For players & non-artists: texture preferences?

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RobotZombieWizGirl
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For players & non-artists: texture preferences?

by RobotZombieWizGirl » Post

This question is for people who don't consider themselves graphics artists when it comes to Minetest, e.g. players who don't create mods or texture packs, modders who don't draw their own textures / only draw utilitarian programmer art.

What do you want textures for MT to look like? Right now the general consensus seems to be that people prefer 16x tiles (which makes sense because that's pretty much the set-in-stone standard for block games) but there are a bunch of other details that people seem to overlook.

Using minetest_game as an example, 16px is just about the only standard for how textures look. The style is all over the place: half the items have a border while the rest don't, some shade one way, some shade the other way, and some have no shading at all. There's no rule about how detailed/simple they are either, for example the glass bottle textures have about 4 colors between them whereas the tools use nearly a full gradient of color. This is mostly down to the fact that minetest is a community project of course, so the textures are contributed by many different people.

If you had to decide how minetest looked, what would you pick? I personally prefer 16px and don't use a border. I flip-flop between full color and a limited palette depending on the effect I want (I've attached some item textures I drew as an example).

The reason I ask this question of non-artists is that I think artists have a much larger amount of bias when it comes to what "works" or "looks good", for example any artist will tell you Minecraft's newer (post-1.13) textures are objectively better but much of the playerbase still prefers the old ones.
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Re: For players & non-artists: texture preferences?

by Blockhead » Post

RobotZombieWizGirl wrote:
Thu Feb 02, 2023 22:30
The reason I ask this question of non-artists is that I think artists have a much larger amount of bias when it comes to what "works" or "looks good", for example any artist will tell you Minecraft's newer (post-1.13) textures are objectively better but much of the playerbase still prefers the old ones.
Sure artists can claim a level of objectivity for something they have studied, using jargon terms and specific criteria. Aesthetically, modern Minecraft is nicer to look at, and artists will have words for why that is. That doesn't mean the new Minecraft texture fit other criteria, like legibility, recognisability/distinctiveness, or using a small colour palette, or whatever we want to target.

All of the new Minecraft textures feel overworked and toned out. Take netherrack, gravel and wood planks for instance. The old textures were all much sharper to look at, while the new ones are still definitely recognisable and aesthetically pleasing, they feel.. well.. too artisty? Too soft? Netherrack went from this harsh, noisy texture to some soft meaty sponge. It looks almost like a mipmap of the original.

16px no borders is definitely the established style for Minetest. Some complicated items or technic machines use 32px, and I think that is kind of okay. Some things in life just are more complex. As for shading, I wouldn't want to risk over-shading too much. 16px often means you can't fit a lot of detail, so maybe don't try to squeeze so much in that it looks like it's a downscale from 32px.

Tangent time :) That pyrite looks like a metallic yellow/gold capsicum. The ruby kind of looks ambiguously either round or hexagonal; the shading on the right is a bit weak. And the sapphire looks too rough to be a singular crystal, which clashes with the ruby being a singular crystal.

But I would also say Minetest is big enough to have disparate styles. One obviously should adhere to a style within a game, which is basically a lost cause for Minetest Game's extensive mod list at this point (perhaps we shouldn't be so gloomy about that though). Minetest Game's style at the moment is really "programmer art" or maybe "minecraft-alpha-like". Other games like Repixture have an actual aesthetic going which is nice.
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Re: For players & non-artists: texture preferences?

by RobotZombieWizGirl » Post

Blockhead wrote:
Fri Feb 03, 2023 03:49
Sure artists can claim a level of objectivity for something they have studied, using jargon terms and specific criteria. Aesthetically, modern Minecraft is nicer to look at, and artists will have words for why that is. That doesn't mean the new Minecraft texture fit other criteria, like legibility, recognisability/distinctiveness, or using a small colour palette, or whatever we want to target.
I would say that the newer textures better fit all of those criteria as a whole except for distinctiveness, and that's just because they haven't been around as long.
16px no borders is definitely the established style for Minetest. Some complicated items or technic machines use 32px, and I think that is kind of okay. Some things in life just are more complex. As for shading, I wouldn't want to risk over-shading too much. 16px often means you can't fit a lot of detail, so maybe don't try to squeeze so much in that it looks like it's a downscale from 32px.
To me it seems more like a 50/50 split as to whether borders are used. It even varies within textures, for example tool handles vs heads.
I personally really dislike when multiple different resolutions clash. It makes the game feel less like a single experience and more like a bunch of unrelated stuff piled on top of each other.
Tangent time :) That pyrite looks like a metallic yellow/gold capsicum. The ruby kind of looks ambiguously either round or hexagonal; the shading on the right is a bit weak. And the sapphire looks too rough to be a singular crystal, which clashes with the ruby being a singular crystal.
Rubies are generally cut in a far more complex shape than just a hexagon and I wanted to try and capture that without using a higher resolution. If you look at a complex gem from far away it usually looks round anyway ;) But yeah the shading there isn't great mostly cause I did it with a filter instead of drawing it by hand.
As for the sapphire, it's actually a chunk of raw sapphire that hasn't been cut yet. There's also a gem version.
But I would also say Minetest is big enough to have disparate styles. One obviously should adhere to a style within a game, which is basically a lost cause for Minetest Game's extensive mod list at this point (perhaps we shouldn't be so gloomy about that though). Minetest Game's style at the moment is really "programmer art" or maybe "minecraft-alpha-like". Other games like Repixture have an actual aesthetic going which is nice.
It's pretty clear that most of the people making MT mods and games are programmers first and artists second, so it's not really surprising that it's kind of a mishmash. One example of a game I can think of with a really good consistent style is Block Bomber. It uses a tiny palette an still looks great.

