Springheel's Stuff

[Springheel]

Here are a few new coat of arms banners I'm working on. The one on the top left is the original:

 

Banners

 

There seems to be a little bit of white bits along the bottom, though...it's on the original too and I'm having trouble getting rid of it.

[New Horizon]

Here are a few new banners I'm working on. The one on the left is the original:

 

Banners

 

Wow! They look great Spring.

[Renzatic]

Hell yeah! Damn nice work.

[Napalm]

How did you create those? Do you scan/have a draw pad or do work purley with mouse?

[Springheel]

I work with a tablet when I'm drawing, but there wasn't much drawing involved with these--just using the clone tool to remove the original coat of arms and overlaying a new one.

[Springheel]

BT, I've noticed something odd with the banner fringe. Even though the diffuse map has solid green, there are white bits and a black line appearing in the model itself. Is this related to the uv-map? That's the only thing I don't know how to mess with.

 

[Renzatic]

That looks like it could be a specularity related issue. Try and set a small fullblack texture in as the spec and see if that changes anything.

[sparhawk]

They are looking very good indeed. Nice work!

[Domarius]

Heh, best banners I've seen in any game. Those normal maps are awesome.

[oDDity]

Apart from the gold trim at the bottom, which looks like shit. It's obviously supposed to be gold thread dangling down, but looks like cardboard or something.

[Springheel]

I wanted to get rid of those white bits before doing much with the trim. I've been able to get rid of most of them, and I've added some more detail to the fringe (I left BT's original untouched for comparison). Also tried a couple of artsy tapestries, but I don't think this is the best model for them.

 

Banners Update

[oDDity]

You'll need a normal and alpha, and specular map for it, as well as a good texture.

[Springheel]

It does have a normal, though the lighting in that shot doesn't really show it off. I'll see if a specular will bring out the top threads a little more. I could try using an alpha to make the bottom uneven, but I haven't had good luck with them.

[Springheel]

Ok, worked with the fringe some more. I think that's looking better. I may try an alpha at some point. I also swapped in two other tapestries that worked a little better with that model.

 

Banner Update 2

 

BT, if you don't mind I'll add the updated fringe to yours as well.

[BlackThief]

yeah do it, looks better.

[Springheel]

Ok, done. The six banners are now on CVS.

[sparhawk]

The banners look fantastic, but the fringe still looks like cardboards IMO. Maybe it's only the light, because the light is quite high in your shot. I rather use a map as a background, because this will give a better view how it actually looks in-game.

[Springheel]

Here are some variations of BT's vase1.

 

[sparhawk]

Great! You seem to come up to speed now.

[_Atti_]

Banners look fantastic, those vases seem to be a bit wild in color,however i guess they'll look good in game environment.

[Springheel]

There's a fine line to walk between oversaturating the colours and looking too bland like TDS. A couple of those certainly stray close to the former.

[Renzatic]

Personally, I'd rather we lean our palette more towards dirty and washed out than vivid and oversaturated. It fits the theme far better, and helps combat D3's innate stark metallic sheen.

 

Generally undersaturating yields better results in D3 if you're wanting to go for more earthy tone. Like throwing a somewhat muted red texture into D3 will give you a more "RAHH RED" look, but if you wash it out a bit it usually looks like something far more fitting for a Thief like game.

 

This is a quick 3 second photoshop I did to demonstrate my point. It's hard to say exactly what that'll look like in D3 without having access to the textures, but this is what we should be aiming for as far as the general look of the mod is concerned.

 

Course this is just my opinion, my ears are open for counterarguments.

[Springheel]

That contradicts what we've been doing thus far--going for a more colourful T2 style rather than the bland, washed-out TDS.

[Renzatic]

T2 was colorful in a realistic way, it was still rather muted in comparison to...say...an Unreal game.

 

I'm not saying we should go T3 drab...which really, now that I think about it, is drab textures clashing with almost pastel colored lighting...but rather we should desaturate our textures for the sake of D3. If you were to make a stained wood texture that's the exact same color as one in T2, it'd come out looking more plastic and rendery than it would in Dark. It's mainly because of the lighting, and undersaturating helps combat that.

 

Actually Blackthief's holiday pic is a good example of that, he's doing his diffuse textures with a palette that'd fit easily in T2. It'd look great in T2, but in D3 it almost has a cel shaded quality to it. You have to tone down colors because of the way D3's renderer works.

[sparhawk]

Considering BlackThief's ingame screenshot I think they look rather perfect and real. I'm always wondering how he does it, because his woods even looks on the screenshot much more alive, than anything I can come up with. Mine always look computery.