/u/Gametron13
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Big rant warning. TL;DR at bottom.
So we’ve all seen the latest baby mob models and.. they’re pretty bad. I’ve been pretty accepting of most of them up to this point but there’s only so much leeway you can Mojang with these before it becomes mental gymnastics.
So the prime culprits to the outrage are the Baby Villager and Baby Zombie. Their head-to-body ratio is completely off to what it once was as their heads are much bigger than their bodies. (and Baby Zombies don’t fit in one-block gaps anymore but that’s a bug that will be patched later so I’m not worried about it) The Villager in particular also looks identical to the adult model just cut off at the bottom. People have been asking for Mojang to shrink the heads, but there’s a glaring problem that I don’t think enough people are talking about that makes this more complicated than it appears on the surface.
For the past year or so, Mojang has been trying to fix the problem of “pixel consistency”. What is that you ask? It’s the problem of various mob textures having different sized pixels that make them either smaller or bigger than the pixels in block textures. Obviously having different sized pixels is a cardinal sin so Mojang has been tirelessly at work to purge this evil out of the game. (prime example being the retexturing of the Ghast whenever they added the Happy Ghast)
The reason the heads of the Baby Zombie and Villager are so big is not what most people think. A lot of people think Mojang thinks “big head = cute,” but there’s more to it than that. The reason the heads are big compared to the body is because they use an 8x8 texture. The issue of pixel consistency is in full force here because that’s how big the heads have to be to use an 8x8 texture. If you were to shrink the heads it would force them to use 6x6 textures instead, which would reduce the amount of detail you can do for the face and force them to have 1-pixel eyes. Notice how many baby mobs up to this point have 1-pixel eyes. The Baby Zombie and Villager are the first mobs in the bunch to use 2-pixel eyes. (also look at the Baby Piglin texture. 1-pixel eyes are used there too)
1-pixel eyes work well for the baby animals because you can get away with them looking “cute” if you design your textures right. But this does not work for the Villager. You might could get away with the Baby Zombie having 1-pixel eyes, but I doubt it would happen. For the Baby Villager however there’s absolutely no way to make it not look like a demon spawn because it’s a humanoid mob.
And like I said, the issue is not Mojang’s design specifically, but rather because of their insistence on the problem of pixel consistency. And there’s not that many solutions here. To shrink the head you’d either need to make the body bigger, (which would increase the size of the mob itself which comes with its own set of problems) make the head a 6x6 texture, or change every single block in the game to support 24x24 or 32x32 textures so you can shrink your base pixel size so you can shrink the head that way. Or you leave the head like it is and make it look terrible.
By latching onto the idea of pixel consistency being a problem, they’ve created a perfect storm where they’ve painted themselves into a corner. There’s no perfect solution. The pixel-count smaller mobs severely limits their design capabilities because as everyone who’s worked with pixel art knows; smaller things lead to less pixels which lead to less detail. Their only solution at this point that I feel is in their best interest is to abandon the idea of pixel consistency altogether.
TL;DR: Mojang’s design of Baby Zombies and Baby Villagers and them having bigger heads highlights the issues of their fight for “pixel consistency” as it severely limits their design ability to make smaller mobs look good. They would probably be better off abandoning the idea of pixel consistency.
submitted by /u/Gametron13
[link] [comments]
Continue reading...
So we’ve all seen the latest baby mob models and.. they’re pretty bad. I’ve been pretty accepting of most of them up to this point but there’s only so much leeway you can Mojang with these before it becomes mental gymnastics.
So the prime culprits to the outrage are the Baby Villager and Baby Zombie. Their head-to-body ratio is completely off to what it once was as their heads are much bigger than their bodies. (and Baby Zombies don’t fit in one-block gaps anymore but that’s a bug that will be patched later so I’m not worried about it) The Villager in particular also looks identical to the adult model just cut off at the bottom. People have been asking for Mojang to shrink the heads, but there’s a glaring problem that I don’t think enough people are talking about that makes this more complicated than it appears on the surface.
For the past year or so, Mojang has been trying to fix the problem of “pixel consistency”. What is that you ask? It’s the problem of various mob textures having different sized pixels that make them either smaller or bigger than the pixels in block textures. Obviously having different sized pixels is a cardinal sin so Mojang has been tirelessly at work to purge this evil out of the game. (prime example being the retexturing of the Ghast whenever they added the Happy Ghast)
The reason the heads of the Baby Zombie and Villager are so big is not what most people think. A lot of people think Mojang thinks “big head = cute,” but there’s more to it than that. The reason the heads are big compared to the body is because they use an 8x8 texture. The issue of pixel consistency is in full force here because that’s how big the heads have to be to use an 8x8 texture. If you were to shrink the heads it would force them to use 6x6 textures instead, which would reduce the amount of detail you can do for the face and force them to have 1-pixel eyes. Notice how many baby mobs up to this point have 1-pixel eyes. The Baby Zombie and Villager are the first mobs in the bunch to use 2-pixel eyes. (also look at the Baby Piglin texture. 1-pixel eyes are used there too)
1-pixel eyes work well for the baby animals because you can get away with them looking “cute” if you design your textures right. But this does not work for the Villager. You might could get away with the Baby Zombie having 1-pixel eyes, but I doubt it would happen. For the Baby Villager however there’s absolutely no way to make it not look like a demon spawn because it’s a humanoid mob.
And like I said, the issue is not Mojang’s design specifically, but rather because of their insistence on the problem of pixel consistency. And there’s not that many solutions here. To shrink the head you’d either need to make the body bigger, (which would increase the size of the mob itself which comes with its own set of problems) make the head a 6x6 texture, or change every single block in the game to support 24x24 or 32x32 textures so you can shrink your base pixel size so you can shrink the head that way. Or you leave the head like it is and make it look terrible.
By latching onto the idea of pixel consistency being a problem, they’ve created a perfect storm where they’ve painted themselves into a corner. There’s no perfect solution. The pixel-count smaller mobs severely limits their design capabilities because as everyone who’s worked with pixel art knows; smaller things lead to less pixels which lead to less detail. Their only solution at this point that I feel is in their best interest is to abandon the idea of pixel consistency altogether.
TL;DR: Mojang’s design of Baby Zombies and Baby Villagers and them having bigger heads highlights the issues of their fight for “pixel consistency” as it severely limits their design ability to make smaller mobs look good. They would probably be better off abandoning the idea of pixel consistency.
submitted by /u/Gametron13
[link] [comments]
Continue reading...