Cel-shaded is a very common in games over the years, it's unique and give it a great look in my opinion, a lot of games based off Anime use this style to give it a true likeness to the show or comic they're representing, it's give a great effect and is eye catching and is easily created. You create Cel-shading by doing the outlines, colouring, shading, 2nd colouring, highlighting and then background.
Computer Game Graphics are one of the defining features of video games. Now-days, visuals can make or break a game in sales. If a game has flashy, high quality graphics, that will catch the consumers eye. However, if a modern game is released with dated graphics, even if the gameplay is fantastic the overall sales might suffer because of the dated graphics making the game look inferior to other games on the market. Graphics give the game an atmosphere, effects like fur rendering (fur rendering is used on game characters, often animals to make the fur look realistic) can make the game more realistic or cel-shading, which gives the game a 2D look but plays in 3D.
Textures are possibly, the most important feature for 3D models (aswell as the overall design of the model + the poly count) because without textures, the models would have no detail. They would just be white (or possibly another basic colour) all over. An example of this would be on Wii64, the Nintendo 64 emulator on the Wii. On the current version, Wii64 beta 1.1 'Honey' when Banjo-Tooie is played on the emulator, as the emulator currently has compatibility issues with the game, the environment textures are completely blank (all white). The character models retain their textures but due to the lack of textures in the levels, the game is practically unplayable on the emulator. However, on the emulator settings, when FB textures is turned on, the textures in the environment are now here, thus making the game more playable but slowing down the overall gameplay.
Texture Mapping is an application used in digital graphics. It's application to 3D graphics was pioneered by Walt Disney Animation Studios and Pixar Animation Studios President Edwin Catmull. As well as 3D animation, Texture mapping is a method used in 3D games. It's a method of adding detail to a 3D model via adding a texture to a 3D model. Either Bitmap or Raster images are suitable image files to use for texture mapping. A texture map can be compared to the method of a cube net when you make a 3D cube out of paper. As the 3D cube has a net which you fold around in order to create the cube, if the 3D model happens to be a head, the texture map would wrap around the model in order for the texture to be completely applied to the head, thus texturing the model. When applying a texture, it is recommended for the pixel width/height to be a combination from 32, 64, 128, 256 or 512. the reason for this is so the textures can be equal because if the width/height were at random values, the texture wouldn't appear correctly when applied to a 3D object.
As hardware has improved over the years, textures can now be more detailed. Graphics Cards cannot render texture maps that exceed the limitations of it's hardware. It requires a certain amount of RAM and graphics memory in order to be rendered.
Text graphics would be the font of the text used in-game. For example, a game like Banjo-Kazooie (you've probably established I am a big fan of the game!) would use a more cartoon-ish font like Comic Sans due to it be a cartoony platform game. A war game like would use a stencil font as that fits in with the theme of a game. Text graphics also serve an important purpose because if a very basic font was used it would make the game look rather basic and unprofessional and if a cartoony font were to be used in a more serious action game, it would look out of place and ridiculous. It is important for the developer to choose the right text graphics for a game.
This is for the packaging of the game (box art, etc.). Generally, artists specializing in programs such as Photoshop would be working on this. The game packaging is important in terms of looks. An appealing and exciting image for the box art which will catch a customer's eye. For example, you could be in a game shop and notice a copy of Left 4 Dead 2 and decide to take a look at it because the front cover of the game looks cool and implies that this is an exciting horror game. The customer may think "hmm this looks like a good game! I might give it a shot!" and they go ahead and buy the game. Even something like the packaging of a game is important to sales because if the box art was just the Left 4 Dead 2 logo with a blank background it wouldn't be eye-catching thus a customer wouldn't bother having a closer look at it, meaning less sales.
A pixel is a point filled with colour and then put in large groups to create different colours to create a image.
Graphics monitors display pictures by dividing the display screen into thousands (or millions) of pixels, arranged in rows and columns. The pixels are so close together that they appear connected.
