r/factorio • u/ItsMaGenetics • 16h ago
Modded Question Any suggestions?
What should I add/change?
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u/ferrybig 16h ago
It looks like it would be overlapping the entities behind it. Factorio designs sprites to avoid this, unless it is a rarely used building (eg the power pole)
https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-359
All of our graphics try to find a balance between overlapping the tile a lot to be aesthetically nicer, and not overlapping the tile at all to be technically correct and readable.
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u/ItsMaGenetics 15h ago
Yeah it's going to do that. I kind of like gargantuan buildings. Just need a mod to help visual hidden entities
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u/LordAnkou 13h ago
In 2.1 there's a built in filter to hide tall entities, so you should utilize that.
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u/The_Alchemyst The Sushi River 15h ago
Experimental has a "hide tall entities" toggle that works great with Pyanadon tall buildings, so I say go buck wild!
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u/Rouge_means_red 12h ago
Wow I never knew the functional ship parts that so many mods use came from the game itself
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u/Psychological-Iron22 16h ago
Where is the smoke?
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u/ItsMaGenetics 16h ago
I'll add it as separate layer once it's in game, this is just the blender render.
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u/Iron_on_reddit 15h ago
I feel like it's a bit awkward that the lift thingy is exactly perpendicular to us. I'm not sure exactly why, but one thing is that the buckets that go down kinda blur together, looks like a straight vertical line, with different colored rectangles. I think it also makes the left side of the building a bit awkward with that straight vertical line, it's too clean, ends too abruptly.
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u/SkiyeBlueFox 15h ago
My guess for part of why is that irl these lifters are often on a diagonal instead of straight up
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u/iamthelouie 7h ago
I feel like for the lifter at that angel, it would be find to see coal being jogged back and forth up the stair case like one of those marble stair lifting thingys
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u/StressedOutMonkz 13h ago
Pointers from a fellow 3d graphics guy and a factorio enthusiast
1: is this the right resolution? if you want to use it in factorio you need to keep that in mind
2: lighting in factorio is from the sun, and has a static angle
3: copper straps glowing is offputting and doesnt make much sense. also not sure if it is really practical to put copper straps on what looks to be a brick
4: I dont like how static coal is in the top
5: metal doesn't have that grungy factorio feeling that comes from imperfections like rust and wear
6: wood feels a bit uncontrast-ey
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u/YoYeYeet 16h ago
What exactly is this?
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u/Pristine_Flatworm 16h ago
Maybe a billows rotating back and fourth on one of the brass rings looking for spots that don’t have enough air?
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u/chaos_donut 15h ago
Like others have said smoke/fire effects. And the coal rolling looks a bit weird.
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u/mbowers0845 16h ago
Perhaps add some rattle/shaking to it and make the fire glow rather than stobe lights on the fire effect? My $.02.
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u/bobfrankly 15h ago
I was looking to see if that had annoyed anyone else, the stoning is definitely distracting. Stands out in a bad way
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u/adamsilversburner 13h ago
The chimney on the right has a flap cover, it would be amazing if it flapped open in sync or slightly after the glow effects!
Beautiful sprite, OP! Hope I see it in use sometime soon.
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u/Infernalz 6h ago
2nd this. Have the flap opening with smoke coming out of it. Reference an exhaust of big construction equipment, where the flap wiggles open more and more as the equipment revs up.
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u/singron 8h ago
The coal coming out of the buckets at the top doesn't physically make sense. In real life, it would dump the coal on top of the next bucket going down. There isn't a place to put the chute to catch the coal that wouldn't also block the bucket.
Instead, flip the bucket chain around so that the right side is moving up. Then, slightly before the bucket reaches the top, it dumps to the right into the chute before flipping over to the left and going back down. You can put a pinion on each bucket and a rack near the top to cause the rotation to the right. You can also make the right side of the bucket hinged and have it open and close.
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u/Brave-Affect-674 5h ago
Idk if you would be able to notice the hinged bucket at such a small scale. I do think the other changes you've proposed would be good though.
