 |
| ||||||||||
The gold bit only protrudes a little bit, so there's nothing there to cause that much shadow. Plus, glass is transparent, so cast shadows are only really noticeable in the form of missing highlights. The way your shadows curve also doesn't correspond to the form of the gold top and lighting already in the image.
I think in this case, it's better to underdo and not have the shadow at all (like in your original version) than to overdo it and damage the clarity of the image.
The light bits at the bottom are refraction within the glass, refracting light that hits the unseen bottom of the vial. You can also think of it as reflecting the shiny gold if you want. Refraction within curved and hollow objects is complicated, and such effects help make it look more like glass rather than a forcefield, even when they're not physically accurate. One caveat though, is if the red fluid is blood or other mostly-opaque liquid, then it would block most of this refraction, in which case there wouldn't be those highlights. In that case, you could have some hint of reflections on the glass surface instead, if you want it to look more like glass. You could also have both if you want, depends on what look you're going for.
My change to the gold doesn't change the value and contrast, it only changes the hue to be more gold-like. I don't think you need more contrast on the gold, because the fluid level is the important part, and you shouldn't distract the player from that.
If you want more shadows and more contrast on the vial itself to make the whole thing stand out more, I recommend making the design of the gold parts more elaborate. That'll give you more cast shadows, more room for reflections (e.g. the gold reflecting the blood), etc.
Thanks! Yes, it's meant to sort of bubble up from within. I will need a couple of animations for various increment amounts though. And then I'll have to just subtly raise the animation up or down a few pixels to close the gap between the sizes.
Thanks for taking the time to show me what you mean! I like the idea of changing the glass reflection at the top, but it kinda looks like a mistake with only 1 pixel? What if we did more. I also like the lighting at the bottom, but don't entirely understand why it's there. Is it the light reflecting off the gold?
And as for the color change, I'm not sure. I feel like more contrast would be better, because although weaker colors are more pleasing to the eye, they seem to get boring faster (imo anyway). Also I'd say the health bar is quite important, and therefore deserves more prominence.
I always enjoy small animations like this in games, that extra effort :] And this looks quite nice, feels like it's just materializing, which is appropriate.
I think you could make the glass feel more glassy by adding some thickness to it near the bottom, and a little bit of refraction from the fluid (basically just have the edges be red either a pixel higher or lower than the rest), something like this. I got carried away and also cut the top pixel of the highlight off, which makes it look like the gold top casts a shadow, and made one of the gold colours a little warmer, though the colour of the gold should depend on the mood you want for your game, so don't take mine as the one true colour.
So much to take in! Okay x100 ^^
I will add some refraction to the bottom because I think it looks too bland, and I'll just take your advice on the top lighting. However, when viewed at 1x your example has some readability issues in the bottom right corner. Kinda looks like there's a chunk missing with my harsh lighting transition. The glint makes enhances this weirdness?