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Re: For players & non-artists: texture preferences?

by Desour » Post

Hi, I'm a non-artist, and I'd like to give my preferences.

Texture resolution: I don't care too much, as long as it isn't penetrant. I.e. the pipeworks tubes are 64x64 textures (inventoryitem and tiles), but I wouldn't really notice it without looking for such things. The luacontroller top texture is even 512x512 (but has many squares that make it look like it was 16x16). The mesecons fpga top texture is an even better example of a non-penetrant 32x32 texture.
(One thing to note about inventory- and wieldimages: IIRC, the thickness of the item depends on the resolution, so high-resolution textures can look very thin. Also, the wieldmesh will get more faces, which doesn't look good imo.)

Limited palettes: I haven't seen many subgames, mods and co. that look like they use a limited palette. There will probably be large single-colored areas, which can look good and happy (see e.g. pixture), but I guess you'll have to do it consistently.

There are other things that I care more about, i.e.:

Colorfulness / color saturation: Some textures, i.e. the new mtg dirt grass textures, are too colorful, which makes the sky (and other colorful things, like mese) look rather dull relative to the ground. Over-colorfulness can look bad imo. (Another example: The nodes in Blockbomber (at least in the screenshots, I've never played the subgame...) also look to colorful. Shouldn't the visual focus be on the other players, and on bombs?)

Noisiness: Gradients in textures can look good, same applies for a mild noise. But if it's too strong, it looks more like a pixel soup imo. Your examples are almost a bit too noisy for my taste. Consistency is also important here.

Structure / recognizability: (This is also somewhat related to noisiness.) The question here is, whether one can guess what the texture is used for, just by looking at it. Sometimes using the right color is already enough (i.e. technic dusts, and most ore lumps).
Your examples are very problematic tough: For pyrite I'd expect cubes or other simple shapes (with smooth faces). The ruby doesn't look like a crystal at all (realism is not important normally btw.). (And the ruby and saphire don't look like they were semitransparent.)
Related here: Node tiles often don't have much strong structure (i.e. dirt with grass top) to avoid ugly tiling. (The right thing to do here is probably to still have structure, but with very low contrast.)

Mesh detail: Round mesh nodes look completely out-of-place most of the times imo. Furniture and co. that has high detail just on its own (inside its node) doesn't suit the classic minetest experience where you put together blocky things.

Nodebox detail: Nodeboxes usually use the same resolution as their tile textures. Also, too fine detail and staircase-like-slope-approximations often don't look good if done with nodeboxes.
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Re: For players & non-artists: texture preferences?

by RobotZombieWizGirl » Post

I agree on the grass/plant colors. When I design grass I usually use a darker green and use large cartoony grass blades instead of noise like most games do.

I personally see noise as a tool for conveying texture. Polished stone will have low noise and very little luma variance, whereas a raw chunk of ore rock will have lots of bumps and a large variance in luma across the surface. IMO straight up gradients almost never look good and hand-picked color ramps work much better.

Structure & recognizability are just a part of realism. If you're going for realism (within the confines of the resolution) then it matters a lot, but if you value style and aesthetic over realism then it matters a lot less. As a side note, I agree with the gems being poor (and recently redrew them) but pyrite is almost never a clean cube shape in nature, especially when embedded in stone.

Meshes and models are a bit different from texture style but they kinda go hand in hand. It seems like a lot of people think higher poly ⇒ better, but the opposite is often true unless you have really good lighting and hi-res textures.
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Re: For players & non-artists: texture preferences?

by firefox » Post

i like clean textures with small palettes, like those from snes games.
border or no border usually depends on the size, i guess, whereas smaller textures like 16x usually don't have enough space for black borders.

autogenerated palettes look weird because they have too many similar shades.
i once read in an article that pixel art can be drawn sufficiently with 5 shades per colour (base, high, low and two intermediates) and the example images of that technique were very aesthetically pleasing.

i don't know about style, but i think recognisable shapes/patterns are more important than realism. specifically since blocky pixel art isn't supposed to look realistic.
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