Trying to decide on graphics style.

[Construed]

Thanks for the texture resources, I'm sure you'll see a difference in my next models
Here's the house with a little more detail, windows, windowsills and chimney.


Although the rock still needs to be repositioned and have to figure out something with those shadows.

[Renal Shutdown]

Just use CGTextures..

A lot a people tend to avoid CGTextures now, CGCookie would put them in their tutorials now, and Blend Swap don't allow their textures.  They apparently have a contradictory license that's subject to change.

EDIT:

Perhaps the grass texture should be scaled down and repeated more often - with no other reference points, it currently makes the house look tiny.  The rock looks more like a pebble, too.  Maybe shaper geometry (with bevels, maybe) and more facets.  All in all, it's improving each image.

[Construed]

Thanks
Here's some in-game shots I took so you can see what the actual final product will look like, I've been working on quite a few more rooms too.


Still planning to upgrade the grass texture as renal suggested.


The fire in the fireplace is animated,Going to change wall and floor textures here.


Hidden cave entrance behind house.


Inside the cave, animated torches on the wall.


Further into the cave, mysterious room full of glowing crystals with animated twinkles on the crystals.


Pathway to the left of hut.

I thank you all greatly for the help!

If you see anything about the images that me or anyone else hasnt mentioned that you think would make them look better, please let me know.

[dactylopus]

A couple of these images seem off.  The issue is that the camera is too high, and the character looks unnatural in the room:





Basically, these rooms will look better if the camera is lowered.

The character also looks a bit blurry in these images.  I'm not sure what you could do about this, but you might want to look into it.

Other than that, things are looking pretty good so far.  Keep working on it!

[Babar]

The fourth (and third?) image also have the problem of being in perspective, so it won't look good when the player walks down those halls.

[Renal Shutdown]

Aye, that one with the torches will be a bugger.  You might be better making it as a cutaway room, and having the corridor run from the left of the screen to the right.  Just build a set with one wall missing, like they would on a sitcom with an audience.  For most things, imagine a very narrow horizontal strip of land, and design it so that almost all the action takes place there, to limit the amount of character scaling involved.  (Eg, a pavement/sidewalk across the street, a train station platform viewed from another platform, a ledge on a skyscraper from the building opposite, the roof of a train, etc).  Then any vertical movement will be mostly used for transitioning to another screen, not giving the player time to notice the drop in overall pixels as it animates away from the camera.

[Construed]

Thanks for the advice, I tried my best to follow it as much as possible.
I plan to do a complete remake of the characters soon, because they are low scale and low rez.








Sorry how small the images are, but when screen shot in full screen they came out the actual original size, If your using a modern browser you can most likely press ctrl + to zoom in.

Thanks again and god bless!

-Jared

[Renal Shutdown]

Third image is the camera angle I was trying to describe, but the character now looks like an action figure.  Mine shafts generally are ~12ft tall, let alone 50ft.  This is what I was trying to suggest:

[Construed]

The only way I could find to achieve that effect was by allowing some padding around the scene which I actually love because it reminds me of a lot of great old sierra games

Thanks for the great advice!

-Jared

[cat]

In the other thread you said that the 5th picture is supposed to be the inside of the hut. However, it seems to be at least twice the size from the inside.

[Anian]

Construed, make, in any scene, a cylinder the width and height of a normal human being (or what your sprite will be the size off in-game), then whenever you don't know if something is the right size, compare it to the cylinder - doorways, textures, beds etc. Make the same cylinder over and over again and you'll always know what size environments are.
Also try to put the camera around the eye level, or close to it (like you did in that last scene with the mine tunnel), any extremes you make will just not look ok when you put a sprite in. You're making a background in 3d, it's far easier to move the camera than to redraw a sprite in each scene, right?

[Construed]

Ah, thanks for the observation cat and the good idea anian I've got some more images to put on the chopping block soon

[Construed]

I'm bothered by the 2 outside castle images and kind of have an artist block on them.
The inside of the hut is being redone to have padding around it similar to the cave to match the prospective."sorry I missed ur reply before cat"
Starting to realize some perspective changes may be necessary in instances such as the apothecary shop.
Want to redo the char screen but kinda artist block on it..

