Victoria Holt
Artistic Styles used in Computer C omputer Games
Photorealism: Photorealism is where you make game graphics like real life situations or places photos. This is done quite a lot for games to try and encourage the gamers to play the game. The game developers create the game graphics but at the same time compare them constantly to the photo they are trying to recreate. You need quite a high processing speed in order to make sure that you successfully photorealism the photo well. Sometimes in movies they make each frame (30 seconds) pre-rendered so that it appears more realistic to the viewers. By doing it frame by frame it can take up a lot of hours as more complex movies have digital models and scripted motion. As game developers develop ers don’t have as much set time to do this as the action in the game has to respond to whatever the p layer instructs or how they player inputs the game. With video/console games they have to render their graphics in real time, usually at a rate of 60 frames per second. If you watch a video game trailer for a game such as Arma you will find that because the images have be en pre-rendered, the real game actually has better graphics. This is because the trailer is designed to give the gamer viewer a sample/taster of what to expect in the game. Photorealism for games is quite hard to do well so not many company’s use it. I n a few years’ time many gaming companies will be using this method but they currently use motion capture, which still has high quality graphics and gameplay. Photorealism is slowly becoming more popular and used more however it will mean there’s a longer development longer development time for the game as it will take longer to create. As you can see from the images to the right the images on the left hand side are what the scenes look like in real life compared to how they have been interpreted on the game ‘Crysis’. The difference of the top pictures is that they have changed the beach shore line’s slightly and the mountain ranges are slightly higher in the Crysis game opposed to real life. In the bottom two pictures you can see that the structure of the building and surroundings are the same but their difference is the size and design of the black gate.
Real-life
Crysis Game
Cel-shading: Cel shading is also known as toon shading and is a type of non-photorealistic rendering. It is a way of making 3-D computer 3-D computer graphics appear to be flat using many different techniques. One example is where designers use less shading color instead of a shade gradient or tints. One tints. One of the main reasons why Cel -shading is used is to mimic the style of a comic book or cartoon or cartoon by attempting to add a characteristic paper-like paper-like texture. Obviously there are quite a few ways of making your image look like a sketch by simply adding certain effects in photo p hoto editor application software’s. Cel shading is easier on the graphics processor, so games can look great even on less powerful hardware. In most games these days you tend to see characters that have large amounts of block colour and rarely any shading of any kind. A good example of a game which has CelCel -
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shading for their characters is ‘The Legend of Zelda’ where they use outlining and shadows to create a more defined flat character, that was originally 3D.
Abstraction: Abstraction is only really used for computer/console/app games. These kind of games are where there is a lot of colour involved whether it’s for the characters, background or game play interfaces/menus. Most abstraction a bstraction games don’t tend to have a plot or running storyline as the goal is to survive as long as possible, so a good example of one is Angry Birds or Flappy Bird. In both my chosen games the goals are to get as far as possible. Both these games use lots of colour and don’t have any storylines. The goal in angry birds is to destroy the tower only with the birds and bird types they have given you on each level. Abstraction games are made using any platform which has a pixel rate from 8 to 64.
Exaggeration – Exaggeration – Anime Anime & Manga: Both anime and manga are both exaggerated in the sense that they create characters with lots of detail and toning. Anime is Japanese hand-drawn or computer animation computer animation and a lot of the anime games are based on the anime films which were made first. For example, the film ‘Dragon Age Dawn of the Seeker’. The anime word is abbreviated pronunciation from the word ‘animation’ in Japanese. Anime is known by most people as animation ani mation that is created by Japanese people or to look like them. Most of the graphics that are anime use an animation style animation style that is often recognized by colorful graphics, vibrant characters and fantastical themes. As anime is becoming more popular more countries are beginning to produce anime styled drawings/graphics. Many Westerners strictly view anime as an animation product from Japan. Anime is exaggerated because of the use of big eyes on the characters and use of vector graphics, that use shapes and lines. Manga is slightly different to anime in the sense that they are comics instead of games or films but they are still created in Japan or by people who speak/write/read the Japanese language. Manga is a term from Japan that refers to cartooning that is done in a Japanese style. All ages in Japan love and read manga as it comes in many different genres like actionadventure, business, comedy, detective, historical drama, horror, mystery, romance, science fiction and fantasy and sport. Many manga comics tend to be translated into other languages. Even though manga first developed in japan is has slowly gained an existence in other significant worldwide audiences from other countries. Manga stories are typically printed in black-and-white, in black-and-white, although although some full-color manga exist. Manga isn’t available in a game format yet however some manga are drawn centering on previously existing animated films, typically Japanese ones. Manga is exaggerated because of the use of lots of detail that is drawn on each sketch of every character. To conclude both manga and anime are very similar in the sense that they both originate in Japan so are therefore kind of related. They both have different storytelling media outputs however. Some people confuse the two because there is often the same story in the form of both anime and manga. If you talk to a Japanese person, the terminology they use will be
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very different to that of a westerner. The differences between the two is the fact that manga is in the form of comics and has many different genres, whereas anime is found to be a film or game format and is usually based on a current anime film.
