KSP Weekly: Thrusting into the future

[passinglurker]

12 hours ago, Deddly said:

I haven't seen much from you, @passinglurker, about these. I saw that (like me) you would apparently prefer one stripe instead of two, but I'm curious what you think about the overall art quality, particularly the end cap, which I think was a big improvement over the HECS2 one?

I haven't had much of a chance to sit down and make a post I'd be satisfied with before now.
 

On 9/7/2018 at 2:00 PM, SQUAD said:

The part-revamping effort continues. In this release we are focusing on some parts that are used heavily at the start of every career mode, this includes the MK1 pod and the FL-TXXX fuel tanks. This week the art team completed the makeover of the RT-5 “Flea” and RT-10 “Hammer” Solid Fuel Boosters. While working on these parts, we took various real-life references and worked on giving the boosters a panelized texture and new top that brings them closer to their real-life analogues. As you can see below, the belts and other heavy rings were also removed to make the boosters look lighter and more aerodynamic. Additionally, both of these boosters will have a secondary stripe-less texture variant that you’ll be able to choose at will. Click here to see a rotating gif animation of  the new RT-5 “Flea”, and here to see the RT-10 “Hammer”.

@SQUAD This is a step above last week. First the positives to your credit It looks like you are trying and largely listening to feedback (as well as one can within the limits of "can't please everyone"), and that's all very appreciated. Its probably the first time since the revamp started that someone tried to emulate porkalike edge detailing on a large scale and though there is still room for improvement this effort is really nice to see (compare this to last week where low effort copy-paste techniques were depressing if not frustration inducing). It's also good to see you doing research for the stock revamps a lot of stock's less apreciable parts (the poodle engine for example) came about because someone didn't study up before hand or didn't consider the details important (an understandable viewpoint but this game has a knack for inciting a thirst for learning and engineering in people making it more fun to find technically accurate nods to reality here and there amid the stylization and exaggeration) It's a good start I bet two or three iterations off from a good finish.

Now for the negatives/places for improvement. First as others have said it's definitely missing its normal and specular maps or at least ones of appreciable fidelity and strength to be noticed in any way ( @nestor thanks for listening to feedback and implementing the spinny gif's btw so we can catch issues like this  ) This makes the part look matte and dull which compounds the parts "loss of character" problem the others have mentioned (see this post by panzer1b from last week to get an idea of how much detailing should go into a specular map). Second the edge smudge/grime/darkening whatever you call it is much too bold for porkalike the effect though present is usually a lot subtler (see example here). Third the texture is all very "Uniform" I'd argue that it's too uniform considering the point of detailing is to introduce subtle imperfections to give a model character if you look at the previous example again you'd see the smudging and highlighting along the edges are anything but uniform but rather comes in wide's, thin's, high's, lows, etc... all along the edge. This uniformity costs you character which as others have said this part lacks.

Unfortunately I think I know why it's this uniform, it looks like you are leaning pretty heavily on mirroring It's not a bad thing in the right place and time, but I can tell you split the outer circumference of the part into 8 adjacent mirrors of the same UV island which is too much for a player facing surface like this as any character-detail will repeat in pattern multiple times within the player's field of view. I recommend taking apart some of porkjet's textures to see how he strikes a balance between details and efficiency with his UV mapping but generally you'll find that symmetrical tanks/boosters/fuselages like this avoid mirroring more than 4 times around the circumference of a part and often breaks things up with smaller UV map segments sandwiched in between. Any more than 4 and you can't really rely on the curvature of the cylinder and other pattern breaking optical mind games to hide what you are doing, and if you can't hide that you are mirroring then you can't create efficient detailed parts.

Edited September 9, 2018 by passinglurker

[basic.syntax]

11 hours ago, Mako said:

And if, like a few others have mentioned, whites or other colors don't match between new and old parts, that's a problem. This, and other inconsistencies, makes me wonder if there is a style guide for part development, or if the artists are just winging it and hoping for the best.

