WIP: Beach object tiles, Version 1.2 released (20 february 2016)

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Quast65
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Re: WIP: Beach object tiles

Post by Quast65 »

Well I'm still not able to see what I did wrong...
I took a slightly different approach to the shading, but in essence it should be the same.
I took the shading of the grasstiles as a base (and I assume that those tiles were made using the information about how the sunangle is positioned) and concluded that there are 5 shades used:
sunangle2.png
sunangle2.png (32.52 KiB) Viewed 2273 times
1: Flat tile (I use that as a referencepoint for the other shades)
2: Slightly darker than the flat tile
3: A bit lighter than the flat tile
4: Lighter than 3
5: Darker than 2
So, still the question remains, what is wrong?
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Re: WIP: Beach object tiles

Post by planetmaker »

Quast65 wrote: I took the shading of the grasstiles as a base (and I assume that those tiles were made using the information about how the sunangle is positioned) and concluded that there are 5 shades used:
That's actually where it might fail :-) - they might be somewhat wrong in that respect as well, assuming a 2:30 sun position instead of 4:30.

But! When you look at sprites in general, the light direction is not exactly uniform anyway. But it makes sense to have the light somewhere in the back of the observer to ensure a crisp contrast which is kinda typical for this game instead of having half of it in shadows :-)
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Re: WIP: Beach object tiles

Post by Pyoro »

Not sure if it's because there are no grid-lines or I'm just not correctly seeing things, but the tile directly below the 5 seems to be very slightly darker than the neighboring tiles to me. With all "back" tiles the same however those sand slopes somehow look practically flat to me :?
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Re: WIP: Beach object tiles

Post by YNM »

Quast65 wrote:
TBH for worldwide use, I still prefer the older ones (not the oldest through).
Well, sometimes it is a matter of personal taste. As I said I'm happy with what I got now. The eldest ones were too brown for my taste, the version after that too pink and the latest one was too bright for me. I think I'll stick to these.
If you liked the newest one you make, then go :)
I don't want to stop any ideas / effort !
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Re: WIP: Beach object tiles

Post by michael blunck »

Quast65 wrote: [...]
4: Lighter than 3
Which means that the front side of a building in x-direction would get full shade, which is totally wrong.

[edit]
Take a look at this old post: http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php? ... &view=next

(and ignore the gibberish)
[/edit]

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Re: WIP: Beach object tiles

Post by Quast65 »

That's actually where it might fail - they might be somewhat wrong in that respect as well, assuming a 2:30 sun position instead of 4:30.

But! When you look at sprites in general, the light direction is not exactly uniform anyway. But it makes sense to have the light somewhere in the back of the observer to ensure a crisp contrast which is kinda typical for this game instead of having half of it in shadows
Well, as far as I have looked into it, all landscape tiles are made with the shading as I have. I am fairly sure I can stick to that. Especially with the transition pieces (grass to beach), it would look strange when you suddenly have a different way of lighting.
Not sure if it's because there are no grid-lines or I'm just not correctly seeing things, but the tile directly below the 5 seems to be very slightly darker than the neighboring tiles to me. With all "back" tiles the same however those sand slopes somehow look practically flat to me
I agree that without gridlines it is somewhat difficult to see the direction of the tiles. However, I would not use these tiles to create a large landscape with. I would only use them in small parts where I would like to see a beach and well, I have offcourse as the creator the advantage that I can see how those look and to me they look fine for that purpose. ;-)
But, these tiles will be GPL, so anyone will be free to alter (and maybe improve) them to (for example) have gridlines or a better shading/texturing.
I have fiddled around with these a lot now and I have reached my maximum capability of creating these kind of tiles and I think they are ready enough to be released.
If you liked the newest one you make, then go
Will do!
Which means that the front side of a building in x-direction would get full shade, which is totally wrong.
Good point, however Planetmaker made another good point that the lighting direction is not uniform for all pieces in this game.
So it makes sence to me that a building has a different way of lighting than a landscape piece. The only important thing is that it looks good and having an uniform lightingdirection doesn't look right all of the times.
EDIT:
In regard to your edit Michael, I think that refers mostly to buildings. I chose to look at other landscapetiles, to make it match those and, again, I think I did that right.
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Re: WIP: Beach object tiles

Post by michael blunck »

