General SCV CAS Discussion: Your Tips & Tricks

Six standard stickers + two big/number/kanji stickers.

Hmmm...

Darkest skin tone available (pitch black) : 0:43:30

I want credits for sticker 88 ;o)

Do not use too bright colors (hue 5 or less) for armors, to get a realistic look, you can have matching colors between equipment pieces by slightly changing the values to match (use your eyes ;o)

Do not (i repeat do not) refer yourself in 3rd person

While we are adding some DON'TS...

DO NOT use those freakin' drums all over your character. And if you must make your male character...ummm...anatomically correct, the heart object is your friend. If you HAVE to put that on your guy, at least don't make it look like it got caught in a blender.

What if i want to make the thunder god? I should use the Drums

I'm talking about the people the use three sets of them blown up to max size and totally obsure their character.

If you could make it, then do a pic, i would know what you mean

I'm at work, so I will do it when I get home this evening. If someone wants to beat me to it, go ahead.

They take the drums and attatch them to torso or whatever they please then increase the length, width, and depth to max and add the rainbow pattern. It's irritating.

So they just fuck your eyes so they can win?

Essentially :p. I mean, it's not super irritating to me seeing as I'm pretty bad anyway and get schooled by basically everyone so I expect a loss in the first place.

guys, do you need to ruin Gabe's thread with all your gibberish, really ;o)
just kidding, but i know how to make balls and d..., no problem, in fact everyody knows for sure, i even know how to do p...y, i posted it some secret place in my thread lol

recipe on how to make a good/great CAS :
1 - get a fresh idea (i get mine from movies, comics, own sketches, mythology, whatever...), or a theme, preferrably one that has not been done 1000 of times (or just for practicing the editor)
2 - see what style fits the idea best / and then if a weapon in this style fits your CAS (ie. my Caligula with Hilde's trident, or My Fake Ashigaru Hilde, two very different souls with same style)
3 - start working on the first layer of work to make sure your CAS will look good once partially naked (armor break), meaning skin tone and stickers, underwear (nothing worse than a pristine looking feral CAS with pink underwear, hey !), stickers, textures, hairstyle, face tatoo, eye color and so on and so forth...
4- pick the right equipment pieces (with all the tips mentioned before) and assemble before working on colors and patterns individually...if you stumble upon incompatibilities, you are very very unlucky (looooooooooooooool)
5- pick up realistic colors and patterns, give additional texture work to CAS parts you want to stick out (ie. the arms of my War from Darksiders)
6-add stickers as you see fit
7-add special equipment (if you think you lack one slot, think outside the box to save one slot, there is almost always a workaround)
8-do not forget to pay special attention to the voice before you finish editing (the voice dictates what quotes your character will say, so if you do a fierce looking female warrior, don't give her the preteen voice
9-take time to make a nice thumbnail that is pleasing to the eye

if you are unsure to be able to undo (you can undo only one step), finish editing to save, edit again and only quit with b if you messed up ;o)

Namu Namu !

This thread seemed to get off track...

Vilarcane reminded me that there are a lot of questions about blood effects, so reposting what I wrote in that thread:

-FOR BLOOD: Sticker 88, cow pattern (better for making someone look SOAKED in blood), Cammo patterns, the tree-looking sticker (with branches and roots), Chinese symbols, the crescent moon in some cases, and the tree stump looking sticker (forget its number, but it's vaguely round, brown, and has jagged edges), these are all good for blood. I've even used the leaf item. And you'll almost always want to place by view, distorting the stickers just makes them look more real.

Here's some of my bloody CAS as examples, from most recent to oldest:

This is one of VILARCANE's example of using sticker 88:

-when it comes to placing stickers, "Placing by Axis" will allow you to go to more extreme sizes; smaller than the smallest and larger than the largest "place by view" sizes.

-When placing stickers by axis, certain body parts will distort the sticker for better or worse. Stickers tend to funnel in towards the neck area when placing on upper body, and stickers placed on arms and legs become stretched to the length of the limb (example: place a square on an arm or leg, it will look like a rectangle, but will be stretched the same way no matter how you rotate it). This can sometimes be used to create interesting effects if you intentionally distort the stickers, particularly in cases such as the zipper.

