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Ramblethread! A brainstorm approaches!

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Feron:
On the single pixel topic, one white pixel is quite often used as eyes of sprites and that is very noticeable.

Gil:
Jad: while rim highlights are still pretty harmonic to the cluster theory, clothing detail in SOTN is not for example. I'm thinking that the contrast between heightened resolution and pixel level detail is just very visually pleasing and also makes simple detailing more powerful, since it isn't cluttered by more pixel noise around it.

Just a theory

Arachne:
Yay, lines. ;D

A mistake I see done every now and then, is to go from a [1 1 1] line straight to a [2 2 2] line.



The right way to draw a smooth curve in this case is not very intuitive if you think of lines merely in terms of number sequences. I like to think of it as AAing with angles instead of colors. You have two "colors", a [2 2 2 2] line and a [1 1 1 1] line. Halfway between the two would be [1.5 1.5 1.5 1.5], but we only have integers to draw the line with so we get [1 2 1 2] instead. Substitute the middle with that, like [2 2 1 2 1 1], as shown here,



I think it's always important to explain why you're using a rule or put it in some kind of context. If there's no other way to remember these rules than to memorize them to the letter, beginners might find themselves trying too hard to adhere to all the rules and forgetting to actually look at what they're drawing.

I think the most important thing you can do in pixel art is to look at the result after placing a pixel. Did it look better before or after and why? If you keep an eye out for a pattern in what looks good and what doesn't, you will find it in time (and after a few thousand iterations :P).

Gil:
In most cases (in my experience), it is better to go with example 1. Example 2 works perfectly here, but the broken sequence can sometimes do more harm than good. As you said, it's all a matter of trying it out and repeating until it looks good.

I usually go with 1 if I only have inner AA to work with (sprites for example), while I'll definately go with 2 if I can get outer AA too.

Ai:

--- Quote from: Gil on March 06, 2009, 08:58:03 am ---I usually go with 1 if I only have inner AA to work with (sprites for example), while I'll definately go with 2 if I can get outer AA too.

--- End quote ---
I totally agree. 1 is a more pleasant curve if you AA it in the right way, and is also more regular and easy to AA.

I think Arachne was talking about scenarios with no AA at all, though. In those situations, 2 is definitely nicer.
(IMO the ideal curve, in pixel art, is generally very close to a cubic spline (2 endpoints, 2 control points), and example #2 is almost perfect in this case. example #1 is like spline interpolation that is suffering from rounding errors)

I included some thoughts on this in my old advanced AAing tutorial, IIRC. (http://neota.castleparadox.com/aa_tutorial.html). IMO your technique, Arachne, is very similar to Staggering. It also mentions something else which is important for newbies, IMO: because of gamma, the midpoint of the RGB values of two colors usually *ISN'T* a 50% mix of the two. (eg black #000000, white #ffffff -> wrong result = #7f7f7f, right result = #bababa). Knowing this can help avoid ineffectual shading as well as ugly AA.

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