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M.E.
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Quote M.E. Replybullet Topic: Grassy Grassland
    Posted: 10 March 2007 at 4:26am
Hello All,

For my game I'm working on the background. I started at the
bottom with some roots and now the playing area needs some
structure.

This is what I have done so far.

Started out with some grass:

And filled the tile (50x50)


The dark green is the base - color of the game and I thought
it would be a good idea to have it as the base of the tile.

When copying and blending in the tiles with some 'new' pixels
I came to this (100x100)


Repeated this copying and blending with new pixels to get (400x400)



When implementing this to the fullsized area (800x763)




The grass is WAY to large.

I sized one of the previous steps by half and repeated the copying to get :



Now I found that I didn't like the darkish green color as the base of the
grass. I thought over this and in the end I selected all the color and
cut it from the piece. Leaving a transparent grassy image.

The next thing I did was make a background for the background


Just some randomly copying of slightly lighter colors of the palet that I was using.

Copying out to a large background and pasting what I had left:



Fixed some areas but I think there are still some weird dark spots.
Nature is weird sometimes so I'm thinking of keeping it in.

But hey, I want your opion first before I dive in to the next step(s)

Thanks in advance for your advices!

Regards from


M.E.



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jalonso
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Quote jalonso Replybullet Posted: 10 March 2007 at 4:57am
All the grasses seem very, very busy somehow. Maybe they are OK when all the elements are on it but its hard to judge as it is now. The very first tiles (the big grass) looks great but is too big, too bad.
This is a top-down game right?
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Christopher
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Quote Christopher Replybullet Posted: 10 March 2007 at 9:29am
I think they might be a little too distracting for a game. Maybe im just imagining that though.
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M.E.
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Quote M.E. Replybullet Posted: 10 March 2007 at 9:35am
Hello Jalonso,

How do I value your comments! I'm very glad with the efforts you
put in to it.

The game is a top-down birdseye view. The tiles will be overlapping
so it differs a bit from a standard isometric.

I find it very hard to find a good mix between detail without getting
too busy which you found out!

How about this:




This is using a randomized pixel background (50x50) that was tiled and grouped together to form 100x100 pixel grid. Four of them where differently pixeled from 9 grass-kinds.

When I used a darker border color it became too busy again so I left it at this.

Any suggestions?


Thanks in advance.

Best regards from

M.E.

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Quote Pixel_Outlaw Replybullet Posted: 10 March 2007 at 9:50am
It has a really photorealistic feel to it.
 
 
"This is using a randomized pixel background (50x50)"
So you used a seeded random number generator to plot x and y points? Most people feel you should place each pixel intentionally.


Edited by Pixel_Outlaw - 10 March 2007 at 9:52am
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M.E.
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Quote M.E. Replybullet Posted: 10 March 2007 at 1:50pm
Hello Pixel_Outlaw,

The 'dirt' look was made using this tile:



I'm not a native english speaker so I'm sorry if I mislead you
by using the random generator. I just merely
wanted to point out that I have put the pixels on the canvas not
creating grass leaves but to make a basis for the next step. And since
the comment was made that my original grass was too detailed I merely wanted a fuzzy thing going on.

I used this tile to be copied across a larger canvas. This canvas was used 4 times to make some kind of individual tiles using these grassy things:

 

 

I have also used the same ´random´ placement to make these. Just
what I felt would be a good spot to put something in.

These combined:



Which was used to tile it to the larger background that I needed.


If you suggest to do this any different I am more than happy to follow and attempt some other approach.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Regards from

M.E.
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jalonso
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Quote jalonso Replybullet Posted: 10 March 2007 at 9:39pm
Let me start by saying that grass tiles is a 'holy grail' of pixelart, imo. All your tiles so far are probably better than anything I could make

Again, without seeing them in content and just discussing grass as a BG. Maybe less is more. Check how dopple used a very simple technique which he brings to life with just select plants and grasses here and there. Seems like your last version is going in this direction.

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Doppleganger
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Quote Doppleganger Replybullet Posted: 11 March 2007 at 9:57am


Here is another example of mine, with more detail.

