Archive: 12 posts

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In my very easily opposed opinion, detail is the most important part of a level. And many levels today dont do it as well as they could, as decorations are not extremely commonly used, and when they are its only as simply as they possibly can be, when with barely any more work you can use them just as easily and it looks better. So, Ill jump right into how to better utilize the oh-so-awesome decorations. Below, I use some (#) to indicate a note, which are at the bottom. First is the simplest matter, placing them on the other sides of a material. Many people do this, such as putting grass on the top of the material sackboy walks on. However, using invisible hollogram/sticker panel(1), you can form little "decorations" for your level to add some atmosphere, and place them on walls or ceilings to look almost as nice as cooked bacon on a weekend morning. Here however I used a square of solid material and made a box. http://i8.lbp.me/img/ft/2387a86730670ccc8fe406fbbe391eb0ba2055fd.jpg http://i2.lbp.me/img/ft/74227efd029072758fb923f7bc25e102c0c270bf.jpg Its simply a box, but now it looks like a real crate, and doing a better job of it than any square of material. Take a look at this segment of a level I slaved over for hours last night after 7 cups of coffee: http://i0.lbp.me/img/ft/9b0bf67a163d9e322cdfd3ff23edcfe292b0f610.jpg Its beautiful! No, its not. Now, after placing decorations on multiple sides of materials, it looks a little better. http://i7.lbp.me/img/ft/8a701a343c4828ed8bba18d54a744578cc91715f.jpg Still not the Mona Lisa, but it looks a crapload better than it did in the last screenshot. You can see the difference and how much better it looks from simply not going with the generic slap-a-decoration-down-in-my-level-and-move-on thing. Decorations are magical, in that they have no physical properties(which you should usually give them anyway so that you arent walking through something thats supposed to be solid)(2). So you can place decorations onto a background and have them hidden by the foreground. This is advantageous if you only like a certain part of a particular decoration. For example: http://i9.lbp.me/img/ft/4f9d36d1fdfa210ee12196cfe50464a185a9f882.jpg Youll notice the pipes in the middle look a little funky, thats part of a big decoration problem(3) you should read at the bottom. Course, you probably scrolled down and looked at all the pictures first anyway... So anyway, look at this next picture, again: http://id.lbp.me/img/ft/f1d9cd77a887bb8ca78243edac73daab744338a8.jpg See what I mean? Hiding parts of decorations can yield cool stuff that will make people go, "Sweet, howd he do that?"(4) something Ive always wanted to achieve. So now that your hiding decorations and putting them on the 5 visible sides of a square(want all 6? Youre gettin there), its time to add some more options. If you try and put a decoration on the edge of a squared away square like sticker panel or light matter, youll notice it only yields one more option, a sort of 45 degree angle rather than the other two 90's. Well swap over to the good ol' LBP1 microchip, dark matter. You see, dark matter is a little more rounded than it's lighter, twice-removed cousin, allowing you to place it on many, many more angles. Instead of explaining, Ill tell you to look at this picture youve already looked at anyway; you probably already knew what Ive been explaining before I finished just by looking at it. http://i7.lbp.me/img/ft/4f7d55dad539fb98d2a23acf4e264cb0cc82b6a2.jpg And now, you can use your handy-dandy change material option found on every materials menu and change it to sticker panel and alas, you can have everything except the decoration be invisible, and still retain its many angles. Below, Ive done this with some of the engines from the LBP1 Metropolis levels. http://ic.lbp.me/img/ft/a5c1d823ea17b475b4ab8fba489d0191de691133.jpg Then, I change it to sticker panel/hologram, copy it, and voila, I have something cool that you like never see because no one really does it, which is why Im making this tutorial in the first place. http://ia.lbp.me/img/ft/4fac4470105e74b6a90bb212e6bd4f82bb0c6ea0.jpg It may look a little rough up close, but trust me, it doesnt look like that from a normal distance. You can utilize this to make pretty cool objects; here we go back to that metal crate from the start of this tutorial, only this time its more 3D and has little latch things on it. http://i3.lbp.me/img/ft/423eb084f9ebf0bfe883f71fc829b264e59f58ed.jpg This screenshot is from straight on, no angle used(you can see a little cardboard there that I put in so as to give it physical properties). The crate looks pretty beat-up and "off grid", but I think it makes it look better! You better hope yours does too, cus good luck lining that stuff up. Moving on, heres a useful trick... This! http://i1.lbp.me/img/ft/2d10b27f619c34cfde05efa3fd60a67fc89c6387.jpg Place a decoration on a material, and when that material is scaled, the