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

[athanasios]

1. I think your sprite is not aligned well. It is over the white line.
2. Consider making it slightly smaller. Just 1 pixel, to the scale of Georges' ones, but not to half tile (maybe if alighned correctly it will not be needed).
3. The company color is not smooth (suppose game engine cannot blend?), and this is visible when the color is on top of the bus side as a small stripe. I suggest to use company color on sides or to extend on whole roof.
4. Seems dark side is too dark, but it maybe due to the dark windows.

[denny577]

Don't know if this has been worked on, or known in any way (or obvious ), but when the bus travels in NW direction it's completely blue, and when it's going in SE direction it's blue with a company colour line at the top.

NW direction

Plartfingford Transport, 8th Jan 1975.png (403.2 KiB) Viewed 3588 times

SE direction

Plartfingford Transport, 10th Jan 1975.png (402.67 KiB) Viewed 3566 times

EDIT: I found the fact that you have made only a company colour line sprite in that direction

[GeekToo]

1. I think your sprite is not aligned well. It is over the white line.
2. Consider making it slightly smaller. Just 1 pixel, to the scale of Georges' ones, but not to half tile (maybe if alighned correctly it will not be needed).
3. The company color is not smooth (suppose game engine cannot blend?), and this is visible when the color is on top of the bus side as a small stripe. I suggest to use company color on sides or to extend on whole roof.
4. Seems dark side is too dark, but it maybe due to the dark windows.

1. What is the road set you're using? It seems like a nice set to test the alignment with. I'll try to get the alignment in line with Georges buses

2. Will check this when the alignment is right.

3. Correct, that is going to be a problem: the company colours must be applied by means of a mask file, that is the file in the tar with the m postfix( eg 3097m.png). This is an 8bpp color indexed file, with the standard ottd palette. By drawing pixels in this file in the company colours, the pixels in the 32bpp png get replaced (rgb, alfa of the 32 bpp stays as is). But there are only 8 colours shades available, so when the complete roof is painted in company colours, it will not be smooth with 8 colours, next to the 32bpp shades. I.e. 32bpp is effectively useless in the places where CC are applied. That's why I want to keep the area with CC small. And you're right, I've not yet found a way to blend the colours of the mask with the 32bpp png. Transparency in the mask is possible, but only fully transparent, or not transparent, completely replacing the 32bpp colour. Also, antialiasing is not possible on the edge of the CC area and 32bpp area, because in the 32bpp png, I don't know which colour the CC is going to be. So that might work for one colour, and make all other colours even uglier. I do not know whether this issue is worked upon by the dev's or that it is going to stay this way.

4. I agree, it looks ok on larger scale, but in the 64px scale it is rather dark. I will experment a little with filler lights in blender for those sides, as said before, the standard lighting setup is ok for buildings, but for vehicles, esp. on this scale needs a little work.

[LordAzamath]

There's one thing too...It looks damn blurry! I think, when resizing, you shouldn't use som much antialiasing or whatever it is. I know that there is similar problem with my bank actuallly too. I will try on test -> I'll render my bank w/o voersampling and then resize it. Maybe the bank looks sharper then. You should try the same with your bus, but wait a moment. I'll post my results here

EDIT: ok, nevermind, it didn't look better. It was worse But the problem remains though

[GeekToo]

Lord, I don't know exactly what you mean by blurry: lack of contrast or unsharpness?
Part of the problem may be that because the renders are 'smoother' than with 8bpp, and used in the same screen, they look blurrier, but in fact the 8bpp sprites look 'harder'
What you can try for your bank, is to render it with the key option in the render screen, iso the sky option.
This makes the render in fact worse, but for the 'sharp' effect, it may be what you want.

[athanasios]

So what I was afraid of is true. We have an issue with mask not geting transparency as was originally meant to be.

lordazamath: I think your Bank is OK. Blurring is not so much to worry about. Blurring is a problem with smaller structures. When I made by hand some buildings (not 3D) I had the same problem with photoshop. I could not find any way to reduce the blurring, since I am an amateur with photoshop, so I resorted to another program that didn't blur and then merged the 2 images. But in 3D rendering I don't know how you can work it.

[Zephyris]

The problem is that in 3D graphics an edge (whether it is in a texture or part of the geometry of an object) is never precisely along a pixel boundary. With the isometric camera setup all vertical edges, which would ideally lie along a pixel boundary, never do, and end up blurred over 2 pixels. This is a common and easy to solve problem in 2D graphics, you simply do a "sub pixel nudge" to align the edges to pixel boundarys. However in 3D I don't know how to solve it!


Two squares, both the same size, with a 1 pixel border. A sub-pixel nudge makes the edges far clearer.

