AuthorTopic: Little Dwarf  (Read 14491 times)

Offline ndchristie

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Little Dwarf

on: December 16, 2008, 05:25:55 am
Just a little practice,\\





embarrassing 350 tris and the texels on the legs are too small/many...empty spot on the map is for arms (this guy is going to be light infantry - harquebusier)
« Last Edit: December 16, 2008, 12:21:26 pm by ndchristie »
A mistake is a mistake.
The same mistake twice is a bad habit.
The same mistake three or more times is a motif.

Offline TrevoriuS

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Re: Little Dwarf

Reply #1 on: December 16, 2008, 11:40:28 am
Not bad eh =) Uv's on the edge of the helmet are a bit odd, being the border falling off. Care to post any wireframe?

Offline Draco9898

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Re: Little Dwarf

Reply #2 on: December 16, 2008, 12:29:26 pm
You have me sold if you made a 2.5d platformer or 3d platformer with 2d gameplay out of this :)

Offline TrevoriuS

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Re: Little Dwarf

Reply #3 on: December 16, 2008, 12:51:05 pm
Why embarrased by the poly-count? It's rig-able like this :O

Offline ndchristie

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Re: Little Dwarf

Reply #4 on: December 16, 2008, 05:57:19 pm
You have me sold if you made a 2.5d platformer or 3d platformer with 2d gameplay out of this :)

Haha, if wishes were horses than beggars would ride; if artists could program we'd do so with pride...

The idea is actually for a strategy game not unlike fire emblem/advance wars/what have you in which the player competed for control of branches and trunk parts of the Yggdrasil as:
The Silf (elves) - they climb about like monkeys/ninjas and are built on speed and striking first.
The Fae (sprites and fairies) - they flit around using mostly assisting or impeding spells and rely on....well, not getting struck.
The Gnomes (think dwarfs but more woodsy) - with the exception of their builder units, they cannot climb, and rely on building structures to advance.  Guns and big axes are where they are at.
The Cull (Mushroom and Lichen-people) - they literally grow on the tree, so while they have a great range of movement in deploying, they are hard to reposition.  They are though the only race to just not care about gravity.
The Blight (Wicked spirits) - a group that is completely balanced in all of the above and the obvious "nemesis" faction (think chaos from warhammer).

The reason for the structures/gravity bit and the reason this game will never be made is that it's meant to be quite literally grid-combat over a branch, and use all the sides of that branch (including the bottom).

Perhaps one day a magical, experienced and not-busy 3d programmer will sweep me off my feet and make this game, but until then it's just low-res practice for when I feel untalented or am tired of thinking about blobs of ferrets (which you are not allowed to know about yet).
A mistake is a mistake.
The same mistake twice is a bad habit.
The same mistake three or more times is a motif.

Offline snader

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Re: Little Dwarf

Reply #5 on: December 16, 2008, 09:04:56 pm
the face wants more pixels

Offline ndchristie

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Re: Little Dwarf

Reply #6 on: December 16, 2008, 10:29:11 pm
the face wants more pixels

Hmm.....I tend to feel that extra-sizing the face of a model is the worst sin since the arbitrary blue ambient...but now that you mention it I think i've gone in the opposite direction here and actually made the face pixel-y-er.  I think I can increase the detail by pushing the helmet edges together and bringing the hand up a few marks (it doesn't use the whole space that it's shown to take). (goes off to try)
A mistake is a mistake.
The same mistake twice is a bad habit.
The same mistake three or more times is a motif.

Offline Helm

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Re: Little Dwarf

Reply #7 on: December 26, 2008, 01:28:54 pm
Hmm.....I tend to feel that extra-sizing the face of a model is the worst sin since the arbitrary blue ambient...

I agree - though I don't mind the blue ambient. The artist is supposed to be conveying a holistic effect - that the art is all made by the same primary atom. We're pixel artists, aren't we? We all know how mixing resolutions hurts the art and although this is inevitable to a degree in 3d it seems because of applying perspective and skew on an otherwise flat pixel map, to actually deliberately go in and make one surface much higher res than the rest just screams to me "bad priorities". Yes, I know everybody does it.

