Help on giving backgrounds some texture?

[antipus]

I'm not an artist myself, and was hoping for a bit of help or advice on adding some texture to room backgrounds.  I've got some rooms that "work" in the game, but aren't really very interesting.  The first is near a force field.



In-game, the screen isn't awful, but I wince every time I look at the rocks, and there's just nothing going on behind the force field.  The actual background is below.




The second background that really gets me is below:



Towards the end of the game, you break into the enchanter's treasury.  The treasures in the back alcove are fun, but there's really nothing else to the room.



The floors and ceilings are particularly soulless.

What I'm hoping for are some recommendations or tips.  How do you make unimportant parts of the screen less boring without distracting from the important parts?  Any tips on lighting or textures?  Any examples of either I could borrow from?

[Ghost]

Force field-by-there-yonder rocks:
Doesn't look too bad, really; the rocks, while plain, absolutely work, and the field itself is easy to recognise. So just a few tips:
* the force-field smells of Photoshop filter. Use it. But only as a template, in that resolution it's absolutely no problem to create a paint-over, maybe set it to transparent in-game, and your audience will be that much more grateful. Really! I also use filters a lot, but only for reference. In low-res they hardly ever work that well anyway. (personal opinion)
* the perspective of the path and castle seems a bit off to me, I think the horizon line should be placed lower, and thus the angle of the plane should be smaller. That would make it easier (for you) to add some details- simply do a dark "skyline" of trees and roofs.


Regarding overall detail, never underestimate the power of some
* simple dithering,
* shading to emphasize your perspective, and
* just adding stuff to the foreground, where it can be seen, but doesn't interfere with your actual "stage". Make them darker than the "real" background.

Here's a small example from a game screen of mine (left), fading into a revamp (major part, right). Both are *not* perfect, but I think you see the difference between three colour flat-shading and some extra pixels.



One trick that makes NICE textures:

* Create an image the size of your game's resolution.
* Select two colours, one slightly darker than the other one.
* In Photoshop, select the filter "Image filters" - Graphic Pen(sorry, my PS is german, so it might actually be called different). Set line length to about 5 pixels.
* Select the lighter color, then repeat the filter on that selection with two new colours, both darker than the previous two.
* Now change the image size to two/thirds the image's height (deselect "keep proportions" and use "double pixel" (no interpolation))
Voila, one way to get a nice base for a ground texture!

Another one:
* Use a soft, rather large brush to create a quick texture with soft fading of colours (works well for monochrome areas like rubble and hewn).
* Reduce the colour then (again, in PS, "Posterize")
* May require some refinement, but works well (in my example, that's how I made the tree leaves)

[NickyNyce]

Just a couple quick  ideas for you, not that my perspective or color is right...lol..., just the idea, maybe a window on the far wall, that wall needs some color for sure, add what Ghost gave you for the floor and walls and texture it up

[arj0n]

You could use gravestone(s) or family-weapon-logo-stones in the floor, as seen in churches and give them a cool hotspot-description about the ancestor(s) of the wizard:

[antipus]

Thanks, all!  Happily working on the treasury with a sort of mix of Arj0n's and NickyNyce's ideas.

Any suggestions for the rocks and castle grounds?

[Ali]

I don't think it's texture they're lacking so much as contrast/depth. If you look at them as thumbnails or from a distance you can see how flat they are.

Adding texture uniformly could make this problem worse rather than better. For some guidance, try looking at Loominous's workshop Background Blitz or Theo's excellent tutorial.

[antipus]

Here's the treasury-in-progress:



The biggest change is that the perspective was off, so I redid the walls to match the rug and new floor.  That offset the door, so I had to kill the cool stairs.  :: sighs ::  I'm planning on adding KQVI-catacombs-esque symbols on each of the floor tiles, and improve the stony look.
I've added some cheap blurry foreground elements to give the room depth.  They're not final, but I wanted to get a feel for whether they would work.  Do they help?  Should I add more or take them out?

Additionally, I'm working on an establishing shot for the game's splash screen or the intro, whichever works best.  After going over countless YouTube how to draw videos and the tutorials that Ali suggested, here's what I've got:




I may be opening another can of worms, but any suggestions? (Lighting, perspective, coloring, etc?)  Both of the pics are works in progress, but I didn't want to progress too much further without some more helpful feedback.  Thanks!!!

[NickyNyce]

Looks much better, just a few little things that stick out though... the shelves, the bottom one is ok, but the middle and top need to have the angle changed, just take off a few pixels from the top shelf and one or two from the middle. IMO I like what you did with the depth, but if there are no other BG's like this with depth, it may clash

Under the shelves, I think the floor should go all the way under them also.

The gold statue needs to have the base changed a bit to match the perspective

As for the bottom pic, in order to get the depth feel, you need to tighten the mountain pattern as it gets further away in the distance, just make the pattern a bit smaller, the rocks in the distance look too much like the ones in the foreground.....and maybe widen the river a bit

[DrSlash]

Is that a black bird from QfG on one of those shelves?
btw very nice BGs! But I suppose that you should add some more details to the part of the background which is behind the force field.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Is that a person in the foreground?  If so I'd recommend cleaning up the details on it so that it looks something like this:




I haven't really detailed it much but what I did was to find a photo to save time which I then resized, tweaked, and painted over.  It could use more work but I'm mainly illustrating how you'd make the form look more realistic while saving some time.  If it's a toy then I'd say it's more of a distraction than a benefit to the room, as it makes it look like someone (the player) is standing there.

[antipus]

ProgZmax: No, that's not a person, it's a Rosella doll (from either KQ4 or QfG2, depending on how you look at it).  I like the additional texture in the hair and the way you've lit the clothes with just a few colors.  I'll see what I can do to imitate that.

Bad news all around, though.  Putting the new-and-improved treasury in really clashes with the old-school hallway I've got, and since the hallway is a scrolling room, it's hard to make the floor there have more detail.  For now, I think I'm going to have to keep things the way they were...  At least with the floor.

I'm still working on the other one, though.  THANK YOU ALL for the feedback so far...

[Kastchey]

You could try adding some of the following if the treasury feels too empty for you:
* A decorative tapestry or two
* More statues of various types and size
* Heaps of gold coins on the floor
* Cracks and dirt in the floor tiles
* Cracks and dirt in the walls
* Paintings
* Another carpet, perhaps bigger and more decorative than the one you already have in the picture
* An overgrown carnivorous man eating plant on the wall - somebody has to guard the place, no?
* A collection of some sort. The Rosella doll is a good start.
* Sources of light - candles, chandeliers, torch stands, anything.
* A relief
* A staircase (the one you had in the original version was cool indeed)
* Shields, weapons and armor
* Antlers of an exotic, mysterious animal
* A chest filled with jewelry
* More columns
* Perhaps a balcony for the owner to admire his treasures
* Stone gargoyles
* Since it's KQ inspired, some sort of a magical treasure would fit the background maybe
* More treasures that can be exhibited in the center or on the sides of the room.

Also sometimes when you need to fill the empty space and just can't get the right idea, you can make it a multi purpose room, eg. a treasury and an underground library for example.

[Monsieur OUXX]

I'm not sure you need to add some texture.
You should simply focus on making surfaces less flat, by imagining them in 3D when you draw them and shade them.