I'm working on a mod that adds sub-types

[knotty anchor]

ooh what is your process for creating the ores? it looks really good

i've tried to make a custom ore sprite before (for ice deposits) and it doesn't look very good 😅

[raw smelt]

I had Gemini AI create the base sprites and photoshopped them for a while. Gemini doesn't know how to output transparent pixels. I'll post my prompt along with the raw output in a little bit.

I use Affinity for image editing. It has a useful feature for slicing sprite sheets out of textures. I used that to get images of individual rocks to make the harvested ore items. You can import images as references in Affinity so I can easily regenerate the item sprites whenever I recolor the base ore texture. It just takes a lot of clicking

[raw smelt]

AI Prompt: "Can you create a new sprite sheet similar to the uploaded example that depicts siderite iron ore? It's difficult to describe what colors siderite rocks are. They have a lot of impurities and this creates a varied appearance. They are often yellowish-brown to dark brown in color. They sometimes have small vomit-colored crystals growing on the surface. The rocks are shaped rather planely and generally have a rough matte surface, but sometimes they have streaks of quartz that add shine in unexpected places.

The sprite sheet is arranged in a grid. The sprites on the top represent richer ore and it gets more depleted as you go down. The sprites must not leave their grid cell. Use a solid white background. Use clean edges between the sprites and background to make it easier to remove the background in postprocessing steps. Follow the reference images layout and style."

[knotty anchor]

oh i was hoping it wasn't ai haha

oh well

[raw smelt]

I tried using the real factorio ore texture in the prompt but it has a bunch of little pebbles and dust which were really annoying to add partial transparency for. So I removed it from the base picture and used it in all AI prompts. Then the AI didn't make the dust.

[raw smelt]

Well, you asked how I did it. I still spent several hours retouching it and getting it game ready. There's still an art to it.

Here's the AI's raw output for that prompt. My main issue with it is that it looks way too much like normal stone. I'm not totally satisfied with my current version but it's good enough to start working on the other ores.

Here is the game-ready sprite sheet

When photography was invented it shook the art world. Up until that point, art was focused on creating realistic images of things and people spent lifetimes mastering it. But now with the invention of the camera anyone could do it with a the push of a button. People thought art was dead. It wasn't. It adapted and people invented new styles and ideas that couldn't be captured by a camera. It will happen again.

[knotty anchor]

okay