Update #68: ART!

[Ulquiorra]

You guys really aren't happy until trolls look like REAL trolls, are you? Like this;

 

All i requaire is troll that don't look lame compared to others designs is that to much to handle ?

 

Im very thankfull that at least they said that "This" was a troll. Otherwise i whoud bet it was Satyr, orc, bugbear or something simmillar.

 

By the way, wy PE ogres look awsome like ogres but trolls look like WoWish/ deep ones/  deer crossover witch so .. "low quality" details ?

 

From the look of them we don't even know how long their arms are, we don't know if they have weirdly looking lips or some king of bird beak, they have fur or slime skin ? They wearing some king of trusers or have just oddly yellowish legs ... it's just horrible.. expecionally it's in isomethics ...

Edited December 1, 2013 by Ulquiorra

[rjshae]

Trolling about trolls... we've come full circle.

[rjshae]

I like the trees more of the same color. Looks weird in the old Iso RPG's, the forest is way too multi-colored

 

Yes, to my eyes it looks more like a natural deciduous forest--some forest greens, some with a slightly blue or yellow tint. Hopefully they won't forget to add a few mounds formed from fallen, rotting trees. Also, a little brownish leaf dirt under the trees, here and there, would be realistic. Love the look though, even if the trees are a little small (for visibility reasons, I'm sure).

[John Forseti]

Trolling about trolls... we've come full circle.

[Ulquiorra]

I supose you say that the desingers are trolling about trolls

[Messier-31]

Yo dawg, I heard ya like them trolls, so I put trolls in last PE update so you can troll while you troll.

[Ulquiorra]

This is to much "troll" word, then i can handle ...

[anameforobsidian]

I love Magic the Gathering's wide variety of trolls.  My favorite is:

But I think, the next one gets it pretty well too:

 

I picture trolls as vaguely misshapen or unfinished humanoids.  Larger than an orc, smaller and smarter than an ogre, and much smaller than a giant.

[Ulquiorra]

I personaly think that if devs designed troll like big kittens there still whoud be many people that like this idea becouse it's "obsidian".

 

Any type of kritic opinion is seen as trolling ..

[IndiraLightfoot]

[neo6874]

Hello to everybody! 

I love art updates, keep doing it!  

The art pieces are not bad, but they can be muuuch better. They still need lot of logical construction and polishing. The images in this state have very slight atmosphere which is the most inportant ingredent in such games, further more if this game pretend to have something common with such powerful adventure like BG.

I overpainted one of the images in order to to demonstrate what I have in mind (it tooks me 3 hours):

 

 

1. The fireplace is loaded, this mean people use it often andthere is no way near it have brushes. Also when the fire burns it paints all stones in black, the grass around it dies as well. 

2. Usually people walk there commonly.

3. Trees need to be more diversified, now they are very sterile.

4. Brushes on the middle of the intensively used road?!?

5. I put some imagination, the skeleton speaks but not enough. I put this soil poisoning in order to provoke the imagination of the player.

6. Obviously this place was devastated around year or so, this mean people with sure have started to cut out the dead trees around.

7. The road is  not logically narrow.

8. Why there we have such turn? There must be some obstacle, people always use the shortest path.

9. The poisoning is not only around the skeleton, guess why?

 

With this corrections I believe the shot become more alive, with deeper atmosphere and with much more story inside.

 

I believe constructive critic is the most precious gift to one creator! 

Have a sunny day!

 

First off, this is a great additive pass to what's already been done (Obsidian's already stated they haven't done the final paint passes yet).

 

 

1. Agreed, either they should remove the logs, or remove the extra stuff (bushes, whatever) from the fire-pit.

2. (comment below)

3. Actually, no ... the first pass looked better for a "late spring" (or "summer") version of the trees.

4. (comment below)

5. nice, though you missed the wings (I'm assuming they're actually on the ground, and not still held in the air)

6. maybe, maybe not -- depends how far away from a town this is.

7. (comment below)

8. (comment below)

9. Really this part looks more like sun-burnt grass (that you'd see during mid-late summer when there hasn't been enough rainfall)...