Your latest grass looks like a rough canvas texture with imperfections in the weaving/stitching all over. The idea with grass tiles is to get them looking natural but not obtrusive. A general misconception people new to grass tiles seem to have is that grass tiles are made with random dots and lines until it looks good.

It is best to start with two color grass until you get something that looks rather unnoticeable when tiled, and then go in and smooth out whatever bad spots there may be with shading and highlights.

Another useful technique is to make sure that the blades take up "random" areas of space. By random I mean, seemingly random. For instance, you might have blades of grass in rows to start with but it shows a glaring dark green line all across the bottom of the row when it tiles. This can be fixed by shifting some of the grass up and/or down from that row. Of course you don't want to follow that pattern for all rows or you'll just get a glaring zig zag tiling problem instead. So, the idea is to perhaps use the grass you're drawing to break up the tiling. This can also be said for the non grass areas of it. Really it's just all about balance.

Hope that helps, it's better explained with pictures but I haven't the time now.




Edited by Doppleganger - 11 March 2007 at 9:57am
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M.E.
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Quote M.E. Replybullet Posted: 12 March 2007 at 2:22pm
Hello Doppleganger & Jalonso & Rest,


Still experimenting with the background grass.

The first thing I did was again using a grass-looking tile:



The same pixels where used previously, but this time I darkened
a little bit more to match the 'root-grass' that I had.

When tiled gave:



And then the weaving / stitching that Doppleganger mentioned was clearly visible.

I don't want a tile background, but rather a background where I can
put tiles on top of.

So next thing I thought of was to copy/paste parts of the 50x50 tile
and paste them to 100x100 tiles:



To make:



In order to avoid the stitching I decided to do several of these:

         

When tiled diagonally I ended up with this:




There are still some rough edges that I need to clear up, but I wanted to make sure that this is the thing that I am supposed to be working on....


As always I value your comments!

Regards from


M.E.


Edited by M.E. - 12 March 2007 at 2:23pm
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Doppleganger
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Quote Doppleganger Replybullet Posted: 12 March 2007 at 3:30pm


Now, I don't doubt that you pixeled the tiles yourself, I'm simply making the point that the effect you're creating is just random noise. I tried breaking down my grass tile into a WIP for you. The steps are not 100% the way I do things but it's the same principle.

I am aware that your grass is not meant to look anything like my grass but following those simple steps can still help you out. Pixel art is about control and crispness, not randomocity.

Your current grass is a vast improvement from the previous grass though, I think it just needs some quality control on your part. I don't think that 10 100x100 tiles is a good solution to your tiling problems.
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M.E.
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Quote M.E. Replybullet Posted: 13 March 2007 at 1:59am
Hello Doppleganger,

WOW! Thanks a lot for this detailed step-by-step actionlist.

OK, I will try to limit my 'randomocity'.

This is what I have done with your advice:

   

When tiled this worked immediately better than what I had before.
But I didn't like the contrast so I added a fourth color:



The tile mechanism from Gimp gave again the stichiness, so I decided to copy it myself:



To give:



Using this tile I made this:



There are a lot of 'banana-shaped' grassies in there and I found it
annyoing so I used a larger tile to remove a lot of them.
The larger tile was used in order to avoid another repeat of another
form.





Again copying this myself...




This was in the end the product.

Personally I find this much better than I had before.

Any more suggestions?!

Thanks in advance. I truly admire the willingness to help and I'm very
thankful!

Best regards from

M.E.
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Quote Serendor Replybullet Posted: 13 March 2007 at 7:53am
yes indeed it looks better than the previous

but I think you can make it even better, try to make the grass straws more together...

now they are seperated, think it would look nicer if you put them together... you see in dopplegangers exampel there are more chunks of grass... you have lots of the darkest ground colour left.

so.. fill in with more grass straws, that will do I hope ;)
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Quote Doppleganger Replybullet Posted: 13 March 2007 at 8:32am


One last thing that I kind of forgot. Color choice is about as important as every other step. The colors you have chosen are very abrasive and vary so greatly as to break apart your image of grass. I agree with Serendor about filling the tile in with more straws but, if you opt not to, the least you can do is bring the colors together. This image is the exact same as yours but with changes in color. I chose to go brighter and livelier, as that's the way I roll, but the same can be applied to your color scheme. Grass should not have all that much contrast because it is tightly packed together and everywhere. I feel that your current grass might strain a person's eyes if they chose to play your game for too long of a time.

