Question about drawing a character

[Dziva]

Hi there, I would have used my old thread but that one is all about coding and this is purely about the art. I have a few questions on how to do a couple of things so here we go

 

1. A cape/shawl/anything that covers the entire back

 

2. Hair that doesn't go up and isn't pigtails. Long hair in the back and long hair pieces in the front (past the head png)

 

3. How to resize/move the head png/mesh so so that doesn't take over so much of the body/shoulders and arms (like if it has a hood on it and so becomes larger looking than normal)

 

Thanks so much for reading and hopefully answering! I hope I'm not so helpless one day XD

[Sabeku]

I'm no pro, but I can maybe help you by telling you some things I've learned.

1. If you mean an entirely new piece, you'll be dealing with editing the compiler, I think. Which also means editing custom animation!
If you mean to just replace the torso, you might have clipping issues and the pivot would need to be adjusted. Again, custom animation might be needed to make it right. Did you mean something long like a trenchcoat where the feet show, or something more like a dress? If its a trench, I would look into just replacing the torso and skirt with a 2-piece set. For a whole-body dress, see #3.

 

2. Do you mean long hair? I was trying to do that for my character, but it doesn't seem to be working out. Should you find a way to make it work, let me know!

 

3. I would think this is just drawing the image smaller, towards the pivot point, or simply including it in the headbase. Now, if I understand correctly, you want a hood on your character. This would mean you want something like bangs located above your character's head (so it bounces). Adding another piece like that might be very difficult, and considering the ordering problems I mentioned in #2, it might be a lot more hassle than its worth.

If you mean putting it so its over the shoulders and arms, like a long cloak... I would consider scrapping the idea of a human entirely and looking into how monster are coded / animated.

 

Think of the pigs, how they're body is hunched and over their heads. Its abnormal, but its coded in a way where it works. I would imagine you would be doing the same thing for a cloak, rather than replacing the human pieces. Then you would have to add the custom animations, because you'd be essentially making an entirely new monster/player thing...

 

Sorry for my ramblings. I don't mean to discourage you, its just a lot of these things are still in the dark for me too! I hope you'll still find a way to work on your character.

 

Edit: There's a lot of non-human character mods in the workshop that you can take a look at too!

Edited February 17, 2015 by Sabeku

[Sabeku]

Also you mentioned in another thread (but I'll put this here since you wanted your art and coding topics separate):

 

the extended sample character template mod is a humanoid animal character and mine will be simply human. I'm simply wondering if anyone knows where I could get similar files for a human character. If not then I'll use the files given obviously but having human files to start with would save time since the art is going to take me a bit anyway

 

I don't think there is an official human character to reference, however when I was making my mod I replaced the cat head and face files with Wilson HD mod to better adjust the art.

 

Attached is a cleaner zip version of the Wilson-Esctemplate character mashup I made for a human base. It has a few pieces from my own mod as placeholders. I should also mention I didn't touch the coding on the scml for this either.

 

As for how to do the actual art, you'll have to take it into a drawing / editing program and draw over with your own art. What I did is take a screenshot (you can use the preview files inside the zip for this) and draw on top of it in several layers. The head, face, hair, body, etc are all on different layers. You'll be essentially making puppet pieces, then when it looks like what you want, take the pieces and replace the ones in the file. Make sure the positioning is the same! (But if you want to position something differently, like the face being lower, just lower it in the png itself.)

Lastly, do not change the dimension. They're part of the coding/compiling process.

 

I hope this helps make the art process easier!

 

Art Assets - Wilson Esctemplate.zip

Edited February 17, 2015 by Sabeku

[Dziva]

@Sabeku Oh wow thank you so much! Those files should help a lot. I had no idea that I would basically be needing to make a new mesh. Goodness. The artwork seems almost as hard as the coding once you realise the restrictions involved. I guess I could add the hood to her head itself and just have it draw there but long hair pieces would seem out unless I could somehow match it up perfectly on the other parts...which would result in some weird clipping like you said.

 

How the monsters and animals are coded and animated seems great but that wouldn't really work for my ideas. I guess I'll just have to shorten everything to match up with the currently working meshes and not try and fiddle too much. Also it isn't that I want them separate per se it is just that they often require different skill sets so if someone super skilled at the art part of modding looks at my other thread they might not look far enough to see the art problems and vice versa. It makes it easier for people who know what they can answer and also a little bit for me so I know instantly which of my issues was responded to.

 

If I get long hair to work I will most certainly let you know! Maybe I can fiddle with the pigtail mesh somehow...I'll definitely check out your linked threads to see what you have done. Maybe two brains on it will crack it! 

