Art Asset Pipeline Question.

[Dash-X]

Hi, I checked the wiki and the forum as far back as 11 pages, and couldn't find answers to some questions I had.

I've recently decided to start a simple VN project, and I have some questions about the art side of it. So far, I have made a basic outline of the story and a complete list of necessary visual assets. I figure that it's probably best to consult people who know what they're doing at an early stage (before anything gets FUBAR'ed).

What are some efficient ways to produce assets for VNs?
What are good habits to get into when creating visuals for VNs?
What are good starting and final resolutions for characters and backdrops?
What can I do as an artist to make things go smoothly with the project?
What should I avoid doing?

Thanks for your time.

[Sin]

I just want to point out these are very good questions.
I have my own ways of doing it in Novelty, where 80% of the engine is pure asset management, but I'm curious of how it's done in Ren'py.

[Jake]

I figure that it's probably best to consult people who know what they're doing at an early stage (before anything gets FUBAR'ed).

I would start by saying that in this there aren't really any absolutes - a lot of it comes down to the way you personally work and prefer to spend your time. The following, although it'll probably be phrased in terms like "it is best to...", is just the way it works for me.

What are some efficient ways to produce assets for VNs?

It's too general a question to provide a particular answer, really, but in general:

* Come up with an assembly-line process, so you can follow the same steps in the same tools over and over again for each asset, which both increases familiarity (so you get used to the process and cut out any "what next?" time) and also coherence (so all the character sprites in your game, for example, look like they were drawn by the same person and fit in well with each other. Also allows you to make better estimates of how far through the whole task you are, which I find tends to make it seem less overwhelming.

* If you're going for production speed, then re-use where you can. For example, there were five [other] schoolgirls in MorningStar; they were all constructed from two base sprites (one pose for each of the two schools) with one 'personalisation' layer with hair any anything else relevant on, and then a bunch of expression layers. Each character only had one pose, which she shared with a couple of other girls, and only the face changed when their emotional state changed, but the effect was only really obvious when there was more than one girl from the same school on-screen at the same time. Similarly, each background had a daytime, dusk and nighttime version, achieved by re-colouring the sky layer and applying full-screen filters to the same shaded BGs.

* Go through and produce really quick really rough versions of everything, then go back and do the nice final versions. Worry more about overall feel and framing and so on with the roughs - you'll get an idea for the character of each BG or sprite early on which will help you work towards a believably cohesive whole. This also helps a lot in a team environment, when you're drawing stuff for other people to write into scenes, 'cause it allows your team-mates to put together rough versions without using totally-unrelated placeholders, which means they're more likely to come up with useful changes before it's too late to make them.

* Maintain a list of everything you need to create, and keep it up-to-date both with new items and progress on older items. For MorningStar and Renaissance my list would look something like:

Code: Select all

(0 = not started; 1 = quick rough version; 2 = flat-shaded; 3 = final version)
...
[1] Alice - school uniform - happy
[1] Alice - school uniform - upset
[3] Bob - suit - normal
[2] Bob - suit - happy
[1] Bob - suit - upset
...

The list means you can find new work easily enough - just look through for items without a '3' next to them - and again helps visualise your progress.

What are good habits to get into when creating visuals for VNs?

* Use the same document sizes throughout - again, this is a coherence thing. Scaling stuff affects line weights and shading and sharpness and all kinds of things, so try and make sure you scale everything by the same degree if you can. For example, I'm currently doing character sprites for a project, and I start each one with a 600x800 document. Characters who are supposed to be tall occupy the entire height of the document, shorter characters have a gap at the top. If I chose to fill the page with each character, then when I scaled the shorter characters down more to keep them short, the lines would appear thinner on them and they wouldn't fit in so well.

What are good starting and final resolutions for characters and backdrops?

