I think shades like those on the wings are caused by the normalmap. But I thought I had made that completely neutral too. As I made them by hand I might have mesed up, and the mapping to the uvs might not be continuous.
Anyway, I just arrived at the bottom of the learning curve, and in a few days I can probably do much better. E.g. the wings now are razor sharp, which makes them invisible when viewed edge on. (You would still see the other, but it still looks unnatural.) This can be avoided by not making them completely planar, and give them a thickness. (The need two sides anyway, as all surfaces act like one-way mirrors.)
I have created some 3d pieces with the piece-creation tool I am developing. It can now also make elliptic and excentric levels. (But still all strictly horizontal.) This increases the possibilities. It also creates the maps, as uncompressed Windows BMP files. (But with the Linux command 'convert' I can then turn them into JPG. On Windows I would do that with MS Paint.)
At the moment it still creates a completely neutral normalmap, and it uses false colors (red, green and blue) for the diffusemap. Teese colors alternate between horizontal sections of the piece, so that you can use a drawing program to fill them with the desired colors. With a sufficiently advanced drawing program you might even create smooth color gradient. (But I don't seem to have such a program; GIMP is either very primitive or I don't know how to use it.) Of course the generation tool could very easily create the color gradients, if it only knew what colors to use.
I suppose we could derive a mapping tilt-ange to color from the existing Jocly pieces, and then let the program smoothen those with a gradient when the angle between neighboring surfaces is small (but keep discontinuous jumps when the angle becomes acute). The same way it should do it for the normalmap.
I made some new pieces, which I intend to use for the Shogi generals and the Omega Champion. I currently replaced the N, B and Q of the Staunton set with those ( http://hgm.nubati.net/jocly/jocly-master/examples/browser/control.html?game=classic-chess ). With a little improvement of the maps I think they would be very acceptable. I still intend to paint stars on the caps of the generals to better distinguish those from each other.
As for the Phoenix: I am quite satisfied depicting the Phoenix as a Stork. (After all, it was a mythical bird, so no one knows exactly how it looked. But it was not a bird of prey, so it would not have looked like an Eagle!) Like I already do in 3d (even though the Stork there still needs some work). I would try to match that in the 2d graphic. Even if it means I have to draw it myself. Using an Elephant for Phoenix strikes me as horrid. For the Kirin I am quite happy with the Giraffe, which is good quality both in 3d and 2d. (And in 3d it is about equally tall as my Stork, which is also nice.)
I am not sure if the representation has to be constant over games. In Makromachy I used the Bow for the Phoenix, because that fits with the theme of the flying pieces. I can always use the excuse there that it is not a normal Phoenix, as it blocks flying pieces, onlike any other normal piece.
I think shades like those on the wings are caused by the normalmap. But I thought I had made that completely neutral too. As I made them by hand I might have mesed up, and the mapping to the uvs might not be continuous.
Anyway, I just arrived at the bottom of the learning curve, and in a few days I can probably do much better. E.g. the wings now are razor sharp, which makes them invisible when viewed edge on. (You would still see the other, but it still looks unnatural.) This can be avoided by not making them completely planar, and give them a thickness. (The need two sides anyway, as all surfaces act like one-way mirrors.)
I have created some 3d pieces with the piece-creation tool I am developing. It can now also make elliptic and excentric levels. (But still all strictly horizontal.) This increases the possibilities. It also creates the maps, as uncompressed Windows BMP files. (But with the Linux command 'convert' I can then turn them into JPG. On Windows I would do that with MS Paint.)
At the moment it still creates a completely neutral normalmap, and it uses false colors (red, green and blue) for the diffusemap. Teese colors alternate between horizontal sections of the piece, so that you can use a drawing program to fill them with the desired colors. With a sufficiently advanced drawing program you might even create smooth color gradient. (But I don't seem to have such a program; GIMP is either very primitive or I don't know how to use it.) Of course the generation tool could very easily create the color gradients, if it only knew what colors to use.
I suppose we could derive a mapping tilt-ange to color from the existing Jocly pieces, and then let the program smoothen those with a gradient when the angle between neighboring surfaces is small (but keep discontinuous jumps when the angle becomes acute). The same way it should do it for the normalmap.
I made some new pieces, which I intend to use for the Shogi generals and the Omega Champion. I currently replaced the N, B and Q of the Staunton set with those ( http://hgm.nubati.net/jocly/jocly-master/examples/browser/control.html?game=classic-chess ). With a little improvement of the maps I think they would be very acceptable. I still intend to paint stars on the caps of the generals to better distinguish those from each other.
As for the Phoenix: I am quite satisfied depicting the Phoenix as a Stork. (After all, it was a mythical bird, so no one knows exactly how it looked. But it was not a bird of prey, so it would not have looked like an Eagle!) Like I already do in 3d (even though the Stork there still needs some work). I would try to match that in the 2d graphic. Even if it means I have to draw it myself. Using an Elephant for Phoenix strikes me as horrid. For the Kirin I am quite happy with the Giraffe, which is good quality both in 3d and 2d. (And in 3d it is about equally tall as my Stork, which is also nice.)
I am not sure if the representation has to be constant over games. In Makromachy I used the Bow for the Phoenix, because that fits with the theme of the flying pieces. I can always use the excuse there that it is not a normal Phoenix, as it blocks flying pieces, onlike any other normal piece.