New Graphics - Blender ".blend" thread (Works In Progress)

[athanasios]

... therefore please just criticise it within the current limitations. I didn't make it short through choice.
Having a scale of 15-20 metres would mean roads and rail become very narrow which I don't like the idea of...

It depends from the perspective someone views things. I prefer the scale in GeekToo's bridge. And narrow roads are not an issue. More space for pavement and trees.

Sorry, I don't want to discourage you, so to compensate: thumbs up for the sea tile!!!
GeekToo said something that it is somewhat rough, and my appetite became bigger considering the weather patch.

regards
athanasios

[Ben_Robbins_]

I have noted down the other points made, but working on the swell shapes has consumed basically my day. I have experimented with increasing the frequency of one set of waves but this doesn't stop the squareness, but just makes it rectangular. I tried various other techniques, which also don't really work. What I have now got to is going back to the 2 waves as they were, taking 1, and making it into an S. so it still goes straight but part of the wave lags behind. Unfortunately to do this involved a lot of tedious work, and to make a wave go the other way will require it again unfortunately, so I'm not sure weather it needs it suddenly!. It's the .gif in the attached, and isn't tiled perfectly, or textured fully so as to save render time, so it's just there for commenting on the swells)

Although the waves should flow across tiles, I don't think there should be 1 obvious direction because otherwise it may look strange that waves are being pushed up a beach when the water is pulling in the other direction, or adjacent.

In the end because of the tiling it will always look more like jelly then swells, but I think if a few other things are done, including just lowering the height of them, as well as a few texture changes as suggested then parts of the other issues should hopefully go also.

I've attached various avi's as well...only 4 of the 40 I've done, but there a bit big.

I seem to be saying what I'm saying based on what hasn't worked rather than finding what does; it's the long way, but maybe something will come of it.

[Gramble]

@Ben's trains:

The models look awesome
Better than I've ever expected. You are my hero! You make the best looking models I've ever seen in games like TT. Unfortunately I haven't seem them live ingame, already, but as soon as possible I'll test them ingame - I can't wait for that.

But I've to agree to athanasios, the scale of them is not acceptable (the good wagons are OK, but especially the passanger wagons and the locomotive). No matter if it's the only solution at this moment. The spoil not only your work, but also the game. I know that there isn't an other way at the moment. But this just shows how important it is to find a solution for this problem. Some coders should work on this problem, too.

The problem is, that some people don't like changes. They see these graphics as nice replacement sets, but I think, that these graphics show, that it is possible to create a game, which is able to compete against modern, commercial transport manager games. Actually I think, that there is a chance to create a game which is lightyears better than these damn cheap manager games, which are in shops.
But if we only want to enhance the good old TT ...
Every discussion about things like smoother curves or new animations for vehicle rotations, leaded to nothing. But as we can see at Ben's models, these problems are soo important. Otherwise there are limitations, which kill all innovative ideas.

I hope you can understand me, I've still got too much problems with my English.


@water:
The animations are really impressive, because I know that it would be very very difficult for me to create something like that. The tiles fit to the old tiles.
I would like to see more effects on the water (light reflexions), and more reality, but I can't say if it won't look to replete. So I can't say, that you have to add some effects.

@train overlayers:
I saw, that you've used a blue underground for the company colors? Does it work for other colors? I've saw this ingame screenshot with the red company color, and it looked perfect. Please give a detailed description how you created the overlayers. For me they seem to be perfect. (But I haven't tested them ingame, yet)

[Ben_Robbins_]

Gramble: Thanks, and glad you like them.

I am not in disagreement with athanasios that the scale of them is an issue. What I have said is that that it's a limitation and I am working within that. Solving that is not to do with me, and beyond me, therefore I was requesting his critisim's on the graphics kept that in mind. In fact I think I have made my opinion on the matter clear in the past.

Although people may be being conservative, I don't think that is the only reason and/or a petty reason. It is and was a great game, and that wasn't because of 1 thing, but many things that made up the game. The accepted line between what should and shouldn't be changed though seems to be drawn straight between graphics and code. The size of the world's have been increased, the amount's of vehicles have been increased (2 examples), but then the length of vehicles isn't seen in the same light, and it differs from the others as it is a major graphically difference as well as code. Also I would assume that the amount of work required is more of a key factor, than people being opposed to it. I agree that train length is quite important. I don't really argue for reality, but just the ability to capture the key characteristics of what you are modelling in game, and for trains the length is exactly that. Don't feel you have to justify the reasons to me though, as I'm not the person you need to convince for multiple reasons.

Water: A sparkle may be possible although this will probably look terrible for tiling, but reflections wouldn't do much. They would just brighten or darken the water in general, or break up the tiling again.

