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Domarius

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Posts posted by Domarius

  1. That burrick image would have been fine embedded in the post, at approximately the size of the text box you get to make your post with. I wish everyone would post their pictures like that. Most are, but when its just a link to a huge, huge file, not only does it take a long time to download, but it eats into my download cost. When I'm in a hurry at Uni, I can't afford to click links and download huge pictures.

     

    If its embedded in the page, I can see it at a glance. Takes all of .34 seconds instead of 30.

     

    Sketches don't need detailed quality, just enough to get the information across. We can see it has a scaley back, we can see the kind of mouth it has, etc. We don't need to see every single pencil stroke in detail.

     

    Btw, when we're talking about pictures on a monitor, were talking in PIXELS, not DPI. You can talk in 72 dpi, but it just makes things confusing. If, when you resize your image to 72 dpi, it becomes 624x234 pixels, its going to be displayed at 624x234 pixels, regardless of your resolution. Higher resolution just makes it take up less space on your screen. The pixture is still displayed at 624x234 pixels.

     

    And since the forum is designed to fit on an 800x600 screen, so should the pictures.

  2. What's wrong with the "bulkyness" of the old ones? They look just like what they are - huge boilers on legs. Which is what they would have to be. Mostly all boiler, to get enough power going to drive that thing. And then, very very simple, because the boiler is heavy enough as it is. Which explains the spherical shape, and the clunky side-side walk.

     

    I say keep the steam and clunkyness in mind. I think the old one did a good job of making it "beleivable".

     

    At the extreme other end of the scale, you have those stupid garish outfits the X-Men have in the comics, just to look cool. No practicality whatsoever. Notice they changed their outfits for the movie, for something more beleivable.

     

    I reckon it pulls you in to the atmosphere more, as the old mechanist bots did for me - had me staring at them as they walked by, wondering how they worked.

  3. That face is AWESOME. AWESOME. It has so much character, and is a really cool blend of realism and carachature (sp). By carachature, however you spell it, I mean how you exaggerate features, in an almost cartoonlike way.

    That is the style of the original Thief games, if you look at the movie artwork.

    This is awesome.

  4. Even with body awareness, the gem would be required. Players simply aren't going to want to constantly look down at thier body to check if they're in the shadows or not. We don't have peripheral vision in the game, which is the only way that you could really check to see if your in shadows constantly without a meter.

    You are right there. You don't have to actually LOOK DOWN at your body in real life. You can see it at the edge of your periphery all the time.

  5. The thing about www.wings3d.com is that it is BASED on Nendo, which was made by the same people who made Maya - hence they all share a similar interface, and "box modelling" interface. :)

  6. I think that bit of jewelry is perfect. My vote to base it on that.

    i suppose the advantage of the light gem representing a real world (well kinda real world) object is to maintain the suspension of belief. The wierd compass/light gem device in T3 was quite practical, but it felt dissjointed to me.,
    As opposed to T2's square block thing, that doesn't look like much of anything?

    The light gem is a tool for the player. It's to simulate being able to look at your own body in real life and seeing how much darkness you're in.

     

    Although if we have body awareness, it could negate the need for such a gem.

  7. Here is the best budget 3D rendering info I have ever read.

    I love it because I actually preffer the tools involved over the proffesional ones, because they are simply geared toward video game models, and you can make high quality ones too, for the normal maps.

     

    Check out this thread;

    http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/vie...t=wings3d#10937

     

    This post specifically;

    Yes I know Milkshape and I was using it a lot before I found Wings. Milkshape is good all round modeler. If you have Milkshape, you dont need nothing more to make low poly models.

    However while Milkshape is good in modeling / UV maping / animating ..its not exelent in none of them. In what it exel is wide range of export formats.

     

    As modeler Wings is much better, more comfortable and quicklier. Also you are not restricted to low poly modeling.

     

    As UW maper LithUnwrap is better ...have more options and easier editing environment

     

    And finaly CharacterFX is better for animating since it suport weighted wertices already and have better editing posibilities. (Bye the way CHaracterFX export to Milkshape format among others)

     

    That doesnt mean that Milkshape is useles ...you have everything in one package and if you dont plan to model some wery complicated models its sufficient. Its good especialy for begginers.

     

    As for Wings3D, you can upgrade it little bit by downloading YafRay at www.coala.uniovi.es/~jandro/noname/ ...its raytracing renderer. Wings suport it as plugin.

    So basically;

    Wings3D = Modelling

    LithUnwrap = UW mapping

    CharacterFX = Animation

     

    As an example of what he does with this setup, check out his home page

    http://members.lycos.co.uk/arras1/

    Click on "Gallery". It's worth it. Some of that stuff would fit right in with the Thief world. His humans are awesome.

  8. one thing to the door texture up a few posts:

     

    try to avoid the "natural" highlight, i mean that the door is brighter on the top end than it is on the lower end.

     

    it will look strange in the game especially to people like me who have an eye for it.

     

    persective and slightly not down straight 90 degree angles do also look strange, for this case use the arbitary tool in photoshop

    I read a tutorial about how to do this really easily. Too bad I can't remember where it is. The key words are "photoshop" and "high" and "low" and "frequencies"

     

    Basically you ran a "remove high frequencies" filter on the image. Or was it low frequencies? I can't remember. Basically, one makes it really blurry, but the other seems to remove all the "shading" kind of tone data, so if you have a picture of a sign with a highlight or darkened corner, the sign actually becomes uniform in colour, as if it was evenly lit. It doesn't work for all pictures, but it can save you a lot of airbrushing when it does!

