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Messages - questseeker
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91
Pixel Art / Re: [WIP] Pillow Shading
« on: August 02, 2009, 12:36:09 pm »
The far border has spurious highlights, which also contribute to making it look jagged. The reference doesn't look like that.
The middle is perfectly flat, like a floor tile would be. The reference obviously isn't; you might need to exaggerate the curvature (and to invent a random bump pattern), but it is necessary to make it look like a pillow.
I don't think you have a sufficient pixel budget for the wrinkles around the middle of the right side; I don't think they are necessary to make the surface look like cloth (the natural shapes around the corners are enough).

92
Pixel Art / Re: some land/cliff tiles
« on: July 23, 2009, 02:14:09 pm »
I think the ramps should have a different grass colour (representing the different angle of incidence of the sun). Otherwise their walkable surface looks at the same level of the elevated platform. While the lateral ramp can still look like a ramp, the frontal one is hardly distinguishable from an elevated "bridge".
The ramps should be brighter than level ground if the sun is low and darker if it is high.

93
Pixel Art / Re: Sideview Space craft
« on: June 26, 2009, 10:48:02 am »
Quote from: Hishnak on June 25, 2009, 04:25:54 pm
Quote
The purple outline is another extravagant luxury; being the darkest colour purple should only be used for the darkest shadows, as you cannot afford outlines that are wider than what they outline.
Is it necessarily "wrong" to have a double outline? Can't areas of solid color indicate the deepest shadows?

That's what I said. There is good purple, in the deepest shadows, and bad purple, in gratuitous outlines all around the outside border and the interior.
I don't think this piece has enough room for outlines, let alone double ones; if you really feel they are needed, you should restrict them to the exterior silhouette and make them consistent (currently the outline has large gaps in the upper left portion and inconsistent thickness in many places).

The third revision cleans up some little defects and adds about the same number, but the cluttered overall design got slightly worse: the top orange portion has a new blue bar and blue dots that, together with the preexisting diagonal of blue dots, suggest a fluorescent tropical fish rather than a machine.
What's the rationale of the orange/blue colour combination in general? Real world ships have the "natural" appearance of their materials or a principled paint job, not such arbitrary patterns.

94
Pixel Art / Re: Sideview Space craft
« on: June 25, 2009, 01:23:22 pm »
I liked the original bottom better; it looked reasonably mechanical, while the revised one is only a pair of greyish (why not orange like the rest?) triangular spikes that would look more comfortable on a ram (like in certain ancient ships; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trireme) that in the vicinity of a landing strip or an aircraft carrier.
On the whole, the modified design doesn't look significantly more "ship-like" than the first one, except perhaps for making the top left section unlike a gun barrel. The blue pieces, considered in isolation, look quite like a futuristic handgun in both versions alike.

Colours and shadows are mostly improved: the darker blue is crispier, but shading of the top-center orange portion is ruined by the increased fragmentation of parts that were already too small in the first version.

In general, I don't believe in gratuitous details (like the yellow stripes in the top and bottom right fins): your ship would be too complicated at any size, but conveying what 1-pixel parts are is asking too much. The purple outline is another extravagant luxury; being the darkest colour purple should only be used for the darkest shadows, as you cannot afford outlines that are wider than what they outline.

To elaborate on Scribblette's remarks, the most plausible ship type for what I see is:
  • Small because it doesn't have empty or repetitive portions (i.e. it is so crowded that it seems be the smallest hull where every system can fit), but not very small (there is an awful lot of stuff).
  • Deep space/airless environments only because it is anti-streamlined; the usefulness of the bottom right fin is dubious, as it is neither a wing nor a weapon mount like those in modern attack helicopters.
  • Unmanned because there isn't anything remotely similar to a cockpit.
  • armed with several forward-facing serious weapons.

95
2D & 3D / Re: Problem
« on: May 28, 2009, 02:28:47 pm »
If, as I guess, you want square portions of the texture for each cube face, the right command is Unwrap rather than Unwrap (smart projections); the former respects the seams and tries to be conformal, the latter arranges pieces to fill the texture completely.
You can however adjust the UV mapping manually.
Note that Blender 2.45 is obsolete; the current version is 2.48a and 2.49 is almost ready.


96
2D & 3D / Re: Problem
« on: May 26, 2009, 04:20:07 pm »
Start by posting what you have done so far and where you found yourself confused. A picture is worth a thousand words...

97
2D & 3D / Re: Problem
« on: May 23, 2009, 05:03:06 pm »
Please read the tutorial: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro/UV_Map_Basics.
Short version: finish editing the untextured model in Blender, then use a 3D View window to mark seam edges (with the edges selected, Ctrl-E (Edge Specials) -> Mark Seam) and make an UV map (U (UV Calculation) -> Unwrap or one of the other variants); use a UV/Image Editor window to see and edit the mapping. Repeat until you get the seams and the unwrapping right.

At this point you have the "skeleton" of your texture mapping; save a draft texture (UVs -> Plugins -> Save UV Face Layout...) and choose a size and a filename.
With this reference you can use Blender's builtin image editor (Image -> Texture Painting) or not (Image -> Open... and Image -> Save) to edit your texture.

As soon as you have a meaningful texture, you can use it to render your model: enable TexFace in the relevant material.

98
General Discussion / Re: Digitial Painting Help
« on: May 07, 2009, 08:08:50 am »
What you mean by "digital painting", as well as what advice you need, is quite unclear.
Are the mentioned "sketches" scanned from paper originals or did you draw them digitally?
Are they high quality artwork that you want to improve or just a rough skeleton that you want to remake?
Are they small and precise (suitable for pixel art techniques, the almost exclusive interest of this forum) or fuzzy and high resolution (suitable for "painting" with a tablet and variants of photo retouching methods)?
What image editing software are you using and/or are you able to switch to?
What tutorials and guides are you disliking (and why) or avoiding because of cost, and what do you feel you have to learn?

99
Pixel Art / Re: Animation Help
« on: April 02, 2009, 08:24:23 am »
The hollow eyes and the aggressively protruding teeth, which are completely different from the glossy black eyes and the soft closed mouth of the reference, make the rat look very nasty. Is it a wanted effect?

Something obviously wrong with the hands is that rats have 5 fingers, not 3, and the fingers are quite long, thin and pliable: they should flex and adjust from frame to frame and the palm should be smaller.

The pose has another obvious error: the photo reference you are following is of a still, almost seated rat that spreads its rear legs for balance. Rats are neither rabbits nor kangaroos and they walk with their legs close together.

I agree with Euphronius that flipping one frame is completely insufficient. Apart from plain jerkiness in the legs and head, the tail shouldn't travel so far in the time the rat takes to make a step (another effect of basing the walking animation on a still reference: the tail is actually resting on the ground in a random position).


 

100
General Discussion / Re: History of Pixel Art : 5th century Byzantine Mosaic (MODEMS WILL DIE)
« on: March 04, 2009, 09:51:54 am »
There's also pixel art with bricks and tiles.
The low-res façade of the smaller church of the Monte Berico complex in Vicenza, Italy (mediocre photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/25262919@N04/2851072838/; in context: http://www.flickr.com/photos/netnicholls/2349437259/) is a nice example, with remarkably flush white and red blocks forming crosses and diagonals.

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