[squeek]

Hi all,

Now that we have a full compliment of artists and a programmer working on the Fantasy Army Painter project, it is time to start thinking about what specifications we would like it to have.

This is a topic that would benefit from the thoughts and ideas of everyone that has access to this area, so please feel free to add to this discussion as the more ideas we have the better we can make this programme.

The basic specification is a programme that has a commonly used model from each Fantasy army, that is an accurate representation of the miniatures that it is based on. This will then be broken down in to sections that can be coloured to allow a paint scheme to be tested out and then used elsewhere, for instance on a forum. So far so good. This in itself would be the first programme of its kind to support GW Fantasy models, and would be a useful tool. However we want it to be as good a programme as possible so we would like to include:

• Hard coded colours from the GW and Vallejo paint ranges
• A 'mix your own colour' function using reference paint colours
• Interchangable shield and banner symbols to allow customisation of the model
• A print function
• A save function
• A forum output function
• Protected from rehosting
• Minimal server stress from saved images, etc

Other things that will be included are:

• A Heresy-Online logo embedded in the interface
• A donation link to Heresy-Online
• A tutorial of some sort
• Credits to all people involved in the project
• A full legal disclaimer

This list is obviously not complete yet so suggest anything that you think would be a good idea/essential and we will try to make this programme as good as possible.

 

[LVix]

Just a tiny detail... a 'Heresy' paintbrush icon as the pointer? Like a paintbrush with the brush point as the click position and the word 'Heresy' as the brush handle.

LVix - random/pointless ideas coming to this forum soon... :crazy:

 

[Jezlad]

I think a way to stop people embedding the flash file on their own pages is essential. I'm not entirely sure how to stop it, I know I can view the source of a page and pluck a flash image right off it then embed it on a page of my own.

If people are hotlinking the flash image directly into their own pages it ruins the point.

 

[stevenl]

LVix,

That'd be pretty neat, although it may be hard to fit 'heresy' onto a pointer without causing the thing to be way too big, but if someone makes a good looking paintbrush pointer I can include it

Jez,

[-]I don't know that you can stop people hotlinking. This'll be something to investigate further, but I can think of ways round anything I can come up with.

.htaccess restriction - you can get round this by loading the flash file in an iframe to store it in the user's cache and then embed it traditionally since the flash file will already be in the cache
code in the flash itself - i've thought of a few things, correct me if my thought process was wrong you could get the flash file to check some content from the server like a text file or php variable
[/-]
I've just realised that I can get the flash file to check session variables, I'll play around with that and let you know how i get on. I can already get it to check that its stored in exactly the right place (http://heresy-online.net/flashpainter.swf for example) so actually saving the file can be stopped. I definitely agree with you about hotlinking, we'll have to investigate it.

Steve

 

[Hudson]

legally ththe idea below will probably be shite but anywho!!

could this be produced onto a CD? i.e the Heresy online interactive miniture painter or even a download file or will it be solely for the use of heresy-online?

how do you stand legally anyway? is there any restrictions to the artwork being as it is intended to replicate GW figures. not trying to holt things as i'll be a very regular user of it just don't want the Gw legal department shutting it down 2 weeks after launch as i'm sure it will attract a whole new range of members.

but a download would be cool i'd even pay for that. i mean unless you got your heart set on it being free it could be a good way of extra subscriptions being paid i.e free painter with a subscriber account (along with all the other goodies)

 

[squeek]

Well legally we are on far safer ground if we don't sell the product. As far as I am aware using a GW model as a reference for a drawing is not a problem, B&C have had theirs up for ages without issue. Having said that, everything will be umm and arred over by more legally proficient people than me before release.

 

[Hudson]

cool just thought i'd ask but yea as you say being a free item would prob be aload safer than if a profit was being aimed for.

also for my 2 cents worth, what i would find useful would be highlighting colour and lowlight i mean i guess the colours used will be one flat colour and no shading but what would be useful would be if at the end of painting it had the colours used, a kind of shopping list for paint if you will, and alongside each colour have a highlight varient suggestion and a lowlight suggestion if that makes sense

 

[stevenl]

A shopping list for colours is a great idea. Would those be Games Workshop colours? I guess the easiest way to provide a shopping list would be to allow users to lock themselves to only using a certain set of colours, chaos black, skull white, sunburst yellow etc etc etc, but then that doesn't allow people to mix their own paints.. Or we could output the colours used on their model and try to pick out the closest real paint colour as a suggestion of what to buy? And then from there try to pick highlight and shadow colours..
OR is the real paint thing more trouble than its worth and anything we pick would too far off from the colours they've actually used in the drawing..

