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Discussion in 'Sonic 2 HD (Archive)' started by Athelstone, Apr 24, 2008.

  1. Compsense

    Compsense

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    some dance album or summat
    It is off :)

    [​IMG] [​IMG] [​IMG]
    Real/Mockup/3D

    Is this better?
     
  2. Vincent

    Vincent

    Sonic 2HD - Project Leader & Chara Member
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    It's artistically getting better at each version. ^^

    The adjustments I'd like to see improved are:
    • The blue color fixed (using the same blue of the mockup)
    • An overall lighter, therefore more colourful track ambience. (in the original you can see more vivid colors thanks to the light)
    • Move the spotlight near to the camera a little further, like ME's mockup, while keeping the long orange stripes "orange", instead of yellow (they get mixed due light issue)
    • Mentos should be more glossy
    I'm interested in seeing these samples you are speaking of.
    Cel shading is the only way to get 3D working (real-time, or pre-renders) into a 2D environment without clashing issues.

    Checkered pattern or even simple textures? I'm personally not that fond of the idea, given the current mockups, but I'm sure if it gets well developed it could turn out into a winning one.
    Experiments are the key here! ^^
     
  3. muteKi

    muteKi

    Fuck it Member
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    So that's why the perspective didn't look so fucked up in the original version -- the lines didn't actually connect there.
     
  4. Canned Karma

    Canned Karma

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    Cel shading would probably be a truly bad idea here. I tried using that material in the first concept that I put out and it resulted in the harsh gradient shadows, which, while true to the original, not many people liked when it came out as a 3D render.

    Compsense, which 3D package are you using right now? 3Ds Max or another one? Most of my experience with lighting comes down to working in Max and XSI more recently. I love what you did with the globes. Really adds a nice touch of gloss over all there. Your tube caps don't look like they have lighting applied to them at all though. Are they separate objects without lighting applied by any chance? For the severe highlight glare that you're getting on the main tube, you could attempt to get around that by throwing in a skylight to evenly light the area... maybe put in a couple blocking planes above the tube out of the camera's main angle to adjust your shadows better. Also, your geometry for the tube itself is throwing me off - are you using one continual cylinder for that, or is it a cone that you have tapered off? I'm not saying it looks bad; if anything you've done a nice job recreating the original feel. Try putting 10 frames together and getting a basic animation out of it. That's the telling point to see if a concept is coming along well or not.
     
  5. Compsense

    Compsense

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    some dance album or summat
  6. Ultima

    Ultima

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    I found my cel shading demo. It looks significantly better with antialiasing, which I guess is one advantage to using pre-rendered backgrounds. You can get it here; Cel Shading Demo. Same thing applies with the microsoft vc++ sp1 runtime. You can move the torus with WASD and rotate with arrow keys; you can right click a light to remove it, left click and drag to move it, or ctrl+click to add a white light source.

    One interesting point is that this cel shading is done entirely in software as an experiment; you could offload all the calculations into a shader and it'd be much faster. If you were concerned about the antialiasing you could also implement some forced antialiasing in a compositor to smooth the whole thing out even if the user has antialiasing disabled; with such a simple render it probably wouldn't cause much of a performance hit.

    Cel shading doesn't have to just use 3 shades or whatever, you can obviously make it use as many shades as you like (I think eliminating smooth gradients would help a lot, whether it's prerendered or not... completely smooth gradients tend to look unprofessional). I think that 3D+NPR is the way to go. Prerendered movie backdrops do have their advantages, of course, especially since that's the original technique used. It's obviously up to you guys what you think is best. I think both methods would be easy, 3D would use less VRAM and space, prerendered videos would probably look more consistent on different computers depending on the users settings, but 3D objects would be very nice :P
     
  7. Vincent

    Vincent

    Sonic 2HD - Project Leader & Chara Member
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    It looks potentially very interesting.
    It could save us the hassle of spriting rings and bombs in dozen of frames and angles to look right.

    How about making an example of a simple 3D tube with Cel shading (less colour stepped and antialiased)? :v:

    Try for an endless Mentos effect, but remember to make the yellow stripes end before the blue one as in ME's mockup shows. (There are track turns connected to the end of the tunnel, so the last blue area must be taller)
     
  8. ICEknight

    ICEknight

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  9. Mastered Realm

    Mastered Realm

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    The cilynder he made is so long that even if he had left it open you will not notice.

    Do you really know why they left that wall there? Because they were too lazy to make new frames for when a curve is getting near, only that. That wall will not be in our special stages.

    There is something that you many not know. Mega Drive (the brazilian Mega Drive and Genesis) does not have a perfect 4:3 aspect ratio. The max resolution of Mega Drive in PAL-M (not PAL) and NTSC is 320x224! So when we put it on a 4:3 TV the image get stretched vertically. To prove that I took a ruler, put the Sonic 2 cart on my Mega Drive and paused the game when the ring was a circle, then I measured it. Widtht: 1,4 cm Height: 1,6 cm. So you said the resolution is wrong but only if we consider not using 4:3...
     
  10. ICEknight

    ICEknight

    Researcher Researcher
    Whatever reason they made it for, it might still look a little better than having the lines collide perfectly in the horizon.

    We should compare all the possibilities we can make before deciding.
     
  11. Mastered Realm

    Mastered Realm

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    We will add more frames to elimitate the effect, the wall will appear when the curve is getting near! =P
     
  12. Ultima

    Ultima

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    Sorry, but I really don't have time x_x; I was kind of showing it so you had an idea of what kind of thing you could do with cel shading in a day or two, but I don't actually have the time to help with this project, as much as I'd like to.
     
  13. Elratauru

    Elratauru

    Little Shiny Emurralds Member
    don't worry, take your time...I mean, real life is first as always. But Thanks again for your awesome work n-n
     
  14. Canned Karma

    Canned Karma

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    The Staff Recruiting Topic has been updated. We're now looking for a Tool Programmer to come onboard and help us out. If this is you or someone you know, please take a look.
     
  15. Tora

    Tora

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  16. nineko

    nineko

    I am the Holy Cat Tech Member
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  17. Canned Karma

    Canned Karma

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    Those will be great for color palette references, thanks for grabbing those.

    It also gives me some food for thought on making a 3D concept model of Sonic...
     
  18. RamiroR

    RamiroR

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    Is it going to be for this?
     
  19. Canned Karma

    Canned Karma

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    Given that was a week ago when I had time to make something, it was a possibility. Not happening now with the semester about to start back up. In respect to actual development of the Special Stage, absolutely nothing is set in stone. Any and all concepts for it are welcome.
     
  20. Conan Kudo

    Conan Kudo

    「真実はいつも一つ!」工藤新一 Member
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    What technologies are used for this game engine?

    An example of different game engine technologies are:

    SDL, Allegro, OpenAL, Qt4, wxWidgets, DirectX (pure with no middle layer which includes Direct3D, DirectInput, DirectSound), TiMidity++, GStreamer (which does indeed work on Windows as well as Mac OS X), etc.

    I am just curious, I do like to hear of the technical aspects of software but I haven't been able to find any details regarding that.