UI Change - 3D meshes instead of 2D sprites

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Balthagor
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UI Change - 3D meshes instead of 2D sprites

Post by Balthagor »

As of version 9.1.76

Impact of change
  • Units in the UI will be shown with their region specific mesh
  • Unit scale in UI will be more consistent with unit scale on map (good thing and bad thing at times)
  • Bridges don't have a mesh, so don't appear in the UI yet
  • Colour scheme of some units makes them hard to see against the pic frame

More discussion to come...
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Re: UI Change - 3D meshes instead of 2D sprites

Post by Nerei »

I can see why you are doing this and I do think the idea has merits but in the current execution has issues. I would say it has gone live a bit too early as right now there is basically no gain with this and just a lot of headache for users.

Here is a few observations I have made so far:

For a start you are using default textures for the models not regional textures so the advantage of picture and model being identical in appearance has not yet been achieved.
It actually makes it far, far worse in the case of the models I have made as you now got all tanks in basic green instead of an assortment of default or regional textures used on the UGBITS. The small scale just makes it even worse.

I also fear at this small scale camouflage and the like will blur and make identifying units harder than it was with the UGBITS icons.

Edit: Here is a few illustrations of what I mean. All vehicles are roughly 64 pixels size (the lower 9 exactly 64 pixels wide)
Image
Image
I do not find it exactly easy to identify what model of tank each of these vehicles are and I know them in great detail. At a casual glance it is probably going to be more difficult than with the UGBITS icons where they used a variety of different textures.


On top of bridges powerplants and the like that has icons representing what they are now also far harder to identify by their icon/model alone.

Unit production still uses the old icons.

I know you have mentioned model scale and that really is an issue. Look at aircraft carriers for the perfect example. Like half the model is visible in the icon window. Aircraft have some of the same issues.
Buildings also needs to be re-centred as right now many of them are small blobs in the lower part of the window.
On the other extreme great war warships are basically small blobs that are impossible to identify.


Texture appear to be scaled in the unit preview. This does in some cases result in edge bleeding. The perfect example is some of the warship models I have made.

Likewise as mentioned you got grey on grey now. Case in point is the default texture for the F-15 model I made. It is basically invisible on that background. Some of the old 2020 aircraft have the same problem. I would say that is a significant issue that outweigh any advantages of units being in region specific textures (especially with the potential issues mentioned above).

I am sorry but I am not going to spend a few hundred hours fixing those texture colour issues. Part of the problem is a lot of aircraft and warships in particular use a similar colour and the goal of what I do at least is to try and make accurate models. Straying far enough from the background to make them stand out really will compromise that and that is a sacrifice I will not make.
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Re: UI Change - 3D meshes instead of 2D sprites

Post by evildari »

Have to second Nerei:

with the small preview window , i also find it difficult to see what this unit may be without looking at the design name.
Maybe you can increase this window by 200% or more then it may be more useful - right now its IMO wasted space.
(not to mention the evil CPU-power it draws if they are generated in the game at request)

Similar issue with the very small building icon in the facility controls tab , building selection : no way to identify the building
- rather use that place to increase the width and get a few more letters for that list-box that contains the facility text.

And same identification issues in the land-department - those 3d models are less obvious than those hand-painted ones.
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Re: UI Change - 3D meshes instead of 2D sprites

Post by YoMomma »

It looks like a 80's game now, what's the point of this change? Not that i care that it looks like an '80's game, its just more of the screen is filled with empty UI and that makes it kinda intimidating.

Is it to represent 3d units when you hover over them?

No model for a bridge? Are you joking? Couldnt find the resources to draw a bridge.. :lol:
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Re: UI Change - 3D meshes instead of 2D sprites

Post by Balthagor »

The bridge just never existed before. And it's not drawn, someone has to 3D model it.