 

Points 2, 4, and 7 you seem to be missing "oh, and dragons have burnt down the forest about a year ago" that you mentioned in point (6)... so it's kinda hard to say that these features are "wrong" given the timeframe -- it really depends how long this particular stretch of road was too dangerous to travel.  If we're to assume it's been 1+ years, then the narrowing of the road, and quick takeover by some larger plants makes sense (i'm thinking "tall grasses and weeds" more than "bushes" -- like what you'd see in a meadow during the summer if it's left untended)

 

For point 8, a boulder works, although since "nothing" is there right now in the picture, it makes more sense that there was maybe a particularly large tree there at one time, which got mowed down by the dragon as it crashed/died, although it's a little far "left" for that -- removing the two "bottom" trees near (7) and making the road curve there would make more sense (also, the upturned roots of the former massive tree, maybe even taking part (all) of the road with it.

[Ulquiorra]

 

 

 

How long where you designing it 10 years ?

[IndiraLightfoot]

Heh! Try a three second googling of "feline troll", as I actually was intrigued by your kitten troll reference. It was an interesting juxtaposition of agility and class versus shambling "bruteness", as it were.

[Lephys]

I agree that it's not really fair to judge an unfinished work, but on the other hand I think that's exactly the right time where critical input is valuable - when you can still change or try different things.

No no, it's perfectly fair to judge an unfinished work. It's not fair to judge it as a finished work.

 

Saying "Hey, since I don't know what you guys are going to do to it in the paintover, here are a bunch of suggestions!" is a whole different animal from "OMG, I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU ARE STUPID ENOUGH TO THINK THIS SCREENSHOT IS COMPLETE! YOUR WHOLE ART TEAM ARE NOOBZ, AND SHOULD BE FIRED!"

 

They don't think the screenshot is finished, so the people who keep saying things like that are wasting their own time, and being a bit dickish, honestly.

[Mico Selva]

Nice artwork. I really like how the trolls look. Never was a fan of Forgotten Realms troll design. These are much better.

[Archmage Silver]

Splendid work, looking forward to the backer portal!

[Gamgee]

Finally remembered I backed this game. Good to see the progress. In a few months I'll have the first of my batch of KS games done. Judgement time. I wonder how they will fare. As well as Eternity whenever it is done.

[satananas]

Recently I have made some IE areas in Blender just to see how it can be achieved with relatively low effort.

 

The is also a topic in the Baldursgate forums:

http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/22488/new-landscape-environment-art-for-infinity-engine-games-with-blender/p1

[ProjectBG2Respawn]

Sorry but this is horrible.

 

I really can't describe it with other words, i'm so glad you aren't a graphist in Obsidian team.

[Solviulnir the Soulbinder]

It's not terrible, but there's certainly too much contrast and colour variation. 
I think that the sun should be moved as well, it's hard to achieve good illusion of depth with shadows like these. Or try rotating the map 45 degrees to the right.

Keep trying, Blender is not the easiest 3d app. Back in the day there was a nice and simple tool called Terragen - I think it had the option to export terrain mesh as a *.obj file, you could open these in Blender and add some textures etc. Good luck

/edit/ Here's a link for you.

Edited December 4, 2013 by Solviulnir the Soulbinder

[Falkon Swiftblade]

 

Hello to everybody! 

I love art updates, keep doing it!  

The art pieces are not bad, but they can be muuuch better. They still need lot of logical construction and polishing. The images in this state have very slight atmosphere which is the most inportant ingredent in such games, further more if this game pretend to have something common with such powerful adventure like BG.

I overpainted one of the images in order to to demonstrate what I have in mind (it tooks me 3 hours):

 

 

(7) and making the road curve there would make more sense (also, the upturned roots of the former massive tree, maybe even taking part (all) of the road with it.

