Dune Wars Art Thread

[Deon]

I like the multi-image variants.

Here's a quick heighliner nif I've made in seconds. It's very lowpoly so it shouldn't make any impact on the perfomance. Do you need it for the offworld trading animation instead of the flat image?

 

[Deliverator]

Wow. I can't keep up with the explosion of activity here.

@Deon

Thanks for the Protoss Nexus fix and the Spaceport animation. Most of the buildings I consider placeholder at the moment. Once we sort out wonders we can really start doing some unique building/wonder art.

As an idea, I think a 3D heighliner at some point might be good. If we go down that road I'd want the model to have a bit more detail to it. The Homeworld screen has consumed quite a lot of mine and Koma's time recently. Adding a 3D heighliner would involve working it into the planet NIFs and sorting the animation. I'd prefer to focus on other things at the moment.

@Slvynn

Good work on the gamefonts stuff and promotion icons. I think the gold on brown looks nice. I won't have time to check myself until the weekend, but I'm sure others can give you feedback on the clarity.

On the military icons, I think it you have a better idea on how to represent a promotion in an icon than the current symbol then you should try it out. I'm not sure all the current symbols are that obvious.

Redesigning the UI is something Koma and I have touched on. I think something more Dunish would be nice, but nothing too distracting. We can discuss further.

 

[Deon]

Well, the lack of details on the heighleiner is intentional, I thought that it shouldn't eat graphical resources at all, but if you don't mind, I can easily elaborate a much better model. Also, now when I know how to animate things, you can tell me what you want and I'll try to accomplish it.

 

[Deon]

You wanted a more detailed heighliner.

How about this? I had some free time at work so I tried to spend it with pleasure and usefulness .

Spoiler :

I can make a good texture for it.

 

[Slvynn]

IMO with awesome detailed texture it can be very sexy

 

[davidlallen]

After giving more though to the topic, after your feedback, please check this overall plan.

That sounds great. I have been zooming the screenshots you sent to be 100%. In your screenshots the hardest case is not shown: put the spy unit as one unit in a stack, click on another unit in the stack, and mouseover the stack. You will see the promotions in the hover help.

I don't think the spy promos should be in a different color. I would rather have all of them look consistent.

Do you think it is worthwhile to use the same chevrons for all the promotions? As you point out, Combat might be difficult. One common idea in military badges is to add stars or make the chevron shaped differently for the level 4 and level 5.

 

[keldath]

hey guys,

i gotta say, the new promotions art is really something, fine fine work.


deliverator,
since ive been away long,

ive been wanting to ask - why did you guys decide on a blue shield for the city? i really liked you first brownish version - its like in the movie (sheild wall), though the blue is awesome too, just a thought popped to me.

 

[Deon]

I've made a Buzzsaw unit for Harkonnen. If you're going to implement it as UU (i.e. desert only, bonus vs infantry) then I will texture and animate it.

Spoiler :

 

[Slvynn]

That sounds great. I have been zooming the screenshots you sent to be 100%. In your screenshots the hardest case is not shown: put the spy unit as one unit in a stack, click on another unit in the stack, and mouseover the stack. You will see the promotions in the hover help.

I don't think the spy promos should be in a different color. I would rather have all of them look consistent.

Do you think it is worthwhile to use the same chevrons for all the promotions? As you point out, Combat might be difficult. One common idea in military badges is to add stars or make the chevron shaped differently for the level 4 and level 5.

I have new (i think great) idea of icon organisation, the thing vanilla and bts and mod didnt udsed, but i want to try to make some destinction between types of icons - promotions, abilities, unit types. i will explaiin later when i get back home

Also there is such a screenshot the 2nd one
Shortly - i will redo (completely new) units types icons (Melee, Guardsman etc). Their color will be different, becuse unit type isnt a promotion. While counter promotions (Shock etc) will use relevant icons from unit types with some gradient aka-chevron crossings (denying, like stop smoking) . I hope i will put some p-view today later.

The special benefit of such organisation - easy, semi-intuitive distinction of unit designed targets, that mean Suspensor craft icon and anti-suspensor promotion will use same main icon (clear and big), but different color, and very understandable and well known "no-smoking" composition, which fits this futuristic-gradient vector logo style.

@keldath - thanks i am glad that you like it

 

[davidlallen]

I've made a Buzzsaw unit for Harkonnen.

I never played Dune 2K. But, how does a big saw blade move through sand, or through rock for that matter? Does it leave a trench behind?

 

[Deon]

I think it moves like a catamaran, using the saw as a helix. It's like a rower mechanism.

Also, I am considering to make unitartstyles for different factions, you've asked about ability to make faction-related unique art and I think it's a good idea.

House Ordos in my opinion should have vehicles resembling a snake+insect/bug, well they are known "snaky" people, so I thought I'd try to design a hovering vehicle for them.

Here's a "base" unit, which is probably OK for a suspensor transport. I can refit it with various weapons and tweak the shape to get other units (i.e. an ordos lasergun tank).