I recall something about a new hire for the position of art director a while back; I hope they, in particular, are reviewing the feedback regarding the art this and these past weeks. Consistency amongst assets is important, but not so much that you're repeating textures...

 

Refer back to this march 2017 weekly update, for the last time this subject came up. I'm guessing they feel this ground has been covered before, and have nothing new to say about it. 

 

On ‎3‎/‎20‎/‎2017 at 5:52 AM, RoverDude said:

Bear in mind (and to be 100% clear), there's a world of difference between establishing, documenting, and pursuing a consistent artistic style (Hyper-realistic?  Cartoonish?  Retro?) and standards (Specularity, color palette, guidelines for polygons/textures) vs. ensuring every single asset in a game, past and present, adheres strictly to that style.  I am speaking purely of the former.  I have no comment on the latter, as that would be an NDA issue.

KSP has a very distinctive feel (as noted before - it's a chunky cartoonish look, scaled for Kerbals not humans).  A hyper-realistic part... whether it's a hyper-realistic oil drum or a sleek engine nacelle... would be incredibly jarring.  So establishing and documenting what a 'Kerbal' part looks like is important. 

 

[dvader]

1 hour ago, ThirdOfSeven said:

I think main problem is ability to just grind required science points amount by flying to the Mun/Minmus and around Kerbin.

Other way may be adding some story with clues behind all these anomalies scattered around so you can be driven by pure interest.

I'm thinking of "the other way". The main problem right now is that the only player "reward" is science. Once you've finished the tech tree (often before Duna) the reward is gone and you have to find a reason to continue playing yourself. I would like some story mission which holds your hand a bit, shows you some places and suggests some cool things to do (like flying a plane around Eve). I don't want it to be tied to the tech tree because...

1 hour ago, HebaruSan said:

What if a player wants to stay in Kerbin's SOI, though? SQUAD takes criticism when they make decisions that limit play styles.

... and it is a bit silly anyway: "Thanks to the accurate measurements of the pressure differential between high and low space around Minmus, we finally figured out how to build larger landing wheels!". So, the most common measurements in space are Temperature and Pressure? Not taking pictures or measuring radiation? Really?

I don't think a scoreboard/badges/world firsts would do. I thought it could be fun to try to do all the worlds firsts but I stopped playing that career game around Jool. It was just so repetetive to do another "crew transfer around X".

So, optional story missions pinpointing locations of interest and suggesting things to do. Preferably related by some story arc.

The only change I'd like to the tech tree is unmanned before manned since it is a bit unfair to send Kerbals to their death during the first 5 minutes of the game. Also, the stayputnik is very cool looking but probably the most useless part right now which is a real shame (the small-medium connector is much later tech).

Sorry, this probably got a bit off topic.

Main point: Colored backgrounds for parts indicating their size (or other visual clue).

[passinglurker]

@basic.syntax If @SQUAD cracked the code to formulating "kerbal" and rendered in reference document form that they simply neglected to adhere to during MH development then I would bet the modding community would love to see it, and Squad would love to show it off on a slow news week.

But RD also said this immediately before your quote...

On 3/19/2017 at 6:02 PM, RoverDude said:

Trust me, art consistency is something I take into consideration, and have discussed with Leticia (our Lead Artist).  A big part of this is making parts that 'fit' with the different art styles, while pushing towards more consistency.  There's definitely a 'Kerbal' aesthetic - not junk, but not human proportions either.  Chunky, with a slight cartoony feel with a bit of accompanying oversaturation.  

Two things to consider...  Airplane parts are different than rocket parts, and even further removed from parts that never have to deal with atmospheric use (like the LEM).  Another thing (and one that's very hard to see from the outside till the content is in your hand), is that I am making sure all of the new parts have a comparable level of detail (in terms of texture resolution compared to part size), using the Mk-2 and Mk-3 as baselines since those have a pretty crisp level of detail without being massive resource hogs.

