AuthorTopic: Grass and dirt tiles -- comments?  (Read 7589 times)

Offline Lendrick

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Grass and dirt tiles -- comments?

on: August 02, 2009, 07:45:17 pm
Still a WIP...  any thoughts on this?



Thanks,
Bart
« Last Edit: August 02, 2009, 08:12:27 pm by Lendrick »

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Offline EkbatDeSebat

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Re: Grass and dirt tiles -- comments?

Reply #1 on: August 02, 2009, 08:29:17 pm
hi Lendrick,

At the moment your tiles appear too flat and too repetitive.
The grass for example could use some higlights here and there, to show the difference in the height of clutches within the grass.
There's a good tutorial at:

http://gas13.ru/v3/tutorials/sywtbapa_de-mystifying_greats_1.php

This image is from there as well:

You see how the leaves are defined in the grass? And it has some brighter patches, that makes it more lively and give it more volume/depth. By having several tiles with different configurations of the brighter pathes, you also break up the monotony. Yaaay! :)

I guess the same counts for the dirt. Good luck, hope this helped a bit.

Offline Atnas

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Re: Grass and dirt tiles -- comments?

Reply #2 on: August 02, 2009, 08:41:49 pm
The grass and dirt are rather attractive, despite the lack of depth. If I had made that dirt tile I would be quite happy with myself! :D

I think SoM3 gets referenced way too much and because of that I hardly ever see well executed, interesting takes on how to represent grass in game. Just the same old series of tiled grassplosions.

The shrub thing, however, really suffers from flatness. The grass being flat is fine, in my opinion, but this plant looks blurry and the colors lack range. Giving it a more defined border, and adding shadow to the leaves will help eliminate this problem. A more intense green color can help distinguish it from the background.

Offline Lendrick

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Re: Grass and dirt tiles -- comments?

Reply #3 on: August 03, 2009, 12:18:52 am
I upped the contrast a bit and changed the color of the random plant.  I think it stands out a little more now.


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Offline Overkill

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Re: Grass and dirt tiles -- comments?

Reply #4 on: August 03, 2009, 05:25:06 am
Hey Lendrick! Nice start on these tiles. Your dirt looks excellent.

But hmm, the grass seems too noisy. If anything, I'd have bigger strands. Get a few, well-defined blades, and draw over them. The less noise, the easier it is for it to be read, and the nicer it is for you to tile it. Your dirt doesn't look near as noisy, on the other hand, which is good.

Also, the transitions at the edge of the grass look like they need a lot more attention. Your bottom shadows on the grass transition are too small.

The strands at the "top" of your grass have blades which don't really make sense. There's only highlights at the top of the blade, and it makes it look like the grass doesn't actually poke out, because there's not enough elevation.

The colors for the grass pretty much work, I'd probably use another highlight color on that.

Also the plant on the grass seems really out of place. Now it's TOO saturated, whereas before it wasn't contrasting enough.  I would draw the plant as a separate image before trying to merge it entirely with the grass, but keep its surroundings' palette in mind.

So yeah, the grass as it is needs a lot of reworking, sadly. It might be easier to start over than to clean up all the noise. I don't know.

Keep at it though!
« Last Edit: August 03, 2009, 05:26:47 am by Overkill »

Offline Lendrick

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Re: Grass and dirt tiles -- comments?

Reply #5 on: August 03, 2009, 07:10:13 am
Man, grass is tough.  You have to fiddle with it for hours to get a pattern that's even remotely satisfying.  Here, how's this one?



Obviously I'll have to redo all of the transitions, but I'd rather get the full tile right first this time. :)

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Offline Gil

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Re: Grass and dirt tiles -- comments?

Reply #6 on: August 03, 2009, 04:22:59 pm
I like both, but it depends on the size of the character to choose one. You can also combine the two to get two different grass lengths.

Offline Lendrick

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Re: Grass and dirt tiles -- comments?

Reply #7 on: August 04, 2009, 03:51:02 am
When I tried to make the edge tiles with the pattern below, they looked funny, so I reverted back to my original pattern and added some brighter highlights to give it more depth.  I also rounded out the corners and tweaked the shadows along the bottom of the grass:



Or with more contrast:
« Last Edit: August 04, 2009, 03:55:11 am by Lendrick »

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Offline saimo

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Re: Grass and dirt tiles -- comments?

Reply #8 on: August 05, 2009, 08:23:47 am
Lendrick, I think you're doing a great job: your tiles look nice and different from usual :y:
A couple of things could be improved:
 * borders: the grass-dirt transition is too sharp (well, this is something that affects all the tilesets of this kind);
 * dirt: the grid, although not really evident, can be seen.

Keep up the good work!

Offline miscdude

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Re: Grass and dirt tiles -- comments?

Reply #9 on: August 05, 2009, 09:31:43 am
First off, are you using rpgmaker? It looks like you formed things with their autotile system. That, or im just reading too far into things.
ANYWHOO
The biggest issue about your grass to me is the hue. Grass is, yes, green. However, not all grass is healthy, not all gras is the same color etc. If you look at the previous example from ekbat, the tiles in that game have a green look to them--however, the colors are compromised of browns, yellows, and greens, all in mixes to achieve a natural look.

A quick image from google to demonstrate my point. as you can see, the grass shows all sorts of greens, mixed with yellows and browns(not very much brown, just little tints). This looks very natural to me.

This grass however is very very green. there is very little yellow other than to achieve green from blue, and almost no brown. This grass, to me, looks fake (or atleast not lit by the sun. perhaps an industrial light.) This is the biggest issue I see in your tiles, but it is very easy to fix. I suggest you play around wtih colors get a nice range of greens and yellows, and increase the general contrast.
I love your dirt tiles by the way  :D