Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

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Eleazar
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by Eleazar »

OK, now the ocean water colors parallel the the shallow ones. I've converted the ocean to auto-recolor and created a third very desaturated ocean color.

* The difference between ocean and shallow is more obvious when you click on the picture to see it full size.

Most of my screenshots are wide enough that these forums shrink them. You gotta click on the picture to see at full size-- and at full detail.
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Screen shot 2010-09-24 at 6.49.46 PM.jpg
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Jetrel
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by Jetrel »

Ahh, great - I'd been hoping we could do something like this, with the ocean <-> shallow differentiation. Looks great.
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Eleazar
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by Eleazar »

The first steps in getting a quality sand-to-water transition in place. In some ways this will be the most complicated transition set i've ever done, because it requires a full 36 transition set for the inside and another 36 for the outside-- both which have to line up with each other. But i don't know another way to do it right.

The scalloping is due to the limited number of transition i have at the moment.
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Screen shot 2010-09-26 at 3.14.23 PM.jpg
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Eleazar
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by Eleazar »

More progress and definition...

I'm gonna have to leave the other artists working on terrain hanging for about a week. I need some big chunks of time to wrap this up.
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Screen shot 2010-09-27 at 9.05.52 PM.jpg
Screen shot 2010-09-27 at 9.05.52 PM.jpg (126.46 KiB) Viewed 15057 times
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Jetrel
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by Jetrel »

The only thing that seems off to me is how the sand suddenly becomes *bright* as soon as it goes underwater. I would wager it should be a similar luminosity to the sand outside the water. Maybe even darker.

SD3 had a pretty nice treatment of beach<->sand interaction (actually one of very few decent ones done with pixel art that I've ever seen:
http://www.petesqbsite.com/sections/tut ... umo/13.gif

RL references seem to support this hypothesis:
http://www.bergoiata.org/fe/bestw2/Sandy%20Beach.jpg
http://www.mbgnet.net/salt/sandy/1sandy.jpg
http://www.mbgnet.net/salt/animals/1sandtide.jpg
http://www.worldwidevacationspots.com/c ... Resort.jpg
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/mult ... 85668c.jpg
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/mult ... 34741c.jpg
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/mult ... 91086c.jpg
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/mult ... 33533c.jpg

Like, in this pic, it's bright under there, but it's still a lesser luminosity than the sand immediately above water:
http://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/ ... -beach.jpg


I understand if those transitions are merely "not done yet"; if you only tackled the above-water transitions, which I might add, look absolutely superb.
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Eleazar
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by Eleazar »

You are mostly right.
In working on the wet to dry sand i sort lost sight of the wet sand to submerged sand transition.

But my plan -- which is not evident from the last screenshot-- is to make the edge between land and water vague, more like earlier screenshots. Then we'll have semi-transparent waves sloshing between the "water" and "sand" hex. But we do need some sort of edge if animation is turned off. I probably need to get some waves in there to see how things will really look.
Feel free to PM me if you start a new terrain oriented thread. It's easy for me to miss them among all the other art threads.
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Eleazar
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by Eleazar »

Added a simple heat-shimmer animation to the lava.

It's not a great animation, but this should make it easier for someone with the art skill to make a nicer animation.
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Eleazar
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by Eleazar »

I've been staring at the sand-to-water so long that objectivity is too difficult.

So putting that aside, i finished off a decent prototype for the waterfall. This is the general style i want: a top side that can blend with any water color, and thin, broken streams of water following the rock face.

This would of course be cooler animated, but i leave that to others. And of course i'll make my .PSDs available for anyone.
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Screen shot 2010-09-29 at 7.19.41 PM.jpg
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Eleazar
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by Eleazar »

Fixed up the Muddy Quagmire so it's no longer a kludge of ford and swamp, thus freeing up resources used to unnecessarily (and imperceptibly) animate it.
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Screen shot 2010-09-29 at 9.08.35 PM.jpg
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Eleazar
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by Eleazar »

Erggg!

This beach thing keeps surprising me with new twists and complications.

I think i've figured out how to get around all of them-- but still plenty of slogging to go.

I ending up needing to make a simple flat color version of the transitions so i can make sure everything lines up right. The issue is that the line between land and water is usually partly on both the inside and outside transition.
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Screen shot 2010-10-06 at 10.22.05 PM.jpg
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by Jetrel »

Since it's such a big project, when you get to the "making animated crashing waves" part, I should really pitch in.
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Eleazar
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by Eleazar »

Consternation.
i had almost finished the foundation for my lovely, complicated, double-sided shore transition. The sand/water transition line wandered all over the place without breaking.
Screen shot 2010-10-13 at 6.30.41 PM.jpg
Screen shot 2010-10-13 at 6.30.41 PM.jpg (113.03 KiB) Viewed 14240 times
But i hadn't tested it by mixing the terrain with something other than sand or water for quite some time. Unfortunately it totally breaks the transition.
dashed.jpg
dashed.jpg (114.01 KiB) Viewed 14240 times
I'm pretty sure there's no way to make it work short of inventing new complex macros, and greatly multiplying the number of transitions needed.

Having all the edges either convex or concave (as inthis prototype) is not acceptable.

I can get something of this appearance to work, but it will either have to be compressed and/or significantly encroach on the hex.

Jetrel wrote:Since it's such a big project, when you get to the "making animated crashing waves" part, I should really pitch in.
I hope somebody who is a better animator than me steps in. My role will probably be limited to figuring out how it should work, (theoretically already done) making an ugly prototype animation, and wiring it in so potential animations just need to modify/improve existing graphics. Like what i've done with animated lava-- on a larger scale.
Feel free to PM me if you start a new terrain oriented thread. It's easy for me to miss them among all the other art threads.
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Eleazar
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by Eleazar »

Zookeeper helped me brainstorm a way to proceed with this. Using a new type of corner macro, we should be able to make it
work.
Screen shot 2010-10-15 at 9.49.56 PM.jpg
Here's what we have with only half the transitions. I think this is very similar to what the final product will look like minus whatever minor layering glitches can be solved.
Feel free to PM me if you start a new terrain oriented thread. It's easy for me to miss them among all the other art threads.
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Eleazar
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by Eleazar »

Put in some quick and ugly convex transitions to prove that it actually will work. Looks like it will.

Now to make it look good.
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Screen shot 2010-10-16 at 3.28.47 PM.jpg
Screen shot 2010-10-16 at 3.28.47 PM.jpg (105.77 KiB) Viewed 13895 times
Feel free to PM me if you start a new terrain oriented thread. It's easy for me to miss them among all the other art threads.
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Attempting Lucidity
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Eleazar
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by Eleazar »

And here's where we stand tonight--- very close to being done.
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Screen shot 2010-10-16 at 8.24.22 PM.jpg
Feel free to PM me if you start a new terrain oriented thread. It's easy for me to miss them among all the other art threads.
-> What i might be working on
Attempting Lucidity
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