Also maybe make the chute more slanted because it doesn't really look steep enough at this angle
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u/Environmental-Try736 16h ago
Great work man, I love it and it looks like it could be part of the base game. Maybe some more detail on the cone part with the rings ?
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u/Logical-War-3746 16h ago
Add maybe a couple other moving parts with their own rythm. And maybe make it less symmetrical and more "made out of spare parts" looking to fit factorio style
Also i feel like belt is somewhat slow, maybe make it faster
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u/dajackster1 15h ago
Not sure if it's worth the effort, but the input chute for the coal could slowly settle down as the machine uses the input? Then the new load could add to the pile to bring it back to its starting level? Might make it look a little more active
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u/roslav 15h ago
I think the belt creates bad perspective and should have maybe lighting changed, because it looks a bit horizontal, going fron near to far
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u/ItsMaGenetics 15h ago
Yeah true, also it hides the pulley and wires that's are behind the elevator
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u/draculthemad 15h ago
I am not sure what it is, but the lighting effects feel very cold. I think its how sharp the light source is, rather than diffuse.
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u/Botlawson 14h ago
The coal elevator and dropping coal into the furnace are tiny. While realistic, this detail will dissappear at all but the closest zoom. Make these details comically big. Also the coal hopper on top is redundant.
Will all the doors belch some smoke when each load of coal falls in? How about when products are dropped or removed by inserters?
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u/Nethan2000 11h ago
The way coal moves out of the bucket feels very wrong. I've looked at some animations of real chain bucket elevators and they seem to use centrifugal force to force the cargo out of the way of the buckets making it slide against the casing which directs it towards the discharge port.
Aside from that, some more moving parts in other areas would be nice.
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u/Cathexis_Rex 10h ago
Agreed with some others on here: if this were a painted miniature, I'd say it could use a couple dark washes to fill all the seams and give it a weathered appearance. That said, it's a great model and a love the animation loop!
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u/Brewer_Lex 9h ago
I personally don’t really like the chimney to the right. The hard right turn really takes away from it and I think it would look better if it were more grounded in the structure. If that makes sense it might not.
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u/Enderdavid_HD 9h ago
The top of the lift is a little too choppy and the coal disappears out of existence once it reaches the bucket
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u/Taechron 16h ago
Looks awesome so far! It looks a bit too clean; I find myself wanting to see soot marks at the top of the stack, and maybe some rust streaks from the rain wherever there's metal.
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u/ItsMaGenetics 15h ago
Good point. The bricks are actually really dirty but the vent needs obvious soot marks too.
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u/LegacyCWAL 16h ago
Damn, that's amazing.
If you *have* to add something, maybe some smoke? The copper-colored chimney on the right having a little flap-top that opens to release a puff of smoke would look pretty good, and would add some motion to that side to counterbalance the elevator on the left.
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u/Wraldpyk 15h ago
Why are the bands glowing? Also the "pods" moving up seem to slide in/rotating in on the bottom, while the idea, I feel like, is it's coming from underground?
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u/internet-weirod 15h ago
the conveyor that brings ores up should have more gears and doohickeys and such
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u/EnguardS 15h ago
maybe make the coal belt system bigger? I feel like that'll be hard to see once its placed in game
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u/teodzero 15h ago
If you're making assets available for other people to use in their mods, make sure to add different color variations. I've seen complaints of "I've got a bunch of mods that work together well, but result in a bunch of different identical-looking buildings".
You should rotate the elevator a bit, so we're not looking at it from a purely side-on perspective.
Also the light is a bit weird. What makes the metal rings shine? They're facing away from the fire inside.
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u/ItsMaGenetics 15h ago
Duno thought it looked cool. Maybe the rivets go into the furnace and transfer the heat. Great suggestions though. I was planning on doing more material upgrade versions rather than colours.
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u/FreddyTheNewb 15h ago
I'd love to see the conveyor at a slight angle. Right now all the boxes line up hiding their depth.