Yet the revamp previews we've been getting so far have been below space plane level of detail. I think its safe to say this project he's referring to ultimately didn't come to fruition or like porkjet's overhaul was shelved and ignored. We can't simply rely on squad to come around to what should be the easy way to do this right all by themselves. We unfortunately have to keep pushing, and show this is an aspect of the game we care about.

11 minutes ago, dvader said:

Main point: Colored backgrounds for parts indicating their size (or other visual clue).

could "other visual clue" be giveing each size its own distinct paint scheme as its in editor default, and have uniformity styles like "spaceplane" or "saturn" be mesh-swap variants? best of both worlds and you don't have to ask how spaghettified the editor catalog code is  

Edited September 9, 2018 by passinglurker

[Chel]

And as usual, no console news again (not that I'm surprised)

[Redneck]

11 minutes ago, passinglurker said:

@basic.syntax If @SQUAD cracked the code to formulating "kerbal" and rendered in reference document form that they simply neglected to adhere to during MH development then I would bet the modding community would love to see it, and Squad would love to show it off on a slow news week.

But RD also said this immediately before your quote...

Yet the revamp previews we've been getting so far have been below space plane level of detail. I think its safe to say this project he's referring to ultimately didn't come to fruition or like porkjet's overhaul was shelved and ignored. We can't simply rely on squad to come around to what should be the easy way to do this right all by themselves. We unfortunately have to keep pushing, and show this is an aspect of the game we care about.

Ive seen you mention porkjet multiple times now. And i get it that that is where the bar is raised. So my question is what if the current artist just isnt "like Porkjet". Meaning for example I can play a jimi-hendrix song on guitar but it will never be as good as Jimi's because, well, im not Jimi. So what can we expect from the current artist? He is not porkjet. So now what? Where does that leave us? I dont have an answer

[passinglurker]

8 minutes ago, Redneck said:

Ive seen you mention porkjet multiple times now. And i get it that that is where the bar is raised. So my question is what if the current artist just isnt "like Porkjet". Meaning for example I can play a jimi-hendrix song on guitar but it will never be as good as Jimi's because, well, im not Jimi. So what can we expect from the current artist? He is not porkjet. So now what? Where does that leave us? I dont have an answer

Any professional should be able to do what porkjet did its not exactly revolutionary stuff multiple artists in the community can already emulate or exceed his style if they want to.

[Redneck]

1 minute ago, passinglurker said:

Any professional should be able to do what porkjet did its not exactly revolutionary stuff multiple artists in the community can already emulate or exceed his style if they want to.

You 're right. I think me personally, im going to take a wait and see approach. All this added pressure on the artist(s) by the community im sure does not help either. But then again some people work better under pressure so who knows. 

[basic.syntax]

Porkjet has moved on. No two people are going to make the same brush strokes. I could try to copy his brush strokes, but my hand is not as steady. I might not overlap stokes to the same degree or follow a curve as he would.  Did he paint on paper and scan that, or was it 100% digital brushes? At some point even parts he worked on may be remade, to match up with the post-pork parts and emerging unified style.  (And I will keep all my KSP version backups for the textures and models, in case I'm massively dissatisfied by something.)

[passinglurker]

19 hours ago, basic.syntax said:

Porkjet has moved on. No two people are going to make the same brush strokes. I could try to copy his brush strokes, but my hand is not as steady. I might not overlap stokes to the same degree or follow a curve as he would.  Did he paint on paper and scan that, or was it 100% digital brushes? At some point even parts he worked on may be remade, to match up with the post-pork parts and emerging unified style.  (And I will keep all my KSP version backups for the textures and models, in case I'm massively dissatisfied by something.)

Brush strokes? That sounds like an excessive level of emulation, no one's asking for that. The idea that porkjet was some unequalable, unemulateable art god has been debunked multiple times before and I would appreciate it if you didn't perpetuate this myth.

Edited September 10, 2018 by passinglurker

[Lisias]

9 minutes ago, passinglurker said:

Brush strokes? That sounds like an excessive level of emulation, no one's asking for that. The idea that porkjet was some euequalable, unemulateable art god has been debunked multiple times before and I would appreciate it if you didn't perpetuate this myth.

