About backgrounds in LucasArts adventure games

Started by javixblack, Tue 10/04/2018 04:01:03

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cat

You could also try IrfanView's color reduction.

Snarky

Quote from: Snarky on Thu 19/04/2018 18:07:06
That really shouldn't matter, any more than it should matter what application you use to flip an image horizontally: nearest-neighbor scaling is a simple and precisely defined operation with only correct result for a given task.

I have to correct myself here. There is one undefined aspect of nearest-neighbor that different apps might implement differently: What to do if a pixel in the scaled image falls in the exact middle between two (or four) pixels in the original image. This gives you the option between all the various rounding methods (up, down, random, bankers...), or of taking the average of the adjacent pixels; and all these variations could give a noticeably different look to the output under suitable conditions.

Kweepa

(Nearest neighbour should never take an average. That would defeat the purpose - which is generally to not introduce new colors or blur the image in any way.)
Still waiting for Purity of the Surf II

Snarky

#23
It could make sense for upscaling, e.g. if you want to scale up an image to 6.5x.

Which is not to say that it's a good choice for a standard implementation of the algorithm, just mathematically valid in principle.

doimus

#24
Quote from: Snarky on Thu 19/04/2018 18:07:06
I also disagree pretty vehemently that Photoshop looks best. It's better than the GIMP, but it's still afflicted with dithering pretty much covering the entire image â€" and what's worse, single-pixel dithering. Pixelator has a much more pleasant look to my eyes, though it feels a tad too soft. Playing with curves and contrast to get stronger outlines like in the original screen (which I think still looks better than any of these - just check out the sky in the top right, for example â€" presumably due to manual retouching and/or palette optimization) before downscaling and color reduction would probably have helped.

PS: Quite interesting to notice how in the game version they blurred elements of the foreground digitally.

Agree on all accounts.
Unintentional, unordered dithering of any sorts looks awful on modern LCD screens. The same goes for rogue (magenta, green, especially white) pixels. It's the fact we were looking at crappy old CRTs and that we knew no better that made it so awesome. The cheaper the monitor was, the better pixel shader it had. :tongue: In those circumstance, there was no dithering, there was just a smooth gradient between colors and rogue pixels were erm... artistic accents. It all looked good then, that's the reason they left it in, in the first place.

There are quite a few areas where these MI2 backgrounds were retouched by hand, to add more detail to edges and stuff like that.

In this day and age I see little to no reason to downscale traditional art. Either go hi-res or do it digitally, either as pixel art or digital painting.
But if I had to take the downscaling route because, let's say, it makes character animation less demanding, and that's the biggest pro I can think of - I would take some extra time to separate the original scan into layers and then downscale, color correct and index each layer separately. Just imagine, in 1991 you probably had to have a Graphic Workstation (anybody remember those?) to do stuff like that. Nowadays any netbook with GIMP installed can do the trick.

In any case, IMO, Monkey 2 had the worst fitting backgrounds of all Lucasarts games. Not that they're artistically bad (they're great!), it's just like the art direction was slightly lost, trying too hard to be Sierra-like. While in fact it was Sierra and their blurry, muddy VGA backgrounds who were wrong all along (hindsight 20-20). DOTT and Sam&Max proved that, and then some.

Danvzare

#25
Quote from: Snarky on Thu 19/04/2018 18:07:06
I also disagree pretty vehemently that Photoshop looks best. It's better than the GIMP, but it's still afflicted with dithering pretty much covering the entire image â€" and what's worse, single-pixel dithering.
Well there was more than one option for Photoshop (and GIMP). Most notably to take off the dithering. Photoshop also had an option to use a patterned dithering, which made the whole image look like a checkerboard. I just put up the ones that I thought looked the best.
But from your response, I'm starting to think that maybe I should put up the others.

Quote from: cat on Thu 19/04/2018 19:48:05
You could also try IrfanView's color reduction.
And try out IrfanView's colour reduction while I'm at it. Which is yet another art program I already have on my computer. (laugh)

EDIT:
Here are the other settings for colour reduction.
Spoiler

Photoshop without dithering
[imgzoom]https://orig00.deviantart.net/97e6/f/2018/110/0/9/photoshop_none_by_danvzare-dc9c2yz.png[/imgzoom]

Photoshop with diffusion dithering (the one I used in my previous post).
[imgzoom]https://orig00.deviantart.net/c3a1/f/2018/108/5/3/photoshop_by_danvzare-dc95x2h.png[/imgzoom]

Photoshop with pattern dithering.
[imgzoom]https://orig00.deviantart.net/2c74/f/2018/110/5/c/photoshop_pattern_by_danvzare-dc9c2zi.png[/imgzoom]


Gimp without dithering.
[imgzoom]https://orig00.deviantart.net/4e91/f/2018/110/8/6/gimp_none_by_danvzare-dc9c306.png[/imgzoom]

Gimp with Floyd Steinberg (Normal) dithering.
[imgzoom]https://orig00.deviantart.net/86c0/f/2018/110/4/9/gimp_floyd_steinberg_normal_by_danvzare-dc9c30n.png[/imgzoom]

Gimp with Floyd Steinberg (reduced color bleeding) dithering (the one I used in my previous post).
[imgzoom]https://orig00.deviantart.net/9bbe/f/2018/108/d/8/gimp_by_danvzare-dc95x2w.png[/imgzoom]

