AuthorTopic: GR#115 - Space Ships - Topdown  (Read 27563 times)

Offline rikfuzz

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Re: Space Ships

Reply #10 on: July 14, 2012, 09:04:18 am
Another method consists in using vectorial pictures, and not raster, but in this case they don't draw with pixel art.

Also nothing new or possibly super practical, but a lot of games simply stored 16 or 32 rotations, so they could be pre-cleaned up on a pixel level.  There is that 'rotsprite' program that gives very clean rotations (designed for sonic fan-games I think) that need only a small fraction of the manual cleanup.

Offline Grimsane

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Re: Space Ships

Reply #11 on: July 14, 2012, 05:00:18 pm

one of my own modular shmup ships in combination with an edited version of your torus shape part, may not be very good and I could probably point to decent examples of commercial quality shmup graphics, but hopefully it's helpful as a suggestion to what you may want to do with the base of that ship, colour scheme and shading

your Hull design doesn't look very compelling at the moment and what I am assuming is the cockpit (on the blue one) seems to have some clashing perspective with the hull of the ship,making everything but the cockpit look extremely flat, even with the flat reinforcing shading aside, if it is top down with rotation, keep it pure top down like in the example yrizoud posted, if you have anything that comes out like that cockpit it will look rather strange when it is rotating because the points of the perspective will be changing on every degree of rotation, the other ship sprites are fine in that regard

and I agree you may consider what has been mentioned by rik, pre rotated sprite sheets definitely offer more flexibility with the ships detailing
« Last Edit: July 14, 2012, 05:04:32 pm by Grimsane »

Offline Szyu

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Re: Space Ships

Reply #12 on: July 14, 2012, 09:48:32 pm
Ok this one definitly looks great... I totally agree with your statements with pre rotated sheets, but I think for me as a beginner I should hold it easy until I reach a level i can say Ok this has to be like this and so on. So this is why Grimsanes style interests me. Is there any good tutorial that shows how to set the shadows properly for this perspective? Remember, I am a noob... :D

But thank you all for the great and constructive criticisms. It will be hard to learn, but Im optimistic i will make it, if there is anyone who could help me with tips

Offline Lachie Dazdarian

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Re: Space Ships

Reply #13 on: July 14, 2012, 10:55:57 pm
Try to shade by casting light on the ship hull from ship's own sources (windows, etc....) and from the very top (but subtly to avoid pillow shading). It definitely won't work if you pick a static light source in one corner, shade the ship like that, and then rotate it.

Offline Grimsane

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Re: Space Ships

Reply #14 on: July 15, 2012, 12:46:24 am
well I don't have time to make a tutorial persay, but here is a deconstruction of the shading, you could try layering it on like this, but I just do it all randomly and adjust it all as I go, some people work much better with a technical approach like this.


also note how you can highlight paint stripes using the same colours to brighten the edges, and add some visual interest, same with concave/inset regions and lines, and utilize the edge of the object, pull or push the outlines to suite the shame, but with pixels you can also imply bulges with colour alone if you do it right, like the edges with the highlights in the later half of this animated example


major things to concentrate on are the shape, and the colour choice, make sure each shade you choice has visible and significant contrast with each other colour, subtle ramps of value often read very soft and gradient, which you want to avoid.

hope these are helpful

Offline Szyu

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Re: Space Ships

Reply #15 on: July 15, 2012, 09:42:22 am
I tried to accomplish your advices and this is the result of the huntership.

I wanted to try it on another ship, so it isnt as well as yours though, but in my own opinion, I can see a development so far. Any further suggestions?
I think the cockpit seems very flat, but i really dont know how to fix this.

Offline PypeBros

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Re: Space Ships

Reply #16 on: July 15, 2012, 10:29:14 am
The ships don't show a specific lighting either.

Indeed, and many of them looks pretty flat (esp. the protagonist's own fleet).
Note that there *is* a well-defined light-source for most ships, and that's their own booster's light. That one has the advantage of rotating with the ship, so if you need something to increase the 3D look of the ships, you can use that.

Offline Szyu

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Re: Space Ships

Reply #17 on: July 15, 2012, 10:50:57 am
The boosters lights are going to be because of the particles.

A Screenshot of the particle system laying under the ship (The old Huntership version). if i put it over the ship, the booster would be lightened by the particles.

So I dont get whether you want to say only flat sheets are better then sheets with little more details?
« Last Edit: July 15, 2012, 10:58:24 am by Szyu »

Offline Grimsane

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Re: Space Ships

Reply #18 on: July 15, 2012, 06:21:17 pm
the approach to the lighting will dramatically effect how flat your ship looks, if the light you want to apply to the ship is a form of overlay filtering that alters the existing colours, then it might look okay, but if it's just a simple lighten overlay it'll reinforce the flatness, I could elaborate more but hopefully you know what i mean.

and regarding your ship shading, you should avoid having so much banded clusters, here I'll just highlight some


red= some of most noticeable cases of pixel banding, green is where you have applied some forms of combating it, but the yellow is showing the banding still present, banding is unavoidable especially at this resolution, so I must say do not avoid it entirely it'll just wrack your brain, but try to minimise it for sure, something you shouldn't be afraid to do is push the highlight tone to the dark tones, buffering them with the intermediate tone is not always necessary and alot of the time just causes banding. some of the things in this edit are effective



ignore alot of the redesign, just some experiment but hopefully some of it is useful, I think the balance of details on your original design look effect in the rotated example, so maybe pushing some of it back to that, most notably the grey wing tips look good and could double as the origin of the lasers/blasts etc (the guns) and the light yellow features on the wing serve well to reinforce the orientation of the ship, the latest one they don't stand out so much, also a possible approach to lighting when the thrusters are active having a sprite change, maybe even 2 or so frame light flicker animation.

you're meteors need work, I'm sure the forum will offer ample help if you get around to refining them and ask for feedback

Offline Szyu

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Re: Space Ships

Reply #19 on: July 15, 2012, 06:48:03 pm
First thank you for your annotation. Yes my particles affect every color they overlap, so if the ship emits a trail and i let the particles overlay, the booster's colors are affected, too.
The Meteors were my first attempt of spriting something for this game, so i know they need to be redone. But currently I am remaking the hunter ship. So hopefully you will get a new, better version of the Huntership.

At this moment you dont spot the real shape. My intention was to create a spider-like ship. If you know it, you realize the 8 legs, the head and the abdomen. The newer version points the shape out very well.
Special thanks to Cyangmou, explaining me alot about the whole thing of spriting.