3D graphics style

[Pixelton]

While I've been working on my first AGS game Johnny Rockett I've been playing around with different styles for a more serious project after my little test game. I am wanting to do something in 3D but trying to explore a style thats not really been done before.

I'll shut up for a second and stick an image down:

(This is in AGS, theres no anti-aliasing so it looks quite retro...Another World/Flashback kind of feel which is what I'm going for, rendered using Maya Hardware).


(This is of the same environment in maya rendered using Maya Software so it has alot of post production effects...most noticeably nice glows).

What do you think? to be honest for the characters to suit the environment the game has to be set to 32bit colour and the characters rendered as a tif image sequance so....just having one room and one character at 16 frame cycles is HUGE! As for the first image the size is dramatically smaller.

I quite like the retro look anyway over the nice rendered one, I'd be interested in knowing what people think.

Marcus

[Matti]

I totally favor the retro look over the 3d one. The main reasons might be that I'm not really a fan of 3D environments in general (except for ego shooters of course) and that I'm a huge fan of Another World and Flashback and their vectorized peudo-3D pixel look.

Another thing is that the 3D-background has too much noise and looks way too blurry. If it would be cleaner/sharper and more like 'just' a hi-res version of the first BG without fancy effects then I might change my opinion.

Anyway, looks nice.

[Pixelton]

Cheers Matti

I'm the same in I prefer the retro "AnotherWorld" look (I'm a huge fan), getting some external input is really helping me choose what style to go with.

Heres some character stuff, I've built 3 characters from scratch: a female, a male and I modified the first male model to make a chunky guy.



I've rigged the female character and the the thinnest male character and started animating them too.

http://blacktreeuk.net/johnny_r/front.swf
http://blacktreeuk.net/johnny_r/side.swf
http://blacktreeuk.net/johnny_r/back.swf

Marcus.

[markbilly]

Yeah, I really like the retro one. There are a few things that need neatening up because of the conversion, though:

1. There is a rough bit of shading or something by the door that needs simplifying.
2. The yellow beam in the sky looks really silly in the retro version.
3. As with the yellow beam, you need to alter the red cubes and the purple lines, they stand out (in a bad way) and it isn't clear what they are.
4. Put some glass in the window.

Other than those things it's fab!

EDIT: The animations are really impressive! The guy needs to stand up straighter in the side view, though.

[Snarky]

Like everyone else I prefer the retro-looking one, but I'm not sure the aliasing is necessary. Could you render it in a higher resolution and scale it down for a bit of edge-antialiasing? Also, some glow around the pink lines in the top left corner would be good.

[Khris]

I'd seriously consider taking these mighty fine backgrounds to lowres, check out this:


x2

Also, thanks to resizing, there's some neat AA in there.

For best results, I'd render them at 640x480 (or 960x720), then downsize them to 320x240.

[Anian]

I'm sorry, but how are you rendering a 3d scene in AGS?

[Danman]

He is using a 3D designing program copying the image and using it in AGS as a background. Using a program called Maya. I think

[Anian]

He is using a 3D designing program copying the image and using it in AGS as a background. Using a program called Maya. I think

I got that, didn't get if the Maya render is the second screenshot, where was the first one rendered. But I reread and saw that one was Maya software, the other was hardware.

[Questionable]

I'm mixed! There are bits from both that I prefer over bits from the other. However, if I would have to choose one I prefer the low-res. I also really like Khris' scaled down version, as a side note.

Out of curiosity, are you redrawing the render you made in Maya or are you 'shopping the render to make it more pixellated? It seems as if you're pixlating the Maya render, in which case I think that you could get your hands a bit dirty and add some of those glows quite nicely to the pixelated version and also define some edges better and touch-up some other aspects of the image; For instance, the red cubes on the left hardly look like cubes, the wall indent near the left side of the window doesn't has as much definition as the render, some of the lighting seems a bit arbitrary and city scape feels a bit too vivid, I might desaturated that a bit.

I think it's badass though! I wish I could make BGs that effective.

[InCreator]

I have mixed opinions too.

it should be 90% retro

But instead of going full jagged OR downsizing and get so horribly much AA, simply do retro and configure hell out of anti-aliasing filter (lower sample count, try different algorithms (dunno if maya can do this, 3ds max surely can)) to get just tiny bit of AA and not more. Or even anti-alias end result manually.

Now glow... I'd add a tiny bit of glow and only to the places its absolutely needed. like very lightly around that green lights in seat-thing.

This way or another, retro look dominates heavily over other ones.

[Dualnames]

There's one thing with glow and blur, you must not overdo it, as InC, suggested. Just use it a little bit. That way you can keep the retro look but also benefit from the artificial look.

[Snarky]

But instead of going full jagged OR downsizing and get so horribly much AA, simply do retro and configure hell out of anti-aliasing filter (lower sample count, try different algorithms (dunno if maya can do this, 3ds max surely can)) to get just tiny bit of AA and not more. Or even anti-alias end result manually.

