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Okay, fine. Here's a shot of the Horizon during render. I still think it needs more fleet decoration, but this is just the first version, anyway.
Please excuse the general low quality of the image. Remember that these are only supposed to be a few hundred pixels squared when they're actually in the game, so these high-res shots sometimes look a little weird. I aim for detail simplicity, because otherwise the ships become fuzzy and distorted upon compression to the proper size. Some features are augmented or exaggerated to ensure they appear clearly in the final sprite.
"Really, officer; I didn't see the sign that read, 'no firing graviton weapons at passing civilian craft', honest."
QUOTE (Delphi @ Sep 5 2010, 02:35 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
I think it needs a little more purple because the purple's kinda hard to see in the Nova render, but otherwise it looks very fantastic.
QUOTE (Delphi @ Sep 5 2010, 06:02 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
"...
I didn't even know we had a sign that said that."
This post has been edited by king_of_manticores : 05 September 2010 - 12:26 PM
How exactly are you getting those awesome engine glows? Those are really spectacular.
Great work, Delphi. I agree with manticore, the Horizon needs a bit more purple. Possibly a purple stripe along the top of the 'wing' and maybe even a stripe on each side, right at the edge of the wing under the EC. I really don't see what you mean by 'low quality'. I'll admit it does look a little less detailed than some of your other designs, but only a little bit. Really, it's still a fantastic render.
QUOTE (krugeruwsp @ Sep 5 2010, 11:26 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
It's actually a ludicrously easy concept. You'll need Photoshop for it, or some other program that allows multiple layer editing, gaussian blur filtering, and the ability to tweak brightness and contrast of an individual layer. Even just a cheap copy of Photoshop 7 and up should be able to do it. No need to bust the bank and pick up CS5 or something crazy like that.
Here, I'll even give you the tutorial. It's a nice little catch-all that works for pretty much any source of intense light. You can even use this on Bööms and weapon glows to really make them look bright.
First things first, I want to make sure you understand that though the following images only show one frame from the sprite sheet, I actually apply this process to the entire document as outputted by the m2s app. There's no need to do this frame-by-frame. Just open the entire sprite sheet and get to work.
1. I always produce black and white engine glows from Bryce when I perform the renders, because the "colorize" option in Photoshop allows me to tint them whatever shade of whatever color I desire. This way, if I suddenly decide the Enclave are going to have green engine glows, I don't have to go back and re-render every single frame for every ship's glow.
2. Next, I apply the Brightness and Contrast tool to make the gradient of the glow a little more harsh. Just like HDR settings in some video games, this makes the core of the light very strong, while muting the edges. That's all just technical mumbo-jumbo though; it's really just as simple as dragging some sliders around.
3. Next I use the Hue & Saturation panel to colorize the glow. Here, I've used a colorizing hue of 35, with a saturation of 80.
4. Now, copy the entire sprite sheet as it looks (colored and contrasted) and paste it into a higher layer.
5. With that new layer selected, go into your Filters menu and use the Gaussian Blur filter. I used a setting of 5 pixels, but this measurement depends on the realistic size of your sprite. If you are working with a double-size sprite that hasn't yet been compressed to its actual in-game size, then you'll want double your actual measurements. Namely, a value of 5 used here would result in an actual value of 2.5 pixels once the sprite has been shrunk appropriately.
6. Your result should look something like this.
7. Now, use the Brightness and Contrast panel again to bring out the core of the engine glow once again. Don't worry if it looks fuzzy or hazy, because that's actually part of the effect this time.
8. Change your layer mode to Screen and lower the opacity to a range between 50 and 90 percent. It's not an exact science; the opacity will determine how strong the color and light bleed effect looks once you assemble the actual sprite for the game. A higher opacity will generally make a fuzzier-looking glow, assuming your previous steps made a result with fairly high contrast as was shown above.
9. Now that the layer is set to screen, all dark values become invisible, and the blur of the glow sits nicely on top of your original fiery image. The effect here is one naturally observed by the human retina: objects that produce a large amount of light or reflect in a similar fashion tend to overload certain receptors in the optic nerve and cause said objects to appear slightly hazy or blurred on their edges. By creating a sprite with this effect built right into it using simple pixels, it works pretty well at convincing the viewer's eyes that they're experiencing the effects of looking at something really, really bright. Some video games do this using a quick bloom filter, which is just an automated version of what we just did, while others take the more advanced road and composite the image using High Dynamic Range (HDR) light processing.
And yet you'll always know it's just a sprite with some extra fuzz. Clever, isn't it?
10. The last step is to make a copy of your image file and use it to create a mask that suitably covers the sprite. Here, we can thank Nova for using a clever version of the "screen" process we used up above; glows, booms, and weapon effects actually have the black portions of the image turned transparent even if the mask covers them. Just set your image to greyscale (to prevent color artifacts), use the Brightness and Contrast panel once more, and max it right now to obliterate any color depth. You can use the brightness slider to adjust how much of the blur is saved; most times you can reduce this number by a little bit because the pixels it would cover are so dark and colorless they're not even distinguishable.
