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Author Topic: Spooky roof WIP  (Read 30147 times)

Modeler_in_the_Myst

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Re: Spooky roof WIP
« Reply #15 on: March 23, 2012, 11:38:33 am »

You mean in the anim8or render, right?
To adegree, but mostly the gameplay render. All the coils are really noisy in a visual sense, but their lack of shading makes them a rather bland.
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cooldude234

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Re: Spooky roof WIP
« Reply #16 on: March 23, 2012, 11:52:00 am »

lack of shading could be the type of style however, I've seen many games do that purposely.
Besides that the only thing I can see being smooth on sharp and vise-verse, would be the aliasing on the polygons, and the different stretching of the same texture.

However it looks really good. The thing is, if you do graphics correctly, they can look good for EVER! Even if it has a low polygon count and low resolution textures, it can still look good.
The thing is constancy and completeness, and lettme tell you, you defiantly nailed both.
Cheers to ya!
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fromsoysauce

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Re: Spooky roof WIP
« Reply #17 on: March 23, 2012, 01:03:43 pm »

Cooldude has the right idea. If you take another look you'd notice that NOTHING has ANY shading. When I made the gameplay graphics I went in wanting them to have the same feeling as Paper Mario, I was thinking "If Paper Mario wasn't Paper".

The lack of shading also gives a few advantages:
1) It makes the characters stand out definitely, so they are easy to keep track of even in the midst of chaos.
2) It makes them appear flatter, and I was wanting to give them a more 2-D appearance, and I'm trying to make the graphics look kinda like a Saturday cartoon.
3) The lack of shading makes it to where you cannot pay attention to the shading (form), and in turn let's you pay more attention to the animation and shape.

Also the game does have an AA toggleable function, but I like the look better without it (More or less U3D's AA just looks too blurry).
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Modeler_in_the_Myst

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Re: Spooky roof WIP
« Reply #18 on: March 23, 2012, 03:29:36 pm »

Maybe put less rings on the texture and use more expanses of flat colour.
Right now it just looks so busy it's hard to see the silhouette.
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fromsoysauce

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Re: Spooky roof WIP
« Reply #19 on: March 23, 2012, 03:43:53 pm »

Believe me when I say this: It makes more sense when it's animated.
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Modeler_in_the_Myst

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Re: Spooky roof WIP
« Reply #20 on: March 23, 2012, 04:21:35 pm »

I hope so, because I do like the design in the players avatar.
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davdud101

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Re: Spooky roof WIP
« Reply #21 on: March 23, 2012, 05:02:33 pm »

FSS, this is just great. Not only are you very skilled with Anim8or, but you're a pure BEAST when it comes to Game Maker! I've been fiddling with it for literally about 6 years now, and still haven't ben able to come up with much. Yet, here you are, using U3d of ALL things I couldn't learn, to make this game. You're pure genius, and I just CANNOT WAIT for some gameplay footage.
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fromsoysauce

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Re: Spooky roof WIP
« Reply #22 on: March 23, 2012, 05:11:40 pm »

Myst, Siiya is actually the deuteragonist, I had wanted to use the protagonist for the CG of the trailer, but his HQ model is not yet rigged, and do-dates are important so yea.

Davdud, all it takes is tenacity, determination, and the mindset that "close-enough" never exists.

Since this is getting more replies than I thought it would, I'd like to ask if you thin the 27 second CG should go before or after the gameplay in the trailer.
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Raxx

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Re: Spooky roof WIP
« Reply #23 on: March 23, 2012, 05:34:04 pm »

I want to go further about the point that Modeler_In_The_Mist brought up. In the screencapture, all of the monster's features blend together so it's hard to tell what's going on. However, this will be mitigated when it's moving, as it'll introduce depth and details via relative motion. Even so, confusing the silhouette is usually on a game artist's list of things to avoid.

There are two elements of silhouette that artists typically pay attention to. First is the physical silhouette, that is, the outline of the geometry of a creature from any view. If you render the alpha channel of the monster from multiple viewpoints, it should be obvious just by the black-and-white shape where the head, arms, etc are. Below is an example from one of my old game models I made.


