Trying to decide on graphics style.

[Construed]

Hi all,

I'm trying to work on our new game at GQ and I'm having trouble deciding on a theme and style.
My preferred style is painted, however I've been unable to master painting or 2d art So I'm trying to decide how to make the best out of my 3d graphic design skills.


I would love to get some CC and suggestions on this art:








And on another note I would love to hear people's opinions about what type of lighting, camera angles, render quality,textures(photo-real or drawn).

What would be the best game resolution and character/prop sizes for isometric 3d images and perhaps any good tutorials on modeling and rendering 3d isometric images for games similar to ones produced with AGS.



I thank you greatly for taking the time to read this and earnestly await your reply!

-Jared

[Babar]

Those images seem a bit lowishly textured, even for 320x200. At full-screen (or even windowed 2x) they'd be incredibly blurry.

[Anian]

There's lack of detail, textures are a mixture of realistic and cartoonish, lighting is something you'll have to learn (3d sometimes requires invisible lights that make no shadows, in order to keep things lit the way it looks nice but is not completely realisitc), you need to sort out your uvs, the floor in the cabing for example is stretched.

[Construed]

Yea, I suppose your right.
I need to all together put more patience and time into most of the details, looked up some tutorials on isometrics and camera angles.

Thanks for the c&c guys , still interested in hearing what people think the best type of lighting, camera angles, render quality,textures(photo-real or drawn),game resolution and character/prop sizes for isometric 3d images and perhaps any good tutorials on modeling and rendering 3d isometric images for games similar to ones produced with AGS.

[Renal Shutdown]

I'm not completely sure you understand the term isometric.  I vaguely remember someone berating me for calling it 3D Isometric, when it's nothing to do with being 3d; 3/4 perspective or 2.5D are more accepted terms.  Moreover, most point and click games don't even use it, whereas games like the original Fallout did.  Either way, position the camera at a diagonal corner, with it's tilt at an angle that makes everything on screen 120 degrees, and then turn off the perspective view.  Failing that, the vertical lines should remain vertical, whilst X and Y will be equal angles.  (Having the camera at say -10,-10,10 should work, whilst pointed at 0,0,0).

[Corby]

Which anti-aliasing filter are you using for your renders? I use "Catmull-Rom" which seems to give the least blurry results. I'm assuming you're using Max?

Another anti-blurry trick is to go into your texture's diffuse settings and in the first panel, there is the Blur amount (default is set to 1.0).

For lighting the interior scenes, have you tried using some attenuation? The exterior scenes look a bit dark, unless it's a night shot. If so, maybe a bit of blue light?

[Construed]

@Renal
By 3d isometric I meant 3d images rendered isometrically "I dont know if that would be the correct way to refer to it?" , I used to do a lot of isometric work on graph paper.
And your certainly right about most pnc games not using it like if you look at the 2d art of qfg1 they used many angles unlike DiabloII which was completely isometric if I'm not mistaken. I'm thinking I might make the game partially Isometric because I thought It would be a lot easier to use a predefined set of camera angles for the characters and most objects but maybe randomly change a room to different perspectives.Although I don't completely grasp the concept of how the game would end up looking with mostly isometric and some random and I haven't done much work with precise camera angles, I've been doing models since 02 but usually just throw my camera in a nice spot and render away.
My worry about doing mostly isometric and some random may throw the players perspective of the game off or just not look right but if I did full isometric it would steal away from the nostalgia of pnc.
I can tell by your knowledge that you would know more about both methods, So what do you think the best option is?

@Corby
I'm using Blender3D and I'm not sure what anti-aliasing is, But I've seen it in the options many times over the years.
I'm also not sure what attenuation means and yea, I probably should start using different colors on the lights for the truer atmospheric effect.
Thanks for the tip on diffuse settings, I'll be sure to toy with them.
I just looked attenuation and anti-aliasing and it would seem those features could greatly improve the quality of the art.

I greatly appreciate you guys sharing your wisdom!

[Calin Leafshade]

The word you are looking for is Orthographic. It refers to a camera in which points are not adjusted to account for perspective.

For an example of a 3D game rendered like this see The Sims or Magicka.

[Renal Shutdown]

Othographic, that's the one.  (Numpad 5 in Blender)

Anti-aliasing is essentially blurring the edges to make the lines less jagged/pixellated.  Blender's default is 8 samples, Mitchell-Netrevalli, pixel width size of 1.  Catmull-Rom's an option there, too.

I wouldn't say I've got a great deal of knowledge.  I'd planned years ago to make backgrounds in Blender, which I would then use to paintover (I wanted background buildings/landmarks/etc to be in the right places).  I couldn't figure out what the heck I was doing at the time, so gave up quickly.  Nowadays, I'm using full 3d (not an adventure, not AGS), but back then I used to have a nightmare trying to get a perspective I liked.  I could draw with perspective, but it never seemed to match up with the characters I was making.  The best I can suggest, would be to use a relatively level but low height for the camera (1.5-ish Blender units, assuming you're building something to scale - BU is 1 meter).  For lighting, I'm only really using emission/diffuse at the moment (whilst experimenting with AO) so I'm not sure what to suggest, other than keeping it very similar thru-out.  Lots of different angles will need the models to be rendered out multiple times to account for it.  If it's daytime, perhaps a fixed angle sun with AO to soften up all the shadows?

