Inhabitants of the world. Any need for illustrations?

[Robbie]

is it cell shading with post processing?

[12rounds]

The only thing I would say to make it better would be that most people using top down tokens have the resolution set to 100,150, or 200 px per inch for good zooming in, and most top downs expect stuff not part of the body/clothing/gear to be transparent png. You can take a quick look over at fouruglymonsters.com or rpgmapshare.com for a few other examples.

I'll make a note of that. Thanks.

Also, FYI, you could make a bit of side money producing portraits and tokens of this quality. Of course, if you give them away for free, that will not hurt my feelings any!!!!

Hmm... well so far it's only been nickles and dimes really. There are so many talented illustrators out there and I know many industry professionals have issues with 3D work. I have a well-paying day job as a Java programmer and do these illustrations in my spare time. Of course doing paid commission work would indeed be welcome, there's no denying that, but I've not actively pursued it (apart from having sold a few copies of character collections years ago and never receiving replies to inquiries sent over to a dozen or so gaming houses).

How do you do that ? So you use poser and then have some technique to get it into something you color up ? Is that it ? Do you trace out the 3D model with a pen or get some technique to get you part way there. You gotta shine some light on that process.

I first device a concept (on paper usually), then see if I can accomplish that without modelling and retexturing. Usually I can't so it's quite common to first retexture and morph models before I even start.

Setting up things in Poser and once happy in the overall composition then I apply a set of some rather complex shader nodes. Nowadays it just takes two to three render passes to get me where I want to. Then in Photoshop I blend the renders together and just paint over on the blended composite. I started refining this process years ago so all I can say it just takes a lot of practise. About 1/3 of total time is spent in 3D and 2/3 in 2D (Gimp, Photoshop). I also do minor modelling (morphs and small items) in Blender or Wings. It's fairly common for me to just paint whole costumes or other details too if I judge it's easier to do that way. I've been using a Wacom tablet for the past 6 years - I wouldn't even dream of doing anything like this with a plain 'ol mouse. It takes anywhere between 2-5 hours per image.

Oh yes... VTTs - you should play with them sometime.

Yea. I've been a traditional table-top player since mid-80's and I guess since I have a regular group, there's never been a need to get into virtual gaming in the net.

is it cell shading with post processing?

More or less so as explained above.

[jfrazierjr]

The going rate for things like this is $2-$5 for 20-30 tokens, or something along those lines. If you were to create similar creatures in a set, I expect you could probably bang them out around 3 hours each on average. 20 figures x 3 hours each = 60 hours / $3 a pack and you would just need to sell 30 packs to make $20 per hour. For this quality, I would certainly pay a couple of bucks for 20 tokens(though probably over a 2-3 months time)

I know for me, I would love to have a good number (30 or so each) tokens of Orcs, Goblins, Kobolds, Elves, Dwarfs, halflings, etc. In most cases, you might find around 5 good ones of the monster races and I personally would like a bit more variety(since I tend to like larger scale battles)

As for VTT's if you have a projector, large screen TV, or every player has a computer/laptop at the table, using a VTT can bring some great new features to your play. For example, when everyone uses a computer, most VTT's offer independent views for the assigned token owner. What that means is Thark(played by Billy) goes around a corner by himself while Seth(Played by Jim) stays a few feet from the corner. With many VTT's, Billy will "see" several orcs on his version of the map while Jim will not because the VTT handles actual line of site issues as if it were a real person (but from a top down perpective of course!) Also, many VTT's offer some type of dice rolling or even macro creation so you can automate any complicated formulas. This part drastically speeds up play IMO. I have seen the same battle run live in "normal" face to face and the same battle run in a VTT and the VTT one lasted 1/3 of the time (and was just as exciting). Granted, there were different players, but the characters were pretty much the same types/rolls between the two sessions. Not having to think about adding up bonus x/penlaty y, etc can speed the game up. Even when I play in our face to face group, I play diceless now and rarely take more than 5 seconds to report my action and results to the GM, while several others using dice typically take 30 seconds or more. This does not count when a player fumbles dice and has to reroll. Full Disclosure: One of our biggest holdups in our face to face game is one player who does not pay attention AND tends to ask all sorts of dumb questions during his turn AND is a rules lawyer. We even had to have the GM implment a shot clock just because of this player. So, this may taint my experiences.

