Speculative Graphics Showcase

[Catfish]

Well it's not a big deal, really. The bmps are in the zip files. I guess it's force of habit, but just for you I'll go through and change some of the jpgs to pngs in my units posts.

[Catfish]

It's done now. Some of the pngs are now up to 50% larger than the previous jpgs.

[fairline]

Excellent again, Catfish

You have produced the best unit conversions I have ever seen, IMHO. In fact, I was kind of dismissive of photo-reductions and conversions before seeing your stuff, as there are some really tragic efforts out there, but these are a revelation. Clearly you put a huge amount of effort into tidying up / redrawing after reduction. They put my drawn-from-scratch efforts to shame; I might have to have a go at this myself. Any pointers you want to share?

If you've got any spare time, there are some Warhammer 40 000 pics at this site that would be putty in your hands....

http://www.games-workshop.com/40kuniverse/warhammer40k/warhammer40k.htm

Edit: piss-poor spelling

[Catfish]

Originally posted by fairline
You have produced the best unit conversions I have ever seen, IMHO. In fact, I was kind of dismissive of photo-reductions and conversions before seeing your stuff, as there are some really tragic efforts out there, but these are a revelation.

Edit: Edited Fairline's piss-poor spelling

You embarrass me, man. I too was dismissive of many photo-reduced graphics. I think I remember seeing a "realistic" pixellated blobs vs Nemo's isometric units war either here or in the CivFanatics forum, and although I didn't contribute, I was firmly in the Nemo camp - and still am.

The big problem with many of these conversions is firstly, the 8-bit colour limitation (actually substantially less than 256 colours in the Civ2 palette). After loading the Civ2 palette to the graphic you almost always end up with speckling when your graphics program applies a nearest neighbour type calculation to the pixels. Most unit-creators don't clean this up afterwards. Many don't use filters available in programs like PSP and Photoshop either.

Secondly, many of the raw graphics were obviously completely unsuitable - without virtually redrawing the unit - something I try to avoid. I've seen a lot of units that were way too dark, had poor perspective and had inappropriate lighting (inherited from the original). I mean, if you use a Star Wars ship from a 2D picture containing explosions and lasers which light up its surface, it may look great in the scene, but ends up looking like crud after you've reduced it.

Thirdly, collections of photo-reduced units tend to lack consistency of style. I hate this. Even my conversions suffer from this to some extent. Some of my older man-sized units are smaller than my more recent ones, a legacy from the FW mindset. Now I stick to around 41-43 pixels high (head to toe) for such units.

I reckon the Nemo-style (isometric) units look great. If we had these units rendered with 24-bit "skins", they'd look even better. I prefer all mechanised military units and aircraft to be drawn in this style. I'll give you a quick and dirty example of what can be done to some of the existing isometric units by using PSP filters in 24-bit colour. Below, I've got Nemo's original Panther and Jagdpanther units, together with your superb Leopard 2. Each has been re-coloured and then had a texture applied to create different camo effects. The third Panther was re-coloured green and then had a brown mottled texture applied over the top.



Edit: Changed from png to bmp - too dark for what I want to demonstrate.

Originally posted by fairline
They put my drawn-from-scratch efforts to shame.

Bollocks!! To achieve the types of graphics you do within the Civ2 palette is a skill very few can master. In a previous post I listed my top Civ2 artists and made a comment to the effect of, "what could these guys do with 24-bit colour?" The thing is that none of these guys ever attempted ToT graphics. I'm one of the few who has had a crack at 15-bit ToT graphics, so there's not really much for comparison. I'm sure, given the chance, you guys would put me to shame.

Originally posted by fairline
Clearly you put a huge amount of effort into tidying up / redrawing after reduction.

It varies, depending on the quality of the graphic following resizing. Sometimes they're almost ready to go following reduction. Sometimes I'll apply various filters in PSP prior to rescaling, but mostly afterwards. Of course, you will always need to clean up the anti-aliasing around the edge of the unit.

Originally posted by fairline
; I might have to have a go at this myself. Any pointers you want to share?

If you've got any spare time, there are some Warhammer 40 000 pics at this site that would be putty in your hands.... .

Sure, I'll see what I can scramble together about my methodology, if in fact there is a method to the madness . I'll post it later (this post's long enough). Just briefly about the Games Workshop/Citadel miniatures; they tend to suffer from problems of proportional exaggeration. This isn't to say they can't be used, but it is often difficult to find decent source material. The sculptors of this series also tend to favour ornate clothing and weaponry, and this doesn't always translate well to small game graphics. Their heads and hands are often disproportionately large - this can often be fixed, though, by simply deleting the heads and hands, and then adding them again from a further reduced graphic. Generally I just shave a few pixels off the hands. There are other manufacturers, like The Foundry, for example, which produce lines of exceedingly stocky figures, some resembling the Michelin Man. Stretching the unit sometimes works here.

Anyway, I'll get together a list of guidelines and post them at a later date. Now all you have to do is convince some of these scenario designers to use ToT. Hell, I might even go back to work on mine - but don't hold your breath.

Edit: Corrected comments about colour depth - I hate spreading bullsh1t information.

[fairline]

Curt, Tech, anyone else producing ToT units - have you seen these textured tanks by Catfish This could change the way ToT units look!

Catfish - you have to tell me how you did that. I'm firmly fixed in an 8-bit mentality; even the ToT units I've made have used the civ2 pallette. I would really appreciate that step-by-step guide to how you achieved those remarkable textures. I have psp but I never read the manual and I haven't played with many of it's features.