Artistic Styles Conclusion: In conclusion all the different styles listed above appeal to different audiences because of the uniqueness, like in the manga and anime games. Artistic styles are ve ry useful in games as they help set the scene of the game. The most popular element that makes games more professional is Photorealism as it helps games become realistic so it’s as if the players are playing a real life world. They all have a good way of using graphics whether it’s using it’s using photorealism to enhance an image so it looks more realistic or whether it uses Cel-shading in order to break up a block of colour using toning and shading.
Computer Game Graphics
Pixel Art (2D Sprites, 3D isometric Sprites): Pixel Art is one of the best ways in which you are able to easily create art. It basically consists of creating images through a computer software which then allows you to create raster images, that way they can be edited pixel by pixel. By doing each pixel at a time it means you can add more detail to the graphics. Pixel Art is usually found on 2D v ideo games and mobile devices. Pixel Art was very popular before 3D games became so popular however two-dimensional games have regained some of their value. Pixel art is also used to create application icons since not all of them are made as vector graphics. Pixel Art Artists usually work using two different styles, which are Isometric and Non-Isometric views. The difference between these is that Isometric use 30 degree angles and nonisometric are viewed from the front, side or top perspective. In the image to the right it is set on a grid so all the tiny squares represent all the pixels that make up that particular image. 2D sprites are basically the graphics which are made from scratch and most commonly used in a lot of games as the characters. These sprites can be incorporated into a larger scale. 3D isometric sprites are sprites that are originally 2D and give the impression of depth. These kind of sprites are used in a game like ‘The Sims’ to t o add depth to the single perspective. If you play a game with grass and leaves on trees you can turn to face it to give you and impression of the depth. These kind of sprites are made pixel by pixel so developers tend to use graphic tablets to create the graphics from scratch.
Concept Art: This is art, that is normally used when designing a game to develop and improve your ideas. It is where you sketch your concepts on a storyboard but you add detail using shading and refining. Concept art is also a very helpful way of showing and designing your ideas either for films, games, animation or comic books. Usually artists create several different ve rsions of one sketch to try and achieve the result that the client or designer wants. Once many
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concept art sketches are produced they get narrowed down to one final option. Concept Art is mostly used to develop the work, but it can also show the project's progress to directors, clients and investors. Once the sketch developers are happy with the end result of their work they will then pass the designs on to a person who creates them on the computer using software like Photoshop. In the picture to the right you can see a design of a skull that was first modelled before being refined with details and more sketch markings. In the 3D modelling image, you can see that the skull looks smoother than in the refining image. This is because it has be en improved and changed making the second skull image look more realistic.
Characters: Characters are usually hand drawn at first and you can create them using software like Photoshop. Sometimes in games you can make your own type of character so you can change how it looks, what it does and what power ups it has in the game. You usually change your character using a menu with different buttons in the settings options. On the other hand, your games can also have set characters and only some things can be changed about them and some not. When designing a character you can use textures to make the players character more defined/detailed, attempting to give it a 3D professsional look. Some characters can be made into gif animation graphics so they can include movement and text. These days the characters look very realistic because of the advanced technology which allows laser scanning get the correct face/body shapes. Photorealism also makes the characters look more defined and it makes it easier as they can just be scanned into the computer. In the image image to the right uou can can see where the characters have been sketched out first and then created up computer software. In all games you tend to have the choice of what gender you want to play as and you mostly dress them up to suit your style. When comparing two games characters like crash of the titans and super mario bros, which are two completely different games you can see that the textures and definition have improved over each year. The games were made 15 years apart from f rom each other you can can see the big difference between the graphics.
