Spray Paint

[Mychaeel]

Quoted from this thread over in the Jailbreak General forum:

Originally Posted by Mychaeel

Spray Paint Mutator -- I've been working on a spray paint mutator (not specifically for Jailbreak, but certainly of good use there) that allows players to paint text and custom icons on walls. They could even be persistent across matches. It's about half-finished at the moment.

Actually, what I'd need most at the moment to continue working would be a first- and third-person mesh for this -- a spray paint can model, I figure. To be in agreement with the rest of the Unreal world, it'd be best if it was a bit dirty and scratched and dented, too.

Spray paint can sounds simple enough, so I could try digging up my MilkShape license again and try my luck myself. However, if somebody beat me to it, I'd be happy -- and besides, I'm not sure at all that I'd be able to create a suitable skin for this mesh...

Is anybody here who could create a spray paint can mesh and skin?

Secondly, and that's probably going to be great community fun -- I need a stock set of icons. Users will be able to create and add their own, of course, but I'd like to bundle a few with the mutator. The icons must be 64 x 64 pixels, 1-bit color depth (black and white) -- I'm afraid that's the most I dare to have UnrealScript parse (it's really not suited for processing binary files).

So, get creative...

[edit]
It wouldn't hurt to have some "functional" icons too -- like icons for a tally sheet ("I", "II", "III", "IIII", "IIII") -- and arrows, warnings signs and so on. And try to stay in theme: For spray paint you'd either have a stencil (for complex icons) or you'd directly paint things (like those arrows, numbers etc.).

[RevBillyG]

Wahey! Something to do!
Right, here's an extremely quickly-made render of a basic lo-poly spraycan (268 faces).
Textures are, of course, temporary as is the model itself.

Any idea of poly limits I can use?

[Birelli]

Do you want something like these for the templates or do you want something less "spray-paint" and more "stencil" like a perfectly straight tally with neat circular ends?

I can't upload more than 5 images (even though they're each about .5kb each), so here's the basics I've done so far:

I, II, III, IIII, IIII

LeftArrow
RightArrow
UpArrow
DownArrow

Edit: For polygons, the Rocket Launcher uses about 300, the Ball Launcher (BR) uses about 3000, the rest I glanced at all fall somewhere between that.

[RevBillyG]

Another version.
Be aware that this is very much WIP. I'll tweak and play around until I can get something cool

[tarquin]

Nice idea, Mych

And the model looks great, Rev.

[Mychaeel]

Heh, looking very good already...

I'm still working on a user interface concept which lets players select an icon, color and enter a text. I've got some ideas, but nothing definitive yet.

Originally Posted by Birelli

I can't upload more than 5 images (even though they're each about .5kb each)

You could zip them up and attach a single preview image...

Do you want something like these for the templates or do you want something less "spray-paint" and more "stencil" like a perfectly straight tally with neat circular ends?

No, the "spray-painty" look is perfect for this stuff. If we have more complex icons, we'll probably end up with a "stencil" look for them anyway.

Does anybody know how to draw a llama with as few spray paint strokes as possible?

[tarquin]

For the llama, let's use the icon that was on the JBIII HUD.

[TheSpoonDog]

Fuzzy the edges and mess it up a bit so it looks like its been spraypainted though

[Birelli]

It's really hard to simulate "spay-paint" with only 1-bit color depth, you sure we can't have 2-bit to at least give a couple shades of gray?

Edit: Good point Mych, added a zip with a couple dozen random ideas I had, if anyone's interested.

[Mychaeel]

I don't think there are any imaging programs which can actually save 2-bit grayscale bitmaps...

However, if there's any Material system which can make an arbitrary image (texture) look "blurred" as if sprayed on a wall, let's see it.

[-=DARCHANGEL=-]

Originally Posted by Mychaeel

I don't think there are any imaging programs which can actually save 2-bit grayscale bitmaps...

However, if there's any Material system which can make an arbitrary image (texture) look "blurred" as if sprayed on a wall, let's see it.

I have a few a few spray types here and some that look like clan tags (think American Subway)

Hope they resemble something like you are after. They are all 64x64 1-bit (B&W)

[Kantham]

chaos ut have this option already

[CyberSirius]

8-bit would be better

i added my contribution

[Mychaeel]

Originally Posted by Kantham

chaos ut have this option already

Well, sort of -- quoting their custom spray paint images documentation:

The goal was to provide HL-like spray paint where the user could make their own and use that. Sad to say that we probably won't be able to, due to the limitations of the Unreal engine and potential security issues.

With that said we have the next best thing. You can have your own Spray Paints for off line games. You can also have your own for on-line games, but there is a catch. The players on the other side need to have the file your logo is in or else they'll just see a default Proxy logo.

What I'm coding here actually fills that gap: You can create your own logos and use them in online games without requiring the server or other players to install them first. Other players can see your custom spray paint logos; all that's required is that you drop your bitmap source file into your local SprayPaintImages directory and spray the image somewhere on a wall.

That's also the reason why we're limited to 1-bit images here: I need UnrealScript to parse the image files, and UnrealScript is badly suited for processing of binary files. Theoretically, I could have it load any image type I care to write an UnrealScript parser for, but the larger the file, the longer the script will require to load it, and an 8-bit image file requires eight time as much processing as a 1-bit image file.

Plus, I plan to add the option to have sprayed logos persist across matches -- so you could actually leave messages for the people playing the map sometime later.

[Kantham]

Originally Posted by Mychaeel

Well, sort of -- quoting their custom spray paint images documentation:

glad to see their site is now visible ....

Originally Posted by Mychaeel

What I'm coding here actually fills that gap: You can create your own logos and use them in online games without requiring the server or other players to install them first

Exellent ......

[-=DARCHANGEL=-]

Done a few test 'grafitti' style scrawls and projected them onto a wall in a map I am working on at the moment.

Not much of interest to you all I know, just thought I'd show the community I am still working on JB-Astaroth, slowly but surely getting there.

Age is a terrible slowing down process, beer makes it bareable

[Trueblood]

Looking at Darchangel`s picture, how would we get about tilting the letters (or picture) to make it look more grafitti like?

[Mychaeel]

Originally Posted by RevBillyG

Another version.
Be aware that this is very much WIP. I'll tweak and play around until I can get something cool

Could you please add an animation where the sprayhead is being pressed down and send me the model?

Actually, if you could add a hand and a finger that presses the sprayhead, that'd be totally grand.

[RevBillyG]

Right, I've done a really simple animated spraycan.
As for doing a hand...I dunno, that may be a bit beyond me. :/
I'll give it a go tho

[ZedMaestro]

UT2004 doesnt have hands, so making a hand for the model would actually be part of a weapon. So, if you imagine a skaarj model getting out his spray-can, he'll get out a hand too.

That would look a bit odd to me