I'm drawing a factory for a new industry chain I'm developing. Can anyone please help me improve on my design?
Here it is: http://www.mediafire.com/?amywtw1tidn
I think I need the most help on the wall texture.
For images, photobucket would be a better option because you can upload images and post the image code directly, or even use an automatically generated thumbnail view with a link to the full view.
If this is for pak64/128 then the most fundamental thing you need is texturing. Flat-colour walls are fine for pak96 comic, but for all the other paks you're going to want some kind of textured appearance on the walls to stop them looking too clean and clinical.
Once you have texture, start adding shadows and "grime". Everything that could produce a shadow should have one, and grime can be added to the ends of pipes, base of structures (e.g. the chimney), window surrounds etc. Also consider adding some "furniture", e.g. a parking lot with employees cars, signs, fencing, rooftop stuff (e.g. AC units, aerials, ladders etc.)
Basically you need more detail :) Also consider having your building standing in a larger tile, surrounded a bit by some space (with, e.g. a parking lot, entrance, loading dock etc.) to give it more realism and help it to integrate into its surroundings.
postimage.org is also a good choice.
If you use large window surfaces or many windows on a wall, you can make a reflect. I do it as this for my sky scrapers :
_ use photofiltre (or a better one as photoshop)
_ take a sky picture (http://www.cgtextures.com/)
_ copy it in photofiltre
_ paste you building with transparency (about 50%)
_ paste your building (witheout sky) in an other file and repaint all windows in flashy red or green or ... any flashy colors
_ paste this on the building with sky, define the flashy color as transparent color, let the global transparency to 100% (maximum opacity).
_ If you use photofiltre, disable automatic smoothing.
The first time I used this tip was for the nex RES02 (see on high building topic) and I used that many times after, you can see the result ;)
What texture do you recommend for the walls?
You may use any from here (http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=321.0)
A question about textures:
if i download from somewhere a texture released under GPL, can i use it freely, or should i put credits, links, ask permission to the author or what else?
Perhaps you have to introduce some mention to the author in credits, but as far as I know, GPL license allows you to copy, change and redistribute any contributed work. The only thing you can't do is to claim the copyright of that work.
So something like:
Object X
Painted by Fabio Gonella
Texture based on Somebody's work
right?
(thi idea is that i took the texture and scaled and edited to be used with Simutrans, and i downloaded a GPL texture for me to be able to comply with pak128 license policy.
thank you!
GPL is compatible and fine, just mention somewhere (preferably in the image) that it is based on GPL...
Nother question. I found other textures released under Creative Commons:
All textures here are under the creative commons licence (attribution 2.0) that can be found here: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode.
Are these compatible with pak 128 license?
Usually it is safe to ****ume licenses are incompatible. There are "realms" of content that is under same or compatible license, and their borders are not unlike the iron curtain.
For pak128 I chose a license which is a bit more lenient regarding distribution conditions, but is very close to GPL. So it can help in the transition period - but can be later mixed with GPL since it is compatible (well, this is said by both FSF who "owns" GPL and the author, Perl Foundation and both can afford actual lawyers so probably yes). And by that is also chosen the realm where we can operate.
In other words, GPL is okay.
CC licenses are not compatible.
Public domain is perfect.
thank you, it was enlightening, for me software licenses are the realm of unknown! ;)
These textures have a big problem, try to place one next to each other of one type of texture and you will understand ...
For my buildings, I use textures from http://www.cgtextures.com/
Then I incline then with photofiltre.
I know, I've also suffered that when I tried to use them as 3D textures. The sense of my advice was to use them as a template, better than as a usual texture.
Since the licensing problem is very common and many people are acutely aware of it, and public domain is the only safe choice when you want to make your ****ets universal, I suggest searching for public domain. AFAICT there should be enough material for a thousand games! Start from here?
http://wiki.freegamedev.net/index.php/Free_3D_and_2D_art_and_audio_resources
Found this, too:
http://www.burningwell.org/
EDIT: the internets have it all...
http://www.google.com/search?q=public+domain+textures :P
One way to get a real-looking texture is to take a picture of a wall and modify it to fit your need.
I wonder if carpenters and masons would demand credit or payment, though. :D
Be careful!!! They are Creative Commons, IIRC. I wanted to use them as well, this is why i asket it here, but it looks like CC is not compatible with pak 128 :(
Ah, the license, not the pak itself. As long as I do not want to make them part of the official set...
true, but in a way i think it is a wast of work making so many and so beautiful objects only to be released as an addon ;)
ok, probably not all of them, but a few for sure would fit, IMHO...