Quast65 wrote:
mb wrote: Which means that the front side of a building in x-direction would get full shade, which is totally wrong.
Good point, however Planetmaker made another good point that the lighting direction is not uniform for all pieces in this game.
That´s right. I already mentioned it in that linked thread:
mb wrote: According to the original sprites, the angle of light isn´t exactly the same for all sprites.
Quast65 wrote: So it makes sence to me that a building has a different way of lighting than a landscape piece. The only important thing is that it looks good and having an uniform lightingdirection doesn't look right all of the times.
It makes no sense to have different lighting for buildings and ground tiles (landscape). This problem has been discussed much in the past and IIRC there has been an informal agreement as to that ~4:30 sun angle, which planetmaker mentioned.

The lighting of your landscape tiles shown above is almost 90° wrong.

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Re: WIP: Beach object tiles

Post by wallyweb »

How about an image for Quast65 to compare with?
An image is, after all, worth 1000 words. 8)
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Re: WIP: Beach object tiles

Post by Quast65 »

The lighting of your landscape tiles shown above is almost 90° wrong.
But aren't all landscapetiles wrong then?
See for example the arctic ones:
Arcticexample.png
Arcticexample.png (30.96 KiB) Viewed 2178 times
If it is the case that all groundtiles are in essence wrong, than I don't see a reason to change my one until the basic tiles are all corrected too. Because it wouldn't fit in with the current way of shading.
How about an image for Quast65 to compare with?
An image is, after all, worth 1000 words.
True, is there a landscape GRF that has the correct shadings that I can look at?
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Re: WIP: Beach object tiles

Post by wallyweb »

Perhaps this will help. The tiles are from TTDX/TTDP. I assume that OTTD followed similar shading. The palette is TTD/Windows.
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Re: WIP: Beach object tiles

Post by Eddi »

that image doesn't make a lot of sense. it is physically impossible for the brightest and darkest shade to be adjacent, they have to be opposite.
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Re: WIP: Beach object tiles

Post by Gremnon »

That being said, despite what's been said about the apparent agreement of ~4.30, I don't see any reason for the sun angle to change for these tiles. I'd rather have them as they are and appear properly alongside other landscape tiles, than have the differences blatently clear and conflicting with each other just because the people who did the buildings do the shadow differently.

So I think they're just fine the way they are. I'd certainly use them that way.
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Re: WIP: Beach object tiles

Post by Quast65 »

Well Wallywebs greyscales do make a lot of sence to me, it makes it very clear how the shading should be.
It shows that there are more than the 5 shades I thought there would be. Using that idea should also fix the issue Pyoro mentioned and give a better idea of perspective.
The only thing I am not sure about is indeed where the darkest tile should be. I agree with Eddi that the most logical place is opposite of the brightest one. But it would be interesting to debate that further.
So Wallyweb, why is the darkest side not opposite of the lightest side?
And Michael and Planetmaker, do you agree with those greyscales?
It wouldn't be too difficult to change my lighting according to those greyscales, but I would like to be sure that they are correct.

EDIT:
Could it be possible that the darkest side is next to the lightest one, because of the light also coming in from above and therefor the opposite side also gets a little bit of light?
Last edited by Quast65 on 10 Oct 2012 19:13, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: WIP: Beach object tiles

Post by michael blunck »

Eddi wrote:that image doesn't make a lot of sense. it is physically impossible for the brightest and darkest shade to be adjacent, they have to be opposite.
As the original TTD tiles exhibit the same weird effect, one can easily understand that OpenGFX is indeed an independent development, as has been confirmed so many times.

[edit]
Quast65 wrote:And Michael and Planetmaker, do you agree with those greyscales?
No. Like Eddi said, those are physically impossible. There have been some discussions about that problem before, and even the link I gave you should point to some underlying problems which might be one of the reasons for the weird lighting of original TTD landscape tiles.

