Unit sprites for Invasion from the Unknown/After the Storm

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Iris
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Re: Unit sprites for Invasion from the Unknown/After the Sto

Post by Iris »

Awful. No, thanks.
Author of the unofficial UtBS sequels Invasion from the Unknown and After the Storm.
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Sleepwalker
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Re: Unit sprites for Invasion from the Unknown/After the Sto

Post by Sleepwalker »

Homonculus is on the right track, the key to looking metallic is reflections, both of an imaginary surrounding of the unit and itself. This can be hard to pull off, but done correctly it does not look weird, but awesome :D .

Now my edit is far from perfect, but more metallic looking at least I think. I tried not to change any design, just the rendering of the unit, though I think the hip area is a bit off, so that I corrected (I thought there was a claw like shape there at first then after the edit I realized it was the other hip flange thing). Some colors were changed a little bit too.
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Iris
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Re: Unit sprites for Invasion from the Unknown/After the Sto

Post by Iris »

So... shiny and cool.

I am truly still an art n00b.
Author of the unofficial UtBS sequels Invasion from the Unknown and After the Storm.
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homunculus
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Re: Unit sprites for Invasion from the Unknown/After the Sto

Post by homunculus »

I always thought the surface was supposed to be matte metal something like this, maybe more shiny, but not really mirror-like polished.
The spoon-based example was meant to illustrate how, in order to reduce pillowing, you might want to determine the brightest reflection point and have the highlights slightly smaller and more round than would be intuitive.
And that every shiny shape should have a specular at some point, even if it is tip of the needle.
The geometry of the queen does not look wrong, and therefore I guess putting the diffuse and specular highlights in the right place should be a formal matter of applying consistent angles for diffuse (depending on how polished it is supposed to be) and specular highlights, perhaps?

On the other hand, doing some nethack sprites I learned quite a hard lesson in simplification, looking at the original ants (above) scaled to same size as my more detailed ants (below) in game.
Image
The original ants (that look like blobs), scaled to 24x24, look at least as good or better than my more detailed ants, because of simplicity.
The moral of the story might as well be that the queen is already quite detailed, and too many pronounced reflections break up the surfaces even more.
Maybe if the queen was bigger it could accommodate more details more easily.
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Re: Unit sprites for Invasion from the Unknown/After the Sto

Post by Iris »

I haven’t really made up my mind with regards to what the Shaxthal lifeforms’ exoskeleton is actually made of. It was at some point meant to be some kind of reinforced protein, then metal, then some kind of thick and hard plastic, and I don’t really know anymore. I may lean more towards the original “reinforced protein” idea for low level units and make it more and more metallic as they level up.
Author of the unofficial UtBS sequels Invasion from the Unknown and After the Storm.
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