The torches, cauldron, fountain, purple goo, glowing crystals, broken piece of glowing crystal, magical potion and fruit of the tree are animated, perhaps if i find a good external sprite animator I'll add the animations for crit, but for now you can download the game for a better look at: www.GrimQuest.tk

All 3 characters are going to be redesigned with more detail and im not sure what size I will render them at yet but I want to use roomareascaling, looking for suggestions on them too.

Sorry for the bombardment of images and any repeat mistakes and I thank everyone greatly for their input!


-Jared

[Renal Shutdown]

"..as if it were alive", and "There's". Order and Apothecaries should likely be capitalised, too (not the 'of', though).

Perspective on the fountain seems off.

For the castle, perhaps vegetation?  Trees, ivy on the walls, flowers, weeds, etc.  Flags/banners?  One image seems to have a mountain in the background, whilst the other doesn't.  Depending on the distance, there'd usually be peasant shacks near-by, if not the majority of people's homes and places of work.  Castles are generally fairly small, but amidst lots of other buildings, and then if the situation required it, another wall around that.  For a just a solitary castle, I'd suggest going for unusual terrain (Cliffs/Rocks, atop a hill, inside a volcano, etc).

[Snarky]

"..as if it were alive"

I'd dispute this. Both alternatives are correct, and say slightly different things: "as if it is alive" is the correct form if you mean it might be a sign that in fact it does live, while "as if it were alive" is just a simile, a way of expressing how it looks. In this second sense, the so-called subjunctive ("were" instead of "is" or "was") is optional in modern English. Of course, the fruit tree is definitely a living thing (hence alive), so the phrase doesn't make a lot of sense either way.

However, if we're critiquing grammar, it should be "lying on the ground," not "laying."

[Construed]

Yea, I thought the same thing about the fountain and will surely fix it , I knew the castle backgrounds were different, the entire castle image was bothering me immensely so I ended up restarting the whole thing and actually not being lazy with it



I certainly agree theirs needs to be more plant life in a LOT of places and plan to add a wide variety as obj's.

I also started the hut inside over with a mix of you and cats advice, unfortunately I couldn't keep the hut the same size as the outer one because of the character scaling and other issues but I enjoy this effect much more yet again bringing back some nostalgic graphic styling


Yea snarky LOL, I thought that right after I typed it in, but I haven't really gotten serious about the look interactions yet, but will spend a few hours making everything interesting to look at soon

Thanks a mill!

-Jared

[.M.M.]

The last picture - inside the hut - looks good, it's a great improvement! Just one quick thought, what about not showing the roof there at all?

[Limony]

The good thing about zooming in a bit is that it allows for extra detail as well. And there is more immersion.

[rickious]

Hi,  I do alot of 3D modelling and rendering, although totally different software.  But I suggest a few things for you...

type 'tileable' or 'seamless' when looking for textures of bricks, grass etc, and tile them using blender (I havent got a clue how) OR tile them manually in photoshow or whatever software you use. 

Failing that, google for a field of whatever, find one a sinilar angle to your scene, and fade some of the field in.

Also, post-processing, you can add so much more to a scene using post-processing (basically adding and tweaking in photoshop etc), dirt, grime, shadows, smoke etc etc.  It more than makes up for basic textures and geometry in alot of cases.

Also, use .png not .jpg (presuming you are) as theres alot of artifacts in these screenshots which make it look more blurry that the real game probably is.

If you dont already, try rendering twice the size you need and scaling it down, that might make things look crisper too.

Heres an example, added some details like a bit of moss on rocks, blades of grass infront of shadows. rocks and house (to make grass look 3D), faded in a photo of a field, added some shadow to the mountain.

For the moss, grass blades I just used a clone brush from the grass area.  I used a layer ontop of the image so that its easy to undo or tweak what you do.



Going much further (the above only takes 5-10 mins depending how far you want to go) you could also add some good lighting effects from the windows etc, but without being part of the o0riginal render it takes time and may/may not be what you want...