Wow — Rastan cab looks amazing. Especially love the pedestal art to side of coin door. What a treasure. Thanks!
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Solar Warrior (a.k.a. Xain’d Sleena) 4K Vertical Overlay
This was another request by @HyperspaceMadness. I wasn’t familiar game but apparently it had very nice Amiga and Atari ST ports back in the day. It was originally called Xain’d Sleena and developed by Technos/Taito in Japan but was licensed by Memetron and release under the Solar Warrior title in the states.
I was fortunate to be able to find a new old-stock bezel that looked like it had been in storage for the last 35 years on eBay and restored both it and the marquee I found on arcadeartwork.com. It looked like it had been sourced from @MrDo’s site but I couldn’t find it there.
It looks like the original dedicated cabinet had this red and white striped front panel art but I wasn’t able to make out the other cabinet ornamentation because of the low resolution of the only ref pic I could find.
Hope you enjoy.
Here’s a shot of the original cab:
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Oh man, that’s a beauty. Thanks so much, Ars.
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Wow, that came out great! Thanks!
It’s funny, I had never even heard of Memetron, maybe that why it wasn’t very common.
I think the one I played as a kid was Xain’d Sleena and installed in a cocktail machine!
Edit: Although Memetron sounds like it should be a meme generator
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Yeah, I’d never heard of Memetron either, seems like they were just a short lived distributor. Glad you told me about it and I was able to locate the original artwork. That was a great stroke of luck and it’s so cool I was able to preserve this art and make it available for anyone to enjoy when they play the game. 
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Updated Metal Slug 3 Overlay
I updated this overlay using a new scan from an original marquee as well as updates to the other graphic elements with new components and reworked lighting, shading and other effects.
EDIT: Correct a few issues with color etc.
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Looking awesome, I think the new lighting is looking great!
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Thanks @HyperspaceMadness! I know the darker bezel might seem too dim to people when they look at it on a smaller screen, but when you are right in front of a 40+ inch TV I think it’s much easier on the eyes and still plenty bright. Really makes the screen image and marquee pop 
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I think you are right, when I loaded up the Robocop one on the 40+ inch in front of me the bezel area felt quite bright. And you are right it really pulls the screen and marquee forward
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I agree @Dreamstate, it does feel more natural and it’s just a more visually engaging experience overall. Yes, goes without saying these days, most of the components in that overlay were @papashine renders, though I’ve tweaked the levels a bit on them to darken them and fit them into the overall presentation. The speakers were lifted from one of @Thoggo’s overlays and he did those in Photoshop. I’d like a 3D version as well to keep the look more consistent. It was a pretty popular speaker plate.
I do need to fix a couple things on that overlay, will update that pic when I do. Hazards of doing this stuff late at night…
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hey, just caught up with these Overlays @ArsInvictus, they look great! love some metal slug 3, definitely going to make a lot of use out of that one!
I’m working on a test 3D CPO for my current collab with you, with a mind to a) have a 3D template I can use quickly and b) supply the basic elements as a PSD kit for anyone to build their own, along with a bunch of other bits we’ve been talking about - just wondering if the CPO components (sticks, Buttons, etc) is something people might want at two angles or maybe a third as well? (top-down?)
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Beautiful work as always @papashine! I almost feel like I could reach out and touch that thing, sheesh. Would definitely love a set of buttons like that in all 3 angles, top down as you mentioned. If you can provide the joystick ball and buttons in a variety of colors it would be good. I can usually change the color myself, but in some cases it doesn’t come out looking as good as the native render (i.e. white/black).
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Thanks @Dreamstate, i’ll take that as a compliment lol! And thanks @ArsInvictus, I have to say its a lot of fun building stuff like this! If you have a range of colours/colors you want to nominate then let me know - going to do a NeoGeo Panel which should work with all the SNK cab overlays etc
How’s this?
Also, if you guys can look a little closer at the textures etc (slight scratches the red ball of the stick etc) and let me know if they work for you too that would be great 
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Hey @PapaShine, nice stuff! I usually use photographs for my buttons and joysticks (and often the entire CPO), but this would be a great alternative. For a 3D template, it might be worth including various angles for the perspective view, for instance you could space like 10 or more buttons across the CPO to capture a range of perspectives that someone could pick and choose from depending on the layout. If you want to get even more nitpicky, you might consider looking at various button and joystick types – I usually use the standard concave buttons kind of like https://www.pngfuel.com/free-png/nsvqq, which give you some nice reflections. And of course there are bat tops in addition to ball tops.
Another thing that might be worth looking at for a template is adding a smart object layer in the PSD that provides the right perspective, so you could paste a piece of flat art into it and it would match the perspective of the rendered controls. These are all just ideas of course! I think your 45 degree perspective angle looks great, and the flattened perspective would also be very useful. Great stuff.
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Thanks @Thoggo, totally agree 100% - that’s EXACTLY what I’m going for - a smorgasbord of sticks, buttons, angles, positions, and a nice smart object to slide the CPO into - i did try and put real time 3D sticks in to PS for this but they don’t render as nicely (without some user digging!) so this will be a little more work for me but save people plenty of time I hope.
I’ll post progress etc elsewhere to save @ArsInvictus the noise on here! thanks for the feedback everyone. Oh, and I love the concave buttons too