Problem with sprite editing

[Edi]

I've been running 1900x1220 and not noticed anything compared to my older monitor which had 1280x1084 and my monitor is widescreen. Don't have the old one anymore, so I can't compare.

[Stavis_L]

Originally Posted by Edi

I've been running 1900x1220 and not noticed anything compared to my older monitor which had 1280x1084 and my monitor is widescreen. Don't have the old one anymore, so I can't compare.

Well, unless you're looking for it, it's not really very noticeable unless you're looking at something that makes it obvious (such as a sprite with a perfectly round circle - I think this may be what someone in the Mytheology thread was talking about when they noticed the eye sprites were slightly "flattened".)

It's very noticeable if you use windowed mode and modify the dimensions using the command line. For instance, launch specifying 1200x900, which is 4x3 aspect ratio, and then compare with 1280x1024 (5x4 - will appear slightly narrower) and then 1680 x 1050 (16x10, will appear wider.)

Just in case it's platform specific, I'm testing using version 3.24 on Windows 7 64 bit.

[Globu]

I see the problem on WinXP. I just assumed everyone else found it of no account.

[Ragnarok-X]

I made some more units. Any ideas about how to make them look better or general opinions at all ?




edit: is there anyway to attach a .tga and get a small preview inside the post ?

[Globu]

No claim to expertise (I knew nothing about graphical artwork a few months ago, and nothing about art in general a year ago), but I'll give some tips based on what I've been learning lately. If anyone wants to correct me or elaborate on anything, feel free.

For the things I'm talking about, I've attached an example image to show what I mean. I worked on Marerider1.tga.

1) The base sprite for this one is already a bit fuzzy and indistinct, like one of the ones that started out at a lower res and was resampled automatically to get a higher res image. In the future, I'd start out with a better base image. However, since we're working with this one, I would toy with using the paintbrush, 1 pixel, 20 or 30 opacity, set to "lighten only," on one of the brighter colors, to pick out a few details carefully. Like, for example, the edge of the armor going around the horse's neck. (You may want to use the select tool to keep from "paint" bleeding into neighboring pixels.)

Check out the leading and top edges of the shield, the ring around the horse's neck, and the bottom edges of the barding. I used the select tool to pick out what looked to me like the appropriate lines, and then used the color picker to find the brightest white pixel and ran across the selected pixels with the paintbrush (actually, here it was Normal mode, not Lighten only, since hue is not an issue on an essentially monochromatic portion of the horse). Then I picked the brightest spots on the selected areas and ran over them another time or two to make them a bit brighter.

More details could certainly be picked out, particularly on the rider, and I think I'd probably just get rid of the whole chain thing around the neck unless it's specifically desired (instead making it just like the bottom edges of the armor), but it should serve as a good example. And I claim no great artwork here -- I did it quickly for example, and didn't scrutinize it too closely.

You may also want to slightly darken areas setting aside, for example, the bottom of the shield from the foot. Be careful not to darken it too close to absolute black.

2) Make sure the shadows are complete. In Marerider1.tga, you have chunks of the shadow missing. I've colored the missing areas white.

3) As a general rule, make sure and get rid of the dark near-black pixels that show up around parts of the image when you've (a) either reduced or transformed the image or (b) used the smudge or paintbrush or something and it bled into a side background pixel. However, drawing light sources (flame, lightning, glows, etc.) is a bit different, and often actually seem to look better with a bit of dark "halo." The best trick is to try it out in-game and see how it gets rendered on the battlefield. You'll probably want to remove a few of them. (A quick way to find them is to use the color select tool in GIMP, shift-O, set threshold to 0 on it, select some point on the black background, and find pixels that should not be showing up.)

(I haven't fixed any of this -- you'll need to do that. One thing I would do is check out one of the flame graphics from a vanilla or mod sprite you know looks good, and check out closely how they went about it. If you want to try light-sourcing, check out how I did the lightning light-sourcing on the attack sprite for the Great Enchantress in the Community Sprites Update Mod. Not perfect, but I think it gets across the idea. If you do it, though, make sure it works -- it may not work well with this sprite.)

4) A further note on flames in particular, again, must really see how it looks in-game, but one thing I can tell for sure on its flames is that the flames being breathed out of his mouth on the attack sprite are going to show up way fuzzy and conspicuously too smooth. And I can also see two more problems on both sprites immediately: (1) the hoof flames might be angled a bit too much (I see you're going for the motion/wind thing, but you may want to make it a bit more mild -- particularly on the static sprite), and (2) the flames spouting out of his back look like they're coming from holes in the horse's body (like wounds), though this, I imagine, is okay if it was intentional.

5) For eyes, I've personally found that it looks best if you keep a ridge of unaffected color above the eye, and put everything (including glow from glowing eyes) below. I've set examples of how I'd do it quickly in a few quick edits aside from the main image.

6) Watch the feet/hooves. Here, it looks like the two rear hooves that the horse is standing on do not come down to their plane properly. (I've colored it bright green to show which one.) And with the horse's left-rear hoof (from the horse's own perspective), the hoof either looks too long or like the other one is coming down too far, so it should be shortened a couple of pixels.

7) As always, make sure none of the black portions of your sprite go all the way black -- particularly something to watch for on a dark sprite, as there's nothing more ugly than the holes that appear in odd spots from an area going from dark to transparent. (I haven't included it here, but check out the high foreleg on Marerider2.tga for what I'm talking about -- the leg has a two-pixel-wide hole in it.)

I hope that helps a bit!

[Ragnarok-X]

Thanks for your time. Im using photoshop, so now ive find to out how to apply your suggestions there. Thanks.

[Globu]

No problem. With PS, think "tolerance" instead of "threshold" -- that's the term it uses for paintbrush and all that. And for color select, think magic wand tool.

Oh, also, I realized after that post that for the glowing eyes, you'll want to make the pixels next to the bright eye really rich -- high on saturation -- but low on brightness. That brings out the eye nicely and gives the glowing effect.

[Ragnarok-X]

Can you give me an advice on how YOU would "fix" the flame breath ? It doesnt look too bad ingame, but i certainly appreciate if it would look better. What exactly is the problem in your opinion ?

[Globu]

Aside from being too smooth? Well, like I said, the first thing *I* would do is find a sprite that can serve as a good example. It may or may not be perfect, but, say, I randomly found 0910_king_of_magma. Then I'd compare what I have to it, and note that the flames in the example sprite tends to use high contrast, not get too dark, and at least some semi-clean lines (again, too much smoothness tends to not fit in right). So I'd pick out some lines of flame and reinforce them, like you can see in the top left section of the flames in the 0910 sprite.

Like I said, I'm not hanging myself out there like an expert. Just giving asked-for feedback and sharing tips I've found useful in my own learning process.

[rdonj]

It's too bad Sombre was banned, I'm sure he could come up with a few helpful suggestions.