Better still, you could make this an article for the SLeague magazine.

Just out of interest, they still look good when you load up the civ2 pallette - not much of the detail is lost. Excellent work!

[curtsibling]

Very impressive indeed!

These units do transform into standard civ pallete types almost unscathed!

Mind-blowing potential!

It would be great if we could put to together a requests workshop in these forums, so we could gather all the best units and art.
Then have a team of artists to creat stuff as needed!

I am imagining the kind of units Catfish and Fairline would make as a creation duo!

*faints*

[curtsibling]

Amazingly, this is how the same Catfish Panzer looks with the standard civ2 MGE pallete!

[fairline]

That's the one that really caught my eye as well, Curt, together with the JagdPanther. That's the closest thing I've ever seen to the actual camo used for late war German tanks. There's a job for life doing that with all of Nemo's tanks, Catfish

[curtsibling]

I would love to see some of the others done in that style.

I think we have the seeds of a great Civ2 revolution here!

[techumseh]

Another example of ToT superiority!

Here's the conundrum: ToT is a superior scenario making tool, but it's not widely played. MGE is popular, but most of it's potential has long since been exhausted. What to do?

Well, ToT COULD get more popular, but MGE WON'T get any more sophisticated. Since ToT can now be downloaded online for about 10 bucks US, there's a possiblity that it could catch on, at least in the scenario community.

For that to happen, bright new scenario designers are gonna have to stick with ToT and show what it - and they - can do! (Hint for CS )

[Mr. Oobir]

Whoa, hey! 64x64-pixel graphics shouldn't be able to look like that!

PSP filters...how come I've never thought to use those? I use them with any other graphics I make. *Smacks head.*

Do give some pointers on making these types of graphics. I just tried some quick experiments using filters on preexisting units (not from photos) and the results are poor to fair, as can be seen here.

[Catfish]

Originally posted by fairline
There's a job for life doing that with all of Nemo's tanks, Catfish

That's why I'm showing you guys how to do it. The post is here .

Originally posted by curtsibling
I am imagining the kind of units Catfish and Fairline would make as a creation duo!

*faints*

Now, now, don't get carried away here.

Like I said earlier, I'll put something together later about making units from photos, et al. The most time-consuming part is actually finding decent source material, so I'll have to throw in some info about some of the types of websites to look for.

[lajzar]

Here is the complete humans collection from Warcraft III. The graphics could do with a little cleaning, and i haven't included those dots to mark where the shields should go yet.

They are in a 24-bit bmp format. I'd love to include a sample graphic to save you downloading the zip, but I haven't yet figured out how.

[Catfish]

Originally posted by lajzar
Here is the complete humans collection from Warcraft III. The graphics could do with a little cleaning, and i haven't included those dots to mark where the shields should go yet.

They are in a 24-bit bmp format. I'd love to include a sample graphic to save you downloading the zip, but I haven't yet figured out how.

OK, I downloaded the file and I've got a few comments. Firstly, although the units are saved in 24-bit colour, they certainly weren't created at this colour depth - believe me, I can tell. They are standard Civ2 size, which means you should be using the 8-bit palette for this purpose. If you intend to use them for the 24-bit ToT, the unit boxes should be 64x64 and you don't have to worry about the shield markers.

Seeing these units made me fire up WC3 and take a screenshot of the dwarven mortar team. I converted it to a ToT graphic for comparison - to give you an idea of what you can achieve when you create in 24-bit.



If you want to show an image and add an attachment, you will have to use Apolyton's upload feature. Upload the graphic and insert it into your post as an image and then add the .zip file as an attachment.

[lajzar]

Hmm, had a hard time recognising that as the same graphic. Then I realised that it must have had a different original team colour.

Anyhow, my reasoning on the size of the graphics. I am well aware that they are somewhat smaller than many other graphics, although, I hope, not so small that the units lose their distinctiveness. I just dislike the idea of infantry units occupying huge amounts of space inside the grid. I realise there has to be some level of disproportionality to get infantry and aircraft carriers, but I still like my carriers to be visually bigger, which means I have to make my infantry relatively smaller.

In the example you chose, those guys are meant to be dwarfs; stunties. They fill the entire width of the grid, and most of the height. That'd make a great mortar unit with a crew of ogres. But those guys look too big to think of them as dwarfs. Put it this way; you couldn't also have a cavalry unit that wouldn't make the guy on the horse look like a midget in comparison to these two dwarfs.

One other little thing that bugs me about ToT graphics is that most of the graphics (in the original game) have been shifted vertically to fill the approximate centre of the grid, resulting in ships and other units that look as if they are floating. Most of the extra vertical space possible in ToT is, imho, not useful. It means you can have your aircraft fly a big higher, but ships just look silly if you use it, and land units will usually look too tall/big relative to the carriers if you use it. This scaling thing is one thing that bugs me about many tank graphis too. Sure, they're noice and big, beautiful with plenty of detail, but they cover the tile below so exactly that you can't see the terrain

all imho of course. I realise the scaling of graphics is very much a personal taste issue.

About the 24 bit thing. I only use that as an intermediate step while modifying the graphics. I basically wanted to get something out quickly for opinions. Beyond cleaning these up and resaving them as a single 8-bit bmp, I wasn't planning to do much more work on each image.

ok, rant over. Wanna build the graphics for me (bearing in mind how fussy I am) so I can do the more interesting bit of making a rulese file that approximates warcraft?