Scummbar revisited

[woodz]

Heres my re creation of the Scummbar, its kinda based on the one from MI4...
they were done in Truespace 6, using UVtoon shaders to give a 2D feel

[ildu]

The design is fine, but please ditch the toon shader and paint more of your own textures instead.


If you look at the MI4 screens, you'll notice that they've used 0 toon shaders (nor have any outlines visible at all), and the presentation is influenced most by painted textures. Notice that there is basically no pure black (or anything close) in the image, except for the character. They also have a thought-out colorscheme for every bg that follows the composition. Additionally, they have a bright, easy-on-the-eye style, which lightens up the mood greatly.

I'm not saying your work is dirt, rather the opposite. I give the harshest crits to the most promising works. Seeing as you've come so far with the 3d design, it's a shame it's being ruined by the textures and the render method.

So I guess my advice is:

- ditch the toon shader
- plan a colorscheme in advance before starting texturing
- ditch the mustard color on the walls (nobody likes mustardy yellow - my least favorite color by far as well)
- avoid pure black, white and gray colors
- paint more custom textures (may be quite a daunting task especially if pretty much every surface requires it's own texture)

[FSi++]

I also think that the shape of the background bear could be improved somehow. It looks too silly now.
=

[woodz]

I'm not saying your work is dirt, rather the opposite. I give the harshest crits to the most promising works. Seeing as you've come so far with the 3d design, it's a shame it's being ruined by the textures and the render method.

The last thing i was looking for was "wow thats great!", I'd much rather someone pull it apart and say where I'm going wrong.. thanks

It would of probably been easier to do as you've suggested in the first place, than to of used the shaders, i don't know if you've used them but they are awful  to get shadows right. To use textures and shaders they often come out very dark

I'll go back and have a rethink
thanks ildu

@ FSi
In context with the game it'll make sense 

[ildu]

It would of probably been easier to do as you've suggested in the first place, than to of used the shaders, i don't know if you've used them but they are awful  to get shadows right. To use textures and shaders they often come out very dark

I've used toon shaders before and they are indeed pretty awful, not to mention completely passé. I'd definately go the 'color scheme -> textures -> lighting -> post-processing' -route, because, although it is a lot of work, it is the most simple and logical way of getting good results. You can see in the pic I linked to earlier that the shadows aren't very strong, but rather quite light. The fact that it's a daylight scene may have something to do with it, but it's also definately a tool used to make the mood and atmosphere a little more funny/happy. And as is with painting as well, the shadows are the opposite color of the lighted surfaces (yellow -> purple), and no 'blackish' shadows are apparent. You could always use global lighting so that you don't have to rely on your own lighting design. At the same time, you won't have to bother too much with modern surface mapping techniques and the likes, such as bumps, speculars, etc. After all, it's supposed to be nostalgic, right ?

For contrast, here's a night-time shot:

Not too dark is it? It's just a little more monochromatic with stronger shadows.

And here's an indoor shot with quite neutral lighting:

It's got that one near-black surface, but otherwise it may have never even needed rendering.

You might also be interested in the this video:
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/23520.html

It's a developer commentary on how the lighting in Team Fortress 2 was created. It was apparently a mixture of baking textures, creating custom shaders and adding post-processing filters. And if you're not aware of the game or it's visual quality, I suggest you get yourself learned. What it comes down to, though, is that it looks very similar to the style of MI4.

Also, if you've read this far, you might be interested in this video:
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/usermovies/136213.html

It's a video of a crazy Japanese kid mastering Dance Dance Revolution.

[woodz]

thanks ildu
With MI4 being a 3D game shadows had to mild, if you look at the new gen Sam and Max the shadows are very much the same, probably less, black colours edges tend to break up quite badly. at the time EFMI was built to run on what we'd consider now cr*ppy computers

I had a look at the rooms on our lasses Laptop, and OMFG i think i saw, what you see!
my monitor runs slightly to dark, and slight over kill on reds, on the laptop anything wood looked terrible

I use a 3D engine called Awakening, which uses LUA, the same scripting language the LA Grime engine used, its well worth a look at:
http://www.awingsoft.com/
The game the backgrounds are intended for is just a 3 room demo, i doubt i'll change them as it would mean changing everything to suit, the goal is to use the scene models to try and build a control system in LUA and go 3D for the full game

Earlier this year i did a game called Handyman Wanted for the HP Lovecraft common place book project, the plan was to use Awakening to remake HW as i didn't like the original game, i just scripted it and had no say on the content, and puzzles, in my eyes the game flopped, it was to dark 75% of people coulsn't see it!
This is the reworked hallway rendered in Awakening:


Thanks for your time mate, i'm off to check out the vids

[Dualnames]

This is stupid but i couln't resist saying it..
SCUMM BAR YAY..
By the way the last screenshot looks kind of poor..

EDIT: It's lacking something. The walls are a bit empty and the window doesn't seem to have a reflection. Try adding a painting to the wall. And if the style of the room is supposed to be scary or spooky by the looks of it, it's not reaching that point.

[woodz]

sorry Dualnames, the last pic was just showing Awakening shadows which aren't as harsh as the Truespace ones, and doesn't have any thing to do with the first two,, actually the game it was intended for would of had a lightening effect, but our harddrive blew up, i lost all my work and i abandoned the whole project, i only have 2 pictures left lol

[Afflict]

Hehe the Bg's are pretty kewl.

I though still feel that hand drawn bgs cannot be out rendered The style cannot be replicated to the quality of the 2d painted bg's.

Don't get me wrong here, I am not knocking your 3d Pics, I just felt that even MI4 the Bgs weren't what it should be, to hold true to the MI series.

[woodz]

MI4 was probably the worst of the games the whole plot contradicts the story that is already set, the goal was to create something between CMI and MI4, i'm not using 3D characters, also those wont be a copy of the original either. more a evolution on the CMI ones if they stayed 2D