Also, I'd like to see you make a tile that's 64x64 or less to fill in the whole area. Without copying it or flipping it or anything else. Making tiles so large is really counter productive of the whole tile making process. If your tiles end up being nothing more than random variations of the tile pasted upon itself and then pasted onto a larger area, they aren't really tiles anymore.

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Quote jalonso Replybullet Posted: 13 March 2007 at 8:38am
OT: Dopple, why don't you place that awesome tut on the tutorial page?
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Quote Doppleganger Replybullet Posted: 13 March 2007 at 8:44am
Maybe I will do that. I'll probably refine it a bit or something. Oh man, your signature has a paper airplane and a vent...That game was the greatest. 
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Quote M.E. Replybullet Posted: 13 March 2007 at 9:11am
@Doppleganger:

Shees man, I never thought that the brighter vibrant version would
be holding in the game. I had the impression that it would surely
be blinding the player.
But when copying pasting to my game it really worked.

Like I said before I'm not looking at a tileset, but I'm merely searching
for a background where I can put my tiles on.

@Rest and @Doppleganger:

Using this color scheme I will experiment with lots of other grassy
things to enrich the background.

Maybe I will try to do a 50x50 tile which can be repeated really tiled,
but I doubt I will use it. But it never hurts to try!

Regards from

M.E.




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Quote M.E. Replybullet Posted: 13 March 2007 at 1:51pm
Taking the colors from the modified grass by Doppleganger I have
made the following two 50x50 tiles:

and

When tiled gave:



and




Personally I liked the last version the best.


But .. I still want to prove it to myself that making grass without tiling
is possible. So I started with the two small tiles from above to create:


(100x100)

And I'm now on:



Not sure if the larger grass is something that will work but I guess
I have to wait for the piece to grow.

At least I'm more confident that the color scheme is working in the
game so that gives me the opportunity to try different things.


Best regards from

M.E.


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Quote Doppleganger Replybullet Posted: 13 March 2007 at 7:23pm
I like your latest grass. It's your best yet by far! Good work!
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Quote Fhqwhgads Replybullet Posted: 13 March 2007 at 10:33pm
I think the color is a bit bright. Especially for something that is going to be a background, I should be darker so the foreground objects can be seen easier.
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Quote jalonso Replybullet Posted: 14 March 2007 at 2:04pm
Completely OT: Happy BDay!
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M.E.
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Quote M.E. Replybullet Posted: 15 March 2007 at 2:21pm
Thanks Jalonso!

Some social time spend, so the pixel had to wait a bit.

But ...

This is what I managed so far:



This is a 200x200 'tile' that needs to grow to approx. 790x680 pixels.

One of the previous tiles could be used to have a background that
doesn't seems to be stiched, but I want to try a complete background
without repetation or copying.

Regards from

M.E.
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Quote Kfuchoin Replybullet Posted: 15 March 2007 at 3:07pm
i liked better the original colors :S
 
and by the way Happy B-Day :D
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M.E.
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Quote M.E. Replybullet Posted: 17 March 2007 at 2:53am
Hi Kfuchoin,

Thanks.

What doppleganger taught me is that you can easily change the color
pallete later on. So I'm doodeling away at the moment creating sometimes little sticky people in grass.
Hopefully this will in the end resemble to grassland:



Nice experiment, but I have to watch my RSI - wrest




Regards from

M.E.

(Edit: latest revision added - March 18)


Edited by M.E. - 18 March 2007 at 7:49am
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Quote ceddo Replybullet Posted: 18 March 2007 at 12:30pm
Those tiles are looking better and better!

Watch out for RSI - get a f*ckin' tablet! Until I bought myself one, I had severe RSI. RSI is just a painful memory to me now :)
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Quote M.E. Replybullet Posted: 18 March 2007 at 1:07pm
Hello Ceddo,

Thank you for the nice encouraging words.

OT:
Can I ask you what kind of Tablet you are using and if it can be
used with Gimp?