width(for lack of a better word) of the decoration will remain the same. Just look again at the picture below that you already looked at, because I know you obviously arent waiting to read the text before looking at the picture. http://ia.lbp.me/img/ft/8dae5b534c305f58238cea23e36160be581fabbc.jpg Although every other part of the decoration scaled as normal with the dark matter, its distance away from the dark matter did not. This is always true with any decoration, and can be used to create "new" decorations. Use this with invisible sticker panel/hologram, and you can really make some scrumptious visual effects. This also works with putting the decoration on top of the material. http://i6.lbp.me/img/ft/4960722c843155fe0dc35a1f847ac55b34196967.jpg http://i6.lbp.me/img/ft/216f550bf929bb3a505930f4798b59102b457f3b.jpg (And yeah, my fat body is covering the back of this, but the back of the engine is sticking out the other way too) This one is the golden bacon of this tutorial, which isnt actually saying much because gold is indigestible, but its really good. It allows you to place decorations on the back of materials, that sixth side of the square. Simply put down a battery, or any logic, put the decoration on the side of the logic, and move the battery to the side of the material. Please see the note just below! http://ib.lbp.me/img/ft/6abdfa43521b71802ef7ab32b9f51ad399377879.jpg http://i0.lbp.me/img/ft/a70ddc6ed8ae912524b191683305ddb672b202fe.jpg Please see the note just above! Nah kidding. DO NOT TRUST PREVIEW MODE. You will most likely make the battery and material invisible, making the only visible thing in preview mode the backwards decoration. Although you can see it in preview mode, it WILL NOT appear in play mode. Unfortunately, you must make the logic visible for this, because any decorations on invisible logic will be invisible as well. Anyway, you can use this for some cool backs to decorations. Sadly, this is like the only cool one: http://i2.lbp.me/img/ft/222200c9f3f9d18e3b8eeef16a627f2b5cef7b54.jpg Last, and probably least because its pretty useless but not enough to not mention, I have a little trick I thought Id throw in; if you place a decoration on a piece of thin material... http://if.lbp.me/img/ft/96fa5385c0a508e18348f945dd587219d35ebf5d.jpg And widen it out... http://ie.lbp.me/img/ft/35e9765706775c2f9b2f2f3d7a49ac666451fff1.jpg It does that. Now, for some strange reason, I swear it just pushed the decoration out farther away from the material, but now it seems to do this, which I am still wondering about because, oddly enough, in all my endeavors with decorations, I have never before accomplished this until making pictures for this tutorial... Anyway, its position changes for every layer and thickness, so your options are more open. Using the theck and thack layers also changes their position, and if you dont know what those are, don't worry 'bout it. Utilizing these tricks, you can easily create 3D decoration art like I do, and throw it into your levels! http://i1.lbp.me/img/ft/3213faca0b15314e9e4f5d82ab78779b4ea59f17.jpg http://ib.lbp.me/img/ft/38b654f979a3028d6692c2d8bb761a1418ac99d8.jpg http://i0.lbp.me/img/ft/a602592d0607851ce5b6bb51ba0a65466142537f.jpg(^^) Here are those (#) notes from above that should be mentioned. (1) Hologram, when set to 0% brightness, becomes invisible in play mode. Decorations on it will remain visible. Sticker panel is more desirable only because it has less lag; set it to 0% opacity. This is only for people that have the move pack. Also notable, if you plasmify an invisible piece of either of these, sackboy cannot jump through it and so you can block off whole layers. Make sure you make the plasma quiet though! (2) If you have a big piece of decoration that’s taking up an entire layer, put down some invisible dark matter lines(make a square of dark matter ASAP[As Small As Possible] and smear it, and you have a solid invisible line), and box off your decoration, then use the above trick with invisible plasma to fill in the box. This gives the effect that the decoration is solid. (3) This big decoration problem isn’t TOO too bad. Im not great at explaining it, but a decoration on a thin layer, and sometimes a thick layer behind another thick layer, will glitch through so that its perspective is messed up. As you work with decorations, you’ll see what I mean, this gets pretty annoying, at least for me. (4) If you make some fancy decoration stuff in your level and don’t want people taking it apart to see how you did it, just put a thin layer of hologram in the front layer with 1% brightness and 0 animation speed. People will be unable to move their popit sticker curser past the front layer. Please point out any errors you may find, as well as ask any questions you feel the need to ask, and I will try my best to answer them. I hope I helped, because what else would I have spent the time doing this for! It took time to make this stuff, take all the pictures, write it out, and proof read it you know.

