General Project Thread & Feedback

<!--quoteo(post=188400:date=Apr 15 2008, 06:50 AM:name=87th)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (87th @ Apr 15 2008, 06:50 AM)
Corkscrews and metal tubes (both of which were already CG, as the devs said), holographic bushes, rotating metal plates, transparent tubes, and many shapes and curved surfaces that won't look as they should if they lack the needed texture/shines.

Some people including myself have already noted how the vector rings don't seem to be "golden", and the same will happen with all this stuff. As I said before, we have to be careful not to make it look like "Yoshi's Island in Sonic 2".

 

How are the more CG-type sprites going to work? Sonic's corkscrew and spinning (from being launched from a yellow spring) sprites look CG. Fully rendered sprites might look out of place (I suppose some level of cell-shading could get past it, if anyone knows how to do that).

 

I've just thought of something - it's just a longshot, but I might as well suggest it. About the ring thing [again. sorry ^^]...

What if we condensed the Special Zone ring from Sonic 1, and resize it to normal rings for Sonic 2?

 

Here is a CG ring my brother made in 3d Max, leave feedback and play around with it so we can touch it up.

http://www.2shared.com/file/3149520/6d29bf3c/ring_5.html

 

It's a pretty shiny one!

On other hand It's too shiny to be ripped off into frames, is it possible to render it with transparent background?

 

In 3d max apparently the only way to render something with a transparent background is to render each frame as a .TGA image. He's done this with the ring, and it is 50 frames. In photoshop you have to access the transparency map via the alpha channel to view it.

http://www.2shared.com/file/3149819/3700c708/cg_ring.html

 

Hmm, I don't think it will be possible to use more frames than the original game, if this is just going to be VRAM replacements...

Anyway, here's another one I did from the other existant animation, out of boredom.

Perhaps you should have told us what you did exactly... I've noticed right now that you also tweaked the ears, which indeed made them look better, and other stuff I hadn't even noticed.

Also... Vincent, are you really gonna keep the dark outlines in the shines?

EDIT: Don't forget to add his tail!

 

Alright, for those of you that didn't like my first attempt, that was because I was going about it in completely the wrong way and I hope to redeem myself with this post. Observe my latest version:



The first ring on I posted (back on page 24) I created from scratch. This was both an unproductive and time-consuming way to do this, but I have since discovered the Bitmap Trace Function! Combined with the Sonic 1 Special Stage Ring sprites (they're four times more detailed than regular rings) and some optimization of the Bitmap Trace parameters, I was able to create a fantastically accurate animation at the resolution we need. Comments are appreciated, but keep in mind that most sprites are less detailed than the giant ring, so this method may not work quite as well on other things (I've yet to test it).

If people would like to see individual frames or a higher res version let me know.

Athelstone, that CG ring is very smooth and beautiful, but I think ICEknight's right about keeping things to the same number of frames.

 

That ring is amazing, I hated the thought of gci rings since that the style of characters and objects need to be the same style and that looks like the best replica of the old rings in my opinion.

 

That looks very cool, does it look as good at 4 times its original size?

EDIT: Oops, so it's already 4 times bigger. I should read more. =P

 

ICEknight, those are both rendered at 64 x 64 pixels. The original ingame ring mapping is 16 x 16 (the version here is just scaled) and we seem to have agreed that we're besting that resolution by a factor of 4 in each direction. So what you're seeing is the ring as it would appear ingame!

EDIT: Ah, nevermind, saw your edit. :-) Anyway, I challenge a CG ring to beat that on the grounds of authenticity. ;-)

 

Yeah, that looks pretty ace! I trust you'll be getting rid of the artifacts for the final product, right? :P

(The pixelation on the outside and inside of the ring)

 

Well, it could be interesting to try to mimic that one in CG, for comparison's sake... I wish I could try, but I have no idea on 3D modeling.

 

I'll see what I can do. I think that is the result of a slightly imperfect alignment of the vector layers that got magnified when I rasterized it.

 

<!--quoteo(post=188551:date=Apr 16 2008, 01:07 AM:name=Blue Streak)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Blue Streak @ Apr 16 2008, 01:07 AM) </a>

The first ring on I posted (back on page 24) I created from scratch. This was both an unproductive and time-consuming way to do this, but I have since discovered the Bitmap Trace Function! Combined with the Sonic 1 Special Stage Ring sprites (they're four times more detailed than regular rings) and some optimization of the Bitmap Trace parameters, I was able to create a fantastically accurate animation at the resolution we need. Comments are appreciated, but keep in mind that most sprites are less detailed than the giant ring, so this method may not work quite as well on other things (I've yet to test it).

If people would like to see individual frames or a higher res version let me know.

Athelstone, that CG ring is very smooth and beautiful, but I think ICEknight's right about keeping things to the same number of frames.[/quote]

Now that's perfect!!

(I will dare to suggest you a little bit more orange version, just to see a "golden" one.)

About the changes of Neo's edit I already included what I feel is better for it.
The ears are too short, the color scheme contrasts too much with purple spotlights,eyes are too big compared to the "standard" we set on the first frame.
Bigger shine is better, black outlines on shoes are too so I included them on my frame and the previous ones.

I'll try to give him a tail by tomorrow!

 

I've scaled down the one I posted earlier for comparison purposes, since it's the only 4-frame CG ring we have at the moment.


So, if anybody dares to try to improve BlueStreak's with CG art...

 

<!--quoteo(post=188562:date=Apr 15 2008, 03:59 PM:name=ICEknight)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (ICEknight @ Apr 15 2008, 03:59 PM)

So, if anybody dares to try to improve BlueStreak's with CG art...[/quote]

Lol, I can't tell if you're serious in your tone or if "dare" was sarcastic. :-P

I'm making some improvements to remove the pixelation on the edges and I'll see about modifying the color scheme slightly to experiment.

 

Nah, I'm not "serious" but I'd really like to see a good attempt (ie., not mine) at CG rings before ditching the idea completely...

Yours is very likely as good as we can have with vector art, I'm sure of that.

 

There's the improved version that has pretty much eliminated the pixelation and is very slightly more golden (if you think it needs to be golder, say so). Note: if you view this on a white background you'll probably notice a black outline on the inside and outside. That is an artifact of the GIF format somehow (might be related to the transparency), it does not appear in the PNGs used to make the frames, so that line won't appear in the mappings ingame.

I'm very excited that this new method has turned out so well. Thanks for all the feedback.

 

That's awesome.


Have you tried using this technique with other big graphics? Even if some won't turn out as good, they could serve as a base for the improved versions, or just as placeholders.