[Dziva]

Another question! What are the different skirt parts for? Which angles are they? I think skirt 0 is front and skirt 1 is back judging from the spriter (they are pretty much the same looking though to be honest) but I cannot tell what skirt 3 and 4 are for. Also which skirt is for side view?

 

Also, which face is the one used for dialogue?

Edited February 18, 2015 by Dziva

[Sabeku]

@Sabeku Oh wow thank you so much! Those files should help a lot. I had no idea that I would basically be needing to make a new mesh. Goodness. The artwork seems almost as hard as the coding once you realise the restrictions involved. I guess I could add the hood to her head itself and just have it draw there but long hair pieces would seem out unless I could somehow match it up perfectly on the other parts...which would result in some weird clipping like you said.

 

How the monsters and animals are coded and animated seems great but that wouldn't really work for my ideas. I guess I'll just have to shorten everything to match up with the currently working meshes and not try and fiddle too much. Also it isn't that I want them separate per se it is just that they often require different skill sets so if someone super skilled at the art part of modding looks at my other thread they might not look far enough to see the art problems and vice versa. It makes it easier for people who know what they can answer and also a little bit for me so I know instantly which of my issues was responded to.

 

If I get long hair to work I will most certainly let you know! Maybe I can fiddle with the pigtail mesh somehow...I'll definitely check out your linked threads to see what you have done. Maybe two brains on it will crack it! 

 

Like I mentioned, I'm no pro and doubt this method is the only one. I really don't mean to dishearten you from doing what you want to do, and perhaps there is someone else who knows how to do this, or you'll come up with something on your own? I'm sorry all I know about this is negative stuff. I wish I could be more helpful or positive.

 

Super skilled in the art part of mods? I think TheDanaAddams might be who you're looking for. (The link is to her old character mod thread.) Just thought I should direct you to them, but I don't know how active they are on the forums.

 

Another question! What are the different skirt parts for? Which angles are they? I think skirt 0 is front and skirt 1 is back judging from the spriter (they are pretty much the same looking though to be honest) but I cannot tell what skirt 3 and 4 are for. Also which skirt is for side view?

 

Also, which face is the one used for dialogue?

 

I believe skirt-0  and 1 are for the front and back views, since 1 is flipped horizontally.* Skirt-3 looks to be an animated frame, perhaps when you're attacking. It could also be part of DST, maybe for an emote. Skirt-2 is a frame for animation, when you're walking (see below).

I actually thought these might be in conjunction with mining, since your character lifts off the ground but this is not the case. Skirt-4 is the 'bones' one, which shows when your character is struck by lightening. (So theoretically, you can leave this blank if you want, or frayed or anything really. It's typically portrayed with 'bones' for that cartoony look.)

*Note that I would recommend testing this on a character to see if any of these are used specifically for the side view. If you saw my video walkthrough for the extended sample character mod, you'll see I put a red X over the character's eye. I would recommend tagging the skirts in a similar fashion to see which one you're looking for.

Also, for different angles I would be wary of that. For example, headbase-2 gets flipped horizontally when imported into spriter, so when you make it you have to flip it for it to be put on correctly. I'd imagine there is some coding or command that tells spriter to do this with other parts as well, and skirts might follow this rule too. Make sure to test this, just in case. Sometimes viewing the pivot points helps too.

Below is screenshots I got in-game to test my theories, curtsey of Wickerbottom.

 

As for dialog, you'll notice when you examine things that the mouth is open. Judging from Wilson HD, we can gather that face-8, face-9, and face-10 is used for dialog. Yep, only those three.

In DST they seem to have added many more expressions, but I don't actually know if they're used for more dialog. I believe they're mostly used for the emotes, and maybe DST specific events (because I don't see why Klei would recode already scripted dialog commands). Some examples of DST specific events are PVP, DST monsters, and DST recipes.

Edited February 19, 2015 by Sabeku

[Dziva]

@Sabeku I'll take a look at them! Also don't worry about discouraging me - I'm just starting out so I'm being realistic about what I can and can not tackle right now. Making new pieces from scratch is waaaaay beyond me at the moment and is shelved for now. Perhaps one day I will be able to try and figure it out again but for now I'm going to stick with figuring out long hair and getting my basic mods to work with some neat coding.

 

I watched that tutorial! It was a great help in setting up the mod! Seeing what their instructions were talking about made it so much easier to do. I have to admit though that I had to move something in spriter (sorry I didn't listen >.<) for some reason her arm just would NOT connect right even though all I did was recolour it since I liked the shape. It works fine ingame now too so I don't think I did anything too bad XD

 

Oh that is awesome on the skirts and faces! Thank you so much again. Figuring out what everything is for is really hard sometimes since it is just numbers on the files and I couldn't seem to find a list of any type anywhere on what the files are for. The pictures of the skirts really help too so that I know what I'm drawing.