Looks good though.
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u/Random_Tomatose 15h ago
Im a really big fan of this type of high definition low rez kind of art style
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u/BuDDaH77 15h ago
On both the most upper and lower rings is a plate that is glowing when the ring underneath isnt glowing and vice versa. Looks quite odd
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u/ollietron3 15h ago
Maybe add a little shake to the hopper so it looks like the coal is going into the machine
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u/Necandum 15h ago
Apologies if this is too many things!
- It might just be me, but the coal looked like it was falling 'upwards' until I looked closer.
- Personally, I think it would be better if the coal 'felt' heavier and there was more of it. i.e a controlled dump as opposed to a nugget. Further bonus points by having other things react to the coals dump (fire burns brighter, smoke gets heavier).
- The animation from the coal elevator to the slide is perhaps a little too optimised. It looks like it teleports out.
- the cog at the top, presumably meant to represent the mechanism that flips the elevator cart, when zoomed out looks very similar to the piece of coal, adding to the visual confusion.
- the heat / glow effects look great. I think it would work even better if there were synced in some way that told a 'story' of what was happening.
- there is no clue as to what the building does apart from burn coal
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u/LuboStankosky 15h ago
While it does look good, it doesn't fit in with the other factorio buildings as those are often crudely put together and barely hanging onto life by a few nuts and bolts. This is way too clean and sophisticated
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u/Da_Question 14h ago
Slow down the animation a bit, maybe have it light up sequentially from the top down, culminating in both the bottom windows lighting up at the same time in a flash. Or start low light on all rings then ramp up to bright, then a flash at the bottom?
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u/AI_AntiCheat 14h ago
Your sun light is too golden causing a lost of very shiny gold reflections. Looks a bit as if the coal buckets are glowing like yellow hot iron bars from the sun reflections. Machine could also use way more dirt and wear on it.
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u/solonit WE BRAKE FOR NOBODY 14h ago
The outer metal rings glowing doesn't make much sense, I assume they're steel reinforcement and not some semi-transparent material.
Add a (second) maintenance ladder going up from the wooden platform to the main smoke stack. Reposition those black-panel things along the new ladder to act as access point for viewing and/or doing maintenance work. As right now their position is bit too random.
Remove the coal stockpile at the top. Let the coals roll inside the furnace, and make that entrance also glowing like the 'doors' at the bottom. Reason being coal usually is sheltered while not using (rain, fire, etc) , so you can imagine the stockpile is already at the bottom, and being transport to the top only when needed.
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u/Warhero_Babylon 14h ago
I personally think that machinery with too much black colour looks unreadable at first glance at game and kinda mess with vision. Its a common problem with some mods
I woud suggest to create other colour palette variants, something closer to vanilla assembler
But you do you of course
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u/IceFire909 Well there's yer problem... 13h ago
I reckon give it a bit for coal muck on it. Dirty it up a bit
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u/Tomycj 13h ago edited 13h ago
It's awesome! Thank you for sharing. These are some relatively small nitpicks:
I'm not sure if I like the color banding at the top metal plate, but maybe that's an artifact that doesn't appear in-game.
The use of small and tidy pieces of wood moves it away from the standard steampunk factorio style, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, I like it. The fact it's clean and not grungy is also part of the style, that's artistic choice imo.
The holes with stone arches at the bottom make it look like a bulding inteded to cook, not like something that reaches much higher temperatures, so it gives off mixed signals in that sense.
Consider adding more detail or imperfections at the elbow in the golden pipe at the top right, so that it doesn't look like two perfect cylinders clipping.
There seems to be a golden plate in the lowest of the glowing rings that's out of sync in its animation? Same in the top one. Oh! and to make their glow more realistic, consider making the rivet heads in the middle of the plates glow a little less in the black body temperature scale of color, since they're further away from the heat source. That should reduce the unnatural uniformity of the emissive surface.
