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Messages - Rox
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1
Pixel Art / Re: First Attempt at Animation. 2D fighting game[WIP]
« on: October 27, 2009, 04:47:28 am »
Rox, I watched the video you showed and it's great as a reference tool. But... his arms really don't move that much in the video, just like all the other TKD videos that I watched while making this animation. They are bent up into his chest through pretty much the whole kick, just as my sprites arms stay bent, only changing their postion relative to the body itself.
Heh, good. I wasn't talking about the arms, I was talking about the entire upper body, waist up. Don't be afraid to redraw a bunch of frames for something as epic as a powerful high kick! Make him lean back nice and far, that'll give it some oomph.

2
Pixel Art / Re: First Attempt at Animation. 2D fighting game[WIP]
« on: October 26, 2009, 04:42:58 pm »
I'm digging this so far! I've always been kinda fascinated by Hitmonlee's design. Anyway, the only thing I'd like to see more of (even if the cartoon didn't do it, as I looked up references before critiquing) is more upper body movement. The more force you put into a kick, the more your upper body will respond. That should be independent of whether your legs are elastic or not.

Here's an okay example.

Note how, when his leg is fully extended during the side kick, the torso leans back quite far. The more extreme examples I found, with people kicking as hard as they can, ended up with the torso pretty much horizontal. Especially true for the high side kick. I don't know why anyone would need to bring their foot up THAT high, unless they're fighting a giant, but oh well. Keep up the good job!

3
I got it. In order to make some practice, i'm doing a treasure box, where a lot of elements are supposed to repeat.
Is there some easy and effective way to overlap UVs without mistakes?
For example, the top of the box is supposed to repeat, now: do i have to take and manually move the selected piece above the upper one, and so one until i have all four pieces one upper another? It's difficult to have pixel-precision with free hand.

Oh, and another thing: for example, iif a have to draw an entire wall with a flat pattern, it is possibile to have, let's say, only 10 pixel of pattern on the UV and then make it repeat (Tile it) on the plane, instead of having just one all distorted?
Well, I don't know what software you're using, but both Maya and XSI, that I used, have snap functions for UVs as well as align options. Like, drag all the squares to roughly the same area, then select left side, align to left, select right side, align to right, and repeat for up and down. Or, if that option exists, select all left corners and snap to grid, or something, then snap another corner to another point in the grid. Whatever works. It's just a matter of learning the tools you're using, and I'm afraid I don't know yours.

As for repeating UVs... Yes, and no. If you want an entire object, say a building, to use only one texture file, then you need as many subdivisions in the surface that you want to tile, as times you want the textures to tile, so you can overlap all those UVs. But that's very inefficient and I wouldn't recommend it. The only way to have it tile like that is to have one surface or object use a stand-alone, tiling texture file. Like if you have a 64x64 that is only one wall texture that repeats in all four directions. If you do that, you can scale the UV up to be larger than the size of the texture, and that'll make it repeat. Like, if the UV is twice as big as the texture in the UV window, then the texture will repeat itself twice for that space on the model. But again, that only works if the texture itself tiles seamlessly and can't be done if you want a unique texture for each object.

Often, for low-poly, low-res stuff, what you can do is sacrifice some polygons for the sake of preserving texture space. Like, if you have a house there... I think that's what it's supposed to be... You could add one more edgeloop along the longest side. That way those awkward, elongated walls will turn into two nice squares that you can overlap, and at least have the texture repeat once. Usually, texture memory is much, much more important than polycount if you want to stay true to old system restrictions, or things like the DS and iPhone. But now we're really touching on the finer sides of low-res modelling and texturing, here. The whole concept of balancing between a clean mesh and a compact UV is an art in itself. There's a lot more information and inspiration for this stuff on a site like Polycount, as much as I hate to plug another forum on here! But I've noticed we do share a lot of members. Maybe I can consider it a sister site-in-law of Pixelation or something.

4
UVs, eh? Fun stuff. First of all, what are those faces on the UV that have little notches leading in to squres? Is the entire model one piece and you cut the sides up to extrude the arms and legs out of them? Don't do that. Since the body is really just a cube and there's no reason for a smooth transition between body and limbs, there's nothing wrong with having the arms and legs be their own meshes. Like, just have a cube for the body, then create a new cube, reshape it into an arm and put it there by the side. That way you'll save a lot of polygons, and the UV will be a bit neater, too.