The number of bits used to represent each pixel determines how many colours or shades of grey can be displayed.
On colour monitors, each pixel is actually composed of three dots -- a red, a blue, and a green one. The quality of a display system largely depends on its resolution, how many pixels it can display, and how many bits are used to represent each pixel. VGA systems display 640 by 480, or about 300,000 pixels. In contrast, SVGA systems display 800 by 600, or 480,000 pixels. True Colour systems use 24 bits per pixel, allowing them to display more than 16 million different colours.
Image Formats and Extensions
The format in which a file is saved (also referred to as its extension) is the specific format that the image is saved to. Each file format has its own unique characteristics, otherwise known as advantages and disadvantages. By defining a file format it will be possible to determine how many bits per pixel it can hold and other additional information. Below is a list along with a brief description of the most well-known and used file formats.
The BMP (Bit Map) file format is the standard raster file format for a Microsoft Windows application.
The GIF (graphics interchange format) file format is another bit-mapped format which is used by the internet and online message servers. GIFs support colours and various resolutions, this file format also includes data compression.
The PNG (portable network graphics) file format is another bit-mapped format. PNG’s were originally created to replace the GIF file format as an image file that did not require patent license. The PNG file format supports grey scale, palette based images and non-palette based images. IT was designed for transferring images onto the internet and not for high quality printing.
The JPEG (joint photographic experts group) file format is a lossy compression technique for coloured images which can reduce the file size of an image down to as little as 5%, on the down side the image can lose quality in the compression process. JPEG is the most common file format used by digital cameras and other photographic capturing devices.
The TIFF (tagged image file format) is a file format for storing images and is a popular format amongst graphic artists. This format was originally run by a company called Aldus but it is now under the control of Adobe Systems. The TIFF file format is widely supported by image manipulation applications.
The PSD (Adobe Photoshop File) format is an image file created by Adobe Photoshop. Photoshop is a highly popular photographic manipulation program. It may include image layers, adjustment layers, file information, key information and other Photoshop elements.
The PDF (Portable Document Format) is another file format created by Adobe Systems. The PDF format is now standard format for electronic document exchange. When converting documents, forms and images to this format they look how they would have looked if they was to be printed on paper, but also have the ability to add interactivity through buttons, shields, audio and video.
The AI (Adobe Illustrator) is another file format of Adobe Systems, unlike the formats above the AI format is for vector graphics and is dominantly used by Adobe Illustrator which is a popular vector based graphic manipulation and creation program.
Their are two categories that define file types, Lossy and Lossless. Both of these file types have their own pros and cons you have to identify which would work best with the file type that you are using.
Lossy is when the image is compressed in order to get the lowest possible file size, in order to do this lossy compression types will remove information, or modify the image (as JPEG's and GIF's do). Some file formats remove the translucency from a image as a way of reducing the image size as much as possible. I have made a small list of file extensions that use lossy compression.
CPC
ICER
Fractal compression
JPEG
Lossless is when an image is saved and the image quality is mostly unaffected, this is useful for keeping all the quality in the original image, if your using a small image on a large model this can be useful, but if it's going to be a small image that is barley used it would be better to choose a lossy format, lossless images are able to keep all the information including the translucency but are very ineffective for file size.
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(Top) PNG being lossless takes up a larger file size (Bottom) JPEG being lossy takes up less space but the image is slightly effected in this comparison the lossless is a whole MB larger than the lossy format.
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These types of compression are important in games as the textures need to be saved onto a disk or cartridge for a player to purchase, these formats have limited space so to help keep within the parameters set by the storage format it's best to make judgement calls with textures when weighing up quality and storage size.
Image capture is basically anyway for a person to get an image, whether they take, scan or create it. All the different ways to capture images have helped the games industry because it has allowed them to create better graphics, and this means that they are satisfying the players.
Camera
Scanners
Print Screening
Capture Cards
Graphics Tablets
