Pak & Spring's Thread

[pakmannen]

We have started converting the main screens to high-res. We'll post progress of the concepts here.

You can see a few of the current ones here:

- Noblewoman

- Haunt

[drumple]

i had an idea on that, before you get to far making those...

 

basicly, making some kind of movement in the menus like transitioning those side characters from one to

another in a loop.. over a given amount of time would be a nice effect, and if thats the case then the full

screen images are not needed, only the characters with no background, but still have that look of the

parchment, and they would need an alpha channel also... kind of hard to explain what i mean. but basicly the

menu's could use one single hires image, with no paper part on them, and no characters, the paper gets over

layed, and regardless of what menu is going on, the side characters transition.. as to how many.. that could

be discussed.. but lots would be nice.. plus some overall movement in the background parchment also could

be done, tricked in with a flat model..

 

i can do a test sample to show what i mean.

[Springheel]

That's exactly what I was hoping to do. Pak, remember your early concept where the city art on the parchment faded in and out to different images? I was thinking that effect might look better if applied to the characters. A random loop would be preferrable, personally, but it's not crucial. I don't know how the logistics of the transparency would work though.

[pakmannen]

I'm not sure that will be possible without ditching the "swirling background" thing. Cause I seriously doubt we'll be able to separate the sketches from the background, and use alpha channels, like drumple suggested.

 

It would probably look good though, I dont argue with that. My initial idea was actually to have the characters move, slow-motion, still frame animation kinda thing. (That would have been really hard to do with prerendered images though, so I ditched that one)

 

Edit - How's it going with the psd?

[Springheel]

Oh, sorry, forgot to link it.

 

Menu

 

What would we need to get some more character shots like those? Oddity took those screenshots from lightwave, right?

[Gildoran]

Ok, I've tried to see if I could come up with a blending method in D3 that has a resemblance to the "soft light" blending, and I think I have...

[pakmannen]

@Spring: The shots are rendered in lightwave, yes. I don't think we can really count on getting any more than we already have. I worked a bit on the priest, it looks a better. Also added the mech bot.

 

The only ones I don't like are the citywatch and uncle gay the hammer guard. A few of the other ones are a bit low-res but it's not that obvious, and nothing we can do much about. (Thief, Prelate, Priest, Haunt))

 

Also added a few concepts Odd made of other things but I dunno..

Here's the PSD

 

(For the record, good going Gild)

[Springheel]

@Spring: The shots are rendered in lightwave, yes. I don't think we can really count on getting any more than we already have. I worked a bit on the priest, it looks a better. Also added the mech bot.

 

Assuming they're successful in converting the md5 files back to meshes, we might be able to use lightwave to make some more of our own. Or with new models that BT is making.

 

The only ones I don't like are the citywatch and uncle gay the hammer guard.

 

Yeah, I don't like the builder guard either. I actually like the city watch though, at least the large version.

 

How did Odd pose the figures in these shots? http://www.mindplaces.com/darkmod/guards.jpg

They're obviously in-game, but they're well-posed. We could use that method to get more shots if we wanted.

[Springheel]

I don't think we should include the bot, actually. It currently looks very close to the T2 versions, and we may wind up having nothing like it in the actual game.

 

I also suggest that we either stick to having portrait shots of the characters, or try to have an even mix of portrait and full-figure. Right now (in the 'good' ones) the haunt is the only one that is full-body, so it looks slightly out of place next to the others.

[drumple]

how about a close-up shot of a door/handle/lock... where you can see the keyhole... if you know what i mean..

not dead-on.. but at an angle.. i'll see if i can find a sample of what i mean..

 

 

 

and i made a trans test gui.. i can upload it now, or later if i can make the background moving/scrolling effect..

course.. i can up it now.. and add that in later...

[Springheel]

how about a close-up shot of a door/handle/lock

 

At the moment we're trying to stick with screenshots of things we have actually modeled. If we can pose the figures in-game, we're set, but I don't quite know how Oddity did that.

[drumple]

he might have just modeled them in poses with no rigging and no interactivity.. i made a bluescreen map to

get the caps i needed to make the transition test, basicly im in a room where the ai cant see me, and i just

take screenshots of them with a bluebackground for the texture, that way i can quickly remove the blue in

paintshoppro and make the side images i needed for the test..

 

bluescreen map

 

screen of trans test...

 

 

i'll upload the trans test soon, i just figured out how to make the background move, have to get it in game.

 

currently, the side transitions between 4 posing characters, i cannot seem to get the prelate to work.. im not

shure why.. it did before.. but i now have the clean cvs version.. maybe im missing something.

 

but adding other images like a keyhole in that burned way would also break up the character posing, an

image like this.. http://agent47.com/goodlivingguide/business.jsp

or something similar...

 

anyways.. i'll get back on this test gui and try to get it up'd.

[drumple]

ok, im uploading the trans test as it is for now, until i work out the background moving stuff, but its just a test

so keep in mind i made quick character mockups for it, and im no psp/photoshop master..

 

its just to see how the concept might look.

 

its on the ftp in the guis folder, called transtest1.pk4, to run it just type

testgui guis/transtest1.gui

[Gildoran]

Ok, I've finally finished uploading the blending testmap to CVS... to try it, type: testgui guis/menu_blendtest.gui

 

It shows transitioning between two pictures. (the builder and the haunt) Also, I did a small test with slightly swaying the builder.

