Prometheus Spawning Grounds - Page 2

Prometheus Spawning Grounds

Share and discuss visual creations and creation practices like texturing, modelling and musing on the meaning of life.

Moderators: MR.D, Moderators

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MR.D
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Post by MR.D »

Nice

I vote Rattle for doing the ARM units :D
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AF
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Post by AF »

The page has been updated, with a story and an orthographic view of a brawler from multiple angles.
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rattle
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Post by rattle »

And UV mapped... after many hours of puzzling pieces together.
Image
Warlord Zsinj
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Post by Warlord Zsinj »

Gorgeous!

I'm tempted to have a go at texturing it myself, but I daresay my team would probably draw and quarter me.
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chillaaa
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Post by chillaaa »

/me readies the table...
zorbawic
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Post by zorbawic »

A model I made some time ago - my interpretation of the laser tank from the same site - shouldn't take long to fix it when a non top down image will be available:

ImageImage

Done recently - my interpretation of core scout plane - the same as above...

ImageImage

Edit1: reuploeaded the images - dunno why they disappeared from imageshack, I'm working on the textures anyways AF...
Last edited by zorbawic on 23 Nov 2007, 01:48, edited 1 time in total.
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Neddie
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Post by Neddie »

chillaaa wrote:/me readies the table...
Has it been properly disinfected?
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AF
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Post by AF »

you dont need a side on view, his top own images are supposed to encompass a lot fo the detail, as that's what they where designed around. If you read the notes, he explains it all nicely and why he did it that way. He explains what the factions are supposed to be like in style, and details aswell as their weaponry and some reasoning behind things.

That and there's so much stuff there you could guess without needing a full side on view like the brawler or the samson. But no doubt he will see this and maybe send a few messages my way or come here in person.
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rattle
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Post by rattle »

Do you know what the side and top view are needed for?
I'm not willing to spend 3152374 hours on approaching the intended geometry.

At best, top, side, front, rear, especially for asymetrical models.
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AF
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Post by AF »

I prefer to make use of a magical piece of software we all have that can deliver life like images of the model from any concievable angle

Its an extremely powerful piece of software, and it only requires a single image to get started. What's more its totally free!

Get it here

And yes I do know what you mean, however either way the images you're asking for do not exist so asking for them isn't a magical revealing process, its a creative process where the extra details are made from scratch somewhere in Niklas head.

There isn't a need for a perfect replica either, and there are masses of examples showing the style Niklas uses on his website, his profiles, and his blog, even tutorials about how he does his artwork.
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KDR_11k
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Post by KDR_11k »

Concepts are specifications. Sure, he can make up his own but that's like writing software without a spec, you get what the worker thinks you want (or what he feels like), not what you actually want. In this case it's beneficial to have a single concept artist so the results will look consistent instead of an amalgamation of everyone's personal style.
zorbawic
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Post by zorbawic »

some progress ...

core lance

Image Image Image Image

This is not an actual texture, its only this image stretched on the model to show how it can look like, the bottom is untextured (though You don't see that :wink: ).

There are some areas where I had to improvise ...

400 triangles.

Anybody else working on this stuff ?
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rattle
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Post by rattle »

Not anymore, takes too much time.
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Arne
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Post by Arne »

I suppose I should put a reply here.

First, it interesting to see people giving my quick concepts some attention. Although I did refine them a few times, they are still roughs. If I had been doing them professionally, I would have put 6 months into them instead of a few days. Unfortunately, I do not have that kind of <strike>time</strike> patience for <strike>unpaid work</strike> anything. Well, almost anything.

As I write on my little page, the reason for my doing this at all is that I enjoy... cohesion in design. I think TA was kind of all over the place and a bit gritty. What I wanted to bring to the table was some kind of new visual language based on the original, something which allows the player to read the performance of a unit at a glance. It's a bit of an experiment.

A lot of work remains. I try to put as much readability and information as I can in the top down views, but indeed, orthos are an important part of the design process as well. Maybe, since I'm a designer, I have this library of details which I assume other people have as well, so possibly there's not quite as much information in my concepts as I think. It's a bit like those beach-ball players making finger signs behind their butt. To them, it's not just sprawling fingers, or just a sign. It's also context based and contains a lot of information to those initiated. I guess it's about information theory, like Victor Hugo's famous and very brief conversation with his publisher ("?" and "!"). Applied to my designs, I assume the reader has knowledge about tank/plane/ship/mecha design (and their child components), so in some cases I simply provide 'pointers' to use programming terminology. Since my designs are so rough the pointers are very general and there's a number of viable solutions for bringing the designs into the hi-def realm.


