Nootrac4571 Posted February 26, 2019 Because of a reason, I'm currently very interested in Adrian Carmack's original work pipeline for turning the raw digital images of his and Don Punchatz' physical models into useable sprites, and I've spent a little time today trying to reverse engineer the process. I started with the images from John Romero's big image dump of work-in progress sprites. They're really interesting, but they're all very messy, upscaled and blurred versions of the actual scans Adrian Carmack worked with back in the day. So I took a few of the images, and downscaled them back to the original resolution, being careful to choose the right sample pixels so that the resultant images are as close to the original scans as I could get. I'm confident that the arrangements of pixels are 100% perfect, but there's an unavoidable vagueness as to the exact hue of each individual pixel. But it's good enough for what I'm trying to do. Then I compared the actual in-game sprites to each of them, to see exactly how much pixel editing Id did on them before they became the sprites we all know and love. Here are my results, for a single frame of the Cyberdemon, Baron of Hell, and Revenant: Cyberdemon: So: The head has obviously been significantly redrawn to make its features more clear. Elsewhere, there's been some slight re-positioning of the legs/lower half, and some major pixel-art editing of the hand, rocket launcher, metal hoof, and exposed wires on the shoulder. But nearly everything else is very close to the raw scan: There's a bunch of minor clean-up, and obviously some palette switching, but it's recognisably the same image. Baron of Hell: Again, the head's been redrawn to make it clearer, and a couple of bits have been slightly shifted around. There are more significant edits though: The legs and forearms have been completely redrawn: Likely to make it better match Adrian Carmack's original concept sketch for the Baron, which has the same pose. There's a lot of the original image which recognisably survives, but there's also a lot of pixel art going on here. Revenant: Oooh, blimey, this one must have been a total bastard to make. The head's been redrawn, which is to be expected, but it's not the only part: The arms and legs have obviously been traced over the photographic reference to determine their rough positions and shapes, but that's all: they've been completely redrawn. The hips and waist have been redrawn and also significantly repositioned. The only part of the sprite that survives intact from the raw image is the breastplate, and even that's been extended backwards to give him a thicker torso. Basically almost nothing of the original image survives into the final sprite: he's more pixel art than he is digitised photo. He must have taken ages to make, bearing in mind that this is just one of his 70-ish sprites. Aaaanyway, just thought some of you might find this a bit interesting. 18 Share this post Link to post
elend Posted February 26, 2019 Seeing this now, I am still surprised how faithful the sprites are to the photos. To me they always looked more like pixelart than just digitized sprites. I think the most time saving thing about this process is the rotations and all the different poses. It gives the artist a way better template to work from. 4 Share this post Link to post
Nootrac4571 Posted February 26, 2019 3 minutes ago, elend said: Seeing this now, I am still surprised how faithful the sprites are to the photos. To me they always looked more like pixelart than just digitized sprites. I think the most time saving thing about this process is the rotations and all the different poses. It gives the artist a way better template to work from. I've only got a few images to work from - the Arch Vile is the obvious thing I've missed so far - but it does seem significant that so far Carmack's own clay models underwent only slight to medium pixel edits outside of the important fiddly bits like faces and hands, while the Don Punchatz models - at least the Doom 2 ones - seem to have been almost completely redrawn, using the video images simply as a reference to trace over. 0 Share this post Link to post
kb1 Posted February 27, 2019 I'm no artist, but from your comparisons, I would be more hesitant to claim that those features were "redrawn", vs. "traced over" and "tweaked". I'm sure that Adrian would have had to touch most of the pixels anyway, if nothing else, then to choose a proper color from Doom's limited palette. Just choosing the closest color is typically not sufficient. There are a lot of mathematical ways to determine "best matching color", with slightly different results, but even the best match is not always the most desirable result. Except for the Revenant, the models were not colored. I actually like the Revenant's original color scheme (I think there's a early Doom2 box cover back side that shows a Revenant that's colored more like the photo above.) I think the Revenant's original color made him look dirty, blood-stained, and rotten :) Thanks for your interesting comparisons. I'm thinking that, to someone with Adrian's talents, redrawing features vs. tweaking are just about the same thing! I think that, out of all the sprites I've ever seen, Adrian's are among the best. That retouching is absolutely necessary - a straight-forward scan doesn't work on it's own, and I'm not really sure why. It has something to do with the edges, maybe. Also the light and shadows. And, finally, Adrian is able to make recognizable features with only a handful of pixels. What a master! He did edit the images, but, from the looks of it, most of his editing was limited to doing his magic to get the most out of every pixel. 1 Share this post Link to post
