I wanted some input before I put the windows on this house. Is the color and shading okay? Also, anything else - roof lines, etc.
(http://simutrans-germany.com/files/upload/dlo_r01.png)
BTW, I have shaded the door yet.
In my opinion there should be a more noticeable difference in shading between the two walls, and also between the two slopes on the roof. The balcony looks good though!
Many thanks Kieron! I was thinking the shading was not heavy enough. Had not thought about the roof but will address that. I have done some fixing on the detail work so the roof lines look better...well, the left corner anyway. The new version is also yellow but might change that again. I'm honestly not real happy with either color.
I am happy with the balcony though. Sure glad you liked it! :)
The overall structure looks great... as kieron said, I'd make the roof line differences a bit more shaded. I'd also probably shade the -east side under the balcony a bit more.
The roof could use a texture as well, but I'm sure you just haven't got that far yet :)
Right Sarlock and thanks.
That roof has been a pain. I'm thinking I really need to learn blender because figuring roof angles even with my somewhat limited knowledge of carpentry is still difficult since we have so few pixels to work with and can't rotate the image. I have tweaked the off sets and cleaned it up a bit more. Had not thought about texturing the roof but will do that; also will look at shading under the balcony as you suggested. That's a good idea as well.
I think this is all the damage I can do to it for now - house number 2:
(http://simutrans-germany.com/files/upload/dlo_r02.png)
Wow, nice!
The main problem is the roof. The west slope is not right, it seems shrinking... It seems in perspective, whereas Simutrans uses isometry. It should run parallel to the east facade. Also its texture seems too dithered.
You mean the far corner of the roof, that is, the part farthest away? If so I'll see what I can do about that. I've got a lot to learn about roofs...
Can you explain too dithered? I haven't applied any HSV yet, was waiting to get comments back from this version. Do you mean it is too speckled?
I have fixed the roof on the dog houses (that's the common name for them here, can't remember the correct name). At least I think they're fixed. I'm talking about the little short valleys where the dog house roof joins the main roof.
Many thanks for taking time to look at it and comment!
Yeah, he means the back side part of the roof that is hanging over the west side of the building (south is facing down and to the left in the image). All you need to do is add a few pixels on the top part to make the angle the same as the opposite side so that the edge's distance from the peak is the same at the north side as the south side. It looks like you're using a 2:1 gradient on the roof edge, so just use that pattern to build the west side of the roof edge.
These are your cardinal directions for images:
W- N
--/--
S -E
Dithered is just the checkerboard pixel pattern (speckled, as you said). If you're planning to add noise and eliminate that, then disregard :) I also assume you will add noise to the white paint on the walls so that it isn't all one color.
Dog houses = gables... the first one, closest to the camera, has a patch of non-dithered brown in it. I assume this will get removed when you texture the roof.
This is looking great, nice work!
roads
The House like cools.
Lots of things I want to say here so maybe I'll get it all in one post.
Thanks Greenling! I don't think it is possible to get too much encouragement.
Thanks Sarlock! The drawing of the directions is very helpful. For some reason I have trouble with directions on the computer. In real life I can go anywhere and never get "turned around." South, east, north, west just seems intuitive. The opposite is true when I'm looking at an image on the computer.
I think the dithering (thank you for confirming it means speckled to hillbillys) is a color blind problem with shading. I might always have to depend on you guys to tell me something has too much dithering. It can be fixed without much trouble at all usually.
The roof cannot. I worked on it a long time, pixel painting and although it is better, I'm not satisfied it. After seeing the houses you've done, I've down loaded Blender and will attempt to learn it as I think my time would be much better spent learning Blender than pixel painting trying to fix something that should not have been a problem to begin with. It seems apparent using Blender for this is simply a systematic approach.
On a completely new and different subject and this might need a separate thread depending on whether the community considers it valid or just dismisses it. It looks like it has been a convention for smaller buildings - those that do not cover a square - to be placed far back on the square and then fill the "yard" with stuff. Fabio has addressed getting rid of grass for non grassy climates. I applaud this as I think the terrain is quite nice in Simutrans and smaller structures look fine to me surrounded with climate graphic. That said, I think to help avoid the "packed" look of the game, it would be better to set smaller structures closer to the road as opposed to the current way of doing them - setting them far back on the square. This would eliminate the need to add clutter in the yard as most of the yard would be behind the structure. I'm thinking it would also "spread out" the look of the game a bit.
You make a great point about setting smaller structures in the back of the tile. One of my longer term ideas is to develop a set of residential houses are near to the sidewalk and have small or no backyards... probably two to a tile to replicate this. Small frontyard, bigger backyard is common in many residential areas.
Vancouver, BC, Canada: (http://www.elvenorder.com/sar/images/simutrans/close_houses.png)
London, England: (http://www.elvenorder.com/sar/images/simutrans/close_houses_2.png)
Blender is very painful to learn. Expect to feel lost and confused by it for at least 10-15 hours before you start to make any sort of progress. I watched a lot of tutorials on it and slowly got my bearings in the program. I'm probably 40-50 hours of learning in to the program and it's only now that I can actually feel like I'm somewhat competant with it. So be patient :)
Good photos! They show exactly what I was referring to as to getting away from satellite dishes, cars, etc., in the yard. To me those things just adds to the sense of things being packed to tightly together - too cluttered. I really do not like it, it is the reason I use so many trees in my cities. While I do like trees a lot, I am not a fanatic about them. I just wanted some visual space...
I don't think adding two houses on a square is a good idea. I know it is standard and is done all the time but basically it is done to "fill up" the square. If the houses are placed close to the street, in most cases this is not necessary because the height of the house will take up most of the space in the back yard.
I could be wrong about this because I really have not tested it much. What I have tested has looked good to me.
Thanks for the advice about Blender. I fully intend to stick with it but reading what you had to say will make that easier.
mentioned on google+ stream
https://plus.google.com/115377746519459832106/posts/hUY3bRLYJye