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[gfx johnny]

In the end you should use the style that you self prefer most ... I think thats more important than trying to match everyones taste which isn't possible either. And if you work in a style you are not really satisfied with it will probably loose the interest in your own game :-)

A good point, i didnt think about this one. Although i want the game to please the crowd Well, i'll spend some time working on story, riddles etc., and then i'll create some of the first locations as good as i can. I will show you when im finished with this

Thx everyone for your opinion!

[Jerrot]

Hey Johnny!

Thx Jerrot! I always thought, hmm something is strange looking... and indeed, it was the specular level of the wood

[gfx johnny]

Now with a great part of story and riddles finished, i wanted to go on with my graphic tests


I did a test scene once again and tried to play around with blend modes and blur to get rid of that annoying 3d look of my pics.

This is the 3d base picture.

The scene is just very basic, only some core elements to minimize render time. You may wonder about the weird shadows - imagine its dark outside and there are two torches on the first and third colum from the left 

And this is the same picture after some post editing.

I'm very pleased with this result, even though its not perfect. It looks a little bit like a drawn picture imho. I could imagine this look for my adventure, i think...


Come along with gfx johnny as he continues his quest for the ultimate graphic style 

[Jerrot]

Hey johnny,

good to see you working.
Now, this is an interesting approach. Let's see...

I did a test scene once again and tried to play around with blend modes and blur to get rid of that annoying 3d look of my pics.

In my opinion, it works quite good partially, but not for the whole scene. Actually I like your renders, but some parts look to smooth for my eyes. The cave for example - there are no sharp edges at all, I assume you use some kind of NURBS for your objects, which makes them kind of organic.

Anyway - that's not what you asked for. Your post-processing works IMHO very fine for the stone plate, it looks more detailled, as if there were some smaller stones or dust on it, details you couldn't analyze from that distance, that's quite real and doesn't look rendered at all.

The whole picture looks more "Indiana Jones like" now, I guess it's the blurring of the scene, which looks good this way. What still disturbs me a little are the walls in the background - but maybe that's a web developer illness - they look like a low compressed JPEG now. The fragmentation is fine though, it just could need some more detail/structure now. Maybe some partial emboss filters might help.

Don't take me too serious though, it looks fine after all and I never did a scene like that myself (yet ), so those are just "a player's" thoughts. If you didn't ask, I'd not concentrated on these things for sure.

[gfx johnny]

Thx for your answer Jerrot, your opinion (and of course anyone's  ) is appreciated I post because i want to have feedback, a nudge in the right direction

I didn't use Nurbs, i created the base mesh in wings3d and smoothed it; you are right, it looks too organic, not like some kind of mountain - need to model it better.

About the stoneplate and the mountain - exactly my thoughts. I did make the picture a little bit brighter, because looking at it with a white browser background, it was difficult to see details. The original was darker, to hide the mountain in the background Regarding the  fragmention, i guess it's a lighting problem; Look here, on the left side the bump map is washed out by the lights i think, the right part of the mountain has a better structure. The left part looks very very badly... need to check this, because it is just one bump map, should look similar. 

A quick solution would be merging good looking parts together; i just put one on the other and used the rubber to erase not wanted parts: quick test. So i could do several render passes and combine them (just have to be careful to maintain continuity).

More experiments on their way...

[Nihil]

I like it very much so far, just some minor issues:

- as you have noticed yourself, the left and right part of the mountan do not really fit

- the sky needs some work, clouds or so

- and I think it would look better if the plateau would reach the caves entrance. Now it looks a bit like ... well, as if it shouldn't be there really, if anyone understands what I mean ;-)

But overall I like the style very much. What kind of game will it be finally?

[gfx johnny]

Thx for your points, Nihil The background ist without details in this test, so someday there will be more in a final version (for example, clouds or a sky). The ground is just a brown plane at the moment  You are right about the transition between cave and stone; i have some ideas for a better version (some more of a stone temple worked into the mountain). We'll see

I think i must create more details and think more about the significance of shapes (i read the "tiller techniques" on adventuredevelopers^^). I guess i have to learn lots of things regarding art for games (although this adventure won't be my first finished project).


The game will be a classic adventure with a focus on story and riddles. It's about a dystopian setting using the genre of post-apocalyptic science fiction (much to my regret i found out that there are already lots of novels about similar themes  but i'll stay with my "own" ideas ). I guess its some kind of soft sci-fi, because technology won't play a big role (ok, it will play a big role, but not as you would guess, no phaser weapons, no starships and so on). I guess it's difficult to explain without giving too much away... the player will reveal important facts about the setting while playing the game (including a surprise), so i don't want to spoil the fun.


btw: i'm waiting for your screenshots 

[Nihil]

Thx for your points, Nihil The background ist without details in this test, so someday there will be more in a final version (for example, clouds or a sky). The ground is just a brown plane at the moment  You are right about the transition between cave and stone; i have some ideas for a better version (some more of a stone temple worked into the mountain). We'll see

Yes, stone temple sounds good :-)

I think i must create more details and think more about the significance of shapes (i read the "tiller techniques" on adventuredevelopers^^). I guess i have to learn lots of things regarding art for games (although this adventure won't be my first finished project).

Adding details is the part I hate most on creating new scenes :-) Everything else goes on fast and you have quick results, but when it comes to the details the tiniest bit takes forever to create ... unfortunately they are necessary to make scenes look good ;-)

The game will be a classic adventure with a focus on story and riddles. It's about a dystopian setting using the genre of post-apocalyptic science fiction (much to my regret i found out that there are already lots of novels about similar themes  but i'll stay with my "own" ideas ). I guess its some kind of soft sci-fi, because technology won't play a big role (ok, it will play a big role, but not as you would guess, no phaser weapons, no starships and so on). I guess it's difficult to explain without giving too much away... the player will reveal important facts about the setting while playing the game (including a surprise), so i don't want to spoil the fun.

The sounds VERY interesting, even more as we have some hardcore SciFi/Cyberpunk-Fans here, including me ;-)
Dystopian setting rings a bell here, I have written the story for a cyberpunk-adventure some years ago, and it's title was "Dystopia" :-) Unfortunately, I never startet to develop it ... :-)

btw: i'm waiting for your screenshots 

Yeah, me too :-)
I'm working on it, but my PC makes more trouble than it does work ... but they will come, someday, somewhere ... in a galaxy far away ... ;-)