  9. Good idea, but I feel that we need West and East pointed somehow.

     

    There are some good pics in this thread.

     

    I LOVE that one god_is_my_goldfish made, except that it's probably a bit too ornate, and has too many thin bits that will be blurred up when scaled down. HUD items have to be very clear.

  10. Wacom!!!!!!!!!!! They are like, the Creative Labs Soundblaster of the Tablet world.

     

    I have one

    http://www.wacom-asia.com/products/graphir...ire3_index.html

    (of course I have pasted you the Asia-pacific link, but just go to www.wacom.com and choose the correct reigon)

     

    That is the consumer model. Cost me $150 AU and has pressure sensitivity, and a cordless, batteryless pen, with the tip, 2 thumb buttons, and erraser head, completely mappable to any function in any program.

     

    Although the program has to support pressure sensitivity to benifit from the tip pressure. PhotoShop is great.

     

    I highly recommend it. It is powerful enough for your needs and very cost effective. I think anything more expensive is only for highly paid proffessionals, and most of us wouldn't make use of the features. That's only my opinion, but I do own the consumer one, and it does everything I want.

     

     

    Regarding your new concept art Darkness_Falls; ahh, colour dodge - looks like you've accustomed yourself to it quite nicely :) I think those look miles better than the originals.

    Colour dodge can be applied as a blending mode for an entire layer; you can get other kinds of effects that way, by duplicating your artwork onto a new layer and giving that new layer a different blending mode.

     

    There is a new game http://www.crashday-game.de/pages_e/news.htm - check the screenshots - the artist has taken the screen shots and done some layering effects to make them look like photos, not that they had much work to do with making it look realistic, heh, but they've obviously used photoshop to give them "photograph" looks - how everything is sort of blue-ish, and goes darker around the edges.

    Just another way of creating mood.

  11. I have a feeling the drawings will get better over time. I'm actually working on a different room scene right now that I think you might appreciate more when I'm done. There's more life and moodiness, in general, to it -- and it feels more Thief to me. I'm using PhotoShop and the coloring will be much better. Once I get a digital pen, I have a feeling you'll be seeing a lot more cooler things, too.

    Awesome. Yes I was just going to suggest those things - learning photoshop more and getting a graphics tablet.

     

    Using photoshop should be quicker to create more impressive looking artwork, once you have the hang of it. I can tell that the T3 concept artist primarily uses the "colour dodge" tool, which gives everything a glowy, shiny look. Very nice if you don't over do it.

  12. I like what I see so far :)

     

    If you artist guys are using lots of reference material from the appropriate time periods, and making design desicions based on the Thief world that we want, I'm happy.

     

    Just as a suggestion - have you thought about adding bolts or screws to the logo, if you're having trouble putting a hammer with one other thing, some little things like bolts could give you more options to arrange things to look nice.

     

    After we come up with a design, we should read some "meaning" into it, eg, the cog surrounds the base of the hammer, to represent its power that spreads over everything... etc. so the Builders have more things to write about.

  13. Wow, a man of many talents.

     

    Coming up with concepts for furniture by doing some research into the relevent time periods is something that needs to be done. I like the museum stand for that reason.

     

    The concept art for T3 involved a lot of dynamic sceans and good use of colour, that gave designers a lot to work from. In comparison, that shot of the room with the light on the wall is really bland, in terms of colours, archetecture, and overall feel.

    When the concept art was drawn with the camera at a really dramatic angle, you might think "well, the camera angle itself isnt' saying much - your viewpoint moves around all the time in the game", but what you really should be getting out of the image, is looking at it at a whole, and it gives you a feeling, and then you say "well, how can I somehow translate that feeling into the game, and give the player that feeling when they play the game?" I think that is the true power of concept art.

     

    We need something that says something new. Well not real new - we know what the Thief world is like - dark and moody, with brooding shadows and atmospheric lights, and ominous sillhouettes. But see how the concept art took that "theme" and gave it its own character?

    It's not easy but that's what I think we should aim for. A unique style of our own.

     

    I can see these sketches are just drafts, but they're a good start.

  14. Thanks guys! I think it has potential also!! I need to play through Thief 1 and 2 again soon to try and re-capture the feel of some of the aural delights they had. I'm sure you already did this, but while listening to my tracks, close your eyes and try to envision differen't scenes/moods/situations that could be happening. There are a few bits of sounds in there I've noticed, for example, that might work well for machinery -- especially when looped. The piano & strings music sound used in the 'Darkness_Falls-1.mp3' file (about :45 seconds into it) is very similar to the one used in the mansion level of TDS (the level where you could see lightning flashes from inside.) That's the only reason I did that.

    I'm totally glad we have you on ambience. I can tell you know what you're doing. :)

     

    I did try and envision some bits when I listened to them :) And I could see them, even in the sound track's undeveloped stage.

  15. I actually went out and finally got around to guying a book on anatomy last night, finally. Before now I wasn't nearly good enough to justify it, but now... :)

     

    Yes, the face was way too long, from about the eyes down, so I shifted it all down a bit (including the neck). Is a lot better now. Will put up some screens later, but right now I'm trying to make some hands. I hate hands.

    Awesome. Glad to hear you have reached that stage of your artistic development. I'm really looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

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