Gimp with positioned dithering.
[imgzoom]https://orig00.deviantart.net/ed15/f/2018/110/1/d/gimp_positioned_by_danvzare-dc9c314.png[/imgzoom]


Pixelator (the one I used in my previous post)
[imgzoom]https://orig00.deviantart.net/288d/f/2018/108/4/f/pixelator_by_danvzare-dc95x46.png[/imgzoom]


IrfanView without dithering.
[imgzoom]https://orig00.deviantart.net/27db/f/2018/110/b/c/irfanview_without_dithering_by_danvzare-dc9c31p.png[/imgzoom]

IrfanView with dithering.
[imgzoom]https://orig00.deviantart.net/8249/f/2018/110/6/e/irfanview_with_dithering_by_danvzare-dc9c329.png[/imgzoom]


Having looked at all of these, I am absolutely gobsmacked at how good IrfanView looks. I actually had to double check to see if it was indeed 128 colours (it is).
That being said, I think Gimp with positioned dithering has a certain type of charm to it.
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imsomnia212

Sorry for bump this but I was interested in try to get the similar as possible to the in-game image, so I take the paint original one and made a little proccess to it.
Of course the original game have alot of post-production and retouch changing and adding pixels. I didn't do that because it will take  a lot of time (I did this just for fun very fast in my free time)

The Process:
Spoiler

The proccess (I made it in photoshop)
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The Original and the one I edited:

Spoiler
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I need to check again if it was indeed to 128 colours, because I added some adjusts and things after I indeed it and I didn't check it again.
Are u a tuna?

Monsieur OUXX

#27
Quote from: Snarky on Thu 19/04/2018 18:07:06
I also disagree pretty vehemently that Photoshop looks best. It's better than the GIMP, but it's still afflicted with dithering pretty much covering the entire image â€" and what's worse, single-pixel dithering. Pixelator has a much more pleasant look to my eyes, though it feels a tad too soft.

You guys should REALLY try the PS plugins I keep mentionning : XiMagic Denoiser and XiMagic Quantizer. They are a-ma-zing.


Quote from: imsomnia212 on Tue 21/08/2018 10:24:47
The Original and the one I edited:
Spoiler
[close]

I need to check again if it was indeed to 128 colours, because I added some adjusts and things after I indeed it and I didn't check it again.
So you started from the hi-res MI2 background and downscaled it?
It's hard to compare them as you've pasted both "before" (hi-res) and "after" (low-res) at the same resolution. And it's too small to see if the noise reduction or color reduction were positive.
...Or did I misunderstand what you posted and are you asking if your downscaling produced better results than Lucasarts' downscaling? Are the two images that you posted side to side the result of Lucasarts' downscaling (as seen in MI2) and your own downscaling from the hi-res image?

The issue is that you posted a JPEG image instead of a PNG image si you ruined all your pixel work.
 

imsomnia212

Quote from: Monsieur OUXX on Tue 21/08/2018 11:29:43
So you started from the hi-res MI2 background and downscaled it?
It's hard to compare them as you've pasted both "before" (hi-res) and "after" (low-res) at the same resolution. And it's too small to see if the noise reduction or color reduction were positive.
...Or did I misunderstand what you posted and are you asking if your downscaling produced better results than Lucasarts' downscaling? Are the two images that you posted side to side the result of Lucasarts' downscaling (as seen in MI2) and your own downscaling from the hi-res image?

The issue is that you posted a JPEG image instead of a PNG image si you ruined all your pixel work.
I did the same as danvzare, but trying to get the similar as mi-2 process, thinking on maybe how they will make it with today technologies, more faster than those days.
The side to side (original and final) are the lucasart and the hi-red downscaling and after color and adjusts changes and 128 indeed (but I didn't check it again that's why I said that but I sure that is)
I did the images in png but when I upload to imgur they change to jpeg, I don't know how to mantain the same format when you use imgur.
Are u a tuna?

marinedalek

Sorry for the necro-post, but I've come across this thread a couple of times while researching the DOTT backgrounds and have a few things to add!

I think I've been able to identify a rough scale for Peter Chan's original artwork, at least for DOTT. I based the calculation on things like the thickness of the scotch tape used to mount some of the artwork, and a post-it used for a correction on one of the pieces. Because the artwork in the DOTT special edition gallery seems to have been photographed rather than scanned, the calculation is approximate due to unknown perpective differences, furled paper, etc.
I believe the original size of the drawings to be 10" x  7.5" (for a single screen). Of this, the bottom 2 1/8" is masked off for backgrounds intended to be used with the interface visible (i.e. not cutscenes). For screens which scroll horizontally, extra pages are taped together to get the desired width. When using this scale, scanning at 96dpi produces an image exactly 3x the final resolution horizontally. It doesn't work out quite as neatly for the vertical resolution due to the non-square pixels in 320x200.

From the various pieces it looks like the overall process for a background (in DOTT) was as follows:
- Produce a line-art outline sketch
- Photocopy the above and use the copy to produce a fully pencil-shaded sketch for tone and lighting.
- Produce a full-colour marker illustration of the scene, possibly using a lightbox, with a copy of the line art underneath as a template, and using the pencil-toned version as reference.
- Make a few final adjustments to highlights/edges with gouache. (Note: In MI2, this stage was far more involved, and a lot of extra detail was added. In DOTT, it's mainly corrections and dealing with marker bleed)
- Mount the artwork onto animation paper and scan
- Scale down the digital artwork and retouch to flatten areas of solid colour/smooth out gradients and make final adjustments to geometry/signage.

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