As you can see, looking at the silhouette of the physical form in the top row, the features are somewhat obvious, except from some perspectives---if you didn't have the other views as a reference (this is partially what I mean by details via relative motion). What helps this is the texture, which has features on it that make it obvious what's going on. The hat is obviously a hat because of the white border and gray gradient. The arms are obviously arms because of the expressive yellow lines on them. The eyes are easy to pick out because they are outlined in white feathering, and the beak stands out because it's orange with a dark outline. The form of the back is aided by the expressive yellow lines that curve along it from neck to tail. All of these elements in the texture help its form.

However, your monster is confusing because the textures are very sporadic. The only thing really done right with it is that the claws are yellow and therefore easy to pick out. The real problem with the rest of the texture is that there are just random rings that contradict its physical form. Line patterns on objects are known to obscure the object itself, so why did you use it? And don't say that it helps the monster's design (creative license), because that's just a convenient (and wrong) excuse artists typically make.

The other problem with the texture is what's between the rings. Black. This just blends the depth of the monster. If you aren't using hardware shading in your style, nor using any expressive lines in the texture to aid the viewer's eye, then having just common solid colors without any sort of gradient shading drawn in only obscures the monster's form even more. Not to mention the black blends in with the ground.

The point I'm trying to make is that you have to put a lot of thought into the silhouettes, and especially more so with the textures if you're working with low-poly models. You can take this advice with a grain of salt, or learn from it. Whichever is entirely up to you.

I'd like to share a useful program, just in case you want to explore the next steps in texturing. XNormal is a standalone free program that allows you to bake ambient occlusion maps, normal maps, height maps, etc, using a high-res model to bake it onto a low-res, uv-mapped model. To bake AO maps on a low-res model without a high res one, all you have to do is set the low res model as both the high res and low res, then generate the map.

Anyways, good job so far. Last time I used Game Maker, there was no such thing as true 3D implementation :) As for the 27-second CG, typically in trailers the CG "wow" stuff is placed first to draw in the audience, and then the in-game footage driven in afterwards. But it kind of depends on the content of your CG clip as well.
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Modeler_in_the_Myst

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Re: Spooky roof WIP
« Reply #24 on: March 23, 2012, 05:54:34 pm »

Thanks Raxx, you really put it much better than I could. :)
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cooldude234

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Re: Spooky roof WIP
« Reply #25 on: March 23, 2012, 06:09:18 pm »

Raxx, good explanation


2) It makes them appear flatter, and I was wanting to give them a more 2-D appearance, and I'm trying to make the graphics look kinda like a Saturday cartoon.
Do you mean cartoon, or animation?
From looking at your screenshots, you have no contours on your characters, which makes it a lake of cartoon style, however it does look similar to different styles of animation.
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fromsoysauce

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Re: Spooky roof WIP
« Reply #26 on: March 23, 2012, 07:06:56 pm »

First of all Danman (that is it's name) is actually not one monster but 8 monsters working as one.

The individuals are known as Darkclaw, and they look like this:


For the most part, the monsters in my game do follow the principal you have explained.

This one however, quite frankly that was the effect that I wanted to accomplish. I wanted it to be a monster that you couldn't really tell the form of. I thought it made it look more mysterious. Plus the fact that the only thing your for sure of is the large claws makes it look more frightening.

cooldude, that depends, personally I find that the concept of applying cel-shading to a 3D model in no way resembles a cartoon look. It doesn't make it look drawn, it just makes it look cel-shaded. The particular cartoon look I'm trying to get is more or less that of MLPFIM.
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cooldude234

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Re: Spooky roof WIP
« Reply #27 on: March 24, 2012, 12:08:47 am »

I never mentioned cel-shading, I just said, to make it look like a cartoon, you have to have a thick contour (in other words, really thick (usually) black lines defining its edges).

The style like yours is less cartoon, but still much like some 2d animations I know of.
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fromsoysauce

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Re: Spooky roof WIP
« Reply #28 on: March 24, 2012, 11:47:56 am »

Well the idea is simply to make the graphics look flatter, so as long as it accomplishes this, that will be enough.

Alright guys *drum roll* here is the trailer! :
&feature=youtu.be

And here is more of a 30 second commercial like thing that uses just the anim8or render:
d=1
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davdud101

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Re: Spooky roof WIP
« Reply #29 on: March 24, 2012, 08:53:48 pm »

MY GOSH.... This game would just be incredible on iPod and other mobile devices- I'd be willing to pay a buck or two for it, it looks that good. WHat's your overall goal for game making? Cuz I think you'd fare quite well in the business... perhaps you and I could collaborate sometime?
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