Rayman 2

[Steo]

Yeah, this is really nice stuff to have transparent images for the articles.

Regarding the isometric ones, they're likely still better than just using in game screenshots, but I'm sure if there's any that looked strange, they could always be revised later.

 

[bunnieblaster]

I gotta agree that the orthographic perspective looks not so great, especially for character models like Sam's, Jano, etc. However the idea of having accurate screenshots for all characters/objects is a great one!
As a compromise between perspective and orthographic a you could also decrease the FOV in perspective mode (to 40 or something), to still keep the accuracy of perspective mode while seeing more of the model than with a high fov.

 

[RayCarrot]

Nice work!
I do agree with Droolie here though that some of the screenshots look very off compared to how you'd see them in-game. A lot of them look really good, but there are a bunch, like the robot dinosaur and the armaguiddon, which I don't think look so good with this perspective and lack of lightning.
I don't think we need to worry about them all using the same perspective in this case as different models will look different from different angles. It causes some of them to appear obscure certain parts of them that you'd see in-game, and makes them appear at a rather odd perspective at times. Regarding the lightning I would think it'd be better to leave it turned on so the images look like in the games.

 

[1234]

Thank you for your opinions! It's always helpful knowing other views.

As I mentioned, initially I wanted to do the screenshots just for myself, but then decided to put some on the Wiki, according to Steo's motto: Better than nothing / better than just in-game screenshots.

The lighting could make many/all objects appear nicer. However, many objects can be seen in different levels, meaning they look (very) different depending on the level and even on the location within the level. Choosing a random location would leave me quite unsatisfied as I'd know that, with the possibilities/options I allowed myself, I could have achieved a (way) better result; and carefully evaluating the different locations would simply cost way too much time. Another problem with the lighting (the way I see it) is that e.g. the different Teensies (Griskin, Tufkin, Otto, ...) probably would appear quite different from each other, even though they actually aren't. Without the lighting, however, they look the way they sort of actually are and not just the way they appear in game, which is what I was aiming for, even though they might look less familiar then.

The angles at which I pointed the camera at the objects could have been chosen better as well, but, again, I tend to spend too much time optimizing things when I don't give myself some restrictions; in this case I simply restricted myself to some common angles/views (front, isometric, side). Out of this three I always chose the one where most details are visible.

So, yes, with lighting and different perspectives, better looking results could/would have been achieved, but there were reasons why I didn't decide for this approach (mainly lack of reproducibility, arbitrariness and, ironically, dissatisfaction; probably also lack of artistic taste ).

So, don't hold back replacing/removing the pictures!

 

[Droolie]

For instance, while a frontal view (or something close to it) might resemble more what you actually see in-game, a great part of some models might get lost then, e.g. in case of the mechanical fish in Rayman 3 you wouldn't be able to see its whole structure, the brown metal body, nor the propeller in the back (in-game and in screenshots from a frontal view all of it isn't properly visible).

That detail was never meant to be seen - this is why there is much less detail towards the back of the body. It can be cool to see everything "behind the scenes", but not in the main image of a wiki page. I do think these images would be cool as additional images though.

As for a perspective view vs. an orthografic view, while the former one might be closer to how you actually see them in-game, the latter one makes it easier to treat all objects under same conditions and basically get more of the object on the picture, since it's a parallel projection; and it feels the least arbitrary.
Finally, I also decided to turn the lighting off, so that, for the cost of losing some of the look of the objects, these objects become clearer, revealing some other details that were not really well visible before. Also, that way all objects were treated the same way and are easier to compare.

RayWiki is a wiki for the Rayman games. Why would the main image of an object from those games not be a representation of how you see that object in the games?

Additionally, the cost of orthographic view is not only that you lose how you actually see them in-game, it is also that you lose any depth information that is present in the models... look at Jano's arms, for example. In the picture, they look tiny, because they are actually stretched toward you. But with orthographic view, you can't see that. With a perspective view, you can.

The lack of shading does not help with the loss of depth. No lighting doesn't show how the models really look, it shows how they look when you put them into an artificial environment where each vertex is fully lit, and no shadows exist. Imagine taking a photo of an elderly person where not a single shadow exists, making every wrinkle completely invisible - because these all use the same "skin" texture. It would be an interesting photo for die-hard fans of that person who want to study every skin pore in great detail, but not a good photo to use to represent that person anywhere.
If you want to treat objects under the same conditions, I would suggest instead to take one or two white lights that shine on the objects from a fixed direction, similar to how photographers take portrait photos.

tl;dr I think it would be better to keep these images in the articles as additional images, but restore the old non-transparent main images.

 

[1234]

Why would the main image of an object from those games not be a representation of how you see that object in the games?

In a lot of cases it actually even isn't. Often times, even though in-game screenshots exist, an artwork is used which differs quite a lot from what we know from the game(s).

The lack of shading does not help with the loss of depth. No lighting doesn't show how the models really look, it shows how they look when you put them into an artificial environment where each vertex is fully lit, and no shadows exist.

A lot of the models seem to have (some) shadows already applied on the textures so that the negative effect of the missing lighting isn't so much apparent to me, but, to be completely honest, I'm really bad at recognizing such things, so I definitely trust you on that.

tl;dr I think it would be better to keep these images in the articles as additional images, but restore the old non-transparent main images.

For now, as a quick solution, I undid most of the changes, so it won't be a problem when people edit the articles. Once I'll come to it, I might add the screenshots as additional images.

 

[Steo]

I thought the majority of these seemed fine, and I certainly didn't think it was necessary for every single one of them to be reverted. Could one of you please provide an example of what you would call "good" compared to what 1234 provided? I'm curious to see the difference.