Entirely personal preference, really. Work out what you want your game resolution to be first, and that's realistically your minimum backdrop size. For MorningStar I created a document twice that size in Photoshop for each background, drew it out with a single-pixel brush, block-coloured and gradient-shaded it then scaled it down to the in-game resolution, and that looked OK. For Renaissance I drew my backdrops on A4 paper, scanned them in and cropped and scaled to the screen resolution then coloured them at that size. Characters for my current work I'm sketching full-body at 600x800, blowing up to 200% for inking and colouring and they'll later be cropped & scaled down for game use, but characters for Renaissance were pretty much all drawn at display res.

Generally, a lot of people like to work at a higher resolution than the sprite will be displayed. There's nothing wrong with this, and scaling down to game-resolution helps hide a lot of small errors and tidy lines and so on - but it does take a lot longer.

What can I do as an artist to make things go smoothly with the project?

Huh. Work hard, check with your project-mates that they don't have any feedback/changes to be made relatively frequently, be accomodating of any changes that are requested, don't be afraid to just scrap something and start again if it's not working... realistically, the same goes for an artist as goes for any other project member, in that regard.

What should I avoid doing?

Reading forums, sitting on IRC, watching TV...


I'd avoid getting distracted by making one particular piece absolutely perfect. Firstly because it consumes a lot of time which could otherwise be spent making three or four other pieces 'pretty good', but also because if there's one or two assets which are markedly higher quality than the others, then they'll show those others up and make it look like the whole thing was a bit rushed. Ten sprites which look pretty good tend to produce a better overall feel than nine sprites which are pretty good and one which is totally awesome; the instant question is why the other nine aren't totally awesome as well.

[papillon]

I find that I want to get the interface nailed down first because it helps establish an overall feel for the game. In RenPy I guess this would be theme-modifying. Even if all the other art is placeholder, a custom interface helps tie it together and let you think of it as your project, as well as allowing you to see how any final artwork will look when you plug it in.

If finishing the game quickly is really important to you, lay out the art first, get it completed, and use exactly what you have, NOTHING MORE. This may force you to take some shortcuts with your original story idea, reuse stuff creatively, abandon neat ideas because you don't have the art for them... but it also means you can whip up a complete game fairly quickly. However, to get all your art upfront you'll probably have to pay for it. You can get some cheap character and background graphic sets on DLsite...

On the other side, artists are more willing to contribute when you have a near-complete art-free prototype just waiting for them to plug things in, and if you write the whole game before you ask for any artwork, you can work out exactly what art you'll need and not get stuck in problems like 'Well, I want the characters to go swimming, but I don't have a pool background or swimsuit sprites!'


As far as good habits... Layering. Keeping things on separate layers makes it easier to reuse parts of the whole if you suddenly realise you need to!

[Dash-X]

Thanks, guys. That's quite useful information.

There's another crucial question I forgot to ask...

As the artist, is there anything I can do that the engine won't like?

By "won't like", I mean, for example, Unreal Engine 2 doesn't like 10K tri character models (at least, not in my experience...).

On the art side of things, is there anything I should try not to do to avoid crashing the engine or causing problems?

[Jake]

As the artist, is there anything I can do that the engine won't like?

Well, since we're dealing with flat images, they don't take too much memory to store and aren't that time-consuming to render, so you're usually not looking at the kind of performance problems you might get with an FPS engine. Don't store your game graphics at a higher resolution than they'll get shown or it's a waste of RAM and CPU time, I guess?

There have been reports from people with slower computers that some of the more involved transitions - rotozoom and the like - sometimes slow down, but that's not really anything directly to do with the art assets.

[Gau_Veldt]

Thanks, guys. That's quite useful information.

There's another crucial question I forgot to ask...

As the artist, is there anything I can do that the engine won't like?

By "won't like", I mean, for example, Unreal Engine 2 doesn't like 10K tri character models (at least, not in my experience...).

On the art side of things, is there anything I should try not to do to avoid crashing the engine or causing problems?

I don't see you getting into problems in Ren'Py unless you use a lot of layers with a lot of separate images on screen all the time. Even if you do that it will still work but maybe just a bit more slowly on less state-of-the-art computers that run your game.

