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[Jungletoe]

Object Set


In-Game (ignore the bad shader)



The black outlines are necessary for our game because we need to really differ the objects you can collide with from the objects you can step onto. Regardless, the trees and such still look very newbie to me and I can't understand why.

Thanks!

[Aamp]

I think they look pretty good, but maybe they could use some shadows around the trunks like the trees in A Link to the Past?

[Cobralad]

The black outlines are necessary for our game because we need to really differ the objects you can collide with from the objects you can step onto.

not being same color as grass would help

[Moth]

I think the main problems here are a lack of illusion of depth (it mostly just looks like objects on top of a flat background) and there seems to be a lack of direction of shading on the trees.

As Aamp suggested you might try adding a bit of shadow to it (also added a strand of grass overlapping the rock- a deceptively tricky proposition because you want to make sure the strand is identifiable as grass and not a graphic error, and you also don't want to take away the personality of the rock):



I feel when it comes to detailing trees, the outline kind of informs to their shape and therefore their shading.



Here's an example of shading that might follow the gesture of the lineart more. You might want to go with a different shape of lineart for the tree? You can refer to how Zelda does it, check out how the detail on these trees is informed by their shape

Anyway that's just me trying to lend a critical eye and point out where things might be able to be improved. It's a cute style, lookin nice

[DXimenes]

I think what you're missing is a little bit of texture and contrast on the colors. Some sel-out wouldn't hurt either.

Here, I did a quick tuning using only the colors you already have on your palette.



(please be mindful that I spent no more than 15 minutes on this)

You can use "bigger" leaves on the texture if you want to give the trees a punch and still keep the simple inorganic look.

[Bobert]

it's definitely a good start, but i'd say it could use more hue variety and texture. all the plants and the grass in the screenshot use almost the exact same shades of green, so mixing things up would help. the trees also have very smooth shading that doesn't really convey the texture of leaves. it's not necessary, you could make nice trees that have no texture whatsoever, but some of your trees suggest a leafy texture better than others. the lumpier round trees look nicer than the triangular trees because of this

like aamp said, i'd suggest making the trees cast shadows on the grass. that'd add some more visual variety and help convey the perspective. it also wouldn't hurt to add some dirt tiles or another color of grass to the ground

[Jungletoe]

Ok, I tried experimenting with more of a leafy texture w/ @DXimenes' advice (I didn't want to go as detailed as his piece because I didn't think it fit the overall game's style of simplicity) and with @Moth's suggestion to look at Zelda for guidance.



#1 is the original
#2 is the first pine tree I tried to fix up and add leafy textures to
#3 is my attempt at cleaning up some details in 2, but I may have gone too far?
#4 is reverting back to #1's lineart after some people on reddit suggested that #2 and #3 had weird perspectives
#5 modifies some of the perspective to be more consistent... I think?

Which one do you prefer?

I understand that you guys want me to switch some of the colors, but every time I try to swap some of the colors for others, it ends up looking wayyy too saturated for some reason. I already do some hue shifting, so if you guys could give me some more advice on that front I'd really appreciate it

I think they look pretty good, but maybe they could use some shadows around the trunks like the trees in A Link to the Past?

As Aamp suggested you might try adding a bit of shadow to it (also added a strand of grass overlapping the rock- a deceptively tricky proposition because you want to make sure the strand is identifiable as grass and not a graphic error, and you also don't want to take away the personality of the rock):

The issue with adding shadows/preset grass into the graphic is that our trees can be placed on any type of terrain in the game-- The player has the option to place the trees/rocks on dirt or snow if they wanted to. I've tried adding some alpha'd shadows, but when the trees were planted near each other it caused shadows to overlap and make the graphic not work out at all.

In the end we might end up doing a fix in the game engine, but meh... if you guys have any other suggestions I'd love to hear them.

[Forstride]

2 looks the best IMO.

[Aamp]

That's cool that the trees and rocks etc. can be placed anywhere.  I like a combination of 3 and 5, if that gives any ideas.



Maybe these shadows are too big for being just black.

[DXimenes]

That's some great improvement Jungletoe I like these, especially 2 and 4. Aamp's suggestion also looks nice, and I really think the shadow on the bottom helps a lot with the depth.

I think the problem with the contrast is that the color on your trees is too close to the base color of the ground; the hue is not shifting enough. They're fitting too cleanly on the same ramp, and the distance between shadow and light on the trees is very small, and it doesn't help that they cast no shadow, so they're lacking depth.
In my opinion you should either shift hue a little more or add brighter colors to the grass and the canopy.
Also, all your hues are bending toward a blueish color. You can try pushing the trees more to the green/yellow spectrum and keep the ground on the blue/green.



Alternatively, if none of these suggestions suit you and you think things are too saturated, you can try desaturating the ground instead.

[Moth]

Love that bright tree palette DXimenes.

I really like seeing the different textures on the trees! Personally my favorite is #3. I really like the orb shaped flow to the lighting, expanding at the middle and then tapering towards the center at the bottom.

Maybe you could implement a shader or something to change the color of the pixels based on what terrain they're on top of. Might seem like a bit of a roundabout solution but also less work in the long run than making a bunch of variant images with different shadow colors, if you did want to implement shadows. Could also be applied to stuff like building and entity shadows if you have those.

In fact it wouldn't necessarily need to be a shader, pixels of a certain color could just be placed in the game world as static graphics when the trees are created on top of x terrain.

[DXimenes]

You can get an alpha channel if you save the image in PNG-24. Make a black shadow with, say, 20% transparency and voilá, no need to make a shader

[Moth]

Jungletoe notes above he tried alpha shadows but it didn't work because of how shadows overlap, that's why I suggested the shader stuff which is a bit more fancy (and from an artistic standpoint it would be nicer because then there would be more control over colors).

[DXimenes]

That's weird. They don't seem to be close enough together to overlap in such a bad way if he puts a small blot on the base of the trunk.

Well, in this case the shaders might be a solution.

[Jungletoe]

Thank you guys so much for the help <3



I'm satisfied with how that looks now. The oak trees are really the last thing I'm having issues with now. The clumpy texture felt really awkward and weird when I tried to draw it, so I tried out the pine tree texture.



#1 is the original
#2 is the one with the pine tree texture

How do I make it look more like a clumpy, puffy texture instead? Do you guys have any references I can use? Zelda doesn't have any oak trees

I actually really like those shadows. I'll have to talk it over with one of the other programmers to see which solution we'll go with.

That's weird. They don't seem to be close enough together to overlap in such a bad way if he puts a small blot on the base of the trunk.

The players can place trees and the hitbox on them is just around the very small trunk, not the shadow. A small blot might work but for some reason it just doesn't show up properly in the game.