Mythruna

Sometimes you guys are interested in the "magic" behind the scenes.  Here is the work in progress of the flame texture painting I did last night.  Still lots to do to it as flames are a pain to paint.

http://i.imgur.com/rfXjgUj.jpg
(http://i.imgur.com/rfXjgUj.jpg)

I think a style like this will fit Mythruna better than the other ones.
Even if it were a realistic-graphics game, those flames were too yellow for most fires.

Edit: after watching the stock videos of fire on the jmonkey forums, I think what bothers me is that the flames were too clean wnd well-defined.
But then I haven't been spending hours slaving over the appearance of fire, so suffice it to say that the samples you have here look more like I would expect fire to be in Mythruna that the other ones.

Yeah... though regarding the "too yellow" thing, I think the left/new fire in the latest video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivqGrs0IDsc

...is pretty darn close to something I'd be proud to have in a photorealistic game.

Note: for those wondering... my process may not be 100% apparent from this screen shot.

Those small really bright flames in the lower right are the photo-flames that the current videos were using.  I left them there for reference.  On the left you can see one of the flame tutorials I read and I loaded it to have more reference points.

To finish, I need to clean up some of the lines and brighten up the bright places.  Some of the shading needs some more layering, too.  It's kind of one of these "keep doing it until it's done" sort of things... with no idea when "done" will arrive.

that said, I loaded three of these into my flame effect and they didn't look bad already.  So... I'm hopeful.

Yes I love this flame! Agreed BenKenobiWan, it just seemed too realistic and yellow.


Heh, at some point, you will know when to put down the brush :)

Mind me asking if that is a torrented Photoshop version?

It's best not to question where people obtain their Adobe products.  ;D

Well, not everything is 'torrented'. And by that I mean not everything uses a torrent.

I have two legal copies of Photoshop.  One is this old version that I'm used to and one is the newer one that came with my tablet that is fancier but not as comfortable.  Somewhere I have an even more ancient version but I don't know what I did with it.

When you want to make a game for commercial purposes it is best not to undermine your foundation by using unlicensed tools.

Besides, if you are making a game for commercial purposes, I'm sure you have the money to at least buy something anyways.

ehh.. you've gotta spend money to make money.

...or use the free tools.  (GIMP in this case.)

So, I mentioned that last night I took the unfinished hand-painted flames and put them in my demo just to see what they looked like.  Even unfinished, I think they look ok... at least encouraging.  The flame on the right is the one with the old photo-flame textures using what I feel is the best configuration.  The one on the left is using three of the hand-painted flame images from above.

(http://i.imgur.com/hyLEUUi.png)

So when I improve the contrast and stuff I think it will look fine.  I can't really tweak any of the fire settings until the flames are fully complete.

The flames look like lightning. So magical!

the right one looks best to me, just because it seems to have more defined flames than the left one. Though i may not really notice if the flames were moving...

Yes, well the left one is not done yet and as you can see from the above images the contrast is poor.  Anyway, the right one looks better but it also looks more real.  I'm going for more of a painting effect... think Frazetta camp fire style or something. :)  Or at least more along those lines.

Still, it's important to show that I _could_ have made real looking flames and that I just chose not to because they'd look out of place. :)

Edit: Actually more like if Frazetta painted a campfire.  Can't find a single decent campfire pic.  I should have picked a different fantasy artist. :)

I like the left one better because it doesn't look like a buffering video.

Heheh... that is the other down side.  It is definitely not a video and not even a conventional animation.  Just those three flame textures (which are even the same one just rotated) and I cycle through them and do some funky tricks.  The fact that it looks like a streaming video is both good and bad at the same time. :-/

Maybe someday I will put together a video of all of the different effects that combine to make that.

Actually, here is a first video I made to show another one of the JME guys. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6peQKIuYo0
It's just a single static image with a heat effect.  That is one of the core animations in the full fire effect.  I did it as a test just to see what it would look like when I was going to remake my particle flames... and I liked it so much that I pursued it instead of particles.  The rest is history.

Here it is after a few hours of work tonight... other than tweaking, I think this is pretty close:
http://i.imgur.com/kIQQEET.png
(http://i.imgur.com/kIQQEET.png)

In case this interests anyway... the steps it took to get there:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8Fxzw7lmhM

That effect would be very nice, could you implement it? (Not asking you to, this is a "Could you?" question)

Which effect?

And for any who may want to actually try it out in its current form.  I've uploaded another test build of my shader demo.
http://mythruna.com/temp/FlameTest2-Linux.zip
http://mythruna.com/temp/FlameTest2-MacOSX.zip
http://mythruna.com/temp/FlameTest2-Windows.zip

This version includes a few variations on the hand-painted textures.  It only uses 3 of the 8 images I painted, though but that's enough for a good effect.  I think they look like a much better fit for Mythruna... even if they are less realistic overall.  They also look a bit more "alive" to me.
(http://i.imgur.com/V0NPWWU.png)

Eheheh, I downloaded it and tried to use it then I remembered that my desktop doesn't have GLSL and OpenGL2 support :P

Yeah, it only works on machines that will run Mythruna, basically.

You already have the effect in so nevermind.

The 4th one on the download is my favourite. It fades into the air better than any of the other flames. Maybe add a heat effect above the fire like we discussed about how deserts will have a wavy effect in the air.

The wavy heat in the air is referred to as a heat wave.

If they are the same order as in the picture above then the first and fourth should have identical "fading" but the center of the fourth one will be brighter.

The nice thing is that it's just a parameter tweak... so technically I could use different versions of the flame for different kinds of fire/combustion.  After all, it could turn out that "things on fire" would prefer the second/third versions since they are less intense and may look more like something burning than something with a fire laid on top of it.

Maybe something like a house burning for 4th?

cool, a house burning. Or maybe that campfire? I can't wait till theres enough features in for me to make a decent 2nd trailer  ;D Once almost everything is in i'm gonna make one killer of a fan trailer (made entirely of clips from my adventures).

Nice, you are going to use Player POV.

This makes me smile. :)

My face when you use the Windows Classic theme... I always admire that theme...

Heheh.  Yeah, everything newer looks like a cartoon wasting space to me. :)

Step 1: install windows
Step 2: switch to Windows Classic
Step 3: mess with file explorer settings

Heheh. Funny thing is, when I disabled explorer.exe my computer doesn't run any faster when playing a game or such. I've used tons of things so I can make my laptop run faster but I have come down to this: Bottle-necking. Even with a program (ThrottleStop) that is supposed to stop that it doesn't work. Laptops are so hard to work with.

I always found messing around with the settings of my Windows 98 Gateway really fun... it disgusts me when I see people using a Gateway as a doorstop.