Graphics Question and Concept

Neon Soldier

First off, since the FAQ still hasn't been updated for Nova, what are the pixel dimensions of the large shipyard info pictures?

Also, while I'm posting, for those large shipyard pictures in Sephil Saga, we're considering showing a blueprint/schematic wireframe view of the ship in lieu of a scene. What's your opinion of this?

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orcaloverbri9

They're 600 x 400. And I like the idea.

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Weepul 884

Note: determining their size is (would have been) as easy as copying one out of Nova's data and looking in a paint program.

I'd be against the blueprint/schematic/wireframe idea, since that's the only image large enough in Nova to really let the graphics people shine at scene creation.

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Masamune

One thing to remember, Neon, and others as well, is that we have the opportunity to do 2 scenes for each ship- one for the prebuilt ship and one for the frame only. One thing that's possible is that we could do the blueprint/schematic for the frames, and a scene for the prebuilts. However, it's up to the graphics people in the end- just saying we have room/reason for at least two.

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Neon Soldier

Quote

Originally posted by Masamune:
0 **One thing to remember, Neon, and others as well, is that we have the opportunity to do 2 scenes for each ship- one for the prebuilt ship and one for the frame only. One thing that's possible is that we could do the blueprint/schematic for the frames, and a scene for the prebuilts. However, it's up to the graphics people in the end- just saying we have room/reason for at least two.

**

It does make sense for the frame to be schematically displayed. However, I'm not so great at making scenes. Psyg was the man to do that, but he has left us. Maybe Gage and I could do a joint effort.

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SpacePirate

Do you mean show the ship in a scene, and in some corner, show a wireframe of the ship? That would be pretty cool, if done right.

~ SP

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slouch

Sounds like a great idea to me. Especially if greater info on the ship's specifications (outfits, shield recharge, etc) could also be included. I'm all for more info. Pretty pictures are nice, but I rarely look at 'em more than once. Then again, I'm among the graphically challenged.

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Neon Soldier

Here's a rough composite to show you what I mean:

Posted Image

Bear in mind this just a rough outline- optimally, it'll look more like you're looking at an actual computer terminal in the shipyard, which means it'd have a fake interface and whatnot. Gage_Stryker can probably help me out in that area. What do you guys think?

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Arion

Okay, basically I like the idea, though what you showed here is not a true blueprint. A blueprint would show the ship from straight views (like here, top/side/front/...) and perhaps a small 3D view. It also would be more technical, for instance showing sizes and stuff, and the drawing would be more like a good draft rather than showing all polygons. Look at the image below to get an idea. However, in case you would make them all like on your image, I'd prefer scenes.
Posted Image

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Phyvo

I really like the type of thing Arion has there... It's not a space scene, but it's interesting. Plus, if you have a concept artist, you can do it. If you just have some little notes about ship technicalities, it would look cool. To make it holographic-like, of course, you could just change the black to blue and white to black. However, the type of this Neon Soldier showed would be the type of thing I, personally, wouldn't bother with. It just doesn't look good enough to merit a giant 600x400 picture of it being shown whenever I want to look at a ship's stats...

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Dr. Trowel

Quote

Originally posted by Neon Soldier:
**Here's a rough composite to show you what I mean:

<image>

Bear in mind this just a rough outline- optimally, it'll look more like you're looking at an actual computer terminal in the shipyard, which means it'd have a fake interface and whatnot. Gage_Stryker can probably help me out in that area. What do you guys think?

**

I like where you're headed -- adding call-outs labeling the ship's featured bits gives you a feel somewhere between EV/EVO-style target graphics and a futuristic equivalent of the sort of glossy handouts you might find at a car dealership.

It would be a shame, though, if going this route meant that players would never be exposed to high-detail renderings of your ships.... Hmm. Can you use your schematic graphics in the shipyard, then make some full-color a/o scene-like graphics appear with key mission texts, as visual rewards as players progress through your storylines? Polycon and the default Nova scenario use smallish (200 X 200?) pics for that, but can larger sizes perhaps be used?

orcaloverbri9

Quote

Originally posted by Dr. Trowel:
It would be a shame, though, if going this route meant that players would never be exposed to high-detail renderings of your ships....

Hehehe, no. The sprites do that job nicely from what I've seen.

And you can use 4096 x 812,000,000 for the shipyard pic if you want (though I doubt anyone has such an enormous resolution). Nova will resize it to fit exactly in the item in the DITL resource.

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Spoony

I would agree with Weepul here in that most of the time graphics artists are doing boring spins and 200x200 shipyard images, there is really no room there to show much detail. In the larger Shipyard pics the artists can really show off their composition, lightning, and environment building skills. Something not often seen in Nova... However, it all really depends on how the artist is feeling. However you most certainly want to invent some kind of interface that changes per race and is consistent inside each race.

