Sauna WIP

[JJ Naas]

Hey! I've been working on this Finnish sauna pic during coffee breaks at work for a long time, but I'm kinda stuck.. there's an unnecessarily high amount of different browns here, and all in all the brownness in the pic is a bit overwhelming, despite the fact that that's what saunas are like. I've tried to break the brownness with the cool blue light coming from the window and the green water barrel. The shadow under the bench is also a problem. I'm intending to make this into a looping animation.. the light in the stove flickering, people sitting naked in the sauna, water dripping from a tap into the barrel etc. I haven't worked out details in many places yet, so it's a W that's still muchly IP.

This is a sort of test image of what I'm after:

 But how to achieve this sort of a steamy atmosphere by pixeling?

I wonder what'd be a desirable amount of colours in this kind of a piece? 32 colours for the room and another 32 for the animated people and objects later on would be awesome, but atm 64 / 64 is more likely.. argh!

Here are some random photo references:

http://www.thesaunadepot.com/images/sauna-benefits2.jpg

http://www.tampere.fi/ekstrat/sahkolaitos/naps/naps12002/kuvat/raja2.jpg

http://www.rukasafaris.fi/images/img/Sauna_rgb.jpg

http://www.gasthausmantyniemi.com/files/P5_6.jpg

[ndchristie]

you have an unbelieveably high tile count, which should make steam very easy.  just add it into tiles in shapes that will seem to flow between them

[candiru]

It's looking very nice so far. I think the problem with all the browns is that you emphasized the color of the material too much while neglecting the lighting. This can be a really great scene if you get the lighting right. For example, look at the fourth reference photo, where the light source has a dramatic effect on the scene. With two light sources with different color lights it will be a bitch to pull it off well, and may not look all that good.
If I were you, I'd get rid of the window and keep the stove, which looks really nice in the second picture. Maybe draw a second door on the left side of the stove to light the benches. Be sure to take the slits in the door into account when shading, and darken the parts of the room away from the stove. It will be a lot of work, since you will not be able to use shortcuts (every board and bench will be different due to their unique position in relation to the light source).

The rug looks like it's top down perspective, maybe it should be more like this:

[JJ Naas]

Adarias: I'm not even sure if I'm gonna do a real tiling here... just maybe something that has the look of tiling.

candiru: Good point about the browns. Yes, the lighting is crucial. Maybe I should just create a more dramatic contrast to get rid of the muddiness of the middle value browns. Maybe I should remove the window and create a door where the water barrel is now... that way it'd light up the benches with a cool light coming from the opposite side of the stove. Thanks for the rug edit, I'll study it.

[Helm]

Steam is one of these cases where one better bite the bullet and do an alpha channel with low opacity, perhaps dither it. Look at SNES games for reference, but I wouldn't suggest trying to do this ON the tiles themselves. I really like it so far, and I wanted to say that the small places where styledither was used, it's a good idea for a 'steamy' environ. Looking forward to progress.

[junkboy]

Looks nice, I think this is the first time I've seen a pixel sauna since I played River City Ransom.

I guess one way to achieve a steamy atmosphere is by having animated steam-poffs bobbing around here and there, as separate sprites.
On top of that you could make the upper part of the room wobble from the heat. That in combination with sweaty people should give
the viewer a pretty solid impression of a heated room. It might be too cartoony for what you're after though.

In any case, don't forget the Finland style tinfoil-wrapped sausages on the sauna rocks. 

[Sharlenwar]

One could also use Direct X and create the steam by creating a steam texture, then just have it overlap the scene.

[JJ Naas]

Right.. I'm revitalizing this project. I decided not to worry about those hazy effects for now, because that's what got me stuck for good. Here's the latest version. 24 colours. I'm wondering how'd I be able to convey the existence of a door in the lower left corner.

[Souly]

Making a door is as simple as removing a part of the wall...

[Arachne]

I like how this is coming along.

Souly, I think he meant the left wall, but now that I think about it, the bottom wall might be easier to add a door to. You could just flip the doormat. I suppose you could draw a door, but make it almost closed to make it apparent that there is a door there without blocking too much of the rest?