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Home Market

Started by Gouv, January 17, 2010, 10:39:17 PM

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Gouv

Hi,
my Version of the Home Market is (very) slowly getting Shape and i think it's ready for first Preview.
The Box on the roof isnt final, but the Building itself pretty much is.
Other Boxes are just Placeholders for future Vehicles.
Behind the Building i will (probably) build a few Loading Bays for Trucks and a few Doors + Stairs, not sure yet.
http://gouv.de/ext/simutrans/preview1.png

Fabio

nice! i like it!

a few tips, though:

i would exclude pavement and roads from 3D modelling. Pavement would look better if we used the standard one (more consistency). Similarily, roads should rather use standard pavement&stripes (or better, with VS's consent, those i'm preparing for a complete replacement. I could provide you with both, if needed. Those could be added in a second time, or used as a texture (I have NO idea how to work in 3D).

Gouv

Well, replacing the Textures of the roads is pretty easy, I'd just need a rectangular picture for that.
I was thinking about removing the Roads myself, - they take way to much place. I thought it would look kinda stupid if i dont connect the Parking and the loading areas to Roads.
About Pavement - do you think i should fill the entire ground with standard pavement-texture? I'd like to keep some of my neat stone plates in there  ;)
Oh, and 3D isnt all that hard, - my entire Knowledge about Blender (and that's just basics of modelling and texturing) is not older than 1 Month.

MHD

Great!

Just two ideas:
- Between street and entrance a small stripe of boardwalk
- There are usually these shopping carts on the parking lot

In germany, often wooden huts are standing around in front of these markets...

Gouv

Alright, here is Preview2:
http://gouv.de/ext/simutrans/preview2.png

Backside of the Building is still under Construction  :D

Fabio

nice! i'll provide you also with the texture for asphalt, if you're interested.
;D

Gouv

#6
Thanks. I think I'll forget the roads alltogether, there is not much place for them.
I'm not sure about many things, it's my second Building after all.
Was hoping for more than every 100th Viewer to post some sort of comment and help with my Decisions, oh well..

Edit: @MHD I tried to make that Shopping Cart Housing and actually modeled a bunch of those Carts inside of it, but it's really hard to see on the Image. Thanks for Ideas anyway.

Spike

Quote from: Gouv on January 20, 2010, 08:25:35 PM
Alright, here is Preview2:
http://gouv.de/ext/simutrans/preview2.png

Backside of the Building is still under Construction  :D

That is very impressive already :)

ӔO

simple looking, but very pleasant to look at. nice work.
My Sketchup open project sources
various projects rolled up: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17111233/Roll_up.rar

Colour safe chart:

Fabio

Quote from: Gouv on January 21, 2010, 04:57:17 PM
Thanks. I think I'll forget the roads alltogether, there is not much place for them.

i was thinking of "standard" pavement for the parking area, though...

Gouv

Uh, guess I misunderstood you. I thought you were speaking about road-textures.
I'll take any help i can get. So, if you still like to share the textures i'll take them with thanks.

Gouv

So, I've learned and used a few more Things about Texturing. CityCars look better now, Shoppingcart Housing still dont.
Almost done now, here is 3rd Preview(444kB): http://gouv.de/ext/simutrans/hm_1.png.
So, I think there is still some tweaking to do on the Trucks, anything else?
Oh and that white rectangular Tile above the Building will be gone in the final picture.

VS

#12
Wow, what a pathetic evil overlord I am - this topic spent the last 5 days opened in my browser and I couldn't think of a way to express myself. Let's break that block. Step by step...