Weapons: The weapons are gradually getting better alongside other game aspects like the vehicles and environments. You can get access to various different kinds of weapons depending on the game you’re playing. In some games you have to unlock the weapons or earn th em buying completing tasks within the game. Weapons are mostly used in the shooting genre of game, so it’s vital that they function properly and don’t disappoint players who are using them. There are a lot of things to develop dev elop when creating a new weapon fo r a game such as how it works, its aesthetical qualities and what happens if you shoot with it. In order to make your weapon good it must look realistic so that players are more likely to use it. For example, in a game like CSGO you can see that the image of the game weapon looks very similar to the real thing, as they are trying to make the game as realistic as possible.
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In the example shown to the right you can see the simplistic weapons that are used in The Hunger Games, which include the bow and arrow, spear and sword. These type of weapons are used in hunger games because it’s not a shooting game as such.
Vehicles: Vehicles are used quite a lot throughout many different games such as Arma, where the vehicle helps your transport your way around the map and world. As games have been developing more and more it means that the actions of the vehicles can becomes more complex and detailed. Vehicles are sometimes one of the main things in games especially if you have to move around quickly and carry things with you through different areas of the game. Most vehicles like the one shown to the right have big wheel and are a robust shape. You can get different types of vehicles which all have their own advantages and disadvantages. As you can see from the images there is the real life vehicle (Bottom image) and the game vehicle (Top image), which is used in Halo 4. They both look very similar and an d use a green colour scheme to blend into any forests or woods that the vehicles may be played in.
Environments: Different games have different environments, for example if you’re playing you’re playing a 3D game it is more likely to have textured graphics instead of 2D sprites. They try to make the graphics look professional and stand out more. In the game the environment world is where a player spends the most time in the game and sometimes it can be changed to suit what the player wants. The game environment constantly changes between different game versions as they add more textures and depths to make the game more 3D. Some games have lots lo ts of different environments like on Temple Run 2 where you can go and play on an ice track instead of a boring road. In a game if you change between two different environments then you sometimes have to change your power ups to suit it better. Environments have to be unlocked sometimes. For example, on a game like Hill Climb Racing you have to have so many coins in order to play the next environment levels. The levels in Hill Climb Racing include snow, field, volcano and rollercoaster.
Texture Art: Texture art is used a lot throughout many games to try and give different background object/graphics a better sense of blending in with the surroundings. Texture art is mostly seen to be used on walls, a vehicle, or a creature/character. Textures are commonly used in 3D graphic games rather than 2D ones to make them stand out as be ing better to play. As the games are 3D it means players can view vie w different angle aspects of the game as well. When texture game artists are creating the graphics they may scan real life photos into the computer so they can compare them to the designs they are developing to make it look as realistic as possible.
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By scanning them in this also means they will be able to manipulate graphics by taking clones of the texture and adding it to their work. Scanning textures means you can apply that texture to the creatures, environments or objects found in the game. Any textures that are scanned or created by the designer have to be mapped onto the 3D objects, environments, and characters in the game. This is important to get right so that game looks professional and has a sharp edge which is unique to other games as well as not repeating texture over and over again as the player will lose interest. interest. Most 3D objects have great textures that make them stand out. If a lot of texture is being added to a game, the artists have to be careful that the files don’t become too big for the game console which is being used otherwise the game will lag. A game that shows a lot of texture te xture is The Battle for Middle Earth (shown on the right), where you can see that they have used a texture on the path to make it look sandy and slightly cobbled. On the grey path part, they have used a shadow affect to make the games path look like it’s m ade of stone. Although this looks simple to do it takes the designer ages to develop and create.
Conclusion: Different types of graphics are used to try and develop your ideas and make them look professional in a company. In the game all of the graphics are made on the computer and you are able to add textures easily. Texture art and pixel art are very important in game graphics because they help the game have definition and stand out from the rest of the game itself. In most games you will find all of the elements above like characters, vehicles and weapons. Designers tend to spend a lot of type creating these graphics in order to ensure that the gamers get the best experience and it looks as realistic as possible.