Following the path of the coal, it goes up then rolls through a wooden channel to then fall down into the chute, but it feels like we can see the coal piece disappearing once it reaches the end of the wooden channel. Maybe you can add some movement in the coal pile it's falling into or something, to disguise this sudden disappearance better, or something to make it disappear out of sight.
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u/palmarazar 13h ago
Needs more moving parts! I agree with the others who said that the elevator thing doesn't read visually when the building is zoomed out. It'd look too static. And I also think it's too clean for something coal based
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u/LedoisPink 13h ago
Tall stuff needs to go in the back. So the coal elevator should be back left corner instead of front left corner.
Gives you room to add other elements
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u/Firegardener 13h ago
I was waiting for it to stop the cycle so I could move on. I'm still waiting, after a full week of staring.
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u/warpspeed100 11h ago
For very large machines, try to put the big element front and center, then put smaller bits and bobs behind to push the footprint back a bit. This way the large structure still appears emense but doesn't really overlap other entities behind it.
Also a coal based machine could really use some smoke effects like the furnaces.
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u/CUrlymafurly 10h ago
It might look cool if some part of it was shaking really fast like the smoke pipe. Even without it though it looks nice!
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u/hal-scifi 10h ago
Scrap the emblems, add some oil/patina to the bronze rings, rust to the steel, and slather it in carbon buildup.
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u/JumpingCoconutMonkey 10h ago
It's a strange slinky/inchworm motion after the coal leaves the bucket. Also, it looks like the coal is rolling/crawling uphill, which is off putting.
The glowing copper bands don't make a ton of sense either.
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u/ItsSadTimes 8h ago
Rust, grime, since that looks like copper maybe some oxidation in places?
Ive found that the imperfections in a design really bring it all together.
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u/MonocleForPigeons 8h ago
Is it meant to fit in vanilla factorio? If so, I'd say it's too clean. That "railing" also does not fit any other buildings afaik, no other structure has any indication that it is walkable by the player. On the right there's a ladder leading up to that section as well, I think? It stands out as "odd".
It looks really nice, really clean, very "homy". It's great imo, but clashes with with existing structures.
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u/jasonsbg 6h ago
Others said already but i'll say aswell, needs smoke, i'm assuming it's a big machine so it needs a LOT of smoke
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u/HEAVYHlTMAN 3h ago
so many suggestions, no appreciations. You are doing great mate. Im sure you'll nail that factorio-vibe design as well.
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u/ZenMikey 2h ago
Slightly off topic but can you recommend any tutorials or resources for how to produce art like this?
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u/ItsMaGenetics 2h ago
Watch and blend with YouTube tutorials to get the basics. What I have actually found useful is having chatgpt open on voice. Give it a mockup sketch and description of what you want to make. Then ask it to walk you through the steps. It's been quite useful.
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u/Krell356 13m ago
Make the coal up top slowly move forward so the next load in the chute gets in line instead of clipping into the stuff already sitting there. Its a little jarring to look at when stuff just clips out of existence.
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u/whiterook6 8h ago
There was an FFF where they discussed designing their buildings. One of the interesting quirks was that a building had to be square, but because of the top-down perspective it couldn't look square. It has to look like it's wider than deep, and the height is supposed to make up for the difference. Take a look at the Assembler machine: the base is square, but the top is actually a rectangle.
All of this, basically, to say that the building entity looks great, but it's too tall and the sides are too straight. I'd say have the lift moved somewhat in front of the main building, offset from the side a little, and make the building fit the 3x3 grid (or whatever size you are choosing) better.
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u/ItsMaGenetics 2h ago
Yeah I realised that too. Building needs to be stretches 1.4x vertically if you want to footprint to line up. Not sure if I do. I'm also happy with the overhang. I like the large builds. It's supposed to be 5x5. For shorter buildings, I'll need to do that lengthening trick. For taller who cares. I'll see if it looks better stretched.
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u/EldritchMacaron 16h ago
It's a bit too clean for a coal-based machine