By the way if you are using a 3D program (eg: Blender, Maya, LightWave, et Al.) as the stage to cast your assets you'll need to export 2D renders for all the model's (character's) poses you want to use in your game (Ren'Py can't display 3D directly). Make sure you have as neutral lighting as possible (maybe even mostly ambient) since any highly-directional shadows will limit what 2D backdrops will work without the character appearing "out-of-place". Since you are exporting renders of the model (to subsequently load as 2D images) there are no limits (except any internal to the application you use) on how many triangles that model could actually use.

[rocket]

I would start by saying that in this there aren't really any absolutes - a lot of it comes down to the way you personally work and prefer to spend your time. The following, although it'll probably be phrased in terms like "it is best to...", is just the way it works for me.
<snip>

All great advice and useful enough to deserve putting into the wiki I wager! Wish I'd had something like this when I started since I had significant resolution and re-resolution scale problems when I did Ep0.

In the spirit of getting quick feedback I'd also suggest sketching/blocking out all the poses for all the characters and getting thoose in engine as early as possible. Don't wait until you have one finished sprite and then move onto the next.

This allows writing and coding to happen in parallel with final art, and lets you test the flow and feel of things in 'story board' fashion before committing all the effort of final production.

[Dash-X]

Thanks again, all.

I agree. This information would be nice to have on the wiki.

If I come across any more problems that haven't been discussed, I'll bring them up.

If anyone has anything else to add, please don't hesitate to do so.

[DaFool]

What are some efficient ways to produce assets for VNs?

The general asset list for VN are as follows:
1 words in the script
2 character graphics (sprites and CGs)
3 backgrounds
4 music

You can usually outsource 3 and 4 (and it's actually recommended to do so if you're not experienced or a professional). There should be a few freeware royalty-free repositories available, others you have to pay.

It's usually not recommended to outsource 2, else how else would your game be unique besides 1?

To further expand 2, the number of sprites should be countable with your fingers. If your story is less than 100,000 words, 10 sprites (plus a few facial variations) or less should suffice. 10 sprites is around 4+ characters with multiple poses. If a character only mentioned in passing in your story, it shouldn't have a sprite.

What are good habits to get into when creating visuals for VNs?

Like what papillon mentioned, stick with what you originally planned. You'll be amazed how the workload can spiral out of control.

What are good starting and final resolutions for characters and backdrops?

I'm using at least a 1600x1200 resolution or higher, then scale down to fit later.

What can I do as an artist to make things go smoothly with the project?

Get the essence of the story's character in your head correctly, so that what you draw will match the story. And like Jake said, don't focus on perfecting each graphic... just move on -- just like a real animation studio with its often flawful output. If the story really deserves it, it may get remade with better graphics, but by that time it's better to make a new story anyway.

What should I avoid doing?

Planning too much. YEP, PLANNING TOO MUCH. I had suffered that fate (and still do to some extent), that I have so much typed up, but when I actually start creating the graphics I say what the heck so many things get thrown out the window due to the actual hands-on practicality of it.

[Deji]

From my little experience working on my VN college project I'd say you have to thing of the following, art-wise:

- Sprites
- Backgrounds
- Event CGs
- Others

General tips:
The working resolution should be at least 25% bigger than the final size you're going to use. I'd recomend working double the size.
If you can, make yourself a color palette, keep the same light source for all the sprites, and make yourself a defined coloring routine to keep the consistency on all your artwork.
Make yourself a checklist with all the things you have to do. It could contain the following:

Name of artwork: [ ] is it sketched? [ ] is it linearted? [ ] is it colored? [ ] is it ready to input on the game?

Take note of how much time it takes to do every asset, as it will help you figure out ho much time will it take you to have everything you want/need.

Sprites are mostly to be saved in transparent PNG, so keeping a bright neon solid-colored background is helful to figure out if there's any bit of color going out of the lines. Change the background color often to not get bored and to be sure everything is fine.