Doesn't matter if the artist's works are easily cloned, copied or mimicked. People tend to prefer the "original" over any kind of copycats.

There's a reason anyone could buy a poster with Van Gogh's "The Portrait of Doctor Gachet" for a few bucks, or even a very good artesanal and faithful copy for a few thousands. But yet the original would cost you about 150M USD.  

There's a lot of people able to mimic and surpass Porkjet's work. But yet, it's Porket's works that have fans around here, not them.

You can debunk the Porkjet's "legacy" how many times you want, it's pointless. We are not talking about a tool, we're talking about art and style.

[passinglurker]

3 minutes ago, Lisias said:

Doesn't matter if the artist's works are easily cloned, copied or mimicked. People tend to prefer the "original" over any kind of copycats.

There's a reason anyone could buy a poster with Van Gogh's "The Portrait of Doctor Gachet" for a few bucks, or even a very good artesanal and faithful copy for a few thousands. But yet the original would cost you about 150M USD.  

There's a lot of people able to mimic and surpass Porkjet's work. But yet, it's Porket's works that have fans around here, not them.

You can debunk the Porkjet's "legacy" how many times you want, it's pointless. We are not talking about a tool, we're talking about art and style.

It's a game not an art auction for all practical purposes the style can be emulated for the sake of a unified aesthetic that builds off the work that was already done with the space plane overhaul.

[basic.syntax]

Art is very subjective ... I recognize that passinglurker sees some community artists as producing work that comes close or could exceed PJ, but depending on who you ask, their good work could be judged "similar", "very close", or "does PJ has a new name?"  Squad has the people that they have, and is clearly working to improve parts uniformity, over time. I thank them for continuing to work on it.

[Lisias]

1 minute ago, basic.syntax said:

Squad has the people that they have, and is clearly working to improve parts uniformity, over time. I thank them for continuing to work on it.

And that's all that matters. Since Porkjet moved on, it's unavoidable that the art will move on too. It's just pointless to complain about Porket's fan preferring his work instead.  It's years of KSP playing using his art, you can't fight people's memories.

[klgraham1013]

Okay.  I like PJ's parts as much as the next guy.  ...but with all due respect to the man, he's not the greatest artist I've seen.  To say that a new artist couldn't do equivalent and matching work is absurd.

2 minutes ago, Lisias said:

Since Porkjet moved on, it's unavoidable that the art will move on too.

No it's not.  PJ established a style.  Any new artist of reasonable skill should be able to match it.

[Lisias]

Just now, klgraham1013 said:

No it's not.  PJ established a style.  Any new artist of reasonable skill should be able to match it.

Artists are rarely motivated by copycatting other people's works. We are not talking about tools, we are talking about art.

It's unavoidable that the new artist would prefer to use his own style. If by not anything else, to enrich his portfolio. The guy is a professional after all, he have his professional future to care about.

It's the best for the KSP? Who knows? Someone on Squad thinks it is - and I don't have any logical argument to say he's wrong. And the die hard fans always can mod the game to get things back. So...

[Redneck]

13 minutes ago, klgraham1013 said:

Okay.  I like PJ's parts as much as the next guy.  ...but with all due respect to the man, he's not the greatest artist I've seen.  To say that a new artist couldn't do equivalent and matching work is absurd.

No it's not.  PJ established a style.  Any new artist of reasonable skill should be able to match it.

A copy cat could yes. But he would not be an artist...just a copy cat. They hired an artist. He is his own person with his own style. Either way no matter what he does it does not matter not everybody is going to like the changes. There will always be somebody that dont. No way around it

Edited September 10, 2018 by Redneck

[scimas]

1 minute ago, Lisias said:

Artists are rarely motivated by copycatting other people's works. We are not talking about tools, we are talking about art.

I didn't really want to get into this argument, but this doesn't make sense. 

I understand that motivated artists do beeter work; in fact that is not limited to artists at all, it's true for everyone. But you can be motivated to make better art than your predecessors even when you're required to stick to a style. These artists aren't doing their own thing, they're working for KSP. If a style is decided for the game then they have to stick to it. If they don't want to stick to it, they need to change every single part to match their new style. 