Spoiler :

It looks a bit bland without a texture, but with a proper texture it should be fine. I had an urge to add a lot of gear and devices on it, but it'd slow the game considerably. A better texture is a better solution.

 

[Deliverator]

ive been wanting to ask - why did you guys decide on a blue shield for the city? i really liked you first brownish version - its like in the movie (sheild wall), though the blue is awesome too, just a thought popped to me.

People suggested blue so I changed it. I did like the orange version, but I think the blue one is more distinctive.

I've made a Buzzsaw unit for Harkonnen. If you're going to implement it as UU (i.e. desert only, bonus vs infantry) then I will texture and animate it.

The model is nice, but I'm not sure about having a Buzzsaw unit. We are mostly trying to capture the atmosphere of the books and not just recreate the Westwood RTS. The problem with a desert-only Buzzsaw with a bonus vs infantry would be that very few infantry can actually move onto desert tiles.

 

[Slvynn]

small preview i made on job (not accurate yet)

Unit type logo - Guardsman, and Promotions related to it (City defence bottom, anti-guardsman top center and right)

I will polish this later and show more organised lines.

I think the logo should be distinctive much as possible, so i will lessen opacity for those stripes. Thats a key to their distinction is smallest size. Abot CD i may use just home symbol like for Homeland promotion. Also there is another ogranisation way of 2nd picture - again , anti Guardsman promos. 3rd is Melee line for comparison.

I will be glad to hear any feedback/oppinions on new material.

 

[Deon]

The model is nice, but I'm not sure about having a Buzzsaw unit. We are mostly trying to capture the atmosphere of the books and not just recreate the Westwood RTS. The problem with a desert-only Buzzsaw with a bonus vs infantry would be that very few infantry can actually move onto desert tiles.

Aww. I liked the model I've made . But I get your point :3.

What about a style for the Ordos unit?

Because you're not sure about new units, I won't try to make any then for now. Let's return to something I am used to. Buildings.

The Atreides Palace:

Spoiler :

I will add details as additional towers, flags and animation later.

 

[Slvynn]

Aww. I liked the model I've made . But I get your point :3.

What about a style for the Ordos unit?

Because you're not sure about new units, I won't try to make any then for now. Let's return to something I am used to. Buildings.

The Atreides Palace:

Spoiler :

I will add details as additional towers, flags and animation later.

love that eagle awesome

 

[Deliverator]

Let's return to something I am used to. Buildings.

The Atreides Palace:

Dude, you're a machine! This looks great. I learned a while back how to convert buildings from Emperor : Battle for Dune. I was thinking of converting one of the eagle buildings, but yours is far better.

At the weekend, I'll try and post an art tasklist so we can focus our efforts.

@Slvynn: Is it possible to have more of orange/light brown to yellow gradient, rather than a pink to yellow gradient on the light background icons? I think that would look better.

 

[Deon]

I had remaning 20 minutes at work so I've started to work at a generic desert buggy. I like how it looks so far even while it's only half-done.

Can it be used as a quad art for some nation?

Sorry, the work day has ended, I have to hurry home .

 

[Deliverator]

Sorry, the work day has ended, I have to hurry home.

You must have a fun job if you can spend the day making models for Dune Wars.

 

[davidlallen]

I had remaning 20 minutes at work so I've started to work at a generic desert buggy. I like how it looks so far even while it's only half-done.

I have watched the development of some unit art like the tanker truck in Fury Road, or the sandworm in DW. How much time is involved in creating the base mesh, as opposed to creating the blank texture map ("unwrapping") and the final texture?

 

[Deon]

Well, a creation of a mesh for a structure takes from 5 minutes to an hour, it depends if it's a complex model and do I know what am I making or do I make it "on the fly". I.e. Atreides palace took me ~ 30 minutes because I didn't know how I want it to look so I experimented with various details and parts.

Usually a unit mesh consists of a few objects and it takes more time to make it. This buggy at the current state took 25 minutes to make.

I don't know how long does it take to make a complete UV-map, I usually draw/paste parts of a texture from my head first and then "span" the model faces on the image, making changes on the fly. It takes from 30 min to a few hours, it depends of the avaliability of textures (Cgtextures.com was free some time ago and it was easier than now) and how it looks in the end (I often remade a texture from scratch because I wasn't satisfied with the final result). So sometimes it's easier to model than to texture for me.

But don't get my words seriously, I don't make a lot of models so it's a pretty amateurish example.

You must have a fun job if you can spend the day making models for Dune Wars.

Yeah, I am supposed to be an administrator of an electronic archive of our Russian National Library, watching quotas for users, managing backups and programming our engine, but most time I procastinate. The PC there is really bad for the games I like, it even cannot handle graphical tiles for Roguelikes like Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup (it has 128 Mb RAM (PC100, even not DDR), 8 Mb videocard, I think it's Savage, it's worse than Voodoo), but thankfully today I've found out that Nifskope and Wings 3d work finely with this dinosaur, so here's the result.