Lionheart's Skins

[Lionheart]

I haven't posted a new skin since Dec. 2005. Time to rectify that.

With C6 making a great av for Heart's Fire, and me putting together an av for my daughter, Lionheart was starting to look a little dowdy next to them (my first skin ever). So it's time Lionheart updated his duds to fit in with his family a little better.



This skin uses the Gryphon base and a hex of Grenadier's Black Knight mesh.

[FLASH_22798]

The red is a bit hard to see in some areas, you may want to contrast the colors a bit more, but otherwise, it's a nice improvement while still staying true to the original.

[jeremy355]

Cool looking skin Lionheart.

[Lunarman]

wow, I love that design!

Lunarman

[UnkoMan]

Yeah, it's a very solid design. I agree about the red being a bit hard to see, but my advice would be to try thickening up the lines just a smidge.

I was going to suggest raising some of the contrast in the black area since it's hard to see detail, but actually I think it works with the style here.

I love the little circular cape attachments, too.

[Lionheart]

Thanks for the comments, guys.

I'll take another look at the red. I want it to be semi-subtle, but still visible. Haven't checked it in-game yet.

Unko - I had the same thought about the black, and came to the same end conclusion. :)

[Lionheart]

Apparently my sig was too long and the links to my Yahoo groups got killed. Since someone asked, I'll go ahead and post the links here.

http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/LionheartFFscifi/
http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/LionheartFF/
http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/lionheartff2/

For those who may not have seen my skins (I haven't produced anything new for quite a while), I've posted photos in the Yahoo groups.

[Tomato]

I love this design, it's very nifty! Red outlines give it that pop and splash of color that it's lacked in the past.  :thumbup:

I dissagree with Unko about enlarging the red... sort of. It wouldn't nescessarily hurt(Try it, if it looks better, go for it), but I think it's more a matter of going over the red areas with a low-level sharpen brush or add some highlights to the top of the seams

I would also add that while I agree the black doesn't need more contrast, adding some low level highlights just to smooth it out a bit more wouldn't hurt. Carr's tutorial is good for learning how to do that, despite being a bit outdated at this point.

[Dr.Volt]

Great looking new skin, Lionheart!  I very much dig the new color scheme together.  Subtle and yet striking. 

I do agree that the red could be a little bolder...but it works well as trim!

Btw, great to see you back around these parts!

[Lionheart]

Btw, great to see you back around these parts!

I've been around, but mostly lurking and watching for Renegade's Toybox to reopen.  :)

[Dr.Volt]

Btw, great to see you back around these parts!

I've been around, but mostly lurking and watching for Renegade's Toybox to reopen.  :)

Ok...this is turning into a "my bad" day.  Lol!  So very glad to hear that, Lionheart!

[Lionheart]

Here is a skin I'm putting together for Yell0w Lantern's golden age Blitz mesh.



I know that adding highlights would help, but frankly my attempts at highlighting with the male_costume base stink so far, so I left them off. Is there any way to get the colors themselves to pop better? When I look at some of the better skins out there, the colors themselves seem bright, not just the highlights.

[tommyboy]

I'd shift the green to either a slightly more yellow-y green, or a richer, darker one.
The yellow is bright enough where it is in light, but the parts in shadow are being made duller by the shading. It may be worth going with a slight shift in the shadow's colour (a touch of purple perhaps) to make them a bit livelier.
The trouble is the difficulty in getting "lively" colour without going into "garish" territory. I sometimes just shift the "saturation" values up a few notches if I feel a skin is not standing out enough.

Regardless of the above, it looks pretty good as is.

[Lionheart]

Here's Blitz again with a different base. I want to keep the Golden Age look, so I didn't want to go too muscular.



Any opinions on which version looks better?

[jeremy355]

I like the second one better.

[tommyboy]

I also prefer the second one.

[Tomato]

I also prefer the second, but I would try darkening the shadows on the yellow a tad... It's almost too bright as-is.

[UnkoMan]

I like that you changed the crummy darkness of a dark yellow. I'd say maybe use an orange tinged yellowish for the shade on it instead.

It does look neat though.

[BentonGrey]

Definitely the latter one.  Great skin Lionheart!

[Lionheart]

Here is another skin I'm working on for YL: The Knight Watchman.

I'm running into some issues though, relating to the colors and how FFvtTR handles lighting.

Here is the first pass of the skin:

[spoiler][/spoiler]

Looks okay in the character tool, but in game it looks like:

[spoiler][/spoiler]

Notice how all the lighter areas are so bright they're basically white and all detail is washed out. It's not quite as bad when the character is facing away from the main external light source, but it is still not good.

So I darkened the skin up some to look like this in the CT:

[spoiler][/spoiler]

It definitely helps in game, but the main highlighted areas still get bright white, just not as bad as the previous pic.

Now when I moved the original skin to male_basic_effects in FF1 (YL's mesh is already converted, so I couldn't set it up in FF1), it looks pretty good in game:

[spoiler][/spoiler]

This is the single biggest remaining roadblock for me when it comes to switching to FFvtTR. M25's AI generator and the mapsets and FX coming out make FFvtTR VERY tempting, but the lighting effects trash too many skins to make it worthwhile.

Are there any in game settings that will fix this? I've been playing around with the in game video settings and haven't found anything that helps yet.

[detourne_me]

Are there any in game settings that will fix this? I've been playing around with the in game video settings and haven't found anything that helps yet.

i prefer the original version of that skin.  he's looking fairly iconic.
you can use EZNif convert to fix the lighting on all the meshes,  or if that doesn't work,  its possible to fix in nifskope too.

[Lionheart]

Thanks for the feedback, Detourne_me. I like the first version of the skin better too. :)

Note that this is a converted mesh I'm working with. The issue isn't too little light, it's too much light. The lighting is so intense it's burning through the purple color (but only the purple) and making the unshaded portion of the skin bright burning white.

It almost appears to be an issue of the purple color itself interacting with FFvtTR's lighting system, because it doesn't matter what mesh I put the skin on. I've tested it on another converted mesh and on the "native" NoCapeMan mesh with the same result. The blue part of the costume works fine, only the purple is an issue.

[Lionheart]

Issue resolved.

Yell0w Lantern re-exported the NIF as native to FFvtTR and it looks great. The excessive burnout is gone.

Great job on the mesh, YL.  :)