The simplest way I can think of doing this would be to render the image in high resolution, downsize it once using nearest-neighbor, and another time using a bilinear or lanczos filter, and put the two resulting images as two layers in your image editing program. Then you could play with the opacity of the upper layer to vary the amount of antialiasing, maybe erase parts of it or use a layer mask to make some parts antialiased and others not.


I would also consider not having a pubic hair patch on my characters' leotards.

[Kweepa]

+1 for the first one.
-1 for glow/AA.

I was also going to mention the pubes but Snarky just beat me to it :'(

[Pixelton]

Thanks for the replies - hell of alot of food for thought there, some great responses.

I've trimmed back alot of the glow and removed a few objects that were simply added to create glow fall-off so its cleaned up the scene alot more, I've also scaled the glow down on some of the objects.



@ InCreator & Duelnames: I've lowered the sample rate down so its created a more jagged effect and I do like that...and doing it like this allows me to keep some of the post effects that the Maya Hardware renderer can't calculate (its a very basic built in renderer). I'm liing that alot more and having wrists slapped for splashing to much glow everywhere.....well I should know better :p The crits have been great.

@ Questionable: I'm not doing any post processing there in photoshop/gimp, its just what the maya renderer spits out. I may go back and touch up a few lines and shading where the lighting isnt doing that great of a job (I'm not that great at lighting scenes in Maya) but ideally I dont really want to get my hands too dirty in photoshop

@Danman: Yeah the second screenshot is from maya (the one with the glow effects, the first screenshot is rendered assets in running in AGS as simple sprites). I have got the higher quality renders in AGS but with .Tiff image sequences for my character with full alpha at 32bit....my AGS project on compile is huge :s so ideally I want to stick to 16bit (which really means avoiding anything with an anti-aliased edge as it would look horrid).

Hey Kris, I'll have to look into your down scaling idea for the environments that has me intrigued and it does look quite funky too Nice job!

@Markbilly: yeah...the yellow beam does look horrid! lol, thanks for pointing that out about the side on walk-cycle....in game you dont really notice it but looking at it now...he does move abit silverback-ish :p Will fich that when the time comes Cheers for pointing that out man.

@ Steve & Snarky: Yeah it has crossed my mind about composing two images together to get the glow areas in, I'll definatly give that a try! Damn you both! When I modeled the characters I thought...."They're alittle too simple lets just add abit of detail here"...dont ask my why I chose that particular spot....but now you've pointed it out....all I see are Pubic Mounds! LOL cheers guys...thanks for ruining my fun!

Marcus.

[Pixelton]

Heres an interesting test....I took a render of the environment using the low-quality Maya hardware renderer and took a render using highquality and masked out all the none-glow detail.



Certainly interesting atleast.


A compile test of the artwork


Marcus.

[Questionable]

I'm imagining that this will be difficult to animate doorways and other background related things. Have you given thought to how you'll achieve or bypass this?

I have two huge books on Maya... going to be using it in a few months for class... 3D programs intimidate me. I remember playing around with this one 3D program that was able to pretty quickly make some interesting landscapes... and shiny balls. Can't remember the name of it though...

Good improvement on that last image, though! I personally liked more glow off the bed/chair. While we're on the subject of making me happy the purple things have too little glow now and I was envisioning less glow from the red cubes...

Make me happy... NOW DAMNIT! =P

EDIT: Oh no- it's changed on me. Brain- still processing- changes done so quickly.... *MELTDOWN*

[Pixelton]

Hahaha! Too much glow, not enough glow! Too much pubic hair! not enough!! What have I created!?

Dont be too scared of 3D especially with Maya, Maya is one of the easiest 3D modelling tools out there in my opinion and I have used them all...Blender, 3DS Max, Cinema 4D and I think your discribing Bryce 3D. As high-end 3D packages go you cant go too wrong with Maya. I used to be a 3DS man but had to learn maya..very quickly! for a job and now I would never go back (but thats me and I know alot of people that have tried maya and hate it...).

I do think the purple bars..whatever they are do need to give off abit more light. I think I stuck them in just because there was too much black space for the shape of the room....this is all test crap anyway...still working on my first AGS game :p

As for doors and other incidental animations I dont see why they would be difficult, I'd probably set them up like how I would do it going down a drawn pizel art route....but this method of doing things is still abit of a learning curve and its not very tried and tested :p

Marcus.

[markbilly]

Sorry to be depressing but after all the fiddling about, I still like the very first image best. With a few little bits tidied up it is a simple, clean, clear background.

P.S. Kris's edit makes my eyes hurt!

[Anian]

Once you get used to navigating in 3d space, the only thing that is "hard" about Maya or Max is that there are so many functions. But simle modeling and texturing (especially if it's a car or something, although a biped is not that hard either, at least what I tried in Max) over blueprints and stuff is pretty straight forward.
I'm saying this about simpler modeling, of course if you want to be really good at it, it takes time and advance functions.

ZBrush is the program I had trouble with, just gave up on it cause I couldn't get a handle on it. 

onT: the room looks good with all settings, although I like the high quallity rendering more personally