Are you able to build a good quality 3D model of a bridge that's low poly and game ready? You seem to think it's an easy task...
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Re: UI Change - 3D meshes instead of 2D sprites

Post by Nerei »

Making a simple bridge model should not be the hard part. Here is a quickly hacked together model I made in like 5 minutes. Tris count is 188 (so basically nothing) and it should work just fine with a non-transparent 512x512 pixel texture (possibly even 256x256). The texturing should not be too hard either.
Image
Sure it can be done better but again this is basically a 5 minute hack job.

Whoever made the great war models should at the very least be more than capable of doing something similar.
Naturally up to now there have been no reason to do so and making models without any reason is not good business.

The real question is if they will be present on the map and if so how that will be handled. That is a significant determining factor in how the bridge (or bridges) should look. I suspect there might also be some programming involved in making it work properly.

If they are not to be present on the map I suspect BG can get away with simply applying a picture of a bridge with alpha to a 2D plane angled towards the camera.
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Re: UI Change - 3D meshes instead of 2D sprites

Post by Balthagor »

Nerei wrote: Aug 04 2018 The real question is if they will be present on the map and if so how that will be handled.
That is why it was never created before.
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Re: UI Change - 3D meshes instead of 2D sprites

Post by number47 »

Oh my God, what have you done??

This implementation, at its current state is awful :roll:

Models unaligned in their boxes, some times to big to fit in a box, and if I noticed correctly it only applies to unit research section because unit production still shows sprites (thank God!)...

Can you revert this to sprites before ironing all things out? I can't force my self to play the game in this state :-(
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Re: UI Change - 3D meshes instead of 2D sprites

Post by Nerei »

I am fairly certain production is the only place that does not use the 3D models. The unit listing under the defense tab also uses them. Personally that is the place that annoy me the most as it is already hard to work with without indistinguishable icons. That and buildings.

But yes something needs to be done about it and preferably sooner rather than later.
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Re: UI Change - 3D meshes instead of 2D sprites

Post by Balthagor »

It's still being reviewed. Likely a game option to go back to the UGBITS sprites.
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Re: UI Change - 3D meshes instead of 2D sprites

Post by Nerei »

That would be perfect. It gives people that prefer the new option the ability to use it while still allowing those of us that prefer the old system to stick to it.

You still need to fix scales and positions though ^_-
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Re: UI Change - 3D meshes instead of 2D sprites

Post by George Geczy »

number47 wrote: Aug 14 2018 Oh my God, what have you done??
This implementation, at its current state is awful :roll:
Models unaligned in their boxes, some times to big to fit in a box, and if I noticed correctly it only applies to unit research section because unit production still shows sprites (thank God!)...
Can you revert this to sprites before ironing all things out? I can't force my self to play the game in this state :-(
Nerei wrote: Aug 14 2018 That would be perfect. It gives people that prefer the new option the ability to use it while still allowing those of us that prefer the old system to stick to it.

You still need to fix scales and positions though ^_-
In the last update we did fix/improve a lot of the model alignment and sizing issues, and some consistency in UI, so hopefully that made it a bit less traumatic. And we added in the game option to turn back to the old 2D sprites if it is.

Sorry for the emotional distress we caused, but the intention was to make it easier for modders (editing those 2D sprite sheets is a pain) and also make the pictures more consistent.

There are a couple of minor bugs that were reported after the last update (I think in 2D sprite mode the Land Dept tab icons are messed up), but there obviously is no single "perfect" solution on this that works with both mods and the improved visibility that the sprites can give.

As well, we will look at adding a custom UI scaling value to help with models that are wonky in the sizes, plus maybe tinker with the background colour a bit - although what works for one unit is ugly for another. I agree that this was an idea that sounded better on the wishlist than it does in actual implementation.

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Re: UI Change - 3D meshes instead of 2D sprites

Post by Nerei »

I agree it sounds good on paper. Save the trouble of creating UGBITS and have units look like their regional variants in the process.
Naturally the issue with a largely automated process is that it still needs to solve the issues that could in part be alleviated during the creation of the old icons.

