UNITE 78 - DIGITAL GRAPHICS FOR COMPUTER GAMES P1 Understand Theory & Application of Digital Graphics

LEVEL 3 GAME DESIGN

UNITE 78 - DIGITAL GRAPHICS FOR COMPUTER GAMES P1 Understand Theory & Application of Digital Graphics

COMPUTER GAME GRAPHICS

1.Pixel Art

- 2D Sprites is a computer graphics, a two-dimensional bitmap (BMP)that is integrated into a larger scene.Sprites is referred to independent objects that are composited together, by hardware, with other elements such as a background. The sprites can also be animated. the sprites are mostly made of pixels. 

- 3D Isometric Sprites is referred to a parallel projection where the viewpoint is rotated slightly to reveal other facets of the game environment than are typically visible from a top-down perspective or view, thereby producing a three-dimensional effect.

2.Concept Art

Concept Art is a form of illustration used to convey an idea for films, games, animation and comic books. Concept Art is good for this because it will show the basic concept of the design for a character or background, which could improve later on from the sketch to proper drawing or 3D model.

Concept art is developed in several iterations. Artists try several design to achieve their desired result for the work, or sometimes searching for an interesting result. Concept art also show the project's progress sometimes. Concept Art can be used for also showing it to a developer and which would give the developer the idea of how the final product would look like and show the developer how the character would roughly look like.

3. Texture Art

- Physical Texture is also known as actual texture, are the actual variations upon surface. this can include, but is not limited to, fur, wood grain, sand, smooth surface of canvas, metal, glass and leather. It can differentiates itself from visual texture by having physical quality that can be touched, which can not be used for games. For games Visual Texture is used.

- Visual Texture is the illusion of having physical texture. Every material and every support surface has its own visual texture. To create a wood texture for a game the texture needs to be shaded, dept needs to be added to make it more realistic.

4. Background Graphics

Background Graphics are the graphics that are in the background of a game, usually to add more effect to the game or to make it look better. Background graphics are usually colourful and have objects such as clouds or the sky in the background. To attract the player and make it look good.

5. Print Media Art

Print Media Art is the packaging, covers, posters, booklets etc of a game. Print Media Art is process of making artworks by printing normally on paper. Normally used for making covers only by the process of creating prints that have an element of originality, rather than just being a photographic reproduction of painting. Print Media Art also allows the game to be advertised on billboards, attracting more people to get the game increasing the profit.

Types Of Digital Graphics

1.Raster Images

- BMP

BMP (Bitmap Image) is a raster graphics image file format used to store bitmap digital images. BMP file format is capable of storing two-dimensional digital images of arbitrary width, height and resolution, both monochrome and colour. BMP has maximum image size of 32Kx32K and 2Gx2G pixels. 

BMP stores colour data for each pixel in image without any compression. for example, a 10x10 pixel BMP image will include colour data for 100 pixels. With using BMP format it will store image information and high-quality  graphics, BMP is often used for printable images. But using BMP will increase the file size.

- GIF

GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) is a Type of image for animated image. GIF supports up to 8 bits per pixel for each image, allowing a single image to reference its own palette of up to 256 different colours chosen from the 24-bit RGB colour space for each frame. This format is well suited for for simpler image such as graphics or logo with solid ares of colour. But GIF is less suitable for reproducing colour photographs and other images with continuous colour.

- JPG

This is the right format for those photo images which must be very small files, for example, for web sites or for email. JPG is often used on digital camera memory cards. The JPG file is wonderfully small, often compressed to perhaps only 1/10 of the size of the original data, which is a good thing when modems are involved. However, this fantastic compression efficiency comes with a high price. JPG uses lossy compression (lossy meaning "with losses to quality"). Lossy means that some image quality is lost when the JPG data is compressed and saved, and this quality can never be recovered.

- TIFF

TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) is a file format for sotring raster grapchis images, popular umong graphic artists in the publising industry and photographers. TIFF is felxible, adaptable file format for handiling images and data within a single file. TIFF may be edited and re-saved withouth losing image quality. TIFF also reduces the image is file format

2.Vector Images

- PSD

A PSD file is a layered image file used in Adobe PhotoShop. PSD, which stands for Photoshop Document, is the default format that Photoshop uses for saving data.  PSD is a proprietary file that allows the user to work with the images’ individual layers even after the file has been saved. The .PSD file format can be exported to and from Adobe's other apps like Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Premier Pro, and After Effects, to make professional standard DVDs and provide non-linear editing and special effects services, such as backgrounds, textures, and so on, for television, film, and the Internet. Photoshop's primary strength is as a pixel-based image editor, unlike vector-based image editors. Photoshop also enables vector graphics editing through its Paths, Pen tools, Shape tools, Shape Layers, Type tools, Import command, and Smart Object functions. These tools and commands are convenient to combine pixel-based and vector-based images in one Photoshop document, because it may not be necessary to use more than one program.  o create very complex vector graphics with numerous shapes and colours, it may be easier to use software that was created primarily for that purpose, such as Adobe Illustrator or CorelDRAW. Photoshop's non-destructive Smart Objects can also import complex vector shapes.

- AI

Originally, the native format of AI files was known as PGF - showing a close resemblance to PDF. Compatibility with the PDF file format was achieved when a entire copy of the PGF data was embedded into the saved PDF file. Likewise, this dual path approach is used in newer versions of Adobe Illustrator when EPS compatible files are created and saved. AI files are saved as vector images. This means that the image quality is not getting lost if the user enlarges the image.

- PDF

PDF (Portable Document Format) is a file format that has captured all the elements of a printed document as an electronic image that you can view, navigate, print, or forward to someone else. PDF files are created using Adobe Acrobat , Acrobat Capture, or similar products. To view and use the files, you need the free Acrobat Reader, which you can easily download. Once you've downloaded the Reader, it will start automatically whenever you want to look at a PDF file.

PDF files are especially useful for documents such as magazine articles, product brochures, or flyers in which you want to preserve the original graphic appearance online. A PDF file contains one or more page images, each of which you can zoom in on or out from. You can page forward and backward.

- SVG

SVG is a platform for two-dimensional graphics. It has two parts: an XML-based file format and a programming API for graphical applications. Key features include shapes, text and embedded raster graphics, with many different painting styles. It supports scripting through languages such as ECMAScript and has comprehensive support for animation.

SVG is used in many business areas including Web graphics, animation, user interfaces, graphics interchange, print and hardcopy output, mobile applications and high-quality design.

SVG is a royalty-free vendor-neutral open standard developed under the W3C Process. It has strong industry support; Authors of the SVG specification include Adobe, Agfa, Apple, Canon, Corel, Ericsson, HP, IBM, Kodak, Macromedia, Microsoft, Nokia, Sharp and Sun Microsystems. SVG viewers are deployed to over 100 million desktops, and there is a broad range of support in many authoring tools.

SVG builds upon many other successful standards such as XML (SVG graphics are text-based and thus easy to create), JPEG and PNG for image formats, DOM for scripting and interactivity, SMIL for animation and CSS for styling.

SVG is interoperable. The W3C release a test suite and implementation results to ensure conformance.