I like the different design of the tank. Most of the tanks put the missiles on the turret. I haven't opened it, but I think that it could use some normals.
Good job, for a first try!
Joined: 22 Aug 2006 Location: somewhere south of the north pole
Posted: Tue Jan 06, 2015 9:24 am Post subject:
For a first voxel, this is great! It really is! If you have little experience with 3D in addition, this is amazing.
That said, there is a lot of things you should learn. First of, the colours 0 ->15 and 204 -> 255 shouldn't be used. This is very easy to fix: press [F1] or [F2] and it selects the correct pallet. If it's pink, you need to use another colour. In your voxel, that is the cyan colour. If you look at the top-right angle in-game (or in you screenshot) you will notice that everything is darker, except the cyan bits.
Normals are OK, not great, not terrible. There are 4 ways to work with normals:
1: Pure auto-normals
2: Hand-painted normals
3: Auto-normals from a 3D file
4: Auto-normals with hand-painted details
1 is quick and easy. All the different AN have uses, and in general, 7.1 and 5.6 are most useful, but even 1.1 have uses. I haven't used HBD yet, but it looks promising, with a few black dots.
2 is the most time-consuming, but can give the best results by far. It also requires a lot of time and discipline. There are over 230 different normals, and ideally you should know the angle of each of them by hart. Not all are needed, but if this is the path you choose to walk, that is the ideal you should strive against.
3: this is the one I use. You can get a very good result with AN, and going over a few details by hand can make it very good with a comparably little effort.
4 is the best in regards of time/quality, but you need a proper 3D model to make use of it. Getting started with voxels are a lot faster and easier, but a lot of modders have gone over to importing and converting from a 3D model, then doing a little touch-up in Voxel Section Editor.
The easiest by far is starting with 1, as you have. Over time, as your quality increase, you might want to make some changes to the normals by hand to make sure it keeps the same level of quality as the model itself.
The model itself is OK. Visually, it seems to be a lot wider than what I would expect from a tank. It's also very plain, lacking in texture-detail.
One thing that I don't like at all it the "pod" on either side of the main body. Besides not being visually pleasing, it wouldn't work at all IRL. It makes the tank wider and adds nothing that couldn't be done at least as good if the "pod" was added to the turret.
Technicality: The voxel wasn't centred. At all. You centred it in OS HVA editor, didn't you? The ideal way is to make the model centred without the HVA-file at all. To do this, go to [Sections] -> [Voxel Header CTRL + H] and go to the tab [Misc] and select []Land or []Air (whichever fits the model best) and then hit [Calculate]. This will do the work for you.
You can also change the "scale" of the voxel from here, by changing the [Scale] value. Do not, do NOT use this to make the voxel larger. It won't work, and it'll look like shit. Making it smaller though works fine, just check that the texture still looks OK ingame.
And now something that isn't wrong or right. "Clean" lines. Look at the image below:
This is angles and circles that work well with voxels and pixel-art in general. You don't have to use these lines, but they work well with AN and it might make your work easier.
If there is any more you would like to know just ask. _________________ This is a signature QUICK_EDIT
Joined: 22 Aug 2006 Location: somewhere south of the north pole
Posted: Tue Jan 06, 2015 11:11 am Post subject:
When the voxel is full, there isn't any black dots, given the normals are also good. And the circles will be full of holes, but it's easier to see the size when it's not filled.
As far as normals go, I haven't had any problems with 2:1 angles at all..? However, "flatter" angles have given me all sorts of problems with normals.
If I have missed anything, please tell me! You are a lot better with voxels than me! _________________ This is a signature QUICK_EDIT
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