Also I would from a personal perspective say the creation of UGBITS are a non-issue. I might spend 5-10 hours creating a model if it has a decent number of regional textures. Rendering a png of it, cropping and scaling it to fit and copying it into a guide is easy-peasy by comparison and takes maybe 5 minutes.


That said trust me I did notice that option was added. Also I am sure you cannot guess what option I am using.


I am not really sure what colour you can use on the unit view background unless you plan on going with something extreme like magenta. There are way too many units in grey for grey to be a feasible background colour and it is not like the number is going down.
Going dark will clash with other models and effectively make black an unfeasible colour for models. Considering black is a goto colour for stealth aircraft and submarines that is not good.
White will not be nice to look at and will still risk clashing with models unless you really go with a pure white which again is just going to hurt to look at.

Really the only solution I can suggest other than extreme colours that will not just shift the problem to other models is to use a black border like on the UGBITS.


Again that is still not considering models appearing similar. I made all the models I used in my example above but it being more than 3 weeks ago now I seriously have to look at those 9 tanks to try and figure out what they are. I consider that a major problem as it is based on actual models that might appear together in-game. With UGBITS they use a lot of different regional textures to try and stand out from one another but that is not an option here.
Really I am not sure how to solve the last issue as it is a fundamental problem that I personally will probably end up exacerbating.

On the actual 3D playing field I find it far less problematic but that is likely down to the zoom level I normally use the models are 100-200% larger.


All this said I still think it is good you added the option as I am sure there are both modders and end users that will appreciate it just like I appreciate that you added and option for me to kill it.

I will however probably not try and make models with the 3D UGBITS in mind going forward. I simply do not know how to properly do it. Abandoning airforce and navy grey is not really a viable option and short of painting vehicles in extreme colours models with any kind of similar shape will appear similar at these scales. Modern Russian armour will be one big mess unless I start painting them like they where to participate in the Tank Biathlon. Okay I might do that as a joke at some point.
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Re: UI Change - 3D meshes instead of 2D sprites

Post by George Geczy »

Nerei wrote: Aug 30 2018 I will however probably not try and make models with the 3D UGBITS in mind going forward.
As we've said many times before, thanks Nerei for all the work you've done on units and for contributing that to the player community. I agree that your approach is generally the best for the on-map and realism visuals, which is your intention. The 3D UI pics will get some other tweaks in the future to try to help make them work better.

Originally our design had a "unit colour" standard - tanks were generally desert beige, recon were green, AA were a weird blue-green I think, etc. The idea was to make it easy to see a unit class on the map based on its texture colour - make it easy to tell a recon LAV from an infantry LAV, for instance. But when we started down the road to SR1936 this didn't really make sense, as the visuals of certain colourations are iconic to the war. So the shift to more realistic/historical colours was made in place of the the "by class" colour.

For now it appears that 2D UGbits will be around for a while...

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Re: UI Change - 3D meshes instead of 2D sprites

Post by Nerei »

The desert camouflage I use is fairly close to what is used on the original models. I have a few times considered making it for vehicles where it would not normally be needed (e.g. modern Japanese) but the workload required compared to the benefit it gives does not really seem worth it.
Not going with say desert camouflage on tanks in 1936 might also have helped with recognition of models as even with camouflage patters with enough unit models they will start to blend together. A green tank will always stand out from a beige and brown one.

For the 3D models perhaps add a XYZ rotation option in picnums, perhaps also add scale, vertical offset (to help get planes in focus) and turret rotation. That would allow some individual customisation for each model and while it might not handle the problem with similar model colouration it might allow effective usage of the available space.

Such a system could potentially be used to fix say the issue with the super carrier models I made only showing the middle of the flight-deck without having an effect on other models. There can always be a default setting and this option only be used when you (or a modder) feels it is necessary


Right now there tend to be a lot of dead space even on the 2D UGBITS. I have on multiple occasions considered adjusting angles to get more out of the available space. I have with a few models rotated the turret on tanks to allow the barrel to stay in the picture but not have it take up a significant portion of the available space.


For the colour issues I still think the only effective options would be to render a black border around the model.
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