AuthorTopic: Sand Tiles and Tiling?  (Read 9556 times)

Offline TheMonsterAtlas

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Sand Tiles and Tiling?

on: December 06, 2012, 09:33:43 am
So, one of the first things you learn about pixel art when talking about tiles is breaking the tile. This general means that you place pixels on your turf (whatever size it may be) to carry onto the next tile. (Unless I'm completely wrong with that assumption) This partially hides the fact that you are using a tile over and over again, but how exactly does this apply to sand?

I did a sand tile based off of something Grimsane did a while ago:


Which makes it strange though, is that waves in the sand are more defined than a blade of grass. So what exactly do we do in situations like these? Would a simple solution is make the wave a bigger (64x32) and simply do several different waves and make them overlays to be placed on the sand?

Offline r1k

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Re: Sand Tiles and Tiling?

Reply #1 on: December 06, 2012, 10:06:53 am
try finding some tile examples of sand like that.  I found 2 for you

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-UKyOQ3adNgw/T-1TMrxqaSI/AAAAAAAAJZA/ne6PK4WglO0/s640/seiken-densetsu-3-ocean.png
http://shrines.rpgclassics.com/snes/zelda3/images/heartpiecepics/desert1.gif

you can see zelda uses the simplest solution.  Thats essentially the sort of thing youll get if you just use one tile.  If you want more variation than that youll have to use multiple tiles.  It seems like seiken densetsu uses a few tiles.  Why not try to analyse how they arranged their tiles.

Offline yrizoud

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Re: Sand Tiles and Tiling?

Reply #2 on: December 06, 2012, 01:10:04 pm
One technique that I see often used but not often discussed : staggered tiles. The idea is using a block made of for example 2x2 tiles, seamless on the right and left edges when you lay them horizontally, but vertically you make them seamless when they are offset by 1 tile.
The "pattern" is no longer a square (or a square rotated at 45°), in this case it's a parallelogram where one axis is horizontal and the other is 22.5° from vertical.
« Last Edit: December 06, 2012, 03:39:40 pm by yrizoud »

Offline r1k

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Re: Sand Tiles and Tiling?

Reply #3 on: December 06, 2012, 01:27:35 pm
could you give a simple example of the technique yrizoud?

Offline yrizoud

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Re: Sand Tiles and Tiling?

Reply #4 on: December 06, 2012, 03:34:54 pm

Offline Beetleking22

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Re: Sand Tiles and Tiling?

Reply #5 on: December 06, 2012, 06:18:57 pm
How about this? Use 4 big tiles for sand! You got more variety!

Example..

Offline TheMonsterAtlas

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Re: Sand Tiles and Tiling?

Reply #6 on: December 06, 2012, 07:06:57 pm
Those all look really good, but is sand really suppose to be that active?

Offline Beetleking22

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Re: Sand Tiles and Tiling?

Reply #7 on: December 06, 2012, 07:41:17 pm
Those all look really good, but is sand really suppose to be that active?

What you mean?

Offline TheMonsterAtlas

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Re: Sand Tiles and Tiling?

Reply #8 on: December 06, 2012, 08:53:00 pm
like do we represent sand in pixel art by having each tile with waves?

Offline Beetleking22

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Re: Sand Tiles and Tiling?

Reply #9 on: December 06, 2012, 11:07:52 pm
like do we represent sand in pixel art by having each tile with waves?

Wave effect sand is realistic but you can make it artistic way different..

http://projects.math.arizona.edu/~sp2007/sdgroup.html

Offline ptoing

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Re: Sand Tiles and Tiling?

Reply #10 on: December 07, 2012, 12:07:09 am
Depends what you want to show. In a desert you often get the wave thing. On beaches you don't.
There are no ugly colours, only ugly combinations of colours.

Offline Dusty

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Re: Sand Tiles and Tiling?

Reply #11 on: December 07, 2012, 12:59:06 am
But don't forget that wavy sand is often easily recognizable as sand, even if it doesn't make much logical sense to use in every case. Players have grown up seeing the wavy sand texture everywhere in gaming, so it's quite easy for them to recognize and takes minimal skill to create an appealing tile pattern.

Offline TheMonsterAtlas

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Re: Sand Tiles and Tiling?

Reply #12 on: December 07, 2012, 01:25:27 am
like do we represent sand in pixel art by having each tile with waves?

Wave effect sand is realistic but you can make it artistic way different..

http://projects.math.arizona.edu/~sp2007/sdgroup.html

Ohh wow! That looks really cool haha

So in deserts I would have wavy sand and for beaches I would have grainy sand?


I gave it a try :D

« Last Edit: December 07, 2012, 01:52:53 am by TheMonsterAtlas »