Department:Graphics

Welcome to the Graphics Department! You will find a basic set of information describing how to create artwork for the project and how to operate within the project here. Whether you're looking for tutorials, external materials to use, tips, technical information - all can be found here. If you think that any information is missing here, let us know at IRC or forums.

Style Guide for 2D artists
We would like to present you our warm and informal Style Guide. You should be able to find a basic set of information and advice there, and also see some examples of good work. We like individuality, you really don't need to mimic those works. Its maybe just good to know our approach to creating art for the game.

Current tasks
The easiest way to find out who's currently working on what in the graphics department, is to check out the list of Current tasks. Active developers should add themselves and the tasks they're looking into or working on there.

Tools and Sources of External Materials

 * Graphics:Tools
 * Graphics:External_assets
 * This thread is worth studying

General

 * Contributing to the graphics department
 * Graphics:Resources

2d art

 * 2d graphics design process

3d art

 * Graphics:Workflow Rendering Setup
 * Graphics:Workflow Simple Tile
 * Graphics:Workflow Snow Material
 * Graphics:Workflow Wall tutorial
 * Graphics:Terrain

Licensing
Be sure to use only content that is compatible with our chosen License. If you're contributing as 3d artist, make sure that the textures you're using are properly licensed as well.

Looking for Something to Work on?
Most common thing should be working with the trac ticket list. This is ment to be our main and least neglected todo list. It is easy to work with, not biased by someone's personal point of view, its easy to combine it when interdisciplinary work is needed. Most important thing is that our trac is really transparent if its maintained well.

Trac tickets

 * look (here is a good query) for a ticket to work with, check if its not ready to be closed or if someone works upon it
 * announce you start working on it on forums, posting with the topic like "WIP 2D concept art for XY". If it will be a longer work - like a week - leave a note inside the trac, giving an expected date of finishing it, so that other developers would be informed regardless of topic being pushed out somewhere deep.
 * make something good :), discuss it on the forums and IRC, be ready for taking some constructive criticism (and if it will hapen - it is to make your work better)
 * upload renders and models or lossless bitmaps into the ticket. All the 3D graphics should be provided as renders from 4 or 8 sides, with zipped models and external textures and attached to the ticket (textures should be compatible with our licensing terms, best if with the source link). 2D work should be prepared and uploaded in lossless quality files (optionally also as .xcf, .psd, .tif, .png in larger scale), in game we use .png files. You could also use OpenGameArt, which will make your art available to other projects as well, will give attribution to you and make licensing clear. If you won't provide licensing information with the files attached to the trac tickets, we will assume it is released under the current PARPG licensing terms. We will always remove an artwork if the author will write to us and ask for it.
 * leave an information for someone, who will take care for moving your work into the code tree - this may be on forums, may be inside the ticket or even via IRC.

Other lists
You can find yourself working with other todo lists on some occasion, not only with trac tickets. Some of them may be interdisciplinary, personal or topic/target-oriented lists that are gathering and coordinating very high or very low prioritized tasks. Be carefull if you're not sure what kind of list you're browsing. Be sure the list is not neglected, try to search a ticket for the task you've choosen and check if it was not done yet. Also be sure you won't make mess by filling someone's else tasks from his/her personal list.

When you're not sure what you're expected to produce...
You can find really descriptive things when browsing documentation or discussion of our writing department. On the other hand - when a concept art is needed, its you, who should show the invention and creative powers ;) If you really don't have a clue... Ask for a more verbose description or for a place to find it.

Gallery
There is a concept art & renders gallery, collecting most important artwork we made so far for the project.

Inspiration and Research
Having blocks? Just lacking some inspiration? Check the Inspiration and Research section! Or use the help of your good friends Google and Wikipedia.


 * An article on how other engines handle tiles, sprites, etc: Graphics:Field Research
 * List of inspirational references: Graphics:Inspirational References. The purpose of this list is collect various website links with useful images, photos, concept art or anything that can be used for inspiration for PARPG.
 * There is a thread on our forums