a) Plan, composition, layout... call it what you want. Perfect. It does not feel empty anywhere. :award:

b) Scale. I'm not sure how tall this should be, but a standard floor is ~14 px and the front seems to have 3 slices @13px each. One expects them to be floors, and on the other hand this kind of building usually has higher ceilings than a normal home, so it feels somewhat out of scale. This is highly debatable - maybe there are 2 floors inside, maybe just one! Who knows! But the effect keeps distracting regardless :( Partially, this issue could be fixed by providing some scale reference to guide the eye - namely doors. As in, distinguishing them from the glass wall somehow, maybe by thickening frame around them, or different colour, or something else. Perhaps adding doors spanning 1.5 "glass slice" would make it look the right size. Take that just as a hint - how you tackle that issue is up to you, you're the architect here ;)

c) Colours - well, not much colour as such anywhere, maybe except on cars. Nothing to say, just that the cars look nice like that and add some visual candy :)

d) Textures are... ummm... less wow and more uhm. I'm not sure what is the cause with building, especially roof. First instinct was to call it too grainy, but on a second thought it might be just that it has exactly the same colour as walls. When you think about that... it makes it look somewhat like a brick of paper. Second, pavement. I know it will look different with render settings (see below), but currently it looks just like blurred and rotated standard pavement texture. Both changes for worse. The result has strange "direction" and given the size of visible bumps, used tiles are at least as big as a chair. This, too might help the scale concern.

e) Render. I'm sure this is a quickie preview, but the adjectives it immediately brings to mind is "particularly ugly". I couldn't identify that... stupid of me :D It has a really strong "ancient computer" feeling to it, incredibly pixelated and palettized. I'm sure nicer looks are in this case just a few button clicks away, for starters you could turn on some kind of antialiasing. I am sure Zeno, vilvoh or The Hood could help there. Look at car windows, particularly the yellow one shows these shortcomings in side views. Btw, given what aliasing does, maybe just switching it on will save looks of the pavement, as is.

PS: I'm sorry if it's too much negative feedback at once, but I just want to help... Even if this is a lot of text, actually fixing the issues (at least some) should be straightforward.

My projects... Tools for messing with Simutrans graphics. Graphic archive - templates and some other stuff for painters. Development logs for most recent information on what is going on. And of course pak128!

Gouv

Quote from: VS on January 24, 2010, 10:50:36 PM
b) Scale.
I never counted Pixels in my rendered Images before, but Gimp says my 3 Floors(Glass+Frames) are together 41-42px high and that makes about 14px per Floor. I'm not saying i wont rescale it, gotta see the Building ingame and compare to others first. *looking for tilecutterorhowisitcalledagain*
Quote
c) Colours
Guess you're right, I didnt realise that prior to posting. Building itself (and thats a major part of the Image) is textured with real Concrete-Texture and it's, well, grey.. Maybe to realistic in this case. Additionally, Shadows were to dark, so I added extra Light from the East.

Quote
d) Textures
The Walls/Roof of the Building are completely textured with that Concrete Image mentioned above.
I dont know what material/color Roof should have?
Switched Pavement back to my stone Plates. The other Texture was of wrong size and was anything but good, thats right.
Entrance still cant be identified, gotta put something in front of it.

Quote
e) Render.
Well, I did read in some sort of Blender-for-Simutrans Tutorial, that Oversampling makes the image and especially the edges to blurry and should be turned off. It has been off ever since. Oversampling in Blender can only be put on or off for everything. But after some searching i found a way to keep OSA on without getting the Tile-Edges blurry: Link.

Quote
PS: I'm sorry if it's too much negative feedback at once, but I just want to help... Even if this is a lot of text, actually fixing the issues (at least some) should be straightforward.
You're very welcome! Actually i was already worrying if i made you angry or something, was really missing your comment ;)

Ah, and here is the new Version with OSA on: Image.

vilvoh

I really like the latest version, the textures are soft and the glass fachade looks great but be carefull with OSA, it blurs the edges.

Escala Real...a blog about Simutrans in Spanish...

Gouv

Minor Update: added Entrance and let some lazy Simuworkers repaint the Walls.
The new 'Color'(it's still Concrete-Texture, just tweaked a little) made my Glass-Panels darker again, d'oh..

Image

@vilvoh I know, it's already blurry for my taste. Those tiny Cars seem to look better with OSA on though.

vilvoh

To improve the rendering quality without using an external rendering engine, it's better to use Ambient Occlusion. On the other hand, you can move the cars to another layer and render them separately with OSA.

P.S: 3K posts! uuhaahh!!  ;D

Escala Real...a blog about Simutrans in Spanish...