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Neon Soldier

Quote

Originally posted by Arion:
**Okay, basically I like the idea, though what you showed here is not a true blueprint. A blueprint would show the ship from straight views (like here, top/side/front/...) and perhaps a small 3D view. It also would be more technical, for instance showing sizes and stuff, and the drawing would be more like a good draft rather than showing all polygons. Look at the image below to get an idea. However, in case you would make them all like on your image, I'd prefer scenes.
**

Unfortunately, Arion, producing 2D images like that is a completely different skillset from 3D. I'm trying to look for something that looks good and is within my skill range, which does not include complex scenes. I know "it's too hard" is a dumb excuse, but I'd rather go with something unique that I'm good at than something that's more of the same that I'm not so good at.

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what_is_the_matrix

Took all day to get the effect I wanted, but (url="http://"http://www.evula.org/virtualgoo/images/holo_emitter2_full.jpg")here's a suggestion(/url), that I think gets a sort of fusion of Neon Soldier's blueprint/schematic idea with the desire to build scenes.

The scene is relatively simple - but it just took a long time to render because I went a little overboard. It's basically a simple "hologram emitter" base (wires are optional) with basically a procedural texture, a blue volumetric light shining up on the fighter (the one that I posted a while back on the image gallery - the name is different mainly because I couldn't remember exactly what I called it and I wanted to finish it up quickly), and another blue light shining down on the fighter (I set it so that it would only illuminate the fighter and not the base) to make it look more like a hologram, rather than a floating model. I added a couple more volumetric spotlights to add more to the image without thinking about modeling anything. I have a feeling that they added a lot to the render time. After that, I rendered as wireframe, and in Photoshop, I composited the images so that it'd look like the wireframe was showing through. In this way, you can have a scene (by building the holo emitter, and everything), but have your schematic in the hologram (and it'd be different from most shipyard scenes). I would have had a little legend with pointers, but it's getting late and seeing as I had my last two wisdom teeth pulled only this afternoon and spent the rest of the night putting together a 100lb TV stand, I'm not really in the mood for the extra effort.

Enjoy, but if you don't like it (or if Bryce can't handle it), I at least gained a lot of knowledge about how Lightwave works, so it was by no means a wasted effort. Thanks for giving me the inspiration!

Matrix

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(This message has been edited by what_is_the_matrix (edited 07-20-2004).)

Neon Soldier

Wow. Nice image, matrix. How exactly did you blend the wireframe and the full render? I might look into using views like that.

In the meantime, I did a conceptual image of the "computer interface" route i'm looking into for this. Keep in mind this is a very rough draft... a finalized version would be much more detailed and polished. Anyway, the pic:

Posted Image

I'm going for a multiple-screened paned computer viewscreen doohickey look. What do you guys think?

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what_is_the_matrix

Quote

Originally posted by Neon Soldier:
**Wow. Nice image, matrix. How exactly did you blend the wireframe and the full render? I might look into using views like that.
**

Simple. You paste the full render into the bottom layer and the wireframe into the top layer. If you have a nice rendered background (like I do), you use the Magic Wand tool to get rid of everything except for the wireframe lines (so the background shows through), and you then use a large soft eraser to get rid of all the wireframe lines that you don't want. Adjust the wireframe opaqueness if you want. If you're working on a black background for both (basically as long as the backgrounds are the same), the process is even easier. You just put one layer on top of the other and erase the sections where you want the other layer to show through.

Matrix

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Gage_Stryker

Hmm. Imagine stumbling onto this topic...

Yeah, Neon and I have discussed a few ways of doing things, and I'm starting to get some ideas. In fact, I have a really cool one right now - all I need is a wireframe and a full render from the same camera position.

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Spoony

Quote

Originally posted by what_is_the_matrix:
**Took all day to get the effect I wanted, but here's a suggestion, that I think gets a sort of fusion of Neon Soldier's blueprint/schematic idea with the desire to build scenes.
**

A couple of suggestions Matrix, 1: the light looks good, but either have it spread in a beam type way, or have some dust in the room pick up some light using volumetrics and/or particles so there are some beams shooting away from that light. The pure vertical look just isn't right. 2: Room is too dark. 3: Holographic look is cool, but I would be an advocate of duplicating the image and motion blurring it vertical. Then making that white and Gaussian blurring it, then set it, oh, 40% opacity, same with the text, give them a bright vertical bleed, makes them look a bit unstable, more like a holograph.

Just some thoughts.

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