 

[dr_st]

Regarding the isometric ones, they're likely still better than just using in game screenshots, but I'm sure if there's any that looked strange, they could always be revised later.

I agree with Steo here. I looked at the images that 1234 uploaded:

Loading…

raymanpc.com

A lot of them are really nice. For example, most of the R2 models look great and I prefer them to the screenshots that were there before. Not always, though. I think we should make this decision on a case-by-case basis. Now that 1234 reverted them all, we can try to decide which to reinstate. Do you all agree?

tl;dr I think it would be better to keep these images in the articles as additional images, but restore the old non-transparent main images.

I disagree. The main picture of an article should describe the object. The model of the object is the purest form of art, as the artist envisioned it. I think it's much better to have a large model as the main picture of the article, rather than some arbitrary screenshot where the main object is not even always at the center of attention. Unless the model looks really wrong. It's somewhat subjective to define what's "wrong", though. Should we have a popular vote?

 

[Droolie]

tl;dr I think it would be better to keep these images in the articles as additional images, but restore the old non-transparent main images.

I disagree. The main picture of an article should describe the object. The model of the object is the purest form of art, as the artist envisioned it. I think it's much better to have a large model as the main picture of the article, rather than some arbitrary screenshot where the main object is not even always at the center of attention. Unless the model looks really wrong. It's somewhat subjective to define what's "wrong", though. Should we have a popular vote?

The artist did not model (or even envision) them in orthographic view and did not tweak the normals of the model just for them to be ignored because lighting is turned off.
I agree that it would be good to have transparent pictures of the model, just, again as I said, in perspective view and with lighting.

A lot of the models seem to have (some) shadows already applied on the textures

Yeah, and for those it isn't as noticeable. But as I said earlier, at some point during development the R3 devs removed the shading on R3's character models on purpose to let the lighting do the work:

Demo texture:

Final texture:

As a result, most of your R3 character screenshots look really weird because they lack shading.

 

[1234]

I agree with Steo here. I looked at the images that 1234 uploaded:

Loading…

raymanpc.com

As a small note on the side, there is a page where you can view all new uploads with a preview of the respective images (here or here). I actually didn't know that until recently.

Could one of you please provide an example of what you would call "good" compared to what 1234 provided? I'm curious to see the difference.

I tried to view some models - two from R2, two from R3; the first three of them were mentioned as having turned out strange - with different settings in the following combinations:
___________________| no lighting | default lighting at the default location of the object
orthographic ________|
perspective (fov: 40) _|

The way my (very) untrained eye sees it: In case of this particular R2 images I actually prefer the ones without lighting, at least for a Wiki article. As for persp vs. ortho, in case of Jano I prefer the persp view, in case of the dino I don't really care, but possibly even the ortho view a bit.
Regarding the R3 pictures, in the Armaguiddon image I actually see that the lighting improves the result, in some way, by quite a bit; in the other one (Elite Monger) it's not so much apparent to me. As for the view, both seem to have advantages and disadvantages, so I can't say for sure which I prefer.

But, as I mentioned, I don't really have a great visual gift (rather the contrary), and my eyes/brain don't perceive the flaws of the images quite as well as they should.

So, maybe the best solution would be, as Droolie proposed, to simply use perspective view (giving up some advantages of ortho view but therefore getting a more "realistic"/3D view), and use e.g. two fixed light sources (which should be bright enough to make the model not appear too dark), idk...

 

[dr_st]

As a small note on the side, there is a page where you can view all new uploads with a preview of the respective images (here or here). I actually didn't know that until recently.

Nice! Thanks for sharing.

I tried to view some models - two from R2, two from R3; the first three of them were mentioned to have turned out strange - with different settings in the following combinations:
___________________| no lighting | default lighting at the default location of the object
orthographic ________|perspective (fov: 40) _|

In these particular cases, orthographic vs perspective makes a very small difference, that only pedants would notice, but perspective (bottom) is a bit better. I actually think that all 4 look better without lighting. The Armaguiddon is a bit weird full-bright, but the lighting on it looks unnatural. Actually they all look too dark with the lighting on. Maybe the settings are not optimal.

I would definitely consider the bottom left of each model (no lighting, perspective view) worth of a being a main picture of a wiki page.

 

[Droolie]

I agree that the bottom left looks the best for most of these examples. Already everything looks much better in perspective view - especially Jano.
Personally I would still not try to go for the isometric-like viewpoint for anything though, even in perspective view. I think the examples with the freddox/robot dinosaur and the armaguiddon would look better if the camera was lowered a bit.
For the Rayman 3 models, I think the lighting much improves it too, but they definitely need to be better lit.

@1234: If you're looking for a quick compromise between no lighting & too dark, try playing around with the luminosity slider (but for R3, turn on "saturate") in the LightManager object in raymap.

 

[Steo]

I see what you mean actually yeah, Jano's arms look much longer too just because of the different view.

 

[Gordswitch]

sometimes I kind of wish the 2D version of Rayman 2 could have gotten made.

 

[The Jonster]

I kinda wonder if they continued with this prorotype what the final game would look like.

 

[Alltech]

I personally don't find the lighting necessary. I even find your transparent pictures look better without any!

 

[Gordswitch]

Why exactly did Ubisoft port Rayman 2 to almost every system imaginable from 1999 to 2011? Most games from 1999 only saw a handful of ports to one or two other systems.

 

[StelzenBomber]

Cash sweet money

Thats pretty obvious

 

[Zinx]

Ubisoft is the Western equivalent of Capcom

 

[Steo]

I never actually realised how weird some of the the English translations are in this game, such as "If you need some help, pass close to a stone.".