Graphics Research Pixel
Picture element: The words ‘Picture Element’ has the same meaning as the word ‘Pixel’. Picture elements are basically the squares which make up a single image, and determines whether an image is high or low quality. The number of squares that are used to represent one pixel determines how many colours can be displayed at one time. Dep ending on how you’ve set your resolution will show you the physical size of a single picture element. element . In most people’s opinion a smoother image is better to look at rather than a pixelate d one. A picture element can be made up of one or more dots or sometimes it can be a clump of dots. The squares are normally a lined in rows horizontally or vertically, the pattern is designed so that they are all joined together in a grid fo rmation. Normally all the picture element squares are the same size and each square is a block of colour, it’s never a mixture. A screen is normally divided up into millions of pixels (picture Elements), but the thing is you can’t actually see them because they are too small. Picture elements can blend together to form shades and blends of colours. In an 8-bit colour it allows
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for 2 to the 8 th/256 colours to be displayed. At this depth you may be able to see graininess or spotted colours.
Image Resolution: Resolution is used for a pixel count in digital imaging. Image resolution is defined as the amount of detail an image holds, the higher the resolution, the more detail the picture will have. Resolution is how close the lines can be to each other but yet they can still be b e visible. When you stretch an image bigger the pixels will become bigger and so they will be easier to see. Resolution units are measured in lines per mm or lines per inch to the overall size of a picture. It’s also the quality of colour in an image. Belo w you can see an image of a women, with the resolution at 72 x 72 the image is clearer than when it’s 4 x 4.
Intensity: Intensity uses high levels of three colour channels, red, green and blue. The stronger the colours are the sharper your picture will be. Using three colours creates bright and light toned pixel images and without realising each picture uses a variety of colours. The image below shows the window in which you can change the pixel intensity. The image on the right hand side shows the different colour levels you can get a colour intensity wheel. Basically a pixel’s/graphics intensity is basically its brightness, it can change the overall look of the image. In order to see the intensity of an image you can open an image in Photoshop to look at the brightness levels. When opening it up in the software it will show a histogram with the levels of brightness and darkness in the image and it will give you the amount of pixels in each given intensity. If you y ou want to change the brightness yourself, you can simply do so by going to Edit – Edit – adjustments adjustments – – brightness brightness and contrast. In the image below left you can see that it shows the RGB values value s and the tolerance of an image.
Conclusion: Pixels are very important when creating any kind of graphics because they are what made up the images and allows the designers/developers make the graphics the correct size for their desired platform. This makes the image resolution very important because if you get
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the wrong sixe the graphics for the game will be out of proportion and the game will look stretched. The higher the screen resolution the more pixels there will be in order to display the graphics on the screen. Intensity is vital in games so that you can set the genre of the game using the brightness and colours.
Types of digital graphics Different digital graphics are used to create different looks and types of images. For example, the raster images use pixels and the vector images use lines and shapes.
Raster Images (bmp, gif, tiff, jpg): Raster images are more commonly known by Bitmap images, as they include information which is planned out on a grid of pixels on the screen. You normally find raster images on the web but raster images are also the ones which y ou download from a camera. Raster images are usually digital images that can be created or captured. Raster images are made on a grid with x and y coordinates, there can sometimes be a z coordinate if it is a 3D image. In terms of file size raster images are normally larger than vector graphics, because it has to save all the individual colour. You can also convert a raster file into a vector image, you normally do this if you want a sharper, more refined image. The larger the file image, the more disk space it will take up.
Vector Images (Psd, wmf, fla, ai): This is the use of lines, curves and shapes that make up an image on a computer graphic. The vectors in the image lead through places called control points. These points are found on the x and y coordinates and determine the path either for a stroke colour, shape, thickness and fill. In vector images polygons allow any path which is on the object to join from three or more adjoining line segments. The curves are worked out and drawn when you know the position of two end points p oints and control control points. A point that is shown when it’s at the start and end of the path included parts which the path changes at. Vector graphics are commonly used for logos, maps, cartoons and drawings as they all designed on the computer using lines and shape, and they can be en larged without pixelating.