I'm in no position to decide which style is better, but I can certainly understand the logic behind choosing and sticking to one. 

[passinglurker]

25 minutes ago, Lisias said:

Artists are rarely motivated by copycatting other people's works.

That motivation is called a paycheck falling in line with the style the employer or client wants/needs is part of the job. Thats the way it is because its the way it has to be otherwise every game would be thid unholy mish mash of individualized styles instead of relative consistency...
 

39 minutes ago, basic.syntax said:

Squad has the people that they have, and is clearly working to improve parts uniformity, over time. I thank them for continuing to work on it.

Uniformity overtime as RD described it is not practical. It's a constantly moving target and makes yet more work as you have to go back and revamp your revamps as the average shifts. You draw a line in the sand and scrap everything sitting on the wrong side of the line otherwise you're just wasting time, and money making worse assets. That is not something to thank someone for.

 

Edited September 10, 2018 by passinglurker

[Lisias]

5 minutes ago, scimas said:

I didn't really want to get into this argument, but this doesn't make sense. 

Too late.  I popped some pop-corn by the way. Want some?  

 

6 minutes ago, scimas said:

These artists aren't doing their own thing, they're working for KSP. If a style is decided for the game then they have to stick to it. If they don't want to stick to it, they need to change every single part to match their new style. 

Doing his own thing and working for KSP are not mutually exclusive. Perhaps the guy was hired precisely to give the game a new look? There should be a reason they are calling this effort a "part revamp".  

 

12 minutes ago, scimas said:

I'm in no position to decide which style is better, but I can certainly understand the logic behind choosing and sticking to one. 

 Neither do I. I'm just a grumpy old fart that likes things to be "as they always were". And I'm playing this for less than a year.  However, I already saw some things changing for the better in the past, most of the time, with my complaining about how things are changing.

So I learnt to wait and see. We can mod the game back, anyway.

[Pthigrivi]

The work Nertea posted early in the thread is gorgeous as always, but Im still really happy to see all the new art. Everyone has their own opinions on style but Im just happy to see the effort going in. I will say though the originals had a yellow stripe I like the idea of using an orange stripe as the new convention for all SRBs. It'd make a nice distinction between solid fuel and monoprop.

Edited September 10, 2018 by Pthigrivi

[Lisias]

3 minutes ago, passinglurker said:

That motivation is called a paycheck falling in line with the style the employer or client wants/needs is part of the job. Thats the way it is because its the way it has to be otherwise every game would be thid unholy mish mash of individualized styles instead of relative consistency...

You weren't around before PorkJet's, were you?

[Redneck]

1 minute ago, Lisias said:

Too late.  I popped some pop-corn by the way. Want some?  

 

 

ooh ooh i do i do. 

[passinglurker]

Just now, Pthigrivi said:

Im just happy to see the effort going in

That is something I can agree with and I hope we can continue to see them keep up thier efforts to do better until we reach aesthetic consistency

[Just Jim]

31 minutes ago, Lisias said:

Artists are rarely motivated by copycatting other people's works. We are not talking about tools, we are talking about art.

27 minutes ago, Redneck said:

A copy cat could yes. But he would not be an artist...just a copy cat. They hired an artist. He is his own person with his own style. Either way no matter what he does it does not matter not everybody is going to like the changes. There will always be somebody that dont. No way around it

OK, I've been reading this all weekend, and I have to be really careful about what I say, obviously.
But I'm saying this not as a squad employee... but as an amateur artist and fan-fiction writer.

And I totally agree with these...

Even if I try to copy an artist like Giger, or a writer like Lovecraft... it's not going to be a Giger painting, or Lovecraft story... and it won't be one of my best either...
I am myself, and no matter how much I might try to write or paint like someone else, it's still my work in the end, and not someone else's.

And every other artist I've ever known is the same... 

Edited September 10, 2018 by Just Jim