This amateur art evaluation is as much for my own learning as it is for yours. And while many of these photos will specifically exhibit multiple characteristics that are useful, I will typically focus on one element of it. I plan on doing these evaluation posts once or twice a week, so far less frequently than store evaluations, at least for the time being. In a sense, it's the best I can do at trying to give back to what I feel is already a very giving community.
Today's study is in Ground Clutter, it's uses as a means to improve a scene's depth.
When I first started making levels, I noticed that I had a significant problem in that my levels just felt cheap and amateurish. These levels, I had hoped, would have a good feel and playthrough. But even after throwing what I felt was a significant amount of clutter about (trash bags, rocks, debris, and other small scenery items) I was very frustrated to find that it didn't have the level of depth I was looking for.
Now take a look at this beautiful photo.
Author: Kajocat. Skill level? Over 9000.
Compared to my tripe, this was the work of an old master vs a four year old's crayon drawing on a cardboard box. Mine was on the cardboard, if that wasn't clear enough. So let's evaluate this picture in depth for a moment here. The trail leads you to the center of the screen, as a proper focal point should. In terms of ground clutter items, there are approximately 15-20 bushes of four different types that I can discern.
These are skillfully placed around other objects, to add TO to those other objects. Example: The house on the left. It's got several bushes near it to help it from looking naked in the wild. The trees also have small scrub bushes, as is often found in nature. Indeed in my native home here in Pennsylvania, this is a very common sight - medium or large scale trees with small brambles or scrub bushes near the base. The two pair together very well. Finishing off the scene is some fairly expert use of vegetation.
The vegetation system in and of itself is possibly the best component of the new FPSC engine. While the terrain system has a lot of flexibility, it clearly needs a bit of work to be up to snuff. The vegetation system though is impressive in a lot of respects. The sprites are animated, easily sizeable and colorable and there's a whole host of options for those who own the vegetation pack (Gold backers, for example). I've found the stock settings are generally insufficient if you want to give your game depth. One of the biggest 'uglies' in my work vs this picture was how objects would just touch the ground, leaving a discernable binary look to the graphic. Like "This is the house" and "this is the ground". There was no visual blending of any sort. Then I realized... I could use the vegetation to blur that line.
Bare scene
Scene plus clutter
As you can clearly see, there's a marked difference on these scenes. One is a simple 'town objects, nothing else. The other is 'town plus desert terrain plus some clutter objects' scene. The other is the exact same scene, and about 3 different types of plants, rocks, and scrub bushes
.This time, with plantlife.
The above here is simply the same scene with me spraying wildly with some stock vegetation settings plus a vegetation I felt looked good in the terrain. While it helps and gives it an arid appearance, it seems very blocky and inconsistent. It also makes clutter objects actually stand OUT more. It's not bad though, and definitely an improvement. It's not, however, quite what I'm looking for.
Now check out the difference when I plug these numbers to the maximum (Which is actually my preference, at this point). Note, the final picture includes minor graphic tweaking to show you what a 'final' version would look like - example, higher bloom settings, adjusted ambient, etc.
The only thing different here is the size of the vegetation and the aforementioned graphical tweaks. The vegetation values have gone from quantity/width/height of 50 to quantity/width/height of 100. It's not perfect, but for what basically amounted to ten minutes of work I've created a rather convincing desert scene with significantly more depth.
The shearing of textures as they collide is much less noticeable and you get a much more professional flair with the addition of the vegetation. On top of that the vegetation looks REALLY impressive with it's size at maximum. It's flowing movement is much more noticeable in game.
Bearing in mind that this is merely an example; the proper value would probably lie in the middle between half and full settings for vegetation but these are things you have to experiment with to get the best results. My goal here was to simply show you a process for improving your own scenes as best as possible. If this was of utility to you, please let me know; I'd love to see some before/afters of your own.
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