Supertuxkart new graphical style

[samuncle]

Hello everybody

With the new light system (thanks to cand) we have more options and we can add lights like in blender (\o/) without making lightmap. We can achieve a photo-realistic looking if we want now .
(the classical before/after)



(impressive isn't it ^^).

The problem is that with the new pipeline we need to adapt every tracks . Now the constraint are different and the ways to achieve effects are also different.

I'm also making a library for 3D objects. What that means ? It means that now you can make an object in the library and link its in many track. When you update the object in the library it's automatically updated in the tracks .

It's time to choose a graphical style. After some debate we (the core team) decided:
-> We will avoid photo realistic and plastic looking (like our guidelines say), that's not what we want
-> The style chosen is a Basic color palette with details coming from a realistic texture.

It's the style of team fortress 2 and we think that's a good choice for supertuxkart. Here some example of what we want.




These textures have been made by hand.

So we probably in the future need help from the community due to the amount of work . I will make soon as possible a track to show what is our new style. It's very important for us to be consistent.
One the problem of stk is the lack of consistency. That's why the game looks unprofessional. Hopefully with this new style and the light system, people will love our lovely game .

[betharatux1]

very marvelous

I like it like image number 2 and 3, i think it smooth, and texture looks soft + good

[samuncle]

I made a quick test in blender. The artistic team of TF2 made the textures by hand, they don't used photo.


IMHO the result looks cool

To make a texture like that the process is:
1) You need to make the object in 3D
2) You bake the ambient occlusion
3) You choose the main color (something not too dark and not too bright)
4) You paint the texture starting by general tones and then the details
5) You adjust some color and add some bright areas

Repeat the process until you are satisfied with the result .

[Ludsky]

It's so wonderful ! Good Luck

[RaceAce]

Wow, those scenes look fantastic! The only problem is they make almost all the other tracks look bad, and most of the karts as well. You would have to darken all the karts to make them not so vibrant, I would think.

[charlie]

Wow, those scenes look fantastic! The only problem is they make almost all the other tracks look bad, and most of the karts as well. You would have to darken all the karts to make them not so vibrant, I would think.

Those scenes are not STK. They are TF2 which samuncle was citing as an inspiration of the artistic direction STK should go.

[fraang]

First of all: good choice of style! A cartoonish look fits the game very well.
As for the retexture/painting of the textures I am in for sure. It is basically what I did for all of my textures so far. I made them by hand using filling patterns, filters and painting using my graphics tablet.

[samuncle]

That will be a lot of work .

So I'm making some test and Auria want a track to see how the new style looks in game. I'm right making textures. If the test track looks good we will update our guidelines and I will make a tutorial to explain how the textures are made.

Here is an example of a wood texture

[samuncle]

And a quick in game example

[mr_Spoon]

I like it, it looks good!

Need to be careful that the tunnels etc. don't become too dark to see the track easily in.

[Uni]

I'm a big fan of the fence, the ground and the rocks. I still don't really like the grass, but however, it's better than the current grass. I guess grass is just hard

[fraang]

samuncle, any textures I can paint for you? Just give me the uv map as an image in the target resolution.

[samuncle]

Thanks, any help would be appreciated . However currently I prefer to make one track to test the new guidelines. We already found a problem, with these textures the tracks look a bit empty.

You can try yourself, basically just follow these steps:

1) Make the object in 3D
2) Bake the Ambient Occlusion
3) Choose a color that will be the main color
4) Draw lights and dark area with a square brush
5) Add some details (you can use reference photo to see where details are and how they looks)

I have finished to convert the terrain of farm.


Also we want to keep the gimp file in the media repository to be able to quickly change a texture. Basically for ground the standard size is 1024*1024. I have made several examples.
Dirt ground

Trail for the road

Grass


These textures are called stk_generic_something.png. Because they will be used to make other textures and they aren't associated with a 3D object.

[Arthur]

I believe ground textures will need more details and also preferably different variations of the same texture to make it more interesting.

[Totoplus62]

Maybe there is a simple way to give an nice additional aspect for ground texture (like sand etc...) by using HSV Noise with gimp (tsv in french)
example:

or
HSV noise + simple blur



But is it compatible with the new style ?

edit: i will work on skybox and haystack

[rubberduck]

For me they look better than the old one

[fraang]

I use an HSV noise to make granular surfaces by applying it on a seperate layer filled with a gray color (RGB 808080) which I set to layer mode "Overlay". Sometimes I use more than one layer to achieve a more dense noise. With different noise seeds of course.

I also use Filters > Render > Clouds > Fog to make the surface a bit more uneven. For example earth or rock textures.

[Totoplus62]

I'm making a new hand made skybox for farm to fit with the new style : you can already test it (this is currently a low res while I want a 4096x2048 pixel version)
http://pix.toile-libre.org/?img=1376680982.jpg

I will have to tweak some things on it

[samuncle]

Hello

First of all thanks for your contributions however I see many problem:

1) Don't add extra noise. Ambient Occlusion is already something noisy, so we can control the noise amount for each textures
2) It's intended that textures doesn't have too much details. We (the core team) have noticed that now the track looks a bit more empty. We will add more objects to cover the empty areas.
3) Your skybox has some problem.
3.1) Clouds don't look hand painted.
3.2) there is some obvious repetitive area. I'm not against repetitive area however a texture SHOULDN'T be repetitive. The only acceptable repetition is caused by UV mapping. That's a storage problem (it's stupid to have a big texture with a resolution of 2048*2048 if inside the texture you have small 256*256 areas that are repetitive. You will use less memory if you use one texture of 256*256 tilled with UV mapping.)
3.3) It will looks stretched because it's applied to a cube. The texture need to be deformed to compensate this deformations. The only easy way to achieve that is making a small scene in blender an render its in a cube. It allow us to quickly change a skybox without remaking it.

I'm still training myself to create these textures, When my skills will be sufficient I'm going to make a tutorial. However I recommend to don't use gimp standard filters like fog. IMHO We loose the hand painted aspect.

Currently my steps are:

1) Making the object in 3D with some details
2) Baking the ambient occlusion
3) Painting with a square brush adding dark areas/bright area (the light will be simulated with specular mapping).
4) Add more details with some photography to help.

[fraang]

2) It's intended that textures doesn't have too much details. We (the core team) have noticed that now the track looks a bit more empty. We will add more objects to cover the empty areas.

I wonder what to much details means? TF2 has quite a lot of details in its textures. Only stylised. I hope the "GNOME syndrome" isn't raging here.

[samuncle]

New screenshoots to show the WIP

[Uni]

Starting to look very good! Perhaps some subtle relief (if that's not there yet) could get rid of the empty-look a bit more? Anyway tremendous job!

[samuncle]

Still WIP



As you can see the track looks less empty

[0zone0ne]

Now THAT looks amazing.

[rubberduck]

i found some textures that could fit with the new graphical style

http://opengameart.org/content/cartoon-textures

what do you think, do they fit?