-Maxing out the size of a sticker while placing by axis will enable it to "wrap around" whatever part you are placing it on, enabling you to then move it vertically until most of the sticker is out of the zone, if you are trying to color one end of a part while keeping the rest of it untouched. Example:

Not all stickers wrap around completely, some will still have a small gap no matter what. If you have enough free stickers to do so, you can always just place a second sticker to cover the gap (Max size, same vertical placement, then move the horizontal ruler all the way to one end)

-Want to use part of a sticker for a certain effect but not the whole thing? Cover up parts of it with other stickers colored the same as the underlying part Examples:

"Basic Pattern 1" tricks
If you think of just putting a flat color on a surface, try using this pattern and play with different hues of the same color first before deciding if you just want the plain one. It may give more depth and some great effects very easily when playing with hues and shades/contrast even if it's just suggested. Due to the nature of this pattern, it can also be spammed without hurting the design itself unlike most patterns since it's just a 3 color gradient. It may also fake an iridescent quality, especially on satin and metallic surfaces.

First thing you need to do is to set its size to maximum. After that, try changing the three color channels to what you have in mind. Then, start tweaking with its size again, as well as angle if necessary. Adjust the color channels if necessary.

Here are some examples with these spaudlers

Examples of full application

I will certainly try and use Murasame's tip, when I saw it posted earlier in his own thread I thought "man, that's a really fantastic idea!" It's so subtle yet looks great.

"Basic Pattern 15" tricks


Similarly to Basic Pattern 1, this one is very versatile for suggesting details, more specifically for "grainy effects" and textures. Those grains' color may vary to give interesting nuances. I know LordDraco3 uses it too, so I thought of sharing that.

All you need to do is to set its size to the smallest first, choosing the colors, then adjusting its size and angle to your liking at last. Here's a simple example.

"Modern Pattern 12 [?]" tricks


Other than just using the motif itself, this pattern has a fundamental quality: bump mapping. When the two color channels are set to the same, you then only have the bump map pattern to use, drawing out a different potential of this pattern. One such use is to give an ice-like aspect to some weapons.

Like I just said, first set the two channels to the same color. Then, play with its size and angle depending on the object (some object have less pixels, so the pattern will be stretched, rendering this effect almost useless for these surfaces).

Examples

I suggest you do NOT set its size to the minimum if it's already small, or else there will be too much flickering when looking from a far.


"Ethnic Pattern 14" trick: Glowing Crystal Gems


The previous trick uses the subtle bump mapping of the pattern. In this one, it exploits the reflective quality of these "scales" pattern. Depending on some surfaces you use on, it may shine very brightly, which is great to exploit on gem materials.

After setting the pattern, just play with the color, size and angle as always. Take note that this is affected by the colored reflection "glitch" (search for LordDraco3's first post on page 1), so that may be taken as a limitation or the opposite.

Examples

Here's a side-by-side crappy camera comparison. Notice in the second picture, where the pattern is applied, that the game actually recognize the specular quality of that pattern on the object, creating a beautiful glowing aura around it under some lighting (works especially well in Astral Chaos and Utopia of the Blessed).

It's WAY better if you see it for yourself, so try it!

Just an additional thing about the crystal trick. You can use it on the cloth portion of Elysium's veil and that thing shines incredibly bright. It's almost unnaturally bright. Stages like Tira's or Lizardman's are great places to see it. Murasame's right, pictures don't do this effect justice.

I had no idea this particular pattern had bump mapping, thanks for the heads up!

very impressive murasame (and the others), i found out myself and use pattern 1 and 15 a lot, but the bump mapping pattern 12, that is a very nice find i will try to keep in mind for whenever i resume ;o)
kudos

@Gabby: A philosopher's argument if I've ever seen one. I'd just like to add that "all art is quite useless."
@Vilar: "Gibberish?" The web's a savage, lawless frontier. Don't resent the chaos, enjoy it.

For natural-sounding voices, pitch and tone should be moved together (e.g. +14 pitch, +14 tone). You can move both up and down much farther this way and still sound human than if you only move one or the other.

Conversely, the fastest way to make a voice sound weird is to move pitch and tone opposite each other (e.g. +14 pitch, -14 tone).

Gabby is a girl’s name... Gabe or Gabriel is fine. No offense taken, just sayin’ is all.