 

[LVix]

I think (as with the original GW painter) we should stick to a set of colours(At least for the first version anyhow.) The B&C painter has a colour graph system and that gives a lot more colour options but can be quite irritating to use (e.g. colour fft5674 - really doesn't mean to much to anyone) and you are left guessing what colour is closest unless you look at one of their charts. Whereas if we start with a set of colours close to the GW ones people know where they are starting and can ask for equivelent paints in Heresy's forums - or we could even put in a link to a Sticky thread with charts listing closest paint colours, GW to Reaper for example.

As for picking the colours, going on what is closest to GWs paints could be done by picking colours by comparing them directly to their own colour swatches on their website.

The effect of washes might be something to look at in future... a wash layer (just one... don't want to go crazy) which has a high transparency. Might be worth mucking about with in the future.

 

[squeek]

Colourwise it wont be difficult to provide a shopping list as the range is limited compared to what we could create with a colour mixer. So basically if they use something that is halfway between sunburst yellow and badmoon yellow then we tell them to buy both!

With the colour mixer we were looking at having it as fractions anyway, so if they pick their references colours as above we can even tell them to use 1:5 ratio of sunburst:badmoon. That said, I think the most important thing will be to get the colours on the model. Personally I am not as bothered by what shade I am using, as I am about whether or not the colours will look awful next to each other, if you see what I mean?

 

[Hudson]

exactly it would seem better to use GW paint ranges as for the most part thats what people are going to use, could always expand at a later date to include different 'pallets' using different ranges what i mean is as you paint your mini online a chart is populated with a list of used colours (equivelents or not) and a suggestion of low and highlights.

however, with your idea squeek it would be good to have the shopping list devided onto sections i.e:

Torso
you used: 5:1 badmoon:sunburst
shield
you used......

so people can then see where they've used certain mixes and where the mix will be applied in their actual models

i'd find that really usefull as i'm crap at mixing nd wold be good to see a test of things first.

perhaps you could impliment both i.e have a mixing palete and a block colour one so you can choose to mix your own paints and be shown a ratio of mixes or to use GW (or whatever) colour swatches and be given low/highlight suggestions at the end eg:

Torso:
You used: Dark angles green
Suggested Low: ....
Suggested High:....

something like that

 

[squeek]

We can definitely look at that, it might get a bit out of hand if they pick 20 colours and mix them 40 odd times, but we can always experiment.

 

[Hudson]

lol yea and don't want things becomming too complex either for you guys making it or the end user.

i mean surely the ideas are endless. effects of drybrushing against layeringetc but the end of the day it's about seeing an example of a painted mini in your chosen paint scheme.

great thing when it all comes together though mate i'm really looking forward to using it

 

[Galahad]

Keeping it free will definitely help us avoid a lot of unwanted attention. Generally with stuff like this the best way to proceed is "Legal until they ask us to stop"

If we're using the names of their models/armies/colors they'll pretty much always have the right to ask us to knock it off...we could get around it by using different names, but it just looks chincy and isn't really worth the effort. So long as we aren;t making money off it or causing harm to their reputation/image I doubt they;ll give us any trouble over it.

 

[Hudson]

thats where i think the shopping list will come in handy (still being free of course) i mean we're basically telling people what GW item to buy so that might actually help with having it not so much as GW authorised (althought that would be cool) but having it signed off by them

 

[squeek]

They are very unlikely to go as far as authorising it I think, as soon as they stamp their approval on something they bascially associate themselves with all that we do, and all that we say. So I think the best we can hope for is for them to leave us alone quietly

 

[Hudson]

yea true lol plus that way it would be HAVING to chrage for it i cant imagine GW wanting to give anything out like this for free lol

 

[Galahad]

Best to stay under their radar, I say ;-)

 

[Syph]

I noticed that the GW have colour swatches for their paints on their site. I wonder if it's worth me sitting and downloading every colour and list them in an Excel table or something to use as a reference when I do the Photoshopping of LVix's drawings?

Another thing I could look at actually is if there's a way (and I bet there is) of creating new colour palette in Photoshop based on the GW range which I could then give to the other 'Shoppers here?

 

[squeek]

We already have colour codes for GW and Vallejo paints that B&C worked out; here. We do need to experiment with creating the colour codes from the websites so that we can legimately use the colours; I am not keen on using them without knowing how they got them. It would also allow us to rip colours for Reaper Triads and other brands in the future.

Photoshop wise I am not sure that it would help having the paint colours as we were planning on all colouring being done by the end user in the programme itself. If you take a look at Durinthiam's example here it might help to explain what I mean. We need the models to be cut in to individual items, for example the shield, and shaded; Durinthiam used different layers of opacity with the shading brushes so that it works with white or black as well.

The idea is that each object is cutout by drawing a vector over the top, cleaned up with basic symmetry, etc and then shaded so that when the programme that is being written applies a colour to the object the shading works no matter what colour is used. Apologies if my explanation is a little untechnical in places, it isn't really my forte! If you are unsure of what I mean please say as Durinthiam and stevenl have a better technical grasp than me so could help explain further.