AuthorTopic: Large crystals  (Read 3903 times)

Offline Phlakes

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Large crystals

on: September 29, 2013, 03:44:33 am
I'm in the middle of remaking the crystal cruiser from FTL (see this thread), using Facet's ever useful post as a very close reference, and I feel like I'm really starting to lose some definition in favor of lots of detail, but even the details don't seem to come across right. I have no idea what I'm actually doing, just putting down whatever I feel like and seeing if it works, is there some kind of logic I could be following to get the forms to read better at this size and have more natural reflections on the inside?

Offline Sohei

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Re: Large crystals

Reply #1 on: September 29, 2013, 04:35:32 am
I'm interested in this thread. Can't tell anything useful, don't know much about crystal shading. But I could make use of any info for my ice boulders.

Offline Larwick

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Re: Large crystals

Reply #2 on: September 29, 2013, 11:55:03 am
I like how you're progressing with this so far. Putting out the large shapes and 'lighting' is a good way to start and I think it shows promise. It would certainly be nice to see some of the ship reflect/show through the crystals. This would most likely be easiest using layers and opacity, then cleaning up later. You'll certainly need to add a few tones when it comes to that, but it needn't be more than subtle. Googling 'crystal refraction' and 'crystal flaws' will get you some nice reference images for adding detail and interest to the crystal forms. I would personally finish what you're doing right now with the simple forms then work on detail later.

Not sure if that was actually helpful but good luck. :P

Offline Polioliolio

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Re: Large crystals

Reply #3 on: October 01, 2013, 03:05:30 pm
Can you give me a quick spoiler free run down of what this crystal stuff is in FTL?  I've played the game for 50 hours or more and never saw anything like it.

Offline Larwick

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Re: Large crystals

Reply #4 on: October 01, 2013, 05:01:42 pm
Can you give me a quick spoiler free run down of what this crystal stuff is in FTL?  I've played the game for 50 hours or more and never saw anything like it.

It's an unlockable ship type that you get from doing a specific set of quests.

Offline Facet

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Re: Large crystals

Reply #5 on: October 01, 2013, 09:26:21 pm
Hey! :)

Gonna echo Larwick here; you've got the sharp angles but it looks opaque; the subdivisions you've made of the original surface are self-contained ie. not across multiple faces as you'd expect looking through it, also no ship!(would be broken up a bit, hall of mirrors style), The background colour would make a big difference too; hopefully the game is all inky black space, 'cos that would be great; diamonds are traditionally displayed on black velvet for contrast, you could really do with more darks to push the lights more I think, more extreme the contrast the better!

If you were to block out the far side of the crystal + the whole of the ship, then apply the frontal faces at opacity, could look well, might help with staying purposeful, keeping track of so many bits anyway, even if it does sound rather laborious. The previous aside it'll definitely be fairly easy to lose a larger impression of the lightsource with so many planes & reflections, so tone stuff down when it does inevitably get overcomplicated.

Processed gemstones are cut specifically so that they bounce as much light out the front as possible so they appear to glow; raw, naturally formed stuff obviously won't be quite so dazzling but it's a great 'perfect' material sample to draw on. The other part of that is they also chuck about a bunch of unexpected colours via many small prism effects; splitting light as it travels unevenly, so I'd throw in a few curve balls in the upper register there. Rambling now, I think how refractive the material is due to how much light is slowed down passing through (without being diffused) so in diamond; being super dense, the effect is really pronounced even in tiny stones but perhaps this is a larger factor in huge examples.

     

« Last Edit: October 01, 2013, 10:11:28 pm by Facet »