Balanced Annihilation Reloaded

[1v0ry_k1ng]

This is how the player will see those units most the time, though:



with that in mind, they need to be textured to look distinctive at this sort of zoom level, rather than up close. I mean, they look fantastic and I love the models, but at playing distance they dont look very distinctive. the (ugly) TA models are easy to tell apart because they have simple bold textures.

solution then would be to fill in much more of the model with simple contrasting coloures rather than intricate and varying patterns and colours

[luckywaldo7]

resizing an image doesn't tell you what it will look like in spring





I think you guys are just more accustomed to the old models

[TradeMark]

you dont need to look at the shape of the unit in OTA models because the textures are so different.

looking at shapes takes lots of brain power. looking at colors takes almost none... same as comparing square root and one bitshift operator speeds...

[Pxtl]

Okay, my opinion on how to fix the "it looks too noisy at range" problems:

1) Tires should be black, and nothing else should be. Look at the shrunken images - the tires blend in with the rest of the model because they're almost the same colour. Being able to spot the tires would help unit identification.

2) All those little black and beige rectangles on the teamcolour sections? Fade them out so they're just little bevels you see up close. If they're grills/vents/speakers/whatever, they're painted the same colour as the rest of the teamcolour section.

I'm just saying, your models look fantastic in the images we see here... but those high-contrast high-frequency details just make noise at long range. Lower the contrast (by making the black sections just slightly-different-colour sections). They'll still look good up close, and they'll be invisible at range.

[Neddie]

That isn't exactly so, TradeMark. There is a large amount of variation between the ease of processing shapes and colours. Shapes depend greatly on size and difference from others - a box with four corners and four lines requires less processing than a box with rounded corners, or a four cornered box with curved sides. Colours must be distinguished as well, from context: OOOOO is much easier than OOOOO which is slightly easier than OOOOO. Familiarity and habit formation play a role as well. Most basic shapes take very little "brain power" because you've used them for most of your life. You use shapes and colours together because they offer a larger set of easily understood combinations.

[TradeMark]

yeah you are right... its much easier to look at different shaped gray images than same squares that use 1-3 different colors, awesome, you win

[Neddie]

I didn't make that argument at all. I told you that your statement was incorrect and incomplete in regards to mental processing and even gave some examples of differentiation.

[TradeMark]

my arguments are never incorrect, you just dont know how to read my arguments, here image:

[Neddie]

looking at shapes takes lots of brain power. looking at colors takes almost none... same as comparing square root and one bitshift operator speeds...

This is bullshit. This is what I poked at.

Waldo's screenshot undermines your most recent post anyway. It really depends on the texturing, you can retexture for easier differentiation. Instead of advocating something positive you just go back to "new stuff sucks" and inane arguments when tweaking could give you something superior to old stuff.

[TradeMark]

Instead of advocating something positive you just go back to "new stuff sucks" and inane arguments when tweaking could give you something superior to old stuff.

why say anything positive when theres none? im not gonna boost their ego and then we laugh at them at American Idols because they thought they can sing...

[Otherside]

i find MR D's reaper and ravager (raider for you BA folk) easier to distinguish than the OTA models.

Kaiser's models just need a less noisy texture that is more bland to make the models easier to distinguish.

[Pxtl]

i find MR D's reaper and ravager (raider for you BA folk) easier to distinguish than the OTA models.

Kaiser's models just need a less noisy texture that is more bland to make the models easier to distinguish.

I agree. Like I said, just removing the little black and grey rectangles from the teamcolour section would go a very long way. Well, keep them but recolour them so they look like they're painted the same colour as the rest of the teamcolour section. And tires should be _black_. Lighten up the whole rest of the skin if you have to.

[KaiserJ]

thanks for the tip pxtl and some others, the tyres are hard to distinguish i guess, and i can can change some of the color distribution.

why say anything positive when theres none? im not gonna boost their ego and then we laugh at them at American Idols because they thought they can sing...

so this is why im doing it, for fame and fortune? a record deal? not because its fun at all mind you, or a good challenge, or to help someone out. heres a positive... im actually doing something to help regret! wheras you aren't doing shit. your dismissive attitude is confusing and disheartening.... think you can do it right? show us. show us all! im interested.

of should i just quit and never pick up max again? is that the point you're trying to make?