[Dictu]

The problem is that in 3D graphics an edge (whether it is in a texture or part of the geometry of an object) is never precisely along a pixel boundary. With the isometric camera setup all vertical edges, which would ideally lie along a pixel boundary, never do, and end up blurred over 2 pixels. This is a common and easy to solve problem in 2D graphics, you simply do a "sub pixel nudge" to align the edges to pixel boundarys. However in 3D I don't know how to solve it!

Hm-m-m... May be sub pixel nudge should be applied when scaling big rendered image to proper game size?

[LordAzamath]

Hey all! I was modeling with blender again (not for OpenTTD though) and have this thing WIP right now. I'm just wondering, that maybe I can modify it a bit, so it will be for openttd. I actually have even decided to make it for Open already, but I need some feedback too. Note, that I still don't know the purpose for this building (probably a bus station like this, there is a larger bus terminal under the Viru Centre, but some bus stops are in front of it too)

Accidentally rendered as jpg and saved as png ;)

vaataseda.png.jpg (44.12 KiB) Viewed 13760 times

So comments & stuff would be appreciated
Lord

EDIT: and if someone could please tell me...Why does it render pictures with reduced number of colours (256)...Never happened befors

[GeekToo]

Lord,
Very nice start of the building. Not much comment on it, may when it receives texturing.
My first impression was that it could be a train station iso a bus station.

Dictu,
The render of the bus was not rescaled, this is the original render size, with the appropriate camera scale.

Zephyris,
Interesting feedback, I think the problem is related to scale: for 256 px tiles it looks good, but for 64 px one pixel can be up to 30 cm in real format, so every detail smaller than that will blur the pixel. Too bad no guidelines for 3D can be given.

I recolored the bus (the blue is now more white/silver, added red where I think the company colour must be applied), adjusted the lighting and started testing with different render methods. I added some cubes of different size and colour to show differences in render methods. Feel free to give some feedback on what is the best method for rendering.

[athanasios]

As I said you have to merge, but the different renders are not the same size. I made a try ignoring it (so not accurate) to see how it looks.

[GeekToo]

Update of the Hereford/Foster bus:
-made the bus a little shorter, it's just over half a tile now
-applied company colours in all views
-changed the materials in blender, and did some Gimp postprocessing to make the bus look sharper ( any hints to improve this further would still be appreciated, I'm out of ideas)
-improved the pngcodecing, though I'm not sure all views are correctly aligned now

Remove the old foster.tar from the data directory, and put the foster2.tar in the data directory.

Start openttd with a 32bpp blitter.

Have fun!

I encourage you to play around a little with the company colour masks: I think it's possible to improve them. All you need is an image editor that can handle colour indexed png's: untar one or more mask files ( the ones with the m postfix, like 3093m.png ) from the tar, and put them in the data/sprites/trg1r directory. Open it with the editor, and change pixels to company colours ( colour index 196-203). I sure would like to see some screenshots of nice colour schemes.

For no other reason than just showing off , I've added a render of the bus at a larger zoom level than is currently available.

[Ben_Robbins_]

Sorry for the lack of progress on my part, I haven’t had much free time recently...

Geektoo: Nice work, I have nothing more to say! What Lighting Setup is the last image using? (busshow.png). I have noticed this weekend when doing some rendering that the latest blend light setup has very heavy shading, while in that image it looks about right. I mimicked this light setup in max a while ago, and it has been ok, but I think the shaddowing is far too heavy.

This weekend I've been working on the station anyway. I rendered off all the bits from 1 angle, and as you can see the shadowing is quite heavy. I have therefore messed around with the Light setup in max for most of today and made the shadowing softer, but kept all the other elements the same. If people are ok with this, then I'd suggest tweaking the blend setup to do the same. It is rather similar to the LS used here.

1075_z0 is the render which has been edited and finished and stuck in game, while render1aedt.png is just a render messing around with the light setup. Ignore all the various faults with it, its just there for a comparison with shading. Personally I prefer the softer shadowing. I've attached an example of a white/grey/black cube for comparison of objects/floor and shadow.

(note, unless your browser shows the alpha layer on png's these may look quite messy)

[GeekToo]

Ben,

When rendering the buses with the standard LS from the wiki (version F), I did find the front and sides of the bus too dark. So I started adding some filler lights: ( spotlights, but without casting shadows)
So here's my lighting setup ( I tried to separate it in a separate blend file, but did not succeed, will try again later)

-front of the bus to the south
-camera SE
-sun like in standard setup so rotated left 80 degrees, wrt the camera)

added:
1 spot in the south, filling up the front shadow
1 spot in the east, brightening east side, wrt to the roof.
1 spot exactly above the bus, empasizing the details like the windows
1 spot NW, exacty opposite to camera, positioned in a way that it gives a nice reflection on the roof of the bus
1 spot, app at camera position, to give some reflections on the edge of front and east side
1 spot NE, to give reflection on side of the bus.