For Sprites:
First thing you need to start working is a list of the important characters with the descriptoin of their personalities and the way they're supposed to look and behave, and, if you have them, their concept designs.
Making the basic design for the character is better than start with the sprite right away.
After you have this, you have to decide how many poses are going to be needed for each character. iusually main characters will have at least two poses and probably more than one outfit, and secondary characters will have only one pose and one outfit.
According to the character's pesonality, look for references and make tiny sketches of poses that would suit the chaarcter best. Pick a pose that's neutral but not static or boring. Take in mind you'll need the poses to suit the character's facial expressions (neutral, happy, very happy, sad, angry, etc...).
For expressions you can either draw every expression's face separately or draw different eyebrows/eyes/mouth positions, so you can combine them. I find it more fun and to do the latter, but drawing each facial expression separately could add to the uniqueness of the character.
Make sure the poses of all the characters are of the same size! Sketching/inking them all at the same time before coloring them helps in this.
It's better to draw the character poses naked first and then draw the outfit on top, this will help with common anatomy issues and will allow you to have different outfits in different layers.

For Backgrounds:
Once you have the list of the backgrounds you have to do, find yourself good references.
Try to avoid tracing directly from photographs, as the photos often distort the perspective. If you need to, eyeball them.
Keeping the Horizont in the middle of the picture or at the eye level of most prites is good.
If you have some 3D software knowledge, use it to your advantage when making backgrounds, creating the background you want to draw in 3D first and qiuck-rendering it from an interesting point, so you can draw on top of it.
Loom at turtorials and references regarding light during the different time sof the day, in case you have to make different versions of the same background to fit that. If you're using Photoshop, Adjustment Layers will be your friends here, but don't rely only on them, as the lightsource changes during the day and it'd be awkward if your BG has the same light source in the morning and the sunset version.

Event CGs:
You'll need a list of the Event CGs needed on the game, the characters participating, what are they doing, when an where are they doing it. If you can, get the piece of script asociated with said Event CG too, to get a better grasp of what is supposed to be going on.
Now that you know what's supposed to be going on, use your character designs/sprites and your previously made backgrounds as reference. Mind the light source... is it coming froma light on the ceiling? Is it coming from the sun? or from a window? Do you have more than one light source?
Now take in mind the plane shot you're going to show. If you wnat to focus on the character's emotions, do a face close-up. If you want to show the character's body or outfit, make a full-body shot. If you want to focus on the interaction of two characters, show them full body or 3/4. If it's the character(s) doing somehting related to where they are, show more of the background.
If the characters are moving, try to portray them in the midddle of an action: not at the beggining nor in the climax and give hints of what happened just before and/or what's about to happen, this encourages the viewers imagination.
Pick a nice camera angle. Since sprites and backgrounds are wuite boring, perspective-wise, add some dynamism with foreshortening, 2-3 points perspective and tilted horizontal lines.
Also, if you can, make a slight variation of the event cg.... the girl ñlooking at the main character and then the girl smiling. The character doing something trying to not be noticed and then getting caught and being surpised. Things like changing the face, or arm positions are slight and don't require much work, but are a nice touch.
It's a good thing to sketch the whole event CG but to draw and color characters and background separately.

Others:
Here you may include SD/funny/silly CGs going over the screen but not big enough to ft it all, items shown on small portviews during game or even the game layout, in case you have to work on that. Also Logo design, And promo/poster/ main menu art.

Hope this helps ^^;

[Dash-X]

Oh yeah. This stuff is gold.

Someone PLEASE add it to the wiki somehow... It would be nice if more people could gain access to the information in this thread...

[Deji]

Oh yeah. This stuff is gold.

Someone PLEASE add it to the wiki somehow... It would be nice if more people could gain access to the information in this thread...

granted =3
http://wiki.renai.us/wiki/Art_Assets_Advices

I just wrote my stuff there, but please feel free anybody to edit it and add your own stuff too ^^

[deinarious]

@Deji - I found your advice to be something that sounds rather easy to follow and also very sensible. I think I will adhere to this so I can make my own sprites and backgrounds. Sure, the game will take, like, ten times longer, but that's okay.