2012-07-21 05:53:00 Author: ATMLVE Posts: 1177

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awesome stuff man, just great. Really good tips and explained well. Thanks!

2012-07-21 06:26:00 Author: biorogue Posts: 8424

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awesome stuff man, just great. Really good tips and explained well. Thanks! Agreed. Great tips. And your 3D art at the end is AMAZING!

2012-07-21 09:47:00 Author: Fancy_Zombie Posts: 226

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Great tutorial, will definitely use your tips in my upcoming levels. Thanks!

2012-07-21 14:24:00 Author: Deurklink1 Posts: 346

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Haha this is what i keep saying all the time. When it comes to LBP a level filled with great logic and mechanics means nothing if the level itself does nothing to draw the player in. Its amazing the effect a few decos can make in a level. Also stickers added to this and used right can add even better looks and effects. Like soot marks above pipes etc. Great tutorials and i hope to see these tutorials used. The deco stretching is something i never really tried before. Btw that car is epic

2012-07-21 17:53:00 Author: Lordwarblade Posts: 761

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Good work.with this tutorial, I was considering making something to this effect in game but I haven't gotten to doing it right (I had an old version but eh...). Some things that you could also say here: some decorations can be tweaked either in color/brightness, or in animation speed. This is done simply by placing the tweakable decoration on a surface that can be tweaked, say sticker panel. Just change the brightness, color etc and the decoration will also change. You can then proceed to change the material.if you choose. There is also 1 more glitch that I haven't yet nailed down. By placing decorations on a flat surface and changing the flat material to thick it will move the decorations between layers at times. This is probably related to.the glitch you mentioned but had no use for, but I have found use for it in making character models in order to.properly line up body parts and avoid the decoration perspective glitch. Anyways, good work o.o

2012-08-12 23:56:00 Author: Tynz21 Posts: 544

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Wow, very nice tutorial! But i think i have to read it a second or third time to understand all the things you explaining, because my english is sometimes a bit "laggy" xD greets, cazpa_

2013-01-09 23:27:00 Author: Unknown User

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Great work, we often forget that we can use only parts of a decoration, hiding another part by the ground or a wall, to make it look like a decoration itself. It adds a lot to a level. However, I have a question that might speak to any of us: how far is it thermometer-friendly? For example, how much of the thermometer do you dedicate for such decorations? A third? Less?

2013-01-22 18:26:00 Author: Djibees Posts: 189

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Great work, we often forget that we can use only parts of a decoration, hiding another part by the ground or a wall, to make it look like a decoration itself. It adds a lot to a level. However, I have a question that might speak to any of us: how far is it thermometer-friendly? For example, how much of the thermometer do you dedicate for such decorations? A third? Less? It all depends on how many decorations you use. Each type of decoration you place adds to the thermometer(duh), because the thermometer has to load that decoration into the level. You can sometimes even visibly see the thermometer go up upon placing a decoration. However, you can place a hundred more of that same decoration, and the next 99 make a significantly small impact on the thermometer, as opposed to the first one. So if you limit your decoration variety, you can really go crazy with the quantity, and vice versa. However, lag is a different story.

2013-01-22 23:17:00 Author: ATMLVE Posts: 1177

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Excellent tutorial!

2013-01-26 13:34:00 Author: Unknown User

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These are great tips for the community. Thanks for taking the time to show people how to do this! I’ll be queuing your levels now!

2013-02-13 17:40:00 Author: peoriaspitfire Posts: 359

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awsome!!

2013-02-19 11:17:00 Author: Roosterland Posts: 31

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