LBA3 concept smoothed out

[Echomote]

I thought I'd post here rather than fan art because hardly anyone checks in fanart anyway.

Note: I simply used This.

original:
Spoiler:

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output:
Spoiler:

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[elmuerte]

hmm.. doesn't look that great in full size

[Homeless]

A poor result, I would say. This is the most annoying problem with these 'vectorization' tools. When there are tons of colours, it gives out a very poor result and messy result. It might be good for rather simple logos, as shown in the examples on the VectorMagic site, but other than that; it's still crap. I have a feeling it will take a long time until they'll go beyond crap, if ever, with this kind of software.

When you 'trace' art automatically you get alot of superfluous paths with tons of nodes placed in an extremely unlogical way. Fixing up/cleaning an 'traced' colourful piece of art often takes about two times longer, if not more, than tracing it by hand/manually. Though, I can ofcourse only speak of my own experience.

Now, let me show you how it should be done. I made this in Inkscape not long after the LBA3 concept art were released:

[elmuerte]

yes, that image is.. well.. perfect

[Echomote]

Arthur and this guy didn't come out too bad though, you must admit!




Even if they don't look properly "vectorized" they still look cleaner than the original scans, IMO.

[Kitarii]

I think they look quite good tbh.
Might make some nice avatars.
I love Homeless' style of drawings though!

[Zerath^]

I think they came out good .... although Homeless made it better!

[Mouserz]

so its like trace bitmap in flash, only it looks worse.

[Jasiek]

The one by Homee lacks shading.

[Homeless]

Originally Posted by Jasiek

The one by Homee lacks shading.

Don't piss on my parade.

(I actually made one with shading, but it looked cluttered. I really do prefer the simplicity of this one.)

[Darkflame]

Originally Posted by Mouserz

so its like trace bitmap in flash, only it looks worse.

Trace bitmap in flash looks worse by default, and this seems to offer far better fine-tuneing abilitys.

[LBAWinOwns]

Can't vector format have shadings? The Buddha bunny's legs look like some random geomtrical figures put between each other.

[Mouserz]

Originally Posted by Darkflame

Trace bitmap in flash looks worse by default, and this seems to offer far better fine-tuneing abilitys.

umm, it just gives the illusion, since its made in flash it only makes it simpler to choose the color threshold, the minimum pixel area, curve fit and corner threshold/smoothness

[Echomote]

it just gives the illusion

Huh? If you see something bad, it's bad. You cant say a picture is good because it smells nice.

[Mouserz]

Originally Posted by Echomote

Huh? If you see something bad, it's bad. You cant say a picture is good because it smells nice.

im saying it gives the illusion you have more/better control over it

[Homeless]

Originally Posted by LBAWinOwns

Can't vector format have shadings? The Buddha bunny's legs look like some random geomtrical figures put between each other.

Of course you can make shadings/hilights in vector graphics. It's just a matter of preference and/or time you want to spend on it.

As I said earlier, I began shading the rabbibunny but did not complete it. This was mainly because I was focused on making it with as little colors as possible to be able to print it on a t-shirt later on. As you might notice, my version only contains four colors, which naturally means it would be really cheap to print.

Originally Posted by Mouserz

umm, it just gives the illusion, since its made in flash it only makes it simpler to choose the color threshold, the minimum pixel area, curve fit and corner threshold/smoothness

Originally Posted by Mouserz

im saying it gives the illusion you have more/better control over it

That is an misconception. VectorMagic does an completely different approach to tracing than the function in Adobe Flash (or whatever it's called these days). The fact that the procedure is done using Flash simply means it uses vector graphics and ActionScript. It really has nothing to do with the original procedure. I hope I managed to clarify this.

Originally Posted by Echomote

Huh? If you see something bad, it's bad. You cant say a picture is good because it smells nice.

