Pheonix561's General Art Thread

[PrimaGaga 1025]

Oh they are two different things? So many cubes. Gotcha

[pheonix561 2080]

I better update this thread with something, so here's a glimpse of what I've been working on. These are probably the laziest thumbs I've ever done, ever, but here they are:

 

Just some basic sketches of how some tiled 2D isometric platformer assets might work, for the unity engine. I've done/been doing some studying of the 2D engine for Unity, and I'm going to make an art asset package for sell in the unity store. I'm thinking floating castles.

[pheonix561 2080]

Working out props. It's easy to do simple things like tables and chairs and bookcases, but I'm trying to figure out what portion of the castle should be made of wood and what should be made of stone. Its a difficult balance to strike for solid aesthetics.







Since in something like this the .png's are the actual final assets, And each asset needs to be several thousand pixels high and wide, Im avoiding taking time to actually bother rendering anything. Just figuring out what everything is and should be is enough for now. I want to do things like a smithy, and an alchemy room, and maybe a chapel? Definitely a dungeon, and a kitchen. But before I can do any of that I need to figure out how a castle is built, really.

[PrimaGaga 1025]

these are really cool to look at. Good idea in general, really. Good luck!

[pheonix561 2080]

Thanks Skyler. Last night I threw together a few quick sketches in order to try to figure out what in the world the buildings themselves are supposed to look like, so I can get to work on the insides, too. My first pass looked too much like what you'd find in a coloring book, but my second one ended up cementing my attitude that tudor style castles and buildings would be best. So here's those:



S

Still lazy, but now I'm going to get to work on the definite insides of the buildings.

[PrimaGaga 1025]

These remind me of the Temple Stage from Melee

not in a bad way, obvs. 

 

So like, are you trying to make a tile set or just full maps? The first set looked a lot more tile-based.

[pheonix561 2080]

You mean the first thing I posted? I'm definitely doing a modular set, but I'm debating with my self whether it will all be available in perfect squares or not. The first set is clearly me thinking in tiles and the second is me thinking in props. That stuff with the floating castles is just thinking about what it might look like overall on a macro scale, at such a size where it wouldn't make much difference if it was made with squares or anything else.

[pheonix561 2080]

Spent the day researching and throwing together what the inside of a building/inn might look like. I'm still not sure how I feel about it. Right now I've got it like the foundation goes all the way up the first floor and all timber framing takes place on the second story and up, but I see so many different variations of that kind of architecture that I'm not sure if it would be more accurate to start the stones halfway up the ground level floor, or even just at the very base. I hate the Fire place, I hate the majority of the second floor, and I'm not comfortable enough with understanding how tudor era houses were built.



This is actually one of the largest files I've ever worked with on this computer. I'm surprised my poor dying laptop is capable of handling it. Anyways, I'd really like to look into Lightmapping and things in unity soon, and maybe include those in here since I like the way 2D lightmapping looks. Tomorrow I'll do a kitchen and a cellar. for this thing, and hopefully an outer facade. None of these are finished assets, it's all just placeholder "here's how it might look" stuff."

[pheonix561 2080]

I'll bet you guys thought I haven't been working on this!!! Nope. I've actually been working my way through a lump in the project. See, I could of course just make simple .png files and make a package out of that and be done with that, but frankly that's too easy and I'm never going to get anywhere with something so simple. I'm working on trying to get normal mapped 2D sprites so I can have really nice lighting falling on my objects. There's a professional I'm talking to who runs a blog on how stuff like that works who's been very helpful with answering my questions.

Here's some wood planking stuff I rendered so I could test the stuff I'm learning here:



It doesn't have any highlights because I'm thinking those lights are supposed to show up from the lighting landing on the object. This might be too detailed/high res for the purposes of the project though. It's also possible I did the painting wrong for what the lighting will be. But that's just something to worry about later after I've practiced on it.

[pheonix561 2080]

Normal Mapping, for now and for this particular project, has fallen through. All of the programs and methods I've found for using it are too undoable. I did manage to find a fantastic highly rated program called nDo2 which is all about making normal maps directly in photoshop in order to speed up the workflow of people who need to make maps, and can even handle hand painted maps! Aka, literally exactly the program I need. Sadly it's only available for PC, which is just another fantastic reason to get that PC I've been saving up for.

Either way, I'd decided I'd waited long enough to get to work on account of the normal mapping problem, so I forgot all about it and set to work making simple hand painted stuff. Here's another post on what I've been working on:



I did a sketch of what buildings and assets might look like, if they were all painted sprites. Thought about lighting and objects (didn't like it), and tried different color schemes and styles for things like the stone foundations of the buildings or the roof tiles (also didn't like it).

 

But I moved on from there to breaking everything down into managable sprites, to see how they might work together. I haven't bothered to edit the color palette yet, though, even though it's disgusting:











So that's what I'm looking at. I need to edit everything to fit on a stricter grid, and add more custom building pieces to the nice houses, but it's a start. I'll get a better color scheme going after I handle that. Gotta make lunch first though.

[Sahaqiel 1232]

nDo2 looks crazy-whack fantastic. Cool you're looking into professional 3D kind of work, though you'll probably never see this kind of graphic fidelity outside the modding community, since this stuff is still way too expensive to be accessible. Just keep trying at learning the tools and I'm sure it'll pay off.

 

Your modular environments are looking pretty good too, though the inconsistent beam thickness in the attic-y area of Sample House (Test #1) bugs me a bit.

[pheonix561 2080]

inconsistent beams are just a result of me throwing together the assets without any care for how they might tile. Like I said, they're just sketches for now, with no concern for finished detail. I'm currently working on reworking the pieces so that they all fit on a much more uniform set, so that will be my next update. Along with more pieces of course.

[pheonix561 2080]

Small update

 

 

been trying to find ways to get better shapes out of buildings. I've got some good roofing things going on, but what I need is better sides of the houses. And I need to reconfigure the relationship of first floor/second floor stuff, maybe add some support pillars to that stuff. But it's been coming along at a healthy pace I think.

[pheonix561 2080]

Here's another update: I took a more critical look at the shape of the houses and refined it.

Older look (lumpy and flat):



Upgrade:



With what the interior might look like:



And with (more) objects, not sure why I have them on different layers:



It's starting to come together, I think. I need to really look into how light affects objects in Unity's 2D engine before I go farther, because I need to figure out how to do that kind of lighting for the indoors. But I'm really starting to like how it's starting to look. I also need to figure out how to show depth for the wall panels better. So I guess, more technical stuff before I get into making finished assets again, of course.

[pheonix561 2080]

Wow, guess who's been completely neglecting his own art thread?

I've just spent the past five weeks putting this set of designs together to be printed and handed out to potential employers at GDC! It was a lot of work and a ton of fun to do, and I still feel like I have a lot more designs to put in here. More characters, more locations, more monsters, more designs in general. It's great for my portfolio! But for now, here's a digital copy of the work I'll be handing out:

















Sadly, the company I went to for printing doesn't print booklets unless they're in a number of pages divisible by four (understandably so), and I've got fourteen pages here. Since I don't have the means to make an extra two pages, I had to cut the very last page with the sample prop designs from the final booklet. But hey, that's the way these things go.