As for the UV itself, you don't want square UVs. Yours fit the shape of the object, and that's the most important thing. If the shapes don't match, the pixels will end up stretched and wonky when applying the texture to the object. One thing you could (and should) do, however, is overlapping UVs. Just have both arms share the same UV space, and both the legs as well. I doubt you're going to have a completely asymmetrical texture, so just make the UVs overlap. That way you can use the same texture space in multiple places on the character. You could also have both the sides of the body, and maybe even the bottom and top and back, all use the same one square in the texture space. That depends on how much light information you're going to paint into the texture, of course, and how you go about doing that.

Other than that, I can't say much right now. Just one tip for the eyes: The highlight on the iris should be on the bottom, not the top. While the eye itself is round, and extrudes outward, the iris actually goes inward, so the lighter bit should be at the bottom. It usually looks good to have the iris be shaded that way, then put a strong white highlight near the top, as well, to suggest the shape of the actual eyeball.

5
2D & 3D / Re: Using textures from a 2D pixelart?
« on: August 28, 2009, 11:21:53 am »
You can use any image as a texture, like ndchristie said. So yes, technically, you can apply a sprite as a texture on a model.

However, the most important information in a sprite tends to be the shape and colors, not so much the "texture" in itself. Good pixel art usually goes to extreme lengths to imply the shape of the object via light and color information. Those are things that, in 3D, become pretty much obsolete, and can make a model look worse, in fact, if applied inappropriately. If you want to use pixel art as texture on a model, it needs to be made with that in mind, like some others here in the Low Spec section. I'd be pretty much impossible to grab a sprite and slap it on a model and have it look good.

6
General Discussion / Re: Official Off-Topic Thread
« on: August 26, 2009, 08:44:33 pm »
Unless I'm wrong about what Graphic Design entails, the only conclusion I can draw is that four other people didn't get a proper mention in the Minish Cap's credits. That's kinda bullshit.
Similar thread going on at Polycount today. Pretty interesting, I'd never even thought about it before.
http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=65229

7
Pixel Art / Re: [WIP] Balloons
« on: August 09, 2009, 03:14:27 am »
You really like dithering! I used to like it a lot, too. Problem is, it's not only unnecessary, it also adds texture when the colors are so contrasting. Balloons are supposed to be shiny, but the dithering makes them look rough and cloth-like. The strings also don't appear taut, which they should be if the balloons are pulling up on them. All the strings should be almost completely straight.

8
General Discussion / Re: Official Off-Topic Thread
« on: July 08, 2009, 09:11:31 pm »
Pff, TV. I haven't had any channels on mine since I moved here, a year and a half ago. The only thing I can say I really miss is accidently zapping past Simpsons reruns when I'm bored, and ye olde Discovery Channel. But of course, I'd stumble on both while trying to waste time, so the only thing they really do is help people waste time. I don't know, I'm kinda glad I can't do that anymore.

I'm less happy about my 360 still being broken, meaning I haven't even used said TV for many months...

9
Pixel Art / Re: dump time
« on: June 11, 2009, 10:32:22 pm »
Yes, the biggest issue I have with the skateboard push is that people don't stand sideways while pushing. A proper skateboard push would have some frames in it that look very similar to a run animation. Something sort of like this. Imagine ... I don't know, image standing on a towel on the floor and pushing yourself forward with the other foot, or something, and try to observe the orientation of your body. While actively pushing forward, you're going to end up completely facing the direction you're trying to go.

10
General Discussion / Re: Official Off-Topic Thread
« on: June 04, 2009, 08:50:15 pm »
It was a pretty big problem when playing on Expert with random crowds. I unfortunately didn't have enough friends online at the same time as I was when I wanted to play it. At its worst, a game would consist of me finding a game, everyone agreeing on playing on Expert, going through a level like normal until a crescendo event - the machinegun room in the first campaign and the hospital elevator being particular favorites - where suddenly all the other players would initiate the event with zero preparation then huddle down in a corner and tape their melee buttons down.

A few times I was joined by another sane person who sometimes managed to convince the others to play normally, or sometimes cause them to end up dying, which of course meant we all failed. I'm cool with dying, that's why I wanna play on Expert. Apparently most other players aren't. A particular scenario I remember involved three people hopping into a corner by the elevator in the hospital, and after someone demanded I join in and I refused to, explaining that I want the game to be a challenge, he set me on fire with a molotov.

Short story shorter, it got to the point where a lot of players apparently considered the offenders to be the ones who tried to play the game as intended, instead of relying 100% on the melee button during the parts that are supposed to be the hardest.

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