I'm using my lefthand on the mouse at the moment but I fear
that I am creating another RSI hand :(

Kind regards from

M.E.

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Quote ceddo Replybullet Posted: 18 March 2007 at 2:18pm
I use a 4x4 inch WACOM tablet (it's the white 100$ model). I've been using it for a little over a year and it still hasn't failed me yet. I'm not sure if Gimp has tablet support (pressure and angle sensivity) but the tablet is pretty much just a pen that works like a mouse if not.
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Quote Aleiav Replybullet Posted: 18 March 2007 at 11:52pm
Good improvements with the grass. :) I like the less harsher colors.
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Quote M.E. Replybullet Posted: 19 March 2007 at 10:20am
Hello All,

Pixeling away and this is the 400x400 piece that I finished with:



Then, I noticed that the darkest color was filling more space in
the lefthand corner compared to the other grass-space.

So, taking a deep breath and a large eraser:



And started to do the same as I did the other grassies:



I think I will use this to 'grow' to the fullsize 680x790ish that
fills the background.

Then the last step would be to use the darkest color again to
make the grass stand out because at the moment it is far
too bright. I used the tiling tool in Gimp to make a quick larger
area and it didn't felt right in the game. The last 200x200 tile was
better, so I still need the darker color.

And now I need to give my hand a rest. Maybe tomorrow
I will be shopping for a tablet.


Regards from

M.E.


Edited by M.E. - 19 March 2007 at 10:21am
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ceddo
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Quote ceddo Replybullet Posted: 19 March 2007 at 10:58am
Disclaimer: Tablets take time and persistence to get used to!
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Quote M.E. Replybullet Posted: 20 March 2007 at 9:36am
Hello Ceddo,

Thank you very, very much for the advice.
While I still struggle much with the mouse action of the WACOM Pen Partner
tablet, the drawing mechanism in Gimp is incredible.

I really feel that I have my pencil back, although I'm still drawing with
the lefthand because I don't want to overstretch my righthand at the
moment.

My girlfriend is also very happy since she doesn't have to hear me
clicking all the time

This is the current state of things:





Kind regards from


M.E.

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Quote M.E. Replybullet Posted: 23 March 2007 at 11:39am
Hello All,

The current status is that I'm doodeling away and
that the first color is on the complete background.

The brightest color is now being done.



Tiles definitely are much faster to make, but I hope that the background will give a more natural and less repetitive feeling.

Not sure how many hours I have been putting in, but
they sure are building up

Best regards from


M.E.
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Quote JackBauer24 Replybullet Posted: 24 March 2007 at 2:03pm
That is looking very good M.E.  Keep up the good work.  Also, I wish I knew how to do this.  Sadly I am still at the no touchie stage when it comes to grass.  Good luck!

Jack
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Quote M.E. Replybullet Posted: 25 March 2007 at 4:29am
Hello Jack,

Thank you for the nice words.

When you follow my steps and also have seen the excellent
little turtorial from doppleganger you should be able to make
some kind of a tile with it.
The edges of a tile are the most important thing to make sure
that the flow of the grass is not abruptly stopped.

For the complete background without the use of tiles this is
what I have done so far.

I filled the background with the three colors :
1. Background color
2. Darker color
3. Bright color




When viewed inside the game this looks pretty ok, but I want to
checkout another addition of a darker color.

So.. that is what I'm going to do next.

If anybody has another idea, please share so that I can do some
experiments with it as well.

Regards from

M.E.
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Quote M.E. Replybullet Posted: 28 March 2007 at 7:01am
Hello All,

After pixeling the darkest color in the areas where I had more
than one pixelwidth of background the grass came alive.

At least that is what I think.



As always I value your comments.

At the moment I'm working on the edges and paste the roots at the
bottom.

Edit: In game view:





Kind regards from

M.E.


Edited by M.E. - 28 March 2007 at 7:16am
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Quote M.E. Replybullet Posted: 29 March 2007 at 2:59am
So, here it is the finalized version.

At least that is what I think.

If nobody has anything to say I called it finished.....



Thanks to all of you who have been making comments. I hope I have listened and implemented them.

Best regards from

M.E.
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