Well, it's the very first attempt at the zone. I'm sure it can be improved from here, like every other piece that has been posted here.
The outlines can be turned off on the toon shaders. I actually made this thing with outline-free toon shaders. It's faster, yes, but flashier? I don't know about that. The only places we've been able to really show off flashy art for this project so far are on some badniks and various stuff like my stage icon. It's hard to make a completely nature based area like emerald hill zone "flashy", it's supposed to be pretty and colorful. As for the speed of it, I've been making stuff for emerald hill zone since maybe April? Hell, I've basically drawn everything in the foreground by myself. Sure there are some things other people did, but the stuff I've made takes up the vast majority of the stage. Hell, when I really get to it and just draw stuff I can belt out a ton of tiles for the stage. Here's something I haven't shown anyone here yet. Sure there's a couple places some stuff could be a bit better, but whatever. This is what Emerald Hill Zone looks like, minus the background, of course.
Although I do love it, I don't think it will work with what we have now, maybe if it was more suttle, like if the backgrounds had 3D models that were textured with hand drawn textures, rather than it looking like 3D models cause lighting or not I have a worrying feeling it will look like a Paper Mario version of S2.
I think that's the best way to go about it. In my eyes I saw what you did was meant for a very detailed concept for the other artists. I hope you do other work for the likes of Oil Ocean, Metropolis Zone (this one for definite), Wing Fortress Zone and Death Egg Zone.
Yes, organic stuff might still look better when hand drawn, but most of the brown elements in that Emerald Hill would have looked the same if done in 3D (with the proper lightning applied), as they're just mimicking a 3D look. But then again, all the stuff that needs to look inert (ground shapes, metallic structures, etc), might be perfect for 3D.
While those places could look fine, hand drawn things always have a different feel about them than 3-D models do. That's one of the main concerns I have towards using too much 3-D in this. Things could clash and look shoddily constructed. I also want to keep a lot of this hand drawn to set a bar for this kind of thing. Almost every 2-D game you see released these days is just 3-D models slapped into a 2-D environment simply because it's faster and cheaper (Rocket Knight disappoints me). This isn't as rampant on the DS, but there's a lot of it there, too. I'm not saying that's a bad thing or that 3-D doesn't have any place in 2-D games, but I would love to see minimal 3-D stuff in 2-D games. Now when we talk about the special stages in this, I have a feeling those will be full 3-D, because they were basically that anyways. And as far as using 3-D in the other stages, I think it would be better to carefully construct certain parts in 3D and then pre-render those parts and use them in the stage as a kind of accent for places. We can certainly work some 3-D elements into the game, and we plan to, but we shouldn't get too carried away with it.
3D would only really work with 3D looking objects. Oil Ocean has a lot of those. Chemical Plant... not so much, so I think it should stay in the same style as Emerald Hill. Besides, this isn't a 2.5D game so there's an extra dimension rendered here that we'll never see. That's not to say it doesn't look amazing. But in order to use it every other zone would need to be re-done so that the game actually matches.
Just as long as it doesn't start looking like this (ignoring the shooting game-play, obviously), we'll be fine [*edit* Just joking btw :P]
Well, thats 2.5D, and we already said we are NOT gonna use anything more than 2D, but for metablocks and tiles, we could use some help from 3D renders made 2D images (You know, a side view so you'll not see any "floor" or "celling")...Of course this is my point of view and opinion. I think that metallic objects like some of them in CPZ should be done this way... Organic enviroments of course should be hand drawed and 2D...like backgrounds too. Like the original Sonic team did, they used A LOT of 3D objects...and they did others manually...
Zones like Chemical Plant Zone, Oil Ocean, and Metropolis Zone use so much 3D. Everything else, I doubt it would look any good in 3D. At least not easily done by my talents. It would be a big learning process and a lot of nurb use. To Gambit: OMG What a disaster the new Rocket Knight Adventures is looking to be. They just shat all over it. 3D does not carry over its distinct art. The same thing with Earthworm Jim (3D and PSP). Sad thing is, I'll probably buy it just to support the franchise though I wasn't a fan of Sparkster.
Agreed. I suppose apart from the loop-de-loops (among other things), I don't think zones like the EHZ *could* be 3D based purely on the fact that it's a 'natural' outdoor/open environment anyway. I think the same might apply with Aquatic Ruin too. I think levels like the Wing Fortress Zone would be absolutely PERFECT for MaximusDM's talents! Secondly, I'd love to see what MaximusDM comes up with for the Special Zone!
Although I'm not overly keen on the way the metal parts look (Particularly the colour...), I love how the pipe platforms look. One suggestion I'd like to make (On top of the glow suggestion that was made before...); add a few bubbles like test-object did with his 2D pipes. I'd have to say that I was favouring test-object's render until I saw that 3D render. Sorry TO.
Because gradients were used on the metal properties of the badniks, I think it is fair to use 3D models as the basis for further artwork, on specifically metal objects, such as chemical plant, oil ocean and Wing fortress platforms. The main problem is, among other things, the lighting, and the direction of the lighting. Don't forget that the lighting over every tile would be the same, this is not the case in the 3D CPZ examples above. Why not use the 3D models only as a base or a reference, only on the most metal and geometric structures? We can compare the gradients on the 3d objects with our hand drawn metal peices to find the right "toon"/style balance as we remaster the 3D art into 2D.
I love how 3D looks on Chemical Plant - the ground segments (with the red pipe) particularly stand out to me, I love how you put it together, including how the pipe "sticks out". I think it would look better if you made the material of all the metal a bit shinier and less brown (although you may have used the original colors for the materials, it looks to be that shading has changed the majority of it to a brown-ish hue). I do believe, where appropriate, 3D like this will work wonderfully. This is meant to be HD, right? Why reduce the potential resulting quality with strict stick-to-the-original guidelines? I don't mean to imply 3D automatically makes everything look better, but I do think it would help to embrace the possibility of accepting changes to the original that would improve upon it - such as 3D, or texturing. One good example is that new HD remake of Toki; I don't think it features any 3D, per se, but it has a lot of changes over the original that vastly improved upon the original without veering far enough to make it seem like a different game altogether.
Man, those models are awesome. While just straight 3D may not be the way to go for the look of the game, I see little problem in basing the 2D graphics on them. It seems helpful in figuring out what parts of certain objects recede back into space so that things like the pipes and pillars aren't drawn looking like cardboard cutouts.
This. If you don't add anything more detailed, it will just seem like the original was up-scaled by x4 and made clearer (Emerald Hill). My point is that adding things over the original can really improve the HD quality. The 3D version of Chemical Plant is just amazing. I think a brushed metal texture would be nice on it, but this is just the concept art/model so I'm sure it will have many changes before the final version is done. With that said, I am loving the direction Chemical Plant is going, and please do this for other zones!
Actually, NURBS are more suited to artificial things such as buildings and mechanical objects. It's difficult to create organic details with them. Organic stuff usually uses mesh modeling or Zbrush.
Well, That's why I used a fixed shading on the Egg-o-Matic or the Kiki for example, the egg-o-matic should fit in every enviroment out there without any problem...At least is supposed to. However, sometimes shading is a diferent thing, you could use a metal shading that doesnt look anywhere "like it should be in the reality", but it will look awesome anyways... that's the magic of 2D art after all.