 

 

The only reason there's a bend in the road is because art schools tell you to do so to make the scene more interesting. That's really the only reason you ever see a snaking pathway in a painting. Realistically, I wish artists and designers did do things with purpose instead of following a formula or convention, but I like the thought behind having an obstacle in the way. Actually, one thing I hope they can add into the game mechanics somehow are booby traps, and places where we may get ambushed as we're exploring. Also I feel both images have a very narrow range of values and contrast. I like the idea of having some color in the world, but I would really like to see a solid 7 point values system so things feel a little more organic. Overall the work is pretty and I really like the way the ground looks.

Edited December 5, 2013 by Falkon Swiftblade

[Lephys]

... Or... maybe there used to be a big tree there, when the road was first "carved" through the wilderness. Etc.

 

Regarding the "just 'cause it's visually interesting" bit, art is about visual interest. Even if what you're doing is just depicting something (as in "I'm going to use paint to photorealistically depict that table"), the whole reason you're doing so is because you value the visual interest of that table, and are seeking to create that with your paint/media.

 

So, yeah, even in video games, a portion of the artwork is going to be tackling visual interest. That's just how it is. If it's a simulator, maybe it won't be. Then, it'll just be "try to make that look just like a tree, a forest, the sky, roads, etc." In a game like a fantasy RPG, sure, you want it to make sense (you don't just want a road that arbitrarily snakes all over the place every 10 feet, and causes people traveling it to travel 10 times the distance they'd need to if they just walked straight to their destination, unimpeded). But, ALSO, you want things to be visually interesting. They don't need to be arbitrarily visually interesting. Or, rather, the visual interest doesn't need to completely shove any and all feasibility out of the way. BUT, sometimes, a little less (though still some) feasibility along with some visual interest is far better, in the long run, than MORE feasibility and no visual interest.

 

And, again, if the road's not twisting 72-feet out of the way, who the hell's going to say "Hey, I know this is an already established bend in this road, but... now that that tree's gone that was the reason this road went a bit to the right here in the first place, we should totally start spending all our time and effort cutting that grass and foliage out of the way and rolling our wagons across the uneven ground there, instead of across this consistently-trodden road that's just 10 feet to the right. THAT'LL SAVE US LIKE 3 SECONDS ON OUR TRIP, MAN!"

 

Below a certain threshold, I'm sure it's not worth the effort. You just follow the road. There were plenty of trails through the woods at my summer camp to get from one end of the camp to the other, or from one campsite to the other, and NONE of them were straight lines from all point A's to all point B's. They twisted and wound a little bit, but everyone just followed them anyway, instead of taking upon themselves to course-correct the trails to optimize the trip distance by 1%. Possibly getting bitten by snakes in tall grass and underbrush, and hacking away briars and crap just wasn't worth the miniscule amount of time "lost" by the not-perfectly-efficient trail.

 

Besides... since when were all humans the most perfectly rational robots ever? "Humans wouldn't paint a lion on their breastplate! They'd spend that time doing constructive and practical things!" Oh, wait...

[Bli1942]

Sorry but this is horrible.

 

I really can't describe it with other words, i'm so glad you aren't a graphist in Obsidian team.

 It looked confusing at first but when I figured it out it looks quite nice, just needs to tone down each colour a little

[Silent Winter]

 

Sorry but this is horrible.

 

I really can't describe it with other words, i'm so glad you aren't a graphist in Obsidian team.

 It looked confusing at first but when I figured it out it looks quite nice, just needs to tone down each colour a little

It looks ok - I agree that toning down the colours would help - I'd tone down the lighting too, it's too strong.

The materials need a bit of work - the snow looks more mash-potato (though that could be the overlighting), the water is too blue (I'd tone down the diffuse) and the yellow 'gate' thing looks a bit over-painted.

Conversely, the rocks and trees look nice.

[LadyCrimson]

I think it all looks fine for this stage. A little generic perhaps but fine. I'm more concerned with the gameplay being "fun" than whether the trees are the right color/height or if the trolls are troll-like enough or whatever.

 

Not that I don't understand...first impressions and one likes what one likes etc. Been there sometimes myself. But static screens of even finished/released games are so often nowhere near representative of what one emotionally sees/feels about the mood/atmosphere/look etc. as one plays.