Tagging Your RMMV (nope, not the vehicle)

Rather surprisingly, the posts with material for RPG Maker MV have actually gotten repeated views. Or, perhaps not so surprising since there's a dearth of Modern Tilesets for RMMV, and most are not of the Free Community Assets variety.

Pleasantly surprisingly, there is a KOOBA Cola Facebook group/account/whatever them things are. Nice to see KOOBA is not forgotten.

Today we've got a Modern Tileset with no buildings or structures. It's all purely decorative. Half of the set is simply graffiti and wall art for decorating your city. 

Why half a set?

Because i cleaned out all the game specific graffiti, the taunts to the PC, and the all with foul language beyond tits and ass. Well, i did keep one, but i changed it to read "For A Good Time, Go Love Yourself!"

For the other half, some will be a repeat from earlier sets. We've got an assortment of Business Names, Menu Boards, Drink Machines, Campus Posters, Velvet Ropes, Plaques, and a few odd bits.

(This image, of course, links to a Transparent PNG file for RMMV)

Some of the graffiti images are taken from actual graffiti and contains the work of other artists. For your reference, those are keyed here in red: 

Things Of Which To Be Aware:

Remember that you can stack two tiles on top of the base tile, so graffiti can be layered. You can also add a third layer by making the top layer an event. This can also be used to make the graffiti more dynamic. For example, one gang might mark it's turf with a skull symbol. Using conditional triggers, graffiti can appear or disappear as gangs gain or lose control of an area.
I also use that process to post graffiti with threats or taunts targeted to the Player Character.

Also note that in the lower right corner are 12 pin-up calendar pages. Set these as the images for 12 pages of an event that tracks time, and you've got a calendar that changes every month.

To properly use the Velvet Ropes, use the Passage (4 Dir) button on the Database/Tilesets screen and uncheck left or right on the left and right vertical rope tiles. That makes the ropes un-passable while leaving the tile space open.

And, finally - Note that beneath the KOOBA machines are 3 KOOBA posters (repeated for placement in one or two tiles, as needed). If you're like me, you like to let people be able to look at posters on the wall. These are sized at 720p, since that's the native resolution for my game -

Also note that my world uses Credits as the base currency, so the symbol has been changed. If anyone needs it at a different currency for their game, let me know.

For you KOOBA fans who don't give a dren about any of the rest of it, here's just the KOOBA tiles -

tileset by -3- (2020)

More Kelly, Sans Kelly

My best frenemy, my brain, hasn't much been speaking to me. Much zoning and flitting without alighting. Hence the lack of postings. But we don't want to let that become a pattern, so i'll grab some more prep art from the game i've been noodling when noodle i can. 

Let's go with some of the Public Service Announcement posters that are scattered throughout the game world.

You may recall that we've seen one of these before - a PSA encouraging citizens to Be A Hero that featured Kelly's mother, The Golden Lady.

The game takes place on a colony world, though world is overstating it. It's a large planetoid; a mining colony quite isolated from main interstellar society. They've already faced alien threats from outer and inner space. 

But it's wealthy colony (even if the citizenry isn't) and the Registry wants to keep things peaceful. So, besides crime prevention and colony defense, the superheroes are also required to do Public Service work to help maintain the calm.
 

Some might rebel against that notion a bit, but who wants to lost that insurance and medical coverage?
 

Others are willing and eager to comply (and increase their fan base).
 

Some see it as an extension of their Duty To Protect.
 

Some are genuinely eager to help.
 

And some are just having fun on the company credit chit.
 

Wow. 
I think that might even have been semi-coherent.

Tomorrow i'll try to be back, either with more comics and things, or one of those memoir/commentary pieces that i'm supposed to be doing now and then but keep shying away from. Shying so hard that i'll dangle a preposition to escape it!

art & stuff by -3- (2020)

Another Daze Lost

Damn. 
I seem to have missed a day.

I don't mean i missed posting, i mean pretty much the entire day. Apparently, it's not Tuesday any more, and it's nearly not Wednesday.

I'm blaming this guy...

(The government aren't the only ones putting up propaganda posters in my world.)

I'm digging through old piles of blog topics a fair bit lately. It's amazing how often i have no clue whether something was posted or not. I've prepped pages only to find i'd already done them before, and i've found things that i'd sworn were previously posted but there's no sign of them on the blog.

So, i'm inviting readers to participate in the sorting. If you recall a topic that was lost or left dangling, and you don't prefer to leave it that way, let me know. I've currently got 20-30 Terrabytes of old drives connected for data searching, so the time is right.

Now to catch some sleep before deciding on some comics for a morning post, or that second issue of Look magazine (featuring both Nudity and Death captured on film for a fine wholesome start to their long history) or some of those Un-Comics or ...

Yeah.
Sleep.

Jack by -3- (2020)

Random Post Day

I've been feeling rather disconnected from the outside world (even more than my norm), and very wrapped up in the painting and design work. So there was no blog post planned at all this morning. Oh, sure, we've got more Space Mice and things lying in wait, but the ol' frenemy brain wasn't going there just now.

So, i decided to just grab a random comic out the back corners of the cave and see what we got. It turned out to be Justice #23 from Atlas Comics back in 1951. The first page was the start of a sweet bit of art from John Tartaglione, a name familiar to old fans.

"Perfect!" thought i. 

We won't be seeing that today. (But soon)
The book ended with a tale from Bill Molno. Well, that's a nice bit of intersection - we just saw how Molno was ghosting for Jerry Shuster only a week ago.

