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Author Topic: Spriters judgement thread [non-sprite art allowed]  (Read 2210780 times)

maximilianyuen

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Re: Judgement thread give and receive comments on sprites
« Reply #270 on: October 16, 2012, 10:16:07 AM »

@maximilianyuen;  Took a look and here's an edit and some critique.  

Before/after:


Critique:
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I like the colors and the form is great; the subtle lighting is cool and the rendering approach is working fairly well.

That said, I really feel that you need to add bevels to the greebles to give better lighting results when you shrink them to final sizes and do a lot more pixel work.  

What's happening is that, as the pixels get averaged, there's a lot of pixel blending that's distorting the lighting and AO results, resulting in a very blurry, sub-optimal result.  The ship looks great in huge renders but is extremely blurry at final scales.  There is no one "easy fix"; to get really perfect results, you must spend time doing final editing by hand.

I am sure you will improve a lot as you become more familiar with this art form :)
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wow thanks a lot for the useful suggestions and nice word! especially the graphic, i hope it didn't take you too much time..

i am fully aware that I might get the basic stuff at hand but it really take times and a lot of trial to make it more than acceptable, and i aim for that, given time :)

one major problem now, i don't understand what's the "as the pixels get averaged" part.
I put in the 1:1 scale png into the game but it definitely get blurred inside the game compare to the original png...

my very original render is more than double size so sharpness is not a problem, but i am yet to know the way to make it sharp in game other than over-sharpening before hand.
would be great to know what's the mechanism the game process the png...
(in fact i think i will open a post for this subject for a more focus discussion)
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maximilianyuen

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Re: Judgement thread give and receive comments on sprites
« Reply #271 on: October 16, 2012, 10:17:53 AM »

@maximilianyuen the top-down view of your ships don't do them justice
the perspective view is awesome!
but, maybe a bit paradoxically, they look a bit flat top-down, possibly more shading could fix that :)?

ha unfortunately yup...i do intended to make it flat but the outcome can't really shown it...
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maximilianyuen

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Re: Judgement thread give and receive comments on sprites
« Reply #272 on: October 16, 2012, 10:30:29 AM »

Well, to add more shading's not too hard, since it's pretty flat:

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sorry to say but wrong!
see the 3d picture.
almost all sides are sloping

now you get the dilemma i am facing!
adding the shading at the side would make the ship fat and round
not adding the shading is physically "correct" but visually misleading and seems to be "wrong"...

as your previous nice comment point out, the slope above the deck/in front of the engine/under the bridge is just not able to be seen, because the light is coming from top-down, and you are viewing it from top down...and the camera is not in perspective but parallel (no vanish point)...i.e. no visual hint can be use to indicate a slope as a slope :\

ahhh...

and about the mount, i am not sure is it nice to use the vanilla mount..but will try to make it a bit bigger at least
« Last Edit: October 16, 2012, 10:36:50 AM by maximilianyuen »
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TheHappyFace

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Re: Judgement thread give and receive comments on sprites
« Reply #273 on: October 16, 2012, 10:44:20 AM »

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why do you think the ship starts looking fat and round becuase of it?
here i gave it a try giving some main sloping surfaces extra shading.

ow about the mount.
I like a mount to be visible as one.
dont neccesarily be a vanilla mount as long as its reconnised as a mount and you can see where its pointing at.
« Last Edit: October 16, 2012, 10:51:32 AM by TheHappyFace »
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maximilianyuen

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Re: Judgement thread give and receive comments on sprites
« Reply #274 on: October 16, 2012, 10:50:01 AM »

OK, I gave it one last try :)



forgot to say it in previous reply, looks like you got a lot of place hand-drawn, appreciate your effort  ;D

i prefer the first edtion (second left) due to it's resemble the original design better
but the shading surely make things look more natural and realistic in a way that our eyes expected to see things..

looking at this i think the slope can use a more solid darker grey overlay instead of gradient to represent it, got to try it next time :)

one thing to mention:
the exterior antenna seems won't work well with the damage visual graphic in game...sometimes it will looks like something is broken in the air because you can't see the antenna anymore.

need to see if any good way to deal with it coz it is certainlly cool to have
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maximilianyuen

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Re: Judgement thread give and receive comments on sprites
« Reply #275 on: October 16, 2012, 10:52:17 AM »

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why do you think the ship starts looking fat and round becuase of it?
here i gave it a try giving some main sloping surfaces extra shading.

well...actually your pic prove my point :p

gradient shading represent a round object, hence round and fat
thinking should use hard shading to present a different plate angle instead  ???
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TheHappyFace

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Re: Judgement thread give and receive comments on sprites
« Reply #276 on: October 16, 2012, 11:01:58 AM »

ow i think we have a miscommunication!
i never used a 3d program for sprites so i k ow nothing about gradien shading and rendering or such things... :P
with shading i mean by hand (or trick in my case)
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maximilianyuen

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Re: Judgement thread give and receive comments on sprites
« Reply #277 on: October 16, 2012, 11:02:46 AM »

The last pass was really subtle; I used some gradient techniques to soften the lighting of the edges somewhat and give the light a little more natural-feeling falloff.  I could take it one more stage, and emulate the intended geometry a little more, but at that point I'd have to redraw a lot of it, which is why I stopped; the form's a little different than the model, but it looks like a spaceship :) 

That said, maximilianyuen's overall approach is solid, and if I wasn't getting fast results from the technique I developed over here, I'd probably do it like this.  The AO pass in particular really helped it out by adding contrast lines where panels meet, etc., which a non-AO raytrace, or one with softer, more natural AO wouldn't have done.  