Now, here's two issues I frankly do not know how to address:

1: Are my redesigns TA-based or should I be 'filing off the serial number'? Right now I'm on the fence and it's not a good position. I like being faithful to the original source material, and with these redesigns I feel that I'm not. If I were to bring them closer to TA then I might have to scrap much of my language approach as well as many of the designs. If I were to depart from TA then ... well I would also have to scrap a lot of work. I think that, unrestrained from TA I could do better than I did, with more range in the unit exploration, etc.

2: Can you guys use it? I don't know. As I understand it, Atari holds some sort of Trademark/Copyright/License. I'm quite fond of TA, and my project started as a TA redesign so my heart wants it to stay there. Unfortunately, I did a bad job and ended up on the fence instead. See 1.


Usually I abandon and resume my projects a lot, so I might get around to doing some more work on the TA project later. I added some storyboard panels to that silly story a few days ago btw. Or was it a week? Time flies.

Edit: Oh yeah, I think in some cases a top down projected texture would work. My original files are scaled town to 40% so I have a higher rez source. As I understand it UV mapping is a tedious borefest. Maybe using fewer polies would help. Possibly I could paint the ortho views at some point and a texture could be stitched together (and cleaned) from that.

Edit: ..and I would need to drop the outlines and do the turrets and hulls separately.
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smoth
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Post by smoth »

Honestly Arne, I always saw it more as homage and not so much ripping off the designs. The same can be said of the starcon design work. That stuff was above and beyond the original art. Is doing something that is a homage really that concerning?
Last edited by smoth on 02 Dec 2007, 05:16, edited 1 time in total.
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Argh
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Post by Argh »

@Arne:

If you really wanna be helpful in this regard, I'd strongly recommend moving away from OTA's design ethos, to the point that it's clearly Original Work (some of what you've got undoubtedly qualifies, some is, as you put it, "on the fence"). And provide it to this community under either CC or GPL license.

Why? Because, quite frankly, most of us modelers here aren't interested in producing anything that's still in violation of copyright. Anybody who works from your drawings is at least in a gray area right now- it'd be best to get away from all of that, both for your designs and for us.

I like your design concepts a lot, and I'm referencing some of them (along with a lot of other conceptual artists I like- Loose, Long, Yokohama et al) for the game I'm working on now, but that's a totally different prospect than providing people with stuff they can just translate in a 1:1 fashion- I'm making deliberate alterations to the designs I reference. The community would probably be a lot happier if they knew, with complete certainty, that they were working on something that was legal and novel.

In short, I like your stuff, but I wouldn't try to realize any of it right now, because the reward is nebulous for me as a technical artist, let alone as a creative artist in my own right. I can't speak for everybody, but that's the primary reason I've essentially ignored what you've posted.

In regards to time investment... quickie pencils in 3/4 view would be better for people to work with- there simply isn't any need to go into color choices, imo- whoever picks it up will surely figure it out and arrive at a standardized schema. I understand the urge to make a very complete set of rules on style, etc., and I'm working on a project with very similar constraints in terms of color choices, etc., but... meh... simple guidelines are best.
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AF
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Post by AF »

Actually for reasons I put out in some of my emails, I'd quite like it if you put up higher detailed versions and separated the hulls from the turrets. It would make my life a lot easier as I'm going to have to do that anyway.

As for Atari IP. If you redo the really obvious ones like the peewee and the OTA names sketched in, and maybe change the head dress on the arm commander and fiddle the storyboard to use something other than the arm and core names then you should be perfectly fine to call it your own Intellectual property.

As for the licence I think a CC licence would be better than a GPL licence. I would also like it if stuff based on this had the option of going commercial without a huge licence debacle.
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smoth
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Post by smoth »

I am still floored.
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Arne
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Post by Arne »

What would you guys prefer anyways? Something like what SupCom did, i.e. Core becoming Cybran, and the Thud becoming the... Thud with 4 legs, and the Commander... uh... becoming... the Commander.

Or would you go in a completely different direction, no commanders, you milk cows for resources, etc?

I'd rather keep my TA stuff as it is, maybe bring it a bit closer to TA even. Why? Because I like TA and I enjoy doing homages. Was it Will Wright who said... "we're in the business of selling problems to people", or something like that? Re-designing is kind of like a fun problem solving game to me. Drawing random stuff from scratch is not as much fun because it's easier, and there's so many viable solutions (due to the lack of constrains) that I get both overwhelmed and bored.

Still, designing something merely TA-ish with a commander, bots, tanks, etc is somewhat constrained and could be fun. By doing completely new stuff I could control the distance to the TA stuff better, and keep my TA stuff TA. I would need a few free days (and my passion, which is fickle) to pull that off though.

Adding color schemes and 'shading' doesn't take a whole lot of time really. I've sped up that process now.
Warlord Zsinj
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Post by Warlord Zsinj »

Hi Arne :)
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