Sometimes Random works pretty well. Better yet, i found two more tales drawn by Molno in a couple other random issues pulled from the same year. So, enjoy some random Crime and Romance comics from the brush of Bill Molno -

Oh - and if you're wondering about how the painting is going...   The current batch would have to appear in our back room, so we won't be going there just now.

Even Kelly is embarrassed to be there...

page art by Bill Molno from Justice #23, Lovelorn #14, and Crime And Punishment #37 (1951), paint art by -3- (2020)

A Painted Pause

One thing that will pretty much always take priority over getting a blog post together is painting. When the brain wanders over that way, i dare not discourage it.

So, guess what today?

I mentioned previously that the renders that i had been posting were not to be considered actual game art. They're the 'actors' being cast and costumed - all pre-production work. Now we're actually getting into some of the artwork. 

Though not 'complete & done' status yet, here's a couple that are close enough to give you an idea of the actual look for the artwork.

This first one is for dreaming - something PCs may be prone to doing when sleeping. Kelly Friday was born and raised in a subterranean colony. Her dreams can be simple things, like enjoying a sunset under an open sky -

We previously saw a promo for Epic Super Battles which featured a cropped shot of Kelly's mom, The Golden Lady vs. The Fugly Brute. Here's the nearly completed painted version of the shot -
 

As noted, these are both still in-progress paintings, and they are greatly reduced from the original 6000x4000 size. (I like to print at 30"x20" - reason for a Costco membership all by itself)

I'll tell you one thing - it feels good to be painting again. Hopefully there's a whole bunch more in the flow.

stuff by -3- (2020)

Friday. Kelly Friday

Some folks may be wondering how Kelly Friday's doing. (I'm assuming they're extremely bored)

She's training hard...

(Those floors are an impact absorbent polymer with a shiny surface. The cross is incentive.)

...and testing hard...

...so she's working on her dream of being a superhero.

Meanwhile, i've been testing, too. 

What we've seen so far has simply been casting 'actors' and basic costuming. Now that it's getting to the point where we might need usable renders, it was time to dig into the big changes in the software switch/update to Daz Studio 4.11 from my ancient Poser 7. While there have been at least a few new versions of Poser, as of P8 they decided they were primarily a content marketing tool and required both IEvil and a live net connection to run. Either one would be a deal breaker. Daz Studio works with much of the same models, but Poser served my needs fine for a long time. Much of the enhanced details of newer software was lost or wasted for my purposes since the renders were merely serving as source images for my paintings.

I knew i'd eventually upgrade, and so i'd been picking up models for years even though i couldn't use them yet. And even though a lot have been outdated by a new generation of models (Genesis 8), the older Gen7 stuff still works fine. That's due, in no small part, to the most notable new feature, our hero - dForce.

No, that's not another comic book team. 

dForce is Dynamic Force, used for things like cloth. You might note in the image above how smoothly the semi-transparent skirt pieces lay along her thigh.

Let's look closer. Here's a basic pose that lets you see how the clothing bends...

A bit like a hard plastic shell, eh? 
Now, that's not a major problem for me since what we've been seeing isn't game art. I paint from photographs, so i take pics of things that don't exist before i start painting. That kind of unnatural stiffness can be fixed while painting.

But, that's not necessary now. Take a look at what our hero, dForce, does when it applies little touches like collision detection and gravity...

Much, much better, eh? After giving the outfit a proper texture, it would be good with virtually no alterations to the clothing.

This takes what would previously been an fairly unusable outfit, except in very limited poses, like this one...

...and makes it work quite nicely...

Oh, and it gets better. You see - to use the dForce simulation engine well, you need to set a simple animation. Just the basic default pose and the pose you want to use, nothing fancy or nice looking. You just want to let the fabric flow into place. This also means the the fabric will follow motion, like when Moon spins around...

Obviously, that's a very nice thing for capes on those bold or stupid enough to wear them.

Here, what would have been a very unnatural looking hostage/hero-bait situation...

(Her hair is hidden because it's also dForce and using it here would have Greatly increased the calculation time quite unnecessarily for this fabric test)

...after dForce is applied looks as it should...

No magic Byrne skirts here.

Now, as i said, much of the uglies can be fixed after the render, either in the photo-manipulation stage or the painting stage. But some things would take just ridiculous amounts of work involving multiple renders and working with the source textures. If not simply outright impossible - like using Kelly's nightgown for anything but standing...

It just doesn't bend, and doesn't have the joints to try.

But, who needs to bend when dForce brings the gravity -

Okay, true - that's not quite natural since there's no ground and the gown just falls into empty space. But that brings up another point i mentioned - Collision Detection.

So if she sits on this convenient model's prop...

...the gown falls not just over her, but over the other objects as well...

And now you can easily see why we're working with semi-transparent fabrics - so that we can see how the under layer drapes beneath the visible surface.

Now, as i said, one needs to set a simple animation to make this work well. For instance, in the shot above i needed to make certain that Kelly started far enough away from the seat to prevent her gown from intersecting with it. Collision detection works by reading the surface of an object. So if the gown was already inside, it would stay there instead of flowing over the outer layer.

Since she is moving, that means you might want to give it an extra second to let the gown settle, as it is above. When she first drops into position, the gown is still in motion... 

This can allow a bit of extra choice when selecting which frame to render, as well as be taken advantage of to capture motion like we did with Moon above.

As i said, none of what we've seen is what i'd consider game-ready art. But now we're getting to the point where i might have some to show before too long. It's been a struggle to bend the painting software to my will again (which is to say, i done forgot all my old preferences, brush flexibilities, bristle densities, etc.,.) but i've actually finished the first painting in a few years.

Who'da thunk it?

stuff by -3- (2020)