I think he's really taking the right approach to executing ships in 3D for post work into 2D sprites and it was a pleasure trying to figure out how to get it to the next stage and get the details sharpened up, even though it took a fair amount of pixel work :)

It would have been easier to get it just right if the original render had been available, especially if it had been rendered at a power-of-two size to the intended resolution so that final blending worked a bit better; these are just small refinements of technical stuff though and I am sure he's going to make some amazing stuff in the future :)

for anyone didn't read this, read it again ;D
j/k

question:
not quite get " power-of-two size to the intended resolution"...
say for a 300pixel tall ship, i should rend a 600pixel one or 300^2 pixel?

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maximilianyuen

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Re: Judgement thread give and receive comments on sprites
« Reply #278 on: October 16, 2012, 11:10:42 AM »

ow i think we have a miscommunication!
i never used a 3d program for sprites so i k ow nothing about gradien shading and rendering or such things... :P
with shading i mean by hand (or trick in my case)

ha, english is not my first language so occasionally i get ppl wrong, don't mind :P

i am totally agree that shading need improvement, just in this particular case a gradient shading seems not the best option (with reference to the original design/look and feel)

as said, the reason is gradient shading represent a round body more than anything else, which this ship is not...

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xenoargh

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Re: Judgement thread give and receive comments on sprites
« Reply #279 on: October 16, 2012, 05:00:18 PM »

Quote
say for a 300pixel tall ship, i should rend a 600pixel one or 300^2 pixel?
Yes, if at all possible, it helps, especially if you use the Bilinear blending instead of Bicubic during reduction :)

And yes, flat shades for the surfaces would be most appropriate, given the source material, as in what I tried to do in a quick way with the second version.  That said, it's not perfect; a really perfect version would have required re-drawing some parts or doing big pixel fill work, so I skipped it because of the amount of time it takes.  I think that any of the 3 edited versions are OK though :)

Lastly, don't worry about little antennas looking weird- they only cause major problems if they aren't very visible before they get damaged, generally speaking.  The only big issue is that the damage doesn't respect alpha and draws on areas outside the collision boundary, which can cause problems with areas using a lot of alpha.
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ValkyriaL

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Re: Judgement thread give and receive comments on sprites
« Reply #280 on: October 16, 2012, 10:43:07 PM »

You know that while you are trying to find good kit bashing pieces, you usually find something that resembles a ship and your like *hmm i can use that! =D* this is what i found trying to find parts for my titan.

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TheHappyFace

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Re: Judgement thread give and receive comments on sprites
« Reply #281 on: October 17, 2012, 01:36:10 AM »

well if you want to use the shades i made for version 2.
here's how i did it (form spriters thread)
Spoiler
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its just a simple trick which works perfect for sloping surfaces.

@valkyrial
looking good ,but still need ain't finished.
first one got some flat surfaces which need to be filled.
second one has too small engines and some of the plates on the sides look kitbashed (which they are  ;D)
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ValkyriaL

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Re: Spriters judgement thread (please read the rules before posting)
« Reply #282 on: October 17, 2012, 04:41:35 PM »

I fixed the ships above, they look curved and sexy now :P i also took my time to completely overhaul my other faction, they used EvE ships, (which looks way to good to be in this game) and did some serious kit bashing and ended up with their new ship family. =D

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TheHappyFace

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Re: Spriters judgement thread (please read the rules before posting)
« Reply #283 on: October 17, 2012, 11:57:52 PM »

hummm...

ill get through them as quick as possible.
Spoiler
- proper kitbashing, not so fond of the shape it has. ship looks out of balance (hard to control)
- still good kitbashing, i like its shape although it does need some assymetry imo.
- same as the one before.
- dont like this one, awkward shape, looks like a stretched out vanilla version.
- looks too much like its original but not as good , too symmetrical.
- nothing bad too say about this one, good kitbashing, although i seen it before in-game(is that possible?).
- looks good, a concept that never fails.
- shape looks a bit undefined like escher made the sprite.
- O.o looks awkward!
- mirrored version of the original?...
- with hardpoints , dont really like the look of them.
- fighters all look pretty good ,maybe a bit too much like the vanilla once.
overall its good kitbashing ,but you made them too symmetrical and they look too much like the original sprites you used for the kitbashing.
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good luck with further sprites!
« Last Edit: October 17, 2012, 11:59:57 PM by TheHappyFace »
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maximilianyuen

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Re: Spriters judgement thread (please read the rules before posting)
« Reply #284 on: October 18, 2012, 10:48:22 AM »

a 3 hours of quick work (yeah quick in terms of my slow pc and skill) of a drone ship.

thinking 3 versions, this showing one is the mass production version being universal capable, able to act independently as a drone fighter, while the 2nd version is only capable of ship defence by removing all the main thruster but add 4 external body control thruster for quick and accurate turn, while having capital ship's forward speed
the 3rd version will be very interesting and i believe no one did that before here so kind of keeping it a secret...but probably will be proven wrong when i shown it lol

heres the first version's draft
Spoiler


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