loonygames' Painting on Polygons

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volume 1, issue 39

Today in loonygames:

New!! The Archives have been cleaned up, fead links fixed, and printable versions restored! Also, don't miss the new comments on the front page!

Livin' With The Sims: theAntiELVIS explores the wild and wacky world that is Will Wright's The Sims, asking the inevitable quesiton, "is The Sims the first step toward a virtual life where everyone is Swedish?"

Pixel Obscura: Josh Vasquez on Omikron: The Nomad Soul.

Real Life: Check out our newest comic strip, Real Life! Updated daily!

User Friendly: Updated daily!

Related Links:

Creating a Space Scene (part one): Part one of Rick's ongoing tutorial.

Creating a Space Scene (part two): Part two of Rick's ongoing tutorial.

DRAW Partner!: Chris Buecheler's article on games and 2D art.

Two Programs, Two Dimensions: Rick Grossenbacher's tutorial on using Photoshop and Illustrator to create original 2D images.

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The Bargain Bin: Reviews of games you can actually afford to buy.

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Painting on Polygons:
Creating A Space Scene (part 3)

By Rick "Flatness" Grossenbacher

f you follow this column even somewhat regularly, you’ll notice that I’ve been quite late (a month -- yikes!) with getting a new tutorial out. I’ve been quite busy lately working with a new company developing Nintendo Gameboy Color games (out of all things!). I never thought I’d be working on pure 2-D games again, but boy, it brings back memories of the olden’ days of 2-D low-palette sprite-based game making. I love it! So, needless to say, I wasn’t able to devote the time I wanted to this part of the space tutorial. Since my explanations haven’t been nearly as detailed as I’d hoped for, you can e-mail me if you have a particular question about something in here.

Before I get started on the third (and final) part of this tutorial, I need to back up a few steps. At the end of part two I talked about how it was necessary to delete the alpha channel in order to save you image as a JPG. Well, thanks to a couple of readers I’ve been turned on to something new. Actually, it’s not new at all, just something I never bothered to learn -- and perhaps maybe you too.

There is an interesting little (not talked about very much) option in the File menu in Photoshop. It is called Save a Copy...

The beef with this option over the regular Save As is that Save a Copy has some extended parameters that can be checked, such as Exclude Alpha Channels.

Click the thumbnail to see a larger image.

Basically, you can take care of a lot of overhead by checking the boxes you deem necessary, and save yourself a few steps. I did a couple of tests and found out that you don’t even need to check the Exclude Alpha Channel box if you are saving as a JPG -- it does that automatically for you. After looking at the Save a Copy box, I started to wonder why they even made it in the first place! I mean they should have incorporated all that bullshit into the Save As box. Ahhhhh...... <sigh>

Thanks again to V Andre Lowe and Scott Roberts for bringing this to my attention.

Now on with the tutorial...

Making Stars

The planet was finished up in tutorial parts one and two. Now it’s time to create a space background with stars. Obviously, the first thing you need to do is create a brand new document with a plain black background. Good. Now let’s add stars.

Here is tip number one. When making stars, don’t just plot a single white pixel for each star -- it looks fake, and bad. It’s better to have them blend with somewhat of a glow (or at least a simulated one). So, to do this, they need to be subtle with some slight color variances to them. Some stars will be very bright. Some will be dimmer. And some will be so dim that they are barley noticeable. The majority of the stars (more likely than not) will have more than one pixel in either height or width, or both. The brightest part of the star might be one pixel, but the edge around it giving it the glow is key.

Take a look at these zoomed up stars to see what I’m talking about in action.

You may need to bring this into Photoshop if it is difficult to see. Notice how random the make up of each star is, and how they are varied in brightness. Also notice that some are somewhat vertical and some are horizontal. At first this might seem dumb (zoomed in so closely), but it looks very nice if done correctly from a zoomed-out view.

You will probably also want some much larger stars too. Here is a zoomed up version of one way to create a larger star.

Notice that I put some subtle light rays coming from the star. If they aren’t subtle enough, the star will look too fake, and the rays will be distracting. So, take caution there.

(Continued on next page)

Credits: Painting on Polygons is © 1999 Rick Grossenbacher. All other content is © 1999 loonyboi productions. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited, so don't do it, or we'll paint you white against a white background.