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Vector graphics aren’t made up of dots so they can be scaled to a larger size without losing any image quality, whereas if you zoom in on a raster image it will appear blotchy and more pixelated. When making a vector image bigger the edges of each object stay smooth. When you change the shape and size it won’t affect the way the image will look. If your image is a vector graphic allows you to change the properties of the image meaning you can have more control over the overall image. Vector images can be decreased and increased whereas if you did that with a raster image it would pixelate. If you move a vector ve ctor image it will stay the same and they don’t have any automatic background like you get on a rast er image. This makes cropping and changing the shape on a vector image much easier than with a raster image.
Conclusion: Computer game graphics are created in two main ways using vector and raster graphics. Many games use a variety of them both, raster images are purely made from pixels which means that they easily loose quality when being resized whereas vector graphics are just shapes/lines so can be as big as you need without reducing the graphic quality in any way.
File Extensions These are the different formats in which you can save images as or documents etc. There are around 6 main formats which are all ideal in their own way for saving images.
Bmp: .BMP file extension is a raster image which is made on a rectangular grid of bitmap pixels, each with a different colour. Some programs which open .BMP files are Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator and Microsoft windows photo viewer. The BMP format is a commonly used raster graphic format for saving image files. This format stores a lot of colour data for every individual pixel within the image but it doesn’t use any compression. By allowing this method of storing pixels it allows the graphics to be high quality but it means on the downside there will be a large file size. BMP file formats are mostly used for printable images because of the high quality and it can keep all of the colour data together.
Png: .PNG stands for Portable Network Graphics, these allow for a full range of colour and are very small files. They support a maximum of 16.8 million colours and are resolution dependant. The compression method is lossless which means no information is lost. Lossless compression means that they do not have any blurring or artifacts like JPEG’s. It’s in the format of a raster graphic. Colour quality is 2 -256 colours grey scale and true colour. The PNG format supports the alpha channel which is added to the RGB channel and allows for 256 levels of transparency and colours. Since digital graphics are usually saved as jpegs due to them having small file sizes, PNGs are actually better because they can save images with transparent backgrounds. Most of the browsers and image editing programs support PNG’s and it has slowly become more popular.
Gif:
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.GIF stands for Graphical Interchange Format File and it can contain up to 256 colours. This file can’t be can’t be made as small as a JPEG JP EG because it can be compressed but no detail from the image is lost. These type of images can be great for banners, text headings and diagrams because they are fast loading graphics. GIFs use lossless compression that doesn’t end up changing and reducing the quality of the image. If you take a photo using a high quality digital camera, then a GIF is the right format to use as it can only store a maximum of 256 colours. When saving a graphic using the Gif format it may still look grainy and p ixelated even if you use a custom colour palette. GIFs are most commonly used to display animations/animated images that have movement or different angles, which are always seen on the web.
Tiff: .TIFF is the shorten abbreviation for Tagged Image File Format; they can be saved in an uncompressed format. It is used for storing images with many colours such as digital photos and was first created in the 1980s. The graphics are normally high-quality but consequently they have a big file size. However, Tiff formats can only keep colour depths ranging from 1-bit to 24-bit. As the Tiff format has been improving they have constantly been making new versions and now there is around 50 variations for the Tiff format.
Jpg: .JPEG can store many colours but usually this will result in a loss of quality. This is the standard type of format that is mostly used to store images/graphics whether they are high quality or low quality. These types of image file formats are good for use on the web or just saving images on the computer. It mostly supports 16.8 million colours and it is also resolution dependant. It uses a lossy compression so the image may lose information when resaved or created but it will make the file size smaller. Colour quality is 1-100%. The 16 million colours are made up from producing 8 bits for each separate colour in the RGB colour space. JPEG files not only keep image data but also include metadata include metadata that describes the contents of the file including the image dimensions, color space, and color profile information. information. The disadvantage of using a JPEG image format is that they don’t support transparency so it is a poor choice for saving non-rectangular image.
Psd: .PSD is a Photoshop image file mostly used on the graphic editing program itself. The file is made up of layers which are joined together. Photoshop allows you to flatten the layers so that the flat image can be converted into a JPEG, GIF or TIFF. The PSD file format allows you to reopen the image so that you can easily edit in the software, but you can only use the Photoshop software to do this. PSD files not only o nly contain image pixels and colour but they also involve things like image layers, adjustment layers, annotation, file information, keywords, and other Photoshop-specific elements. The PSD format allows you to use RGB colour, CMYK colour, greyscale, monochrome, duotone and indexed colour, this is because the software is a professional editing graphic software.
