Shipbucket

With deep regret I need to raise an issue regarding works by Olekit24.
That matter has been only now noticed by me, and such delay is, unfortunately, sign of my failure in oversight of what I'm uploading, for which I want to apologize all Shipbucketeers.
The problem is, that Olekit24's work are horribly dotted by artifacts and colors sometimes alter in strange ways etc.
(he also has problems with positioning drawings correctly on template, with anti-aliasing and few other details, but for the most part I was willing to consider it something not horribly important, thanks to huge - and, had there be none of the issues mentioned above, quite valuable - output of Olekit in a rather neglected area of SB, which is merchant ships - but noticing now how otherwise messy these drawings are, my level of tolerance got much lower).
Below is a sample of Olekit's work in false colors. A relatively extreme one, I admit (though all 20 the drawings of this class look similar), but a random check of other of his works showed me that most of them have at least several stray pixels.

I'm making this post to:
1) warn everybody from using Olekit24's work (for kitbash/modification/whatever - of course it's perfectly possible, but huge clean-up would be needed);
2) ask for suggestions what to do with the works in the archive (and there's nearly 460 of them) - they rather can't be left like this, but removing them (which I'd rather not do without "OK" from Powers That Be) would leave huge gap in our database.
Of course, it would be most perfect if Olekit would clean-up all his works (and orient them properly on templates, and so on, and so on), but in any case it would be a massive and time-consuming undertaking, so what in the meantime?

Hmm... Indeed unfortunate. I would remind everyone that to part of the style rules and preparing the works for uploading, A clean up and general finishing checks are also required.
Id suggest you Contact Olekit24 and see if you two can come up some restoration plan and work to find out where the proplem comes and how it could be avoided in the future.

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Shipbucket mainsite, aka "The Archive"
New AU project "Aravala"

@Gollevainen
I wrote to Olekit, of course, but recently he's online here bit infrequently.
I'll try (gradually, as I have other things to do as well, including some Shipbucket-related) to check his works more closely and identify which are mostly ok (like, just several stray pixels that can be cleaned up in a minute, or maybe no issues at all), and which are very problematic (like the one above) and need major rework.

Btw. on a separate note - the manner in which Olekit (but not only him) is shading hulls is not exactly "the intended way" - such entries are somewhat tolerated, but the matter is being raised frequently over and over again. Perhaps it would be good if that matter was clarified in Style Rules?

Yes this propably is most unfortunate but also the only way to proceed. If you are feeling overwhelmed in this work with archive, I can try to stir up the discord staff to start taking more responsibility, if such help would be needed
In this id rather not make any inclusion of the rules before an actuall proper hullshading rules could be defined and ratified accordingly. Then I fear that a harhs rejection policies should be installed to quide people to actually follow the stylelines and just not upload stuff that isent par with them. And naturally instruct the artist to correct the work.

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Shipbucket mainsite, aka "The Archive"
New AU project "Aravala"

Thank You! At the moment I think I can manage with the archive itself. But - particularly in light of this case - I'd appreciate if "Senior Members" (discord staff, community managers, but also "other users with long experience") tried to participate more actively in looking for similar issues (stray pixels, proper templates, anti-aliasing, gradients etc. etc.) Like here - I didn't noticed if for a long time, but nobody else noticed it either.

Sure, it's up to You and Colosseum to decide. I just thought that perhaps it wouldn't be bad to start a discussion, because the matter is recurring one.
In any case, if some specific standards were to be formally established, then I guess at least 2 versions would need to be allowed - the "original" flat-ish shading (when sources are insufficient to represent accurate curvature of the hull) and the "sophisticated" one (most likely based on 45-degree principle). And of course some kind of tutorial would have to be provided (genuine enforcement would be IMHO quite realistically possible, as the heated discussion few weeks ago in the FD AU4 thread shows, but it's much easier when it's possible to quote "Style Guide rule 123.4.5" rather than just being able to say merely "usually it was done this-and-this way")

This proplem is tricky in sense, that it would require all drawings to be examined in detail, with altering the color values to detect the artifacts. And I agree allready with everyone else, that such procedure would be unattainable by our current force levels and technology. Perhaps in the future we can train AI to do it?
But for all these, and possible stylerule discussion, it would be lot more fluid and encomphasis if you would also join the discord server and its staff, since it is, hate to admit this, the future.

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Shipbucket mainsite, aka "The Archive"
New AU project "Aravala"

Making sure that a 100px-long ship is not posted on 2000x500 template (and in the top-left corner of it, by that), or that ship with hull below waterline shown is on "above the waterline only (1000x330)" template, or that there is anti-aliasing in the caption demands no AI, just a glance. And checking if there are no swarms of stray pixels demands merely copying the drawing to paint, "pouring the paint" into the background areas and looking at it - 2 minutes work (it wouldn't find all of the artifacts, but probably would do it for 95+% of them).

Discord... ugh, I understand what You mean, but this idea sounds just so excruciatingly painful... I need to get used to it for a while, first. :>

You can always mute the degenerate channels and just focus on the topcorner of the channellisting

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Shipbucket mainsite, aka "The Archive"
New AU project "Aravala"

I have also noticed that many parts in shipbucket archive, have occasionally various problems:

- Consisting of a billion of different shades of grey. So when you are going to change color of the part, to mach the ship color... you have to almost redraw the part.
- The white background a part is on, is almost always off white, compared to normal white, so you always have to clean up, before you can past it on the drawing.
- Sometimes shading can be all over the place, so you don't know what you are dealing with (I know most parts is a bi product from drawings people draw, but anyway...)

an example:

- I have replaced white background with orange.
- On the RAM, I have given every different "shade of grey" a different color!



One thing I have noticed is that newly drawn parts, doesn't have these problems, mostly. So I do wonder, is some of these problems, due to:
- software used, and how it's saved
- drawing technique
- file compression, when stored on either photo host and or the forum

So it would be nice for people that are focused on parts, think a little about how many shades of grays is needed on the drawing, or just do a fast check (but parts that is just pulled down from a different ship drawing, they just have to be as they are). Many of those color just disappears with rest of the drawing anyway. (I'll admit, that I also do the same mistake to, I am not perfect either )

Heuhen, which parts (sheets) have those off white backgrounds? I had not spotted that so I will have to check and potentially fix that.

As for the RAM launcher: while some optimisation might be possible, this version has IIRC 6 shades of grey (5 shades, 3 to show base, shade and highlight and 2 more to show details in the shape on the bas colour and on the dark areas, and one grey that is not a shade but represents things like the missile launch hatches)
While that drawing of the Mk 49 is not perfect, and I did change my method of selecting and using shades when drawing parts since then, trying to redo the Mk 49 from this 'acceptable' state is not a priority for me since there are still so many parts to either catalogue, upload, fix or draw for the shipbucket wiki. If you think it should be a priority you are of course welcome to do a redraw yourself or help out with the wiki.

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Drawings are credited with J.Scholtens
I ask of you to prove me wrong. Not say I am wrong, but prove it, because then I will have learned something new.
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