Offline Jad

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Re: Little Dwarf

Reply #8 on: December 26, 2008, 05:15:32 pm
Don't worry about that face, I say! He looks like a grumpy dwarf, and you conveyed that within the space of impressively few pixels! I dig, this piece, and I mean especially the face, really combines the appeal of low-res-pixel and low-poly art for me! I dig it, except for the legs/feet, which are a bit .. pointy and angular. From the front, that is, the sillhouette from the side looks solid!
I'm just more or less hoping to see more in this style actually, with the same purplish shadows thing that you've got going here. It's giving me both final fantasy and warhammer vibes.

I dig this lots! Now make more! !yus!
' _ '

Offline nelis

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Re: Little Dwarf

Reply #9 on: December 26, 2008, 06:07:45 pm
In game art you tend to prioritize certain areas from the amount of screen time it gets, take a first person weapon for instance the amount of polygons closest to the camera can be twice that of the area of the gun facing away, same holds true to the texture map, another area that works like this is the face of characters. Since you look at the face first and foremost its essential that it looks better than the rest of the model. But with that all said i think that uneven texture resolution becomes less and less important the lower the model is polygon and texture size wise, so in this instance i think its perfectly acceptable the way it is and i think you should'nt give the face any extra resolution.

There's alot to think about when doing this sort of thing though, like the games camera angle, cut scenes, style etc.
Sometimes artist will give the head an unique texture map so say that you're using a 128 for the character the head will have its own 64 texture.

But this is all up to taste and what the character is going to be utilized for.

It looks really good btw, getting some LofZ Link to the past vibes!

Offline Conzeit

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Re: Little Dwarf

Reply #10 on: December 26, 2008, 07:07:20 pm
personally, I think it's the way that the beard relies so much on diagonal lines that makes you ache for better resolution. Plus there's something that reasembles banding going on...and the beard seems to be more shadowed the more it sticks out...

Offline Dex

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Re: Little Dwarf

Reply #11 on: December 27, 2008, 05:57:17 am
I wouldn't mind playing a little game with these guys. :]

The style is rad, and the colors are really neat. I'd love to see more in this style. Maybe a troll or a knight, eh? Great work!

Offline Talos

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Re: Little Dwarf

Reply #12 on: January 10, 2009, 03:43:01 am
Awesome, what do you use. Man I've fooled around in blender and the best I got was not nearly this.

Offline snader

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Re: Little Dwarf

Reply #13 on: January 10, 2009, 12:44:43 pm
Hmm.....I tend to feel that extra-sizing the face of a model is the worst sin since the arbitrary blue ambient...

I agree - though I don't mind the blue ambient. The artist is supposed to be conveying a holistic effect - that the art is all made by the same primary atom. We're pixel artists, aren't we? We all know how mixing resolutions hurts the art and although this is inevitable to a degree in 3d it seems because of applying perspective and skew on an otherwise flat pixel map, to actually deliberately go in and make one surface much higher res than the rest just screams to me "bad priorities". Yes, I know everybody does it.

It's often done because we focus more on certain areas, for instance the face. On low-performance/retro machines this was more visible then nowadays, because nowadays filters blur the pixels (omgwhat!? yes.) so its all a lot smoother, and you'll hardly notice it when a part like the legs uses big pixels because its all smooth. On the face however it'd look blurry, and you need more pixels to create sharp lines etc.

Also part of it is distance, i think, when you see a person from a distance you see the whole body, but you wouldnt need the full 2048² texture since the model would only be say.. 600 pixels on screen. Up close you'd see the texture at a bigger scale but you'd only see the face and a part of the torso. so logically the torso would receive higher res then the legs.

It's all about focus and how often/at what size you see something on screen and the amount of detail in the surface (hair has lots of detail, but you could stretch them lengthwise a bit. faces are very complex and we notice errors faster,  concrete slabs are less detailed and having a bit bigger crack in it won't look as odd. etc etc.)