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Conclusion: File extensions are very useful when it comes to game graphics. Although it may not seem like it, each graphic is saved using its own file format, with all of them having good and bad quality’s. Some extensions only work with specific programs such as the PSD so can only be used if your computer has Photoshop installed. If you want to save an image with a transparent background, there is only one file format which is suitable and that is PNG.
Compression
Lossy: These are terms which describe whether or not all the data can be recovered when a file is uncompressed. Lossy compression is the opposite so it reduces a file by removing key parts of information. When a file is uncompressed the original information still remains but it won’t be as easy to notice. In general, lossy compression is used for video and sound files. This is so that a certain amount of information can be lost but the user isn’t likely to realise. A JPEG image file is normally an image that uses lossy compression and is found on the web or with photographs. With lossy compressed images you can’t scale it without losing the high resolution image quality.
Lossless: Lossless compression is when all the bits that were in the file originally remain after uncompressing the file itself, so all the information is entirely restored. You normally use this type of compression for text or spreadsheets, meaning that if you lost any of the information, it could create a problem. GIFs is one of the file formats that provides lossless compression and it is mostly used on the web. Lossless compression can be undone and still end up with the result being high quality, this is used for vector graphics because whatever size it will be the quality will still be the same. The image to the right there is an example of game graphic showing the differences between the two compression types on the same image. In the image you can see that the lossy compression image is slightly more pixelated than the lossless one.
Conclusion: Compression is a very important part of computer game graphics because it helps reduce their file sizes in a way that makes the games run smoothly. Only some file formats can be compressed using lossless and other with lossy. Some compression removes information that is not needed and some compression doesn’t. when changing the compression it might alter the quality because its finding a way of reducing the file size. It does this by getting rid of unwanted pixels that are stored.
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Image Capture This is basically what you use to take an image, for example on a digital camera or scanner. Image capture is also when you take a digital screenshot of an image and it can then be imported to the computer of uploaded to the web.
Scanner: This is a device which captures images from photographic prints, posters, magazine pages and similar sources which are used for computer editing and display. Depending on what type of scanner it is it can either scan black and white only or just colour. Scanners normally come with some kind of software such as Adobes Photoshop, this is software which lets you resize and modify a captured image. Scanners can either be hand-h eld, feed-in and flatbed types. High resolution images need a high resolution scanner whereas a lower resolution scanner is only able to capture images for computer displays. A scanner can convert printed, typewritten text into a digital file. You can also get 3D scanners which are very expensive but at the same time can be very useful to architects or such people. The link below takes you to the web page where y ou can find out more about them (https://www.fuel-3d.com/) https://www.fuel-3d.com/)..
Digital camera: A digital camera is a device which records and stores photographic images in digital form. Once a photo has been taken it can be uploaded to a computer and can then be manipulated in a graphics program. There are many different types of camera such as a DSLR, bridge camera, point and shoot and a phone camera. Advantages of digital cameras is that they can easily store up to 10,000 photos depending on the memory card size, they are environmentally friendly and the lack of film means you don’t have to wait for development. Disadvantages development. Disadvantages of digital cameras are if there is a corrupted SD card then you may lose your photos, ph otos, the battery can run out at any point meaning you have to wait to take some more pictures and you can also get a hard dick failure where you might lose photos if there not backed up to the computer. The DSLR camera has the best quality, the ability to switch lenses/settings and a large sensor for taking photos in low-light. The downside to them is that they are expensive, less portable and more difficult to learn how to use. They are more likely to have a higher resolution than a point and shoot compact camera. The Point and Shoot camera is less expensive than the DSLR, is small enough to fit in your pocket so is good for everyday use and normally has special features like smile detection. The two bad things about these th ese are that you can’t change the lenses and it’s not very high quality. The resolutions of a compact camera tend to be lower as the images don’t contain as many pixels, so therefore they have lower quality. A phone camera is very portable and is normally with you if you wanted to capture a moment on the go and it also takes decent d ecent images. The disadvantages of a phone camera are that it doesn’t have many features, they have a low quality and they might not have
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flash. The resolution of a phone camera is oka y if you don’t want to take professional type of pictures.