 

I should note that the builder/revanent pictures haven't been scaled up to powers of two or anything like that, so the image quality on them might not be perfect.

[pakmannen]

@drumple: if we're using ingame characters, why not use the actual model? You can put models in a GUI right?

 

@Spring: I think a mix between close up and not so close up would be nice. Maybe not 100% full-figure. Currently the haunt AND the priest are posed like this. So that's like, 2 out of 5

 

The bot: oh, didn't think of that. A real shame if we didn't get something like that ingame!

 

I'm also not sure about having the ingame characters there as well. They don't really look like the prerenders, so there might be a clash. We'll see how that turns out though.

 

@Gildoran&Drumple: I'll take a look at those tests

[drumple]

@drumple: if we're using ingame characters, why not use the actual model? You can put models in a GUI right?

 

you can put a model there, and have it play some animation.. like idle for instance. but it's tricky trying to

orient the model correctly so it doesnt look skewed... but i can see what you mean with it.. like 3wave, when

they had the player model on the main menu, or even 'no one lives forever'

 

its to bad we didnt have the thief model oddity made.. that would have looked nice in that type of menu

setting.

 

 

EDIT:

 

ok, i tried a model out, looks ok.. kind of skewed.. hard to get a proper position to view him at...

but i had a funny thought... if this was something we wanted to pursue as a test, we could always have

him play animations when we mouse over him.. right now he's in idle anim mode.. but if we mouse over

him we could have him draw his sword.. ect... just a thought...

 

 

plus it took some time to load him in the menu... thats another thing to consider.

[Gildoran]

You know... I think it'd be possible to combine rendering models with the soft-light background blending. Could you post your code for the renderDef?

 

Edit: Good point about loading times... I was just itching to see what a 3d character would look like blended with the background.

[pakmannen]

Yep, the characters has to be blended. Looks silly otherwise.

I still think the prerenders are more stylish though

[drumple]

here's the renderdef, it does need ajustments for the skewing, hopefully you can get him

to render more... inline so to speak.. renderdefs usually give some fisheyed perspective which is

hard to get right.

 

  renderDef ModelRender {
  rect		 0,10, 320, 400
  visible	  1
  backcolor	  0, 0, 0, 0
bordercolor	1,1,1,1
bordersize	0
  model		 "models/md5/chars/guards/elite_citywatch/elitecitywatchmesh.md5mesh"
  anim		 "idle"
  animClass	  "darkmod_citywatch_elite"
  needsRender	  1
  modelRotate	10, 180, 0, 0
  modelOrigin	0, 0, 0, 0
  viewOffset	  -60, 0, 50, 0
  lightOrigin	  -100, 50, 0, 0
  lightColor	  1, 1, 1, 1
  notime	  1
  }

[pakmannen]

@Spring: I worked a bit on the PSD. Did a few verisons of the citywatch. citywatch2 might have the more interesting pose, but I still think citywatch1 (the closeup) turned out better in the end. (It's also higher res)

 

I'm also starting to change my mind about the priest, it looks kinda plastic or something. Plus the pose is somewhat ridiculous.

 

Uploading now Uploaded

 

@drumple: Heh, I also started thinking of NOLF when I wrote that post. Snazzy menu that one

[Gildoran]

Heh, when I see the model blended with the background, it kind of reminds me of the moving newpaper pictures from the Harry Potter movies.

[drumple]

Heh, when I see the model blended with the background, it kind of reminds me of the moving newpaper pictures from the Harry Potter movies.

 

i was searching the net for animated gifs of tree's blowing in the wind and other stuff like that so i could

use them on a gui surface like paper ingame so it would have that effect..

 

sort of like in "the adams family" movie, where fester opens that book and you see some drawing at the

top of the page of the huricane and the text lower down.. but the drawing is moving... i still want to try that

out if i can ever find some proper animated drawing somewhere.

[drumple]

@gil

 

do you have a screenshot of how it looks blended?

[Gildoran]

Here you go.

I've also uploaded menu_blendtest2.gui, so you can see what it looks like while moving.

[Springheel]

ok, im uploading the trans test as it is for now, until i work out the background moving stuff, but its just a test

so keep in mind i made quick character mockups for it, and im no psp/photoshop master..

 

That fading in and out is exactly what I had in mind. We'd have to find a different way to achieve a soft-light affect though.

 

I'm also not sure about having the ingame characters there as well. They don't really look like the prerenders, so there might be a clash.

 

I agree. They really don't go that well together--the rendered characters just don't look very good like that. On the other hand, how easy will it be for us to get more prerendered character shots?

 

@Gil: That looks great. The images look just like the originals. I slighly prefer how drumple did the fading (I think his fade out completely in between images, where yours overlay each other slightly) but that look is exactly right.

 

As for the moving rendered model, I still don't like it. It doesn't have the same illustration feel that the prerendered shots do.

 

@Pak:

 

@Spring: I worked a bit on the PSD. Did a few verisons of the citywatch. citywatch2 might have the more interesting pose, but I still think citywatch1 (the closeup) turned out better in the end. (It's also higher res)

 

I agree, the closeup is better. And I agree the priest doesn't look that great. However, if we don't use the bot, that leaves us only 5 good shots (all but one of which are closeups now). I might be able to squeeze out one or two different versions of the thief, but that's really not enough.

 

I'm going to see what map shots might look like.

 

edit: bah, they don't look good at all.