[TradeMark]

this is right

you dont look the units as a whole, or as a part of the game, you make them in 99x zoom and add all little useless detail that nobody see in the game

you need to start from basic concepts of how the textures would look, not start adding details to ever corner and then expanding until everything is covered with all those little details

*facep* this is what im trying to prevent, you from crying when community bashes your work you wasted all your time, but you can only see whine as whine, not constructive or useful so keep ignoring me boy if you want to keep crying.

[SeanHeron]

Trademark, I'm reporting you to moderation for a whole string of posts here - you're way out of line.

[KaiserJ]

edit* no thats just rage.

trademark, just be nice to me, if you have something to contribute and help me make my work better, then fine, ill be glad to accept. i try not to make purely negative comments about peoples work on this forum, and i'd really appreciate it if you could show me the same treatment

and im not ignoring you, im just having trouble figuring out how to use what everyone is suggesting.

[TradeMark]

ill give a tip: resize your screenshots like this:


and then think what you can do to the textures to look more distinguishable from each other. also use the top-down view, nobody looks units from that angle... (okay 5 players does that).

And avoid doing it like this:

they all look the same

[Neddie]

Well, Kaiser, I haven't made an abundance of textures (Under Ten), and certainly I'm not a well-liked artist, but I can start you with some tips here.

regtrucky2.png

(468.85 KiB) Downloaded 2 times

Those are just some spot notes.

Your textures are overdetailed with little apparent preshading - of which I am not a fan myself - and too little functional contrast. Except for the bright metallic bits, everything has around two levels of brightness, save for front panels which mostly appear to be black. Where you put twenty bars on a grille you should have six, where you have two or three small areas of different colour you should have one of a much darker or richer shade.

You're putting way too much subtle shading on the texture, and too many small details which turn into muddle. Just cranking up saturation and contrast won't fix this, you need to make your details more visible by making them fewer and individually larger. You have no light areas and no dark areas on the texture, though, you need to use powerful and large areas of brights and shadows to create visible grades at distance.

[Neddie]

If you want to keep small details, for whatever reason, you can attempt to do so using detail preshading. Look at this...



The left is v1.8 of my Finnish StuG III texture. The right is v7 of my Finnish StuG III texture.

Ignore that the second one is brighter than the first one. The second one is under fullbright settings, the first was not. I want you to look at how the details hold up. The scale down doesn't do it justice, since the details are pixelated due to scaling the static image, rather than a dynamic object, but you can see them clearer even with the poor resize on the right.

At least you can see that there are details on the one on the right. Note that the texture is a 256 so I was dealing with a very limited space. You have subtle contrasts on your textures... subtle contrasts are what you see on the left example. On the right you have less subtle contrasts, with an artificially bright border against an artificially dark border creating more visible details at zoom.

I think this, combined with simply reducing the number of colours/increasing general contrast/using very dark and very bright regions/increasing the size of colour regions/increasing the size of greebles will help the long distance visibility of your textures.

[YokoZar]

It's really promising what you're doing KaiserJ, please don't let the abrasiveness of other posters discourage you :)

ill give a tip: resize your screenshots like this:


and then think what you can do to the textures to look more distinguishable from each other. also use the top-down view, nobody looks units from that angle... (okay 5 players does that).

And avoid doing it like this:

they all look the same

To further comment, it would be nice to standardize the background that unit pics have using an in game-ish backdrop.

It would be really helpful if the background contained information about the unit's terrain type (and thus suggested most of its role). So air units could have clouds, boats could be shown floating on water, land units could be on dirt, hover units could be shown coasting on water, and amphibious units could be shown coming out of water. Ideally this would be consistent across all units - the same dirt and clouds and water. I think the trickiest to make distinct are the hovercraft and the amphibious units as they'd both require splitting the picture; perhaps it might be as simple as having hovers moving in one direction while amphibs moved to the other.

Basically, the game would be a lot more accessible if the unit pictures carried this information instantly. This idea can be combined with the "unit icons" idea earlier (eg a tiny wrench for builder units), which would make reading most of the tooltips largely unnecessary.