[edit2]
4:30 isn´t optimal, simply because it´ll render both parts of a roof of a house in y-direction the same.
[/edit2]

Would be interesting to do a proper lighting for them, this should be easily doable. I vaguely remember having thought about it, years ago.
[/edit]

regards
Michael
Last edited by michael blunck on 10 Oct 2012 19:12, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: WIP: Beach object tiles

Post by Quast65 »

Pfffff, I'm confused again ;-)
So which ones are correct?
EDIT:
So, uhm would the greyscales be correct if the darkest color is switched with the one opposite the lightest color?
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Re: WIP: Beach object tiles

Post by wallyweb »

The greyscales are proportional to the original TTD rendition and are proper with respect to TTD. That is why I included the TTD grass tiles ... for comparison.
If there is a question as to the propriety of the original TTD graphics then that should be taken up with CS and his team.
If somebody feels that there is a more realistically accurate solution then they should draw them to be coded via Action A.
Until such time I suggest continuing with the TTD solution, if only for compatibility with that TTD feeling.
If OpenGFX has already resolved this, I invite the author(s) to revise my greyscales accordingly and post them to these forums for all to see and comment upon.

[edit]The darkest colour faces directly away from the viewer and is the least visible of all the tiles. Perhaps that is why it was chosen to be the darkest.[/edit]
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Re: WIP: Beach object tiles

Post by michael blunck »

[landscape tile shading]

IMO, there are two problems with TTD landscape shading:

- There´s no proper method to shade tiles in such a way that all the available landscape structures are uniformly shaded. I.e., other than in Walter´s sketch, TTD uses "only" 4 shades, so for a "hill" built from 8 slopes, every two tiles get the same shading. OTOH, when building a "hill" from only four slopes, it should be done in a way that all of the 4 basic shades are being used.

- buildings are generally shaded differently in TTD, with the position of the sun not exactly at 4:30 (i.e., sun is directly opposite the front slope in x-direction (TTD sprite #3998)) because this would result in equal shading for front and back parts of roofs of buildings in y-direction.

This different shading has been adopted by a number of graphics artists (see George´s post, linked above), shifting the position of the sun a bit more "back in time", probably to 4:00 or even a bit earlier. This results in a better discrimination of shades for roofs, and in a bit darker building walls in x, resulting into a better overall display of buildings.

Unfortunately, this position of sun cannot be applied for landscape tile shading in a proper way, because it´d result in an equal shading for tiles #3998 and #3992 (and o/c for the tiles of the shady part of a hill), with even more problems introduced for 8-part hills (again, see Walter´s sketch).

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Re: WIP: Beach object tiles

Post by V453000 :) »

From my own digging and experience with TTD base set (I take it as most of my inspiration for drawing techniques):

Generally, it is not important for the sprites to exactly "make sense" if you zoom in on them. Often there are very bright pixels used next to very dark in order to create a very plastic image instead of something somewhat flat.
I really agree with this as I think it is a lot more important to go for "nice looks" than "sensible analysis of the sprites".

About direction of light, I think that is not just hard to imagine, but often also hard to implement. Sometimes you just do not want a few exact sprites to be bright because it would break the shape illusion of the vehicle. "Make it look nice" is the only rule I use there ... while of course following some lighting from somewhere at the right.

Therefore I would lean towards the TTD light a lot more, but I would make it more obvious, now it looks a bit flat indeed. Unfortunately if you DO want to fit OpenGFX land tiles, you probably have the "flatness" done correctly as OpenGFX does not use the "senseless" contrasts which makes it obviously a lot less plastic, getting the feeling of being flat.

This is how I take it, I hope it helps you somehow :)
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Re: WIP: Beach object tiles

Post by michael blunck »

V453000 :) wrote: [...]
What I wanted to express in the first place is that differing shadings would look odd when using multiple building sets concurrently, or using combinations of building/industry/object sets and landscape sets. In fact, that was the sole intention of George´s thread back in 2005: scheduling something like an "informal standardisation".

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Re: WIP: Beach object tiles

Post by wallyweb »

We have had a lot of words about how to shade some sprites with references to George's "sundial" and to buildings and vehicles and all the inconsistencies.
No wonder Quast65 is confused.

Agreed a "properly accurate" standard would be useful. Unfortunately all we have is that provided by TTD/TTO.

Words are useless ... If someone has a workable solution, they should draw (and code) a full set of groundsprites and provide a chart (similar to mine? It is available to anybody who wants to use it) to be used as a reference point.

Until then, the artist can not be faulted for following the TTD/TTO pattern, if only because of a desire for consistency and it is the only one currently available.

@Moderators ... Perhaps this discussion needs it's own stickied topic.
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