[Armageddon]

There is no real style here, it's lowpoly primitives with photosourced textures and solid black shadows. Where is the radiosity? Where are the edges to go to the next screen? I see no composition. How do you play any 3D games and not know what anti-aliasing is?

[Construed]

@ calin thanks

@renal
Yea thats why I guess I never knew what anti aliasing was, cause blender had a default value good enough to give the needed results.
I've had the same problem for years, I want to make an ags game cause I've come far with all this code and have the desire to make something good for the ags community.
But as hard as it is to get a nice render into AGS and as easy as it is to get a full scale,moveable,animated one with specularity into a 3d engine is not a small difference and really makes it tempting to jump into a 3d engine.
However my fidelity to PNC gaming, AGS and QFG is undying, I might end up trolling through the endless portraits of sierra and seeing if I cant capture the essence of those 2d portraits with perhaps cartoon rendering and all the other suggestions received here

@Armageddon
You bring up a good point, Most games textures are all produced by the same person or people, giving them all a similar style, which I dont have at all at this point. The ground is just a flat plane with no shading and no path or sign of human travel or colonization. I've been playing and eding the cube-sauerbraten engine since 02 and also countless other 3d engines and creating 3d art with blender since the same year, I have no idea how I missed anti-aliasing although I have heard and saw it many times i guess I just never had any interest in it as long as I was achieving the results I needed, I've never had any problem with those weird jagged lines on the edges except many years ago when importing 3d models into sauerbraten aka cube engine, in fact I stopped importing 3d objects bigger than say 200x200 over it and ended up using the engines in-game editor to create all the larger geometry.

I thank you all greatly for the knowledge and input!
Perhaps I will try to make some list or guide that new users of ags can use to avoid the types of frustrations I have encountered whilst trying to render 3d into ags.

But for now I'll be wrapping my head around it myself!

[Construed]

I'm starting to see that one main reason Isometrics doesn't work well in this engine is because most isometric angles obscure doorways, windows and other vital areas of buildings that the character needs to access.

I've taken most of the advice given except using better textures, My lack of 2d prowess prevents me from creating my own but if anyone knows a good resource for free non licensed textures or any other information on getting better textures please let me know.

I'm sure it still needs a lot of work, but I'm scatterbrained at the moment so bear with me lol!

[Corby]

I think orthographic projection would obscure the door/windows because the roof seems a bit too big. It looks like it could use some support beams on the sides just to hold it up.

Some pointers:

-The shadows could use some softening of the edges. Maybe look for parameters like "Sample Range" or "Sample Spread" or "Shadow Integrity" to soften the edges.

-It looks like you have two light sources? One should probably have shadows turned off. The large rectangular shadow the roof is casting stands out as odd.

-The windows seem a bit large?

-The roof tiles also seem too large. Maybe play with the mapping there?

[Construed]

Some great points indeed corby!
Unfortunately my version of blender is old and doesn't support all the options, but I tried to work around to atleast have the same effect.

[Armageddon]

Download the newest version of Blender. IT'S FREE!!! Also use a sky light not a point light to light your scene.

[Construed]

There Tried to add a little terrain to it!
Never realized how much harder it is to make natural medieval style compared to current time.
Still up for c&c lol, if u can find a flaw ill fix it, I'm sure we've only got a few more years of this ahahah.

[dactylopus]

My only major complaint about this is that the rocks to the right of the house look glossy.

Aside from that, it looks good.  Keep working on it and improving it.

[Corby]

Here's some more thoughts:

-The mapping for the roof looks like it got stretched again.
-The rock glossiness could be due from specular levels. Maybe a rock texture with bump mapping would look better.
-The terrain mapping seems too stretched.
-I think you turned all your shadows off?

Adding lots of details can make a bunch of standard primitives look good:
http://mad-owl.deviantart.com/art/Handpainted-textures-Town-WIP-348427001
Most of the objects are just rectangles and cylinders, but the extra detail is worth it. How about some boards to hide the seams in the rooftiles? Some boards at 45 degrees for more structural support? A chimney? Windows sills?

[Renal Shutdown]

I've taken most of the advice given except using better textures, My lack of 2d prowess prevents me from creating my own but if anyone knows a good resource for free non licensed textures or any other information on getting better textures please let me know.
[/URL]

http://gametextures.com/index.php/free-category.html  (check their licensing, as you may have to give credit but there's quite a lot of free ones there).

http://search.creativecommons.org/ use this to find free images, and then GIMP (or PS, etc) to make seamless textures from them.  There's plenty of tutorials, but the basis just involves using offset, a clone brush and a few minutes.


EDIT:
Oh, here, too:
http://opengameart.org/textures/all

[Armageddon]

Just use CGTextures and Google Image Search, that's all you need. And stop stretching the UV maps it ain't the 90s.