Tablet: A tablet is a similar device to a mobile however you can’t usually text or call from them. However, if you have a contract on your phone it can sometimes be referred to on the tablet as well. A tablet is very good for playing games on especially multiplayer games as the screen is bigger than a normal mobile device. Tablets aren’t that good for taking pictures as they are bigger and heavier than a usual mobile device, this makes them less ideal to be portable. Usually the camera quality isn’t that good and t here are less pixels that make up each image as the screen has a bigger resolution. You can also get graphic tablets which enable you to draw your designs better using a stylus pen which is wireless. Graphics tablets come in all sorts of colours and sizes . You can also get some software to go with the tablet which will be similar to Photoshop.
Conclusion: Image capture is very important in game graphics because it means you can use different technology to show your images. The different image capture methods above all have their own purposes. A scanner is good as it allows you get paper based images onto the computer, a camera is used to take your own images of real life places that you can try and create in a game and a tablet is a way of displaying the images or designing them if your using a graphics tablet.
Optimising Optimising is used when the image is too large for the webpage and needs to be resized for example, the web. This is when you should balance out a graphic so that the quality is decent, but at the same time has a reasonable file size.
Target Image Output: This is the place in which I intend to use the graphics for example, on a website, portable device, game etc. You may need to change your image depending on the target destination. If you’re putting you’re putting an image on a game and it is high resolution and has a large file size, it will need to be resized or compressed so that it doesn’t slow down the loading time of the webpage. When you shrink an image size the file size will be smaller because there is less pixels in the image. It is important when preparing an image for use on the internet that there is a balance between good quality and fast loading time. I’m going to use the the graphics grap hics I come up with on a game which I will produce myself so therefore I will need to optimize the designs to the width of a common computer screen resolution. Most of my images will be horizontal as opposed to vertical. This is an essential thing when creating graphics as you have to make sure they fit on the webpage or game but at the same time check that the image is a decent standard to accessed and processed quickly by the computers users. It potentially provides the guidelines to how you create your graphics. It can also be the data you find in a computer file.
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Image bit depth: The image bit depth refers to the amount of colours that are stored in an image and the colour information. The higher the bit depth of an image, the more colours it can store or is likely to store. If I take a 1-bit image it can only show two colors which are black and white as it can only store one of two values, 0 and 1. An 8-bit image on the other hand can store up to 256 possible colours, while a 24-bit image can display about 16 million colours. As well as the colour the bit depth also determines the size/resolution of an image. Basically it is known that as the bit depth goes up, the size of the image is higher because more colour information has to be stored for each pixel in the image. The display where your graphics are shown, this too also has bit depth. It is very easy to change the bit depth of your monitor as you can just simply access the display properties. The bit depth, as well as the resolution, is actually determined by the capabilities of your graphics adapter. If have a graphics card in your computer that is capable of displaying high resolutions and a high bit depth, then you can more than likely view any kind of graphics with any number of pixels.
Image resolution: This is the number of pixels per inch contained on a display monitor. The more pixels there is the better the quality of image and the more detail there is in the image. In digital cameras there are many different resolutions for example 256x256 is found on very cheap cameras and has a low quality with around 65,000 pixels in total. Whereas a camera with a resolution of 4061 x 2704 is found on a top camera with 11.1 megapixels takes these kind of pictures, at this setting you can create 13.5 x 9 inch prints without losing any of the picture quality. The thing which determines how good a digital camera is, is the amount of zoo m which is allowed, how many megapixels/pixels are in the image. The resolution of the images can all be different due to how many pixels are in each image. If there is a small amount of pixels per linear inch the resolution will be a worse than if there were a lot of pixels per inch. The more pixels you squeeze into one one space the better the image resolution will be.