Train overlays: Team colours work on the trains yes. To make one, take an existing one from the tar, and open it [sprite 1]. Then open the carrage/wagon sprite also [sprite 2]. On 'sprite 2' select all the areas that are saturated (to any degree) that you wish the team colour to apply to. On a new layer fill it with blue. (For photoshop you also need to fill a few pixels in one of the corners for alignment reasons). Check the '2nd sprites' dimensions, and then set 'sprite 1's' dimensions to the same. Delete everything in 'sprite 1'. Then copy that layer and clear the team colour sprite and paste it in. Align it and save it as 1234_z0m.png or whatever. (in photoshop align the corner you filled then delete that bit).

I haven't replaced the 'team colour' tutorial in the sticky yet, as this method is an unofficial branch, so to change it would be assuming the dev's have agreed that this is the correct way. If and when this becomes the correct way to do it I'll alter it. Although it could go on the wiki.

[GeekToo]

http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?p=657704#p657704

Company colours are now blended with the v8 and 9 extra zoom patch.
Every colour can be applied, but only the special colours 196-203 are replaced by company colours automatically

[Gramble]

Yes, I understand the system. But you see, that there had been some problems when I tried to do this. And now I'm asking myself, how Ben made it so perfect.

This means, why is the background color blue, which blue? And why the hell does it work so nice with red company color?

[Ben_Robbins_]

I'm not sure what the final intention is, but currently I don't think there is a 'one true blue'. It's the saturation. Here's the texture I made for the good's wagon (termonology?) for example. In 3dsmax it is set to 0.7 rgb level.

[GeekToo]

Yes, I understand the system. But you see, that there had been some problems when I tried to do this. And now I'm asking myself, how Ben made it so perfect.

This means, why is the background color blue, which blue? And why the hell does it work so nice with red company color?

Gramble, I'm sure you can make your truck look as nice as Ben's trains.

In the thread about company colours mentioned above, I promised to improve the applying of company colours, and I did(so at least one coder is not against making graphics changes ... ) That means that blending of company colours is now implemented(at least in the latest versions of my patch).

If you mean with the background colour blue, the colour of the mask, then the answer is because in the openttd palette 196-203 the colours are blueish (see attachment for the colours to use, it doesn't matter which one you pick, because the brightness will be taken from the original sprite, not the mask).

As Ben did correctly mention, the saturation of the original sprite is very important for CC if the original sprites looks like this: http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?p=657946#p657946( very desaturated ), hardly any CC will be applied.

But if you pick a colour like my example in the last post of that thread, CC will appear much better.

Since I saw you do use the Gimp, the method I use for recolouring (you may know some of it already, but I'm also gathering info for the wiki )

1-open your sprite ( sprite 1)
2-open one of the mask files on the wiki (eg one of the train wagons)(sprite 2)
3-resize sprite 2 to the size of sprite 1
4-select the blue colour on the mask sprite as the foreground colour, and erase all pixels
5-goto sprite 1, and select all.
6-copy
7-goto sprite 2 and paste (Gimp will take care of the conversion to 8bpp). Because you did select the complete sprite, you don't have to worry about aligning
8-erase everything you don't want company colour applied to.
9-select everything that is left, and bucket fill with the colour of step 4 of this small tut.
10-save the mask as nnnn_zxm.png (nnnn is the spritenumber, x is the zoom level)

Hope this helps, if you still have problems please do reply, cause I really would like to see your truck ingame

[GeekToo]

Update of my recoloration of dmh_mac s house: standard pavement, rescaled parking spaces. Already pngcodeced

[AndersI]

@GeekToo: Maybe the windows shouldn't show so much of the inside, as it is completely empty. Less transparency of the window glass and darker textures in the room might help.

[Gramble]

Thanks, for the reply. I'll try this next week, when I've written the exam.
One question (just to hear a few personal opinions):
How many company colors should a vehicle have got. 3 are possible, and my last model had got three different company colors, but I've got the feeling, that it's a bit overloaded. In my opinion the first company color suffice, and maybe some little spots with the secondary company color.

@GeekToo: Yes, maybe a bit more mirror, but only a little. It don't bother me. The colors are Ok. Or ... they are very nice!
I would use these colors, but split the house - four houses on 12,5 meters

[Ben_Robbins_]

Nice work geektoo. The transparency may work as it is if the windows are simply made darker. Except for that I would just suggest a minor thing, and that is to darken the curbstone, to make a more definite step up from the road to the pavement.