chemo Posted February 27, 2019 I think the problem with the original, unedited Revenant sprite is that the photo shoots didn't convert well to DOOM's limited color palette, so the finer details like the blood and guts are harder to make out. The modified Revenant sprite is a bit more simple, but it conveys the intended design more effectively. 0 Share this post Link to post
Nootrac4571 Posted February 27, 2019 2 hours ago, kb1 said: I'm no artist, but from your comparisons, I would be more hesitant to claim that those features were "redrawn", vs. "traced over" and "tweaked". I'm sure that Adrian would have had to touch most of the pixels anyway, if nothing else, then to choose a proper color from Doom's limited palette. Just choosing the closest color is typically not sufficient. There are a lot of mathematical ways to determine "best matching color", with slightly different results, but even the best match is not always the most desirable result. I've used some pretty arbitrary language here, but I don't mean "traced over" to be a dismissive or reductive term, or for it to contrast with "redrawn" - actually they mean nearly the same thing: that Adrian Carmack used the raw scans as a guideline for how a part of a sprite should look, but mostly redrew it by hand - over the top of the original - rather than cleaning up or retouching the existing pixel data. This distinction is pretty clear to me: compare the Cyberdemon's torso, which certainly required some careful colour matching and modification on a pixel-by pixel basis, but still very clearly matches the raw scan, with the Revenant's abdomen, which I think is clearly pretty much a total redraw, "traced" over the original. Does that make sense? 2 hours ago, chemo said: I think the problem with the original, unedited Revenant sprite is that the photo shoots didn't convert well to DOOM's limited color palette, so the finer details like the blood and guts are harder to make out. I reckon it's the palette for sure, but also the level of detail. Looking at photos of Punchatz' Revenant maquette in particular, it has way too much detail to be naively nearest-neighbour downscaled to the tiny resolution that Doom sprites are at without ending up looking like a bit of a garbled mess. Carmack's clay models were chunkier and simpler (not necessarily in a bad way!) as well as being less colourful, and so better survived the digitisation process. Or at least, required less dramatic pixel artwork adjustments to make them into functioning sprites. 0 Share this post Link to post
kb1 Posted February 28, 2019 21 hours ago, Nootrac4571 said: I've used some pretty arbitrary language here, but I don't mean "traced over" to be a dismissive or reductive term, or for it to contrast with "redrawn" - actually they mean nearly the same thing: that Adrian Carmack used the raw scans as a guideline for how a part of a sprite should look, but mostly redrew it by hand - over the top of the original - rather than cleaning up or retouching the existing pixel data. This distinction is pretty clear to me: compare the Cyberdemon's torso, which certainly required some careful colour matching and modification on a pixel-by pixel basis, but still very clearly matches the raw scan, with the Revenant's abdomen, which I think is clearly pretty much a total redraw, "traced" over the original. Does that make sense? Again, I'm no artist, so the process fascinates and eludes me. Looking at the before and after, I can imagine applying some color filters to the original scan to get it close, then spot detailing/edge enhancement. Then, finally, redrawing small sections that didn't translate well, like you mentioned with the Rev's abdomen. I only say this because, to me, it looks like there's a clear 1-to-1 relationship with the majority of pixels from the before to after shots, suggesting that most of the final sprite's pixels came through untouched (except for the color filtering, of course). Then again, it seems like you have a more keen eye for such things. What do you think about the original Rev's color scheme? I'd love to see a "restored to original" version of the Revenant in action! 0 Share this post Link to post
SaladBadger Posted February 28, 2019 hrm, the Revenant being heavily redrawn might explain why the frames have a fair amount of inconsistency (the skull in particular changes color a lot), but I can't blame Adrian given that it would have been a pretty big amount of work. At least there was any reference at all for it. 0 Share this post Link to post
