Computer games graphic types

Within the world of gaming graphics are used in every inch of the view-able pleasure experienced by the player. Ranging from such medias as the box art and advertising, to the textures used to give the models life. Through this brief blog you can see me explain to you a different variety of computer game graphics that are used in this industry.

2D sprites

A sprite is a flat image in a game that is used for a character or an object. 2D sprites are a collection of still images used together to emulate a characters movements. This method is not often used in recent games but is very common amongst old games such as Megaman.

3D Isometric Sprite

3D isometric sprites are taken from a 3D model but uses the same process as before to create a moving 2D image. This is to create a 3D perspective in a 2D render. Isometric refers to the viewpoint of the game itself which will be slightly elevated but to the side of your character. the game Q-bert was the first game to use an isometric graphic style.

 

Concept art

Concept art is the first step in making the designs real. A concept artist will create a drawing of a character that is taken from what the design team has given them. However this is not limit to one design, as the concept artist will make tens and nearly hundreds of different designs for a single idea and decide which one will be taken into modelling.

 

Textures

Textures are placed on the 3D model to give it its "looks". The image will be a 2D image that will be fixed into place around the model to give it a better look for the game, rather than a large grey sculpture.

In-game interface.

The in game interface is within a game and give the player information about their game to assist them. This comes in the forms of the HUD (Heads up display) which is on the game generally around the edges and tells you things like how much ammo your weapon has etc. Another one would be the in-game menus such as the pause screens and start menus.

Printed media

The printed media is things such as posters figures and general things to promote the game. This also includes the box art for the game itself. The purpose of this is to attract a big audience and to make sure a big demographic is aware of the game and are more likely to buy it.

File Formats

A pixel is a small square that is coloured and used in Raster images. There are thousands of pixels within a single picture and the aim is to make the pixels not individually visible within a picture this makes the image look more fluid. The image resolution is directly related to the pixels. The image resolution is the amount of detail an image holds and the smaller the pixel size the higher the resolution and more clear the image will be. The resolution is how many pixels are in a certain area, usually per square inch. The pixel colour intensity is how much colour is within the pixel. As they only use a certain number of colours when the pixel is formed they must use different intensities to change the outcome colour to fit a bigger palate. The common ways the pixel colours are stored are either in RGB which stands for Red, Green and Blue.  The more in depth version is CMYK which stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. This is also the colour palate used for printers and so for printing images this is a good one to use.

Compression reduces the files size of an image or file. It does this by compacting all the information and removing what is not needed. This is useful for storing digital graphics because you are able to make the image size smaller without effecting the image itself, potentially saving you a lot of hard drive space. The information that is removed can either be lossy or lossless. Lossy means that the information that is removed is permanently removed from the image, and so if you cut off a piece of an image, this will be permanently lost on save. Whereas lossless refers to the opposite, in that the information can all be restored and re-edited whenever you require.

A raster image is also known as bitmap, these are quite large file sizes but can accurately produce coloured photos and images. These use small coloured squares in pixels to create an image, which means that making coloured images are a lot easier. Examples of these are:

·         BMP (Bitmap) – These files were used a lot in old video games (PS1, PS2, NES, Handhelds), These images are not compressed at all which is why they were used in the video games industry for a long time. These images will be in high quality due to the lack of compression.

·         GIF – This image file has lossless compression and so they keep all the information of the original file. These are not ideal for photos as they can only hold 256 colours maximum and so blending colours will not work. However this file type allows 
      for animation.

·         Tiff – These support high quality images and saves them in a large file size. This is popular amongst graphic artists and the publishing industry as they are incredible high detailed and 
      will mostly deal with lossless compression.

·         JPG – JPG or JPEG is the most common file type. It uses compression to reduce file sizes but can lose a lot of detail due to making a smaller size for the file.

A Vector image is made up of co-ordinates and mathematical equations to create an image. The file sizes are incredibly small due to the information being only co-ordinates and calculations, which also means that upon zooming closer into the image the picture will not blur as it is able to simply re-calculate the image. However these do not accurately show colours and will only use block colours with no blending. Examples of these are:

·         PSD -  A PSD file is the default image file for Photoshop. This like many others have the bonus of using lossless compression. However, The image is in very fine detail as it is used to save the image for editing and so they come out in a HUGE file size.

·         PNG - PNG files have lossless compression allowing for alot of editing. They also include transparency which means that you can have a transparent background on an image instead of a full white one. The downside to this file type is that it only supports RGB colours which means it is slightly more limited than others that can use CMYK, however it is still good for use on photos.

·         TARGA - TARGA files are incredibly big files, which means they have alot of detail and is used in a lot of textures in gaming. They are very flexible to change with the use of Alpha.

Exaggerated Graphics style

Exaggerated games are extremely popular within Japanese games. Exaggerated  styles usually show characters or scenery out of proportion to give emphasis onto specific areas. This is used a lot in Japanese manga and anime and so a the transition into gaming is an easy one to foresee, as this is the next viable step. Games such as final fantasy adopt this style as the characters can be very small and dainty but carry with them swords that are four times their size and in real life this would never be a possibility, however in the realms of gaming this can be made a reality.

Abstract Graphics

Abstract graphics does not mean stylised or cartoonish but, it means to use bright colours and shapes that do not resemble anything that you would expect in real life. So objects of enlarged size or a countryside of yellow skys and purple meadows would be considered abstract as this is out of the ordinary and makes your brain work to identify the points of interest within this world. Games such as Limbo use this is a strange way,as it is classified as an abstract game but does not use bright colours to emphasise things, but it uses all dark shadowing to blend all things together and to make it so nothing stands out. This is still considered abstract but it is used in a strange way. A more easily identifyable way of showing an abstract game would be with Geometry Wars, This uses flashing lights and a variety of strange shapes to resemble asteroids. This is a much more understandable way to show off an abstract graphic style.

Photo-realisistic Graphics

Photo-realism in gaming refers to making a game as close to real life, graphically, as possible by our current technology. Most games that adopt this style of graphic are shooting games as they desire you to feel as though you're in the middle of combat and want to make your heart bump as you feel the adrenaline rush. Another type of game genre that makes sense is the horror genre. Making a game as realistic as possible for a horror game will make the sensation of being scared that much more real! When a person is fully immersed into a game they believe they are within it, and with this in mind making it more graphically similar to real life will also add to this effect making a horror game perfect to scare people outside of their limits!

Cell Shaded Graphics

Cell Shaded graphics have come from a long range of childishly designed games, and have more recently been used within shooters. Cell shaded refers to graphics they have a strong Outline over models and then are coloured within. This technique is often used to replicate the styles of comic books or cartoons and apply them into a 3D setting of a video game or animation. As you can imagine this technique is not popular amongst games such as call of duty which aim to make a game as realistic as possible, which this technique will not suit. However, this style has performed very well with more humorous or just more light hearted games such as the family guy game, The legend of Zelda series and even Megaman. But, a brave step was taken by the developers at 2K games, when they released borderlands, which was to be a post-apocalyptic first person shooter, adopting to use the Cell-shaded graphics type. This was thought to be an interesting turn and was met with an applause as the game recieved multiple awards including xbox 360's game of the year awards for 2009. This showed evidence that this strange and unique art style can serve as a new and interesting view for all genres of the gaming industry.