All spots position higher than the bus, except the one in the east, that point app horizontal, because I wanted it only to lighten up the east side of the bus.
Last 3 spots are probably only necessary for vehicles, to give them a 'shiny' effect.

And then I tweaked a little with the energy levels of the spots, until I liked the picture.

Btw, that is going to be an very, very nice station, judging by these previews.

[Born Acorn]

This weekend I've been working on the station anyway...

Wow. Just wow. I'm afraid that's all that I can muster.

[LordAzamath]

This weekend I've been working on the station anyway. I rendered off all the bits from 1 angle, and as you can see the shadowing is quite heavy. I have therefore messed around with the Light setup in max for most of today and made the shadowing softer, but kept all the other elements the same. If people are ok with this, then I'd suggest tweaking the blend setup to do the same. It is rather similar to the LS used here.

That's....I'll go now and feel shamed for MY works ...
One extra question...HOw can you make screenshots (I guess thay ARE screenshots..) at that zoom level and with that detail? Does it have something to do with the dead 32bpp branch?

[ZxBiohazardZx]

Sorry for the lack of progress on my part, I haven’t had much free time recently...

Geektoo: Nice work, I have nothing more to say! What Lighting Setup is the last image using? (busshow.png). I have noticed this weekend when doing some rendering that the latest blend light setup has very heavy shading, while in that image it looks about right. I mimicked this light setup in max a while ago, and it has been ok, but I think the shaddowing is far too heavy.

This weekend I've been working on the station anyway. I rendered off all the bits from 1 angle, and as you can see the shadowing is quite heavy. I have therefore messed around with the Light setup in max for most of today and made the shadowing softer, but kept all the other elements the same. If people are ok with this, then I'd suggest tweaking the blend setup to do the same. It is rather similar to the LS used here.

1075_z0 is the render which has been edited and finished and stuck in game, while render1aedt.png is just a render messing around with the light setup. Ignore all the various faults with it, its just there for a comparison with shading. Personally I prefer the softer shadowing. I've attached an example of a white/grey/black cube for comparison of objects/floor and shadow.

(note, unless your browser shows the alpha layer on png's these may look quite messy)

looks great, alignment isnt 100% nice imo and if possible can the station track-parts be different then the normal parts?

looks great anyway:)

[Ben_Robbins_]

Cheers guys. I still need to work on the lighting I think, I'll ponder on that when I have a free second. Currently the midtones are too heavily contrasting I feal.

Lordazamath: You are correct, the screenshot it just a print screen or screen grab from the dead 32bpp branch which I use to test sprites in.

ZxBiohazardZx: If you are refering to where the platform comes out over the grass and pavement then yes..I have noticed this. Unfortunately this effect is because of the way the platform tiles appear after the nearer pavement or grass textures, so they appear to come closure. In the future if the ground sprites can have additional sprites for the bits of them that exceed the tile edge, then its a quick fix.

[LordAzamath]

@BenRobbins

How far are you from being ready with the road tiles...(I guess it was you, yes? I mean those nicetues what I can see in a screenshot of yours )
If they were/are practically ready, only some coding/PNGCodec'ing missing, then you can give that task to me or someone.. I mean if you yourself don't have time
The same goes for those rails, I can see from your picture.

And if anyone can point me a link to the 32bpp "testing:)" branch precompiled binary for win32, I would be grateful..it seems that I have failed to find any link but a svn one.
EDIT: I downloaded TortoiseSVN, but as I guessed, the link svn://svn.openttd.org/branches/32bpp:
1. requests a login with TortoiseSVN -> import..
2. With checkout "wonder-wonder" it doesn't exist (anymore I think...it's logical too, because it was executed the most brutal way possible )...So

And if anyone can point me a link to the 32bpp "testing:)" branch precompiled binary for win32, I would be grateful

Lord

[GeekToo]

Ben did post the roads a while ago: http://www.tt-forums.net/download.php?id=72782
Real nice idea to pngcodec them, I had the same idea today, but you were faster.

For the 32bpp branch, I do have the sources for it, but compiled for Linux, so if you don't succeed in obtaining a Windows exe, maybe you can recompile them (sad to hear they're not available from svn anymore, so I better be careful with these branch sources).

Does the retiring of TrueLight have an effect on the implementation of more zoom levels, because he was the dev. that promised that extra zoom levels would be possible? It would be bad, if these extra levels would be postponed.