[jfrazierjr]

12rounds, I would love to see some more tokens if your willing to put in the effort. I would be more than happy to pay $3-$5 for a (around) 30-60 pack of tokens and I am sure many others would also.

Here is an example of the work done by Devin (Night???) if you want to see some samples of what I mean. Deven creates token packs for sale and even does custom work by request (for payment of course). Devon makes some nice tokens(I have purchased 2 packs and the have the free packs), but many of them are a bit "cartoony" for my personal preference.

[Redrobes]

Yea. I've been a traditional table-top player since mid-80's and I guess since I have a regular group, there's never been a need to get into virtual gaming in the net.

You would find that with your skills with the pen tablet that your game would be much improved even when playing face to face around the table if you had a display to show your players. You avoid endless amounts of "So where am I again ?" and "Can I see around the corner from where I am ?" and the eternal "But I thought my character was well away from those explosive runes...".

Heres a few seconds of movie for you - just about 5Mb worth to get the flavour of it.

It shows how you can play with your token and link it to a piccy of him and web sites or other docs. No need to dig out the books or wonder where you put that pic / handout etc.

Given that you do about 1/3 of the work in 3D app anyway you have the top down view nearly done. The top down token for VTTs are a boon. You can draw the shield top down too and then attach it to the character token too. Obviously that goes as well for weapons, hats and any number of other things that are optional extras for the character.

I should have put these into the move but I have another which shows that better.

If you have any trouble viewing the movies then try VLC though media player should work just fine.

[jfrazierjr]

You would find that with your skills with the pen tablet that your game would be much improved even when playing face to face around the table if you had a display to show your players. You avoid endless amounts of "So where am I again ?" and "Can I see around the corner from where I am ?" and the eternal "But I thought my character was well away from those explosive runes...".

Heres a few seconds of movie for you - just about 5Mb worth to get the flavour of it.

Sorry this is a OT, but whats a good "free" conversion program from AVI to some type of easily viewable video format, specifically one that reduces the size quite a bit from the original AVI? I have some videos I want to post to the web, but they are AVI's and thus huge and I don't ahve the much space to post the original AVI files. Likewise, I want to do a few short tutorials in CamStudio and shrink the file sizes some.

[RPMiller]

Heres a few seconds of movie for you - just about 5Mb worth to get the flavour of it.

I should have put these into the move but I have another which shows that better.

If you have any trouble viewing the movies then try VLC though media player should work just fine.

I couldn't view the first video, but the second worked great. So can you change out what they are carrying/wearing in real time or do you need to save it as a separate file first?

[Redrobes]

I clicked on the link with a different PC and it tried to open it with irfanview which didnt play it. If I save the link to disk and then use open with... and select vlc then it was fine. Not sure what else I can do. I thought they were exactly the same format. I always use XviD but something must be different I guess.

As for the token, if you select the edit so that you can move it about with the circle handles which is what your seeing in both movies. You can start to drag, press E for edit and then it takes you to that item where you can take his sword off or put a shield on etc. Then when done you just press backspace to get back to the original map and it will have the new equipment. You can create a clone of it and have two copies with different equip as well if you like but thats not the fastest way to do it. So I would say yes its dynamic but you have to change edit level down by one first which is good because you want to group all the stuff into one token and only have one edit handle for the character and all his equipment all together.

[RobA]

(Threadjack)

I thought they were exactly the same format. I always use XviD but something must be different I guess.

G-Spot disagrees:


I hate codec hell....

-Rob A>

[industrygothica]

You'll have to forgive me for getting back on topic for a moment, but...

How are you with non-humanoids? I could use an orc king (or king-like, anyway) for the Bloodspires in the Witchlight Strand. I've got an idea brewing, and maybe a visual of him will help get it out of my head and into the wiki.

And it goes without saying that anything else in the Witchlight Strand (or anywhere else in this project, I'm sure) are fair game for your talents.


-IG