AuthorTopic: Official Off-Topic Thread  (Read 1004353 times)

Offline Rydin

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #1840 on: November 03, 2010, 02:33:39 pm
I failed the Ludum Dare, but I learned a lot along the way.
Man cannot remake himself without suffering for he is both the marble and the sculptor.

Offline Dusty

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #1841 on: November 04, 2010, 06:34:00 pm
The website Webhallen is having an officially recognized Minecraft texture competition, with first place 180gb SSD signed by Notch, and a painting by(and signed) Kristoffer Zetterstrand. http://www.webhallen.com/minecraft/

Also, thanks for all the above suggestions. I actually do listen to music for inspiration and to calm my mind, so it's odd to hear that can put you off.

Offline Cow

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #1842 on: November 08, 2010, 07:27:39 am

Offline Helm

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #1843 on: November 08, 2010, 08:14:01 am
whhaaat?

Offline 9_6

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #1844 on: November 08, 2010, 08:47:22 am
Is it just me, or does Pixelation seem like more of a ghost town than ever?   :(

The low-spec forums kind of are, aren't they?
Makes me wanna try and pick up pre-rendered or low poly stuff.
Or pre-rendered low poly stuff.
Problem with that just seems to be that you have to have a very specific idea of what you want to do because just starting to model randomly with nothing to build on won't really go anywhere.

Or maybe that's just me.
Does scaling an image blur it?
Opera fix Firefox fix

Offline Helm

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #1845 on: November 08, 2010, 09:07:22 am
Quote
I seem to have very low patience with paper and pencil, which I find odd considering that I enjoy pixel art. With pixel art I can spend hours on a piece... however when I try to draw on paper I seem to want to get it over with as fast as possible. I rush through, I don't spend enough time cleaning up as I should, and I just don't seem to want to put the effort into it. It doesn't seem subconscious, but it seems like while I'm drawing I don't seem to want to put the effort into things like accurate lines, and I get bored fast.

Another thought I had on this: the more skilled you might be on one medium (pixel art here, and you are certainly skilled) the more psychologically disturbing it might be to you to return or dabble in another where the skills do not immediately translate, because the immediate results aren't as good as you're used to, so you want to subconsciously get it over with as fast as possible. I'm slowly learning to color digitally and I certainly feel this flight instinct here and there.

Offline .TakaM

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #1846 on: November 14, 2010, 09:57:36 pm
Just in case anyone here is ever in need of some inspiration, check this guys videos out.
He's a little crazy but in the best ways, he lives out in the woods in an awesome dome house he built himself (the third floor is a trampoline) but his main project is a giant robot.
He's documenting pretty much every step of the way, you'll see him come up with some clever solutions and how his brain works.

Really inspiring stuff, the amount of videos might be a little daunting but once you watch one you won't want to stop.
Life without knowledge is death in disguise

Offline Ai

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #1847 on: November 15, 2010, 08:26:33 am
* Use GMIC to apply a Difference of Gaussians on a copy of the source image,
   to detect areas of high frequency detail like eyes (parameters: 0.05, 0.10, threshold 20, enable 'negative'.
* Apply a curve with a point at 93,33 and 192,192 to reduce the amount of smoothing high-detail pixels will get, even more.
* Edit->Copy
* Enter QMask mode (using keyboard shortcut or the button at bottom-left of your window) and Edit->Paste what you just copied.
* Anchor the pasted layer and exit QMask mode. Now, the low-detail pixels are most selected, and high-detail are least selected.
* Apply GMIC Anisotropic smoothing (amplitude 8, sharpness .4, gradsmooth 0, tensor smooth 0.50, iterations 2)

FWIW, I have now made this into a custom GMIC filter (thus, interactive preview etc.)
It still needs to support multi-layer application (for animations).
Anyway I'll give the current definition here, as it's short:
Code: [Select]
#@gimp Antialias: antialias, antialias
#@gimp : note = note("* finetuning")
#@gimp : Detail preservation = float(.30,0,1)
#@gimp : Smoothing = float(8,0.5,1024)
#@gimp : Sharpness = float(.4,0.001,1)
#@gimp : Iterations = int(2,1,32)
#@gimp : Gradient Smoothing* = float(0,0,10)
#@gimp : Tensor Smoothing* = float(0.5,0,10)
#@gimp : Fast Approximation* = bool(1)
#@gimp : DoG base* = float(0.05,0.001,100)
#@gimp : DoG distance* = float(0.05,0.001,100)
#@gimp : DoG threshold* = float(20,0.0001,49.999)
#
#
# XXX some way to adjust DoG parameters

antialias :
  -repeat @# -l[@{>}]
    --gimp_dog[-1] $8,{$8+$9},$10,1,0
  # -2? -> -1?
    -input [-2]x1
    -repeat $4 -smooth[-1] $2,$3,1.0,$5,$6,.8,30,2,0,$7 -done
#  # sanitize the DOG layer for masking use
    -normalize[-2] 0,1
    -apply_curve[-2] 1,{93/255},{.73-.73*$1},{192/255},{192/255}
    -image[-3] [-1],0,0,0,0,1,[-2]
    -remove[-2,-1]
    -endlocal
  -done

Paste that into the file ~/.gmic and restart GIMP in order to try it, if you are curious.
Make sure to leave that final blank line in.

EDIT:
I just fixed multi-layer application; here's an overly enthusiastically applied example based on a RagnarokOnline animation:

Original:

Smoothed:

(if this was an animation I was actually making, I'd draw some of the sharpness (eg sleeves) back in as needed)

EDIT2:

Here is a better example:


(zoom helps :)
(parameters: smooth = 2 sharp = 0 detail = .2 iterations = 1 gradsmooth = .7 tenssmooth = .5)

The current default settings are pretty good, but I'm sure there are better -- If you think you've found better defaults I'd like to hear about it :)
« Last Edit: November 16, 2010, 01:11:55 am by Ai »
If you insist on being pessimistic about your own abilities, consider also being pessimistic about the accuracy of that pessimistic judgement.

Offline 9_6

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #1848 on: November 15, 2010, 10:58:15 am
Can someone point me to that thread about the blur you get from upscaling?
It got mentioned in another thread but that comment apparently got deleted.
Opera spontaneously decided that firefox is a cool bro for doing it and now blurs everything that's being scaled up by default, even gifs which remained completely untouched in previous versions.

I'd like to turn that off but of course, that option is probably hidden in the most inconvenient manner possible.
« Last Edit: November 15, 2010, 11:01:56 am by 9_6 »
Does scaling an image blur it?
Opera fix Firefox fix

Offline Photocopier

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #1849 on: November 15, 2010, 09:41:28 pm
Can someone point me to that thread about the blur you get from upscaling?
It got mentioned in another thread but that comment apparently got deleted.
Opera spontaneously decided that firefox is a cool bro for doing it and now blurs everything that's being scaled up by default, even gifs which remained completely untouched in previous versions.

I'd like to turn that off but of course, that option is probably hidden in the most inconvenient manner possible.

Type 'opera:config' into your address bar, find the multimedia settings and turn off interpolate images.