayman 3 HD. Most of the textures of the characters, the enemies and the creatures were instead took from Hakyra's 4K texture pack. Some times I just couldn't make a decent level of consistency between some textures because some of them for a certain type did not look good, so I had to use the same ones from another texture pack and sacrifice some consistency in order to include only the most decent textures, as I prioritize quality over consistency.
In the end I menaged to make the best mix between quality and consistency I could get, and not only that, but I personally modifed and fixed some textures myself, adjusting some deteils here and there where I could, adding an even better level of quality to the texture pack.
Here there are some of the things that I fixed and/or improved over TRJTA's texture pack:
- The logo in the opening screen presented a badly cutted shadow, so I used the logo from the 4K texture pack to replace it, which also doesn't have the official Rayman 3 "HD" edited part on top of it, so it looks much cleaner.
- The main menu has been drastically improved, thanks to a combination of textures from the 4K texture pack and the official Rayman 3 HD textures for the UI.
- The color of the energy circles and the energy lasers of the colored cans has been changed from yellow (official Rayman 3 HD) to purple (the original color).
- The new red lums were changed with the ones from the official Rayman 3 HD in TRJTA's texture pack, but only in the second cnt file, resoulting in the new red lums using the textures from the official Rayman 3 HD only from the Desert of the Knaaren onwards. I fixed it adding the same texture to the first cnt file too.
- When Rayman takes a hit or uses the grimace to convert the black lums into red lums, the red lums don't appear because theyr textures were totaly black. Now they are perfectly restored.
- Céloche's textures were recolored in green water to appear with the right colors underwater, but since it's also visible before going underwater, I found it a change not worth it, so I gave it it's original textures without recoloring.
- The water in Clearleaf Forest was darkened out, so I replaced it with the same texture from the 4K texture pack, which is brighter and more in line with the original texture.
- The acid in the first and fourth section of The Desert of the Knaaren was replaced with a flat green texture. I fixed that at the same way as the water.
- The rising lava in the Hoodlum Headquartes... same problem as the acid in The Desert of the Knaaren, same fixes.
- The rising lava in the second section of The Tower of the Leptys was changed from red to yellow, as a leftover from the official Rayman 3 HD. Once again, I fixed it by replacing it with the same texture from the 4K texture pack, which has the right color.
- The general UI has been tweaked lot, not only replacing every texture of the UI from the official Rayman 3 HD to the 4K texture pack, but also adding a few fixes to make it even better. The "2X" that appears in the center of the circle that indicates the duration of the combat fatigues when Rayman uses one of them is now more centered and is contained in the circle, and the score counter has been polished too, correcting the position of the number 4 and 7 to have the same height of the other numbers. Also, the white borders of the bottom part of the score counter, which they went outside the number boxes, are now perfectly cutted (well, not so perfectly, due to the textures alignment, but it's still an improvement over the original texture).
- Some of the textures from the 4K texture pack have been adjusted, mostly cutting out some artifacts easy to remove, such as: the manual, the battleship radar, the platforms on the background in the longest section of the third funkyboard level, the spirit tower wall textures (also used as ceiling in the Heart of the World, for the Heart of the World itself, as floor in the longest section of the third funkyboard level, and as stars on the skybox in the third section of The Summit Beyond the Clouds), the rain, some lightnings textures, some lights textures, some shadows textures, the floating platform in the Fairy Council and the blue indicator that appears when an enemy is locked and Rayman is too far from it.
- The "flat color" textures have been better upscaled, like some funkyboard textures and some light effects textures.
- The ground texture in the Racket Jump minigame was very bad looking, and the UI too. I fixed even those.
- The Crush minigame used the same textures from the Razoff's basement, so I changed them restoring the original textures exclusive to that minigame.
- The tiles textures in the 2D Madness minigame have been changed back to the original PC ones, due to textures consistency problems with the official Rayman 3 HD ones.
- The font has been changed back to the original PC one, since I found the shadowed font in TRJTA's texture pack not very nice looking, and I couldn't find a better upscaled font anywhere, so I just used the original PC font.
To sum it up, most of the textures for the levels have been taken from the official Rayman 3 HD, and some of the improved textures made by TRJTA have been left (not all of them have been left due to textures consistency problems). The 4K textures have been used for pretty much anything else.
You can compare TRJTA's texture pack and the version I redefined for yourslef, texture by texture. And if you want to change something, feel free to do it as you like.
Keep in mind though that this texture pack, while good, is far from perfect. I looked everywhere to find the best textures I could find in all the texture packs available, so at the moment that's basically the best that this texture pack can get, in terms of quality and texture consistency. Also, for the time I made this texture pack, my graphic design skill level is extremely low, and I was only able to do very basic stuff. Obviously there is a ton of room for improvement, and maybe in the future I could retry this when I'll have more skills, but for now, this is the best that I could do.
I should also mention that this texture pack fit perfectly in the standard cnt files and doesn't require to switch the textures at any time in the game (just how it was in TRJTA's texture pack, but unlike Hakyra's 4K texture pack). You don't even need to install the patch that increase the cnt files size from 2Gb to 4Gb, so you don't need to worry about that.
I talked so much about what the project is like but still haven't include a way to actually download it; my bad, I'll fix it right now.
Here's the download link for the texture pack:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/7q0tteqj ... D.zip/file
To install it, first download and install Rayman Control Panel. Then replace the files in the gamedatabin folder of the game with the ones included in the texture pack. Alternaitvely you can click on Open Archives on Rayman Control Panel and replace all the folders with the ones included in the texture pack (note: do not click on the option "replace" to do this operation, instead you have to click on "import", and then select the folder you want to use to replace the current ones), and then click on Save Archives. After you've done either of the two methods, click on Synchronize Textures, and after the process ends you're good to go.
In conlusion, I know this texture pack is really not that great all things considered, but I did try my best, not only to fix everything that was messed up in TRJTA's texture pack, but also to improve some stuff even more. Hope you will appreciate it.