(If you need any texture's made that tile with anything I've made just ask)

I think 2 houses is more normal for that scale, although 4 is easily possible, but reality aside, it works nicely.

p.s. Any thoughts on the wave/sea tile...I'm a bit stumped currently and not sure where to go, so any opinions/advice would be great.

[athanasios]

four houses on 12,5 meters

Yes. There should be more! I mean, IF the house was made for a Hong Kong scenario.

[dmh_mac]

When I made that graphic we were still going for 25×25 M tiles...

[Gramble]

@dmh_mac: Yes, but although this house looks very nice, the scale has changed. I would resize it.

@Ben: Waves... very difficult. I searched for some sea videos, but a realistic behaviour would be to difficult or look stupid ingame. When I look at your avi videos, I have got the feeling, that the waves are moving a bit too fast. And another thing you could try, is to animate the high of the waves. As I saw in some videos, the waves do not only move over the water, but they also go up and down a bit. In your animation with two waves, you could also try to change the speed of one wave, so that both waves have got a different speed. Don't know if it is possible. I hope I have inspirated you a bit.

[GeekToo]

I've been busy today with a 32bpp sprite loading problem, that's why I did not respond earlier to comment about the house. I think I will change the darkness of the windows. About the scale, I will try to change it, unless the master ( being Dmh_mac ) wants to do it himself.

Ben, I took a look at the waves(esp. the gif, I find it hard to judge the waves by only the grid lines) , and they're really beatiful. Only remark would be that there's a slight tiling effect, most noticable from sw to ne(brighter area), but I realize this might be extremely hard to correct, and I don't think it's really annoying.

Furthermore, last weeks I took a look at creating longer trains, and found that it is pretty complicated code to modify. But I managed to get larger bounding boxes, and to let the wagons follow the loc at greater distance( which does look rather funny, with current graphics there is a gap between the loc and all the wagons).

I'm wondering how to continue on this: I was thinking about creating an 'experimental' version of the zoom in patch, so some graphics for longer trains can be created, and we can see how they look and then determine the problems that occur and how to continue. But since that may create some rather big graphical issues, I'm not sure whether this is a good idea. On the other hand, if we don't experiment, we'll never have any progress. Advice would be appreciated.

[Ben_Robbins_]

Gramble, I have been using half a dozen videos I have filmed of waves from cliff paths for seeing how it should look, but as you said realistic behaviours would look stupid in game, almost solely because of the tiling effect. I think I understand what you mean for the last point, but correct me if I'm wrong. As well as the big ways, small choppy waves exist on those waves, so the top of the wave isn't smooth, but has a smaller pattern of waves on it? This is what I tried originally with the 2nd texture, although it's not in any of the last 3 .rar's I uploaded to save render time. For the speed of the waves...that was Zephyris's suggestion which I tried. It seems to shrink the problem, rather than solve it. (there was an .avi of it in the post.

I have a bad fealing the the answer is to have 2 waves crossing as in the first one, but distort them both so part of the wave lags. I can't seem to find any quick way of doing this though, so I am reluctant to do it if I think it won't work, but maybe it's the way.

GeekToo: I agree with your point about the tiling effect being noticeable because of that brighter area. It's on my todo list.

Great to hear about your work on the longer trains. If you want any longer trains, of any specific length, then I'll stretch the one I made in the last train.tar for experimenting with.

[Bad_Brett]

This is more a question to the coders, but anyway:

Would it be possible to include more angles to the vehicles? What I mean is, when the first part of a two-part engine makes a 45 degrees turn, if there was a possibility to include more angles, you could rotate both parts by 22,5 degrees instead (or ideally, let it make really soft turns). It's hard to explain, so take a look at this picture. If there is the slightest chance to archieve this, I definately think you should give it a try, because it would solve many problems and make the game a lot more interesting. As someone said, these new graphics are turning out so great, that it would be a pity to let the old game engine ruin them.

By the way, I do understand that this may be impossible to do.

tracks.jpg (36.28 KiB) Viewed 5760 times

[Zephyris]

As far as I know it is in theory possible, but very hard. It has been considered but never attempted because of this. One of the main sticking points was the lack of motivation - with pixel art sets it is unlikely someone will draw all 8 (normal views) + 8 (22 degree views) + 8 (sloped) views, but with rendered graphics this is now a more fesable possibility...

You can already do a hack job via newGRF with trains, using the corner callback; the principle is the train uses normal graphics all the time except when the preceding carriage has turned a corner, then the normal carriage graphics are replaced with the 22 degree rotation graphics. I have tried it in the past but it looks very odd...

[peter1138]

Problem with that is that that particular angle will only fit exactly one position in the curve. What should happen when the wagon is slightly further on?