Image dimensions: Image dimensions are basically the length and width of a digital image on a webpage, the dimensions are usually measured in pixels. However, some graphics programs allow you to view and work with your image in inches or centimetres. Sometimes you change the sizes of your image in order for it to work well on the web. If you use a high-digital resolution image
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for the web you may want to make the dimensions smaller. It is difficult to get the right dimensions for social media sites as they are all different. Examples are shown below:
Compression: The whole idea of graphic compression is to reduce irrelevance of the image data that is saved in the format, in order to be able to store or transmit data in an effective form. When compressing an image, you get rid of all the unnecessary data and text that is not needed for the user or is not viewed. When compressing an image, you can have different rates and ratios as to what the image can be. There are two main types of compression including lossless and lossy, with the differences being the quality and file size. There are a few different types of lossless image compression including: Methods for lossless image compression are: Run-length encoding, Area image compression, Predictive Coding, Entropy encoding, Adaptive dictionary algorithms, Deflation and Chain codes. The different types of lossy compression include: reducing the colour space, Chroma subsampling, transform coding and factual compression. In the chart image you can see how many bits per pixel there were for each image and what type of graphic it is.
Conclusion: If your graphics are just stored on a computer’s memory they won’t need to be optimised as the quality is more important than file size. This is because computers generally have a lot of storage space to start off with. However optimising is good for reducing file sixes so that they fit on a web page, and its important as it means that you can send files over the internet without any hassle.
Storage of image assets This is the way you store your images and where you store them. You can either have them organised into folders and it’s all to do with what your fie size is as well as to where you can store it.
File size: Depending on the resolution of the picture, image files normally take up a lot of space when comparing it to a word document because a lot more information needs to be stored for example all the pixels. There are many different places to save documents whi ch each hold
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a set amount of space. A USB drive or memory stick is an example of this. Some memory sticks have a maximum capacity of 1GB of space but on others you can get 8GB of space. Below you can see that I have save the same image of a flower six times all with different file sizes. As the image of the picture is saved with a different file format each time you can see how the size varies due to the number of pixels that are used and the resolution of the image. The more pixels there is the more space it is likely to take up on your computer/hard drive as it has to store more colours. The JPEG image has a small file size which means that it doesn’t contain as many pixels as the TIF file which is a lot bigger. The bit depth (amount of pixels) for the Tiff image is a lot higher than the bit depth for the JPEG image.
File-naming conventions: A file naming convention is how you name your files so that it fits and actually describes what they contain. The naming has to be short and relevant so that it is quicker to find files for anyone that needs to. For example, if you had a document with a very long title n ame you would more than likely shorten it so that it has about 2 -3 words. To do this successfully you will need to identify the key elements of the project. proje ct. When naming and saving a file it will also show key elements like date of creation, authors name, project name, version number and the name of a particular section. One of the only advantages to using file naming conventions is that they are unique. By using standardized filenames there is the ability to follow path names and link to other systems that require unique filenames to get to them. Using file-naming conventions it means that you can stay organized by making it easy to identify files and it contains a title that is relevant to information you are looking for. Below you can see a couple of examples that show the difference between an image without a naming convention and with one. Files without employing a naming convention:
Test_data_2013 Project Data
Files with a naming convention:
20130503_DOEProject_Design 20130503_DOEProject_DesignDocument_Smith_v2-01 Document_Smith_v2-01.docx .docx 20130709_DOEProject_MasterData_Jones_v1-00.xlsx
Asset management: Asset management is the organisation of files/images in folders. It is important to keep any files in order so that when you want to access a file you will know where to find it. Giving files relevant names help you find them quicker whereas if you named it ‘Doc 1’ it could be absolutely anything. In order to manage your assets, you can either put all your images or documents in a folder or just organise them into groups. Asset management is used to keep things like documents and files safe for companies. It is especially useful if the companies
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are working for clients or they have lots of assets for one project. When you are asset managing you tend to upgrade things. For example, if you are creating an image on Photoshop and want to save different versions you would put all the versions for that image in one folder. You will then have to maintain the asset management so that everything stays organised and you delete things you don’t need. You basically can dispose of things if they are not ne eded in a folder.
Conclusion: When it comes to storing your images on the computer it doesn’t really r eally matter on the file formats that are use, unless you have made a graphic on Photoshop and might want to go back and edit it. File size is usually an important fact to consider because it depends where you storing the graphics as to how much available space you have. File naming conventions is useful for both documents and graphics so you can tell what they are when scanning down a file of assets. This is why asset management is important as well as it gives you a better chance of finding specific assets.