However, you can say that a picture is bad because it has a poor structure. It doesn't have to be obviously visible in vector graphics. It's all about the amount of paths and the placement of nodes. Let me try to make an concrete and effective example why 'bitmap tracing' functions are often very bad to use.

(I used the blueish background so that the white artifacts could be seen)
For this example I used the tracing function of both VectorMagic and Inkscape for comparison, along side my manually traced picture. The reason to why I used Inkscapes trace function is simple; I do not possess anything from Adobe nor any other vector graphics software.

As you can see, the amount of paths made by VectorMagic is anything but scarce. Actually, it's a massive amount of paths. However, if you compare how the actual paths are constructed, you can see that VectorMagic produces a much smarter result than Inkscape. The latter result ended up bogging down my system until it was almost ready to vomit path-nodes out of the CPU fan.

While I said VectorMagic did produce a smarter result for the formation of paths, it is surely less than genious. Alot less. Due to the large amount of paths it is very hard to edit small things, which makes it a real pain in the arse.

Sure, I have no shading nor hilights in my manually traced version - but that could easily be added with a few more paths. It would be possible to make the shading look like the VectorMagic output, even better, with less than 50 paths. That is a big difference to 158 paths, indeed.

Let me end this post with another little example. Here I'll demonstrate how much easier it is to work with an nicely constructed path structure compared to an traced, VectorMagic, version. I'll try to do the following things at an timelimit of 5 minutes:
Enlarge the head, enlarge the hands, shrink the eyes and remove the legs.

As this example tells, it's better to construct your paths in a nice way, to not use too many paths and to be vigilant when it comes to node placements. The 'bitmap traced' node manipulation shows how hard it is to edit anything when it's so messy.

I hope I made a point and perhaps enlightened a few people out there. Hopefully this will have shed some light upon what is good and what is bad when it comes to vector graphics design.

* Homeless gives a _BIG_ glass of milk to anyone who took his or her time to read everything in my post, as well as understanding it.

[Mouserz]

Originally Posted by Homeless

That is an misconception. VectorMagic does an completely different approach to tracing than the function in Adobe Flash (or whatever it's called these days). The fact that the procedure is done using Flash simply means it uses vector graphics and ActionScript. It really has nothing to do with the original procedure. I hope I managed to clarify this.

gaaahfds, it looks exactly the same.

[Homeless]

Originally Posted by Mouserz

gaaahfds, it looks exactly the same.

I thought you said:

Originally Posted by Mouserz

so its like trace bitmap in flash, only it looks worse.

Anyway, if you've got Adobe Flash at your disposal, could you perhaps give an comparison between it and VectorMagic. I'd love for you to prove that it looks exactly the same, or worse...

[Mouserz]

link to that trace site

and what flash gave, look retty similar, but i couldnt be assed to change the numbers.

[Darkflame]

Originally Posted by Mouserz

im saying it gives the illusion you have more/better control over it

Just because something is made in flash dosnt mean its limited to the same functions that is used in the flash user interface.
Actionscript is very powerfull.
And even if it wasnt, you can add features/settings/fine tuneings...heck, all sorts beyond what is done. (which is exactly what they have done).

Heck, when it comes down to it, even something as basic as editing drawings in terms of pixals is a bit shit in flash by default.

Hell, Flash cant even do an "underline" on your text if you leave it up to the user interface

Thats not to critise flash unjustly, as its a huge and powerfull bit of software. Its just that a focused application doing one thing can often do a lot better then an all-in-one tool.
===

Of course though, as Homeless explains very well, a manual artist will always get a better result because a human can express more information using less nodes.

A simerla thing applys to 3D.
Sure, you *can* scan in a model and get a 3D point-mess, but it will be horribly inefficiant in its polygon usage.

[Rocky]

MS paint ftw

[Kitarii]

Originally Posted by Rocky

MS paint ftw

That's impresive if you did that in paint!

[Rocky]

i didnt do it, Busybee did.. took him about 30 minutes lol