Gouv

#17
*Offtopic*
@vilvoh wow, you've got by far the highest Postcount on this Board. Congratulations!
I'm almost inside the Top100 myself ;)

Edit: here is a Screenshot of the last Version ingame:
Image(1,4MB).
Well, it looks.. different x.x
Maybe a little to small after all, but not badly.
What do you Guys think?

The Hood

I think it looks great!  Not sure about the pavement texture though - that's the only thing...

Gouv

Oh boy, that Word again. Please tell me, what exactly do you all mean by 'Pavement'? From what my Dictionary tells me(never heard/read it before), it's the walkway aside the Road.
I guess it means just any not empty place on the ground not occupied with roads/water etc.

The Hood

Sorry!  Yes you are right, one meaning of pavement is (in British English, not American English) the footpath on the side of the road.  It can also mean (and what I meant here) any paved surface, i.e. the grey hexagonal texture around the building that isn't road, grass, water etc.  (OT: Usually paving slabs (stone or concrete tiles) but can also be used to describe even the surface of roads in some contexts, just to be confusing!!!)

Back on topic, I think the hexagonal ground texture (pavement) could be improved, maybe as simple as making the texture smaller.

Fabio

Quote from: Gouv on January 22, 2010, 10:45:15 AM
I'll take any help i can get. So, if you still like to share the textures i'll take them with thanks.

This is the texture I use for roads / courtyards / parking areas, it's based on Raven/Rojo's roads, only slightly edited.

VS

It seems pavement has become another of the Simglish terms, like convoi or fundament. When I use that word for Simutrans, I apply it to ground that is not grass or road, but improved for walking...

I'd agree with The Hood - make the hexagons smaller and it will be better. In fact, what I tried to say before was just that - make the texture smaller. It seems I failed :P Also note that aliasing means strange things happen to detail smaller than a pixel, so one can't even tell from first images if the original texture was good or bad - just that it was made look bad in that particular image.

My projects... Tools for messing with Simutrans graphics. Graphic archive - templates and some other stuff for painters. Development logs for most recent information on what is going on. And of course pak128!

Gouv

@TheHood Thanks for explaining :)
@Fabio Thanks, i'll try it.
@VS I've been trying to scale that texture down(through Settings in Blender) even prior to first Preview and the result was horrible.
Took a closer look at it and found the reason in wrong cut and ratio of the Imagefile used.
Well, I'm still tampering with the Basics of Modelling and Texturing, wasnt expecting any wonders there  ;D
I'll post again later.


Gouv

Thank you, Silver.
Had not much time, so Trucks are still untouched. Tried to optimize the OSA-Settings and scaled down the Hexagons.
It seems to be the smallest useable size.

Image

Fabio


VS

Um, so... any progress?

My projects... Tools for messing with Simutrans graphics. Graphic archive - templates and some other stuff for painters. Development logs for most recent information on what is going on. And of course pak128!

Gouv

#28
Well, to be honest, there was pretty much no progress since my last post.
In the last few Days StarTrek Online has consumed my free time completely.

I still want to get this done, so, what is missing?
Snow-Version? Or does pavement or anything else definately needs some improvement?
Oh yeah, the Trucks, almost forgot. I'll make some Improvements there, got a few Days off.

Edit: trying to make some snow, Trucks been improved a little too.

VS

...I just can't help it but think the floors are not tall enough. I'd see 2 instead of 3 as good for this building (unless you made it higher)

My projects... Tools for messing with Simutrans graphics. Graphic archive - templates and some other stuff for painters. Development logs for most recent information on what is going on. And of course pak128!

Gouv

Alright, how is this?
The Floors are now ~15px each. I've scaled the roof down a little to make the Floors look taller in comparison. Maybe i overdid a little on that one, but I've got backup ;)


Zeno

It looks better, really. The thinner roof also helps.

VS


My projects... Tools for messing with Simutrans graphics. Graphic archive - templates and some other stuff for painters. Development logs for most recent information on what is going on. And of course pak128!

Fabio


MoTw

Yes, it's really nice.  :o :D
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