And there you have it! This is the process I've been using on all the new engine glows I've produced in the last few days, as well as some running lights and weapon effects! Just remember to save all finalized images in a PICT format and you can just import them directly into Mission Computer.
Actually, that reminds me: if you have any kind of a light source sprite sheet (running lights, weapons, engine glow, etc.) that has not properly been masked, you can use step 10 to produce an effective one. Nova's screening filter is very forgiving of a few misplaced pixels, and they won't even be noticed when the sprite it used. Some of you may have encountered artifacts on your mask files that create a white line down one side or a dotted line along the bottom. To prevent this, I use this process when converting from a color glow image.
1. Save a copy. We don't want to damage the original. 2. Change the color image to greyscale. 3. Bump the contrast to the maximum, and use brightness to tone it. 4. Change the image mode to a bitmap, which effectively locks the pixels and their values. 5. Save the image as a PICT.
By changing it to a bitmap, the save process cannot apply any compression whatsoever, so there's no chance that it will change a single pixel. So long as the image was fine upon completion, saving it as a bitmap will preserve every inch of it exactly as you want it.
P.S. I just want it noted that I always feel a little cheated on my post count, because every time I make a new reply I tend to hammer out a massive wall of text and yet it still only counts at 1 toward my "post count prestige". Bummer.
Oh, and this is how that effect looks when applied to a sprite in-game. You can see the blurring outward onto the body of the craft without obscuring the geometry, thanks to the screening effect I described above.
Couldn't this technique be applied to weapon sprites to make bright plasma bolts or something? I'm experimenting with these techniques with my test of the UE Destroyer from override.
QUOTE (rafy23 @ Sep 6 2010, 12:58 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Absolutely. It works best with anything that has a bright center or is at least meant to have one as the final product. It's actually used by some 3D artists to achieve a softer tone across an entire image. Try it with a low-contrast photo with a strong focal subject, such as perhaps a candle photographed in a dark room. I actually used thus technique to add more powerful glows to the weaponry sprites in my TC, so yes, it works great for weapon sprites. Just be sure to activate the "translucent sprites" flag or else the mask won't activate in screening mode, concurrently leaving big black outlines around the sprite's edge. I wouldn't recommend using the trick for missiles, because you either have to turn the sprite translucent, therefore making the missile fuselage see-through, or you must leave it opaque and have the contrail looking ugly because of the black masking.
Sorry about no TC content posts in the last couple of days; I've been attending training for my new job, and the seminars take up to nine hours a day, leaving me with little time to design things.
Though I'm not technically allowed to broadcast to the world where I'm now employed, let's just say that it's a company made famous entirely by the name of a certain type of produce.
Awesome, you work for my favorite company. All is forgiven, Delphi.
Congrats on the job, Delphi! You've certainly earned it! That solution for engine glows is way better than what I was attempting. I was working with halo textures in Blender, and just never quite got it to look the way I wanted. Much, much better, thank you!
Don't worry. I'm not dead. I'm just really busy between school, work, and the TC. I've done a little bit of production on more detailed weapon sprites (like missiles), and some color work on older sheets.
I did a little bit of work touching up the Pariah fleet and adding a new member to their malevolent war machine: a capital ship of sorts, but more suited for picking on small vessels, in the same vein as the others.
:blink: That capital ship is incredibly creepy, Delphi. It and the other Pariah vessels are really beginning to resemble giant space bugs. You've also surprised me with how organic those ships look. It gives me hope that I can make something resembling a giant organic creature myself for HOTS.
Pffwar, I can't wait to see that thing flying around in game.
On a side note, what are you using to do your weapon sprites?
QUOTE (Sp3cies @ Sep 15 2010, 05:41 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
I've mostly just been using Bryce and doing color and touch-ups in Photoshop. Missiles, of course, have their own physical model...
...while weapon bolts are all based off of the same long teardrop-shaped piece, rendered in full white and enhanced with color and glow in PS.
By the way, the Pariah ships are not rendered in full-black/red like that. I just wanted to creatively illustrate their general sizes, silhouettes, and evil nature. However, they do use black and red paint, along with some gold trim here and there.
Haha, now the Pariah need a capital ship with 8 electro-mag lasers (if I remember their signature weapon's name correctly) so that they can call it something creepy and spider-related, like the "Black Widow" or something.
This post has been edited by king_of_manticores : 15 September 2010 - 05:50 PM
Just out of curiosity, what angle are those silhouettes from? I was thinking top-down or in-game angle, but then I thought they might well be front on, and could probably still work from that angle, so it'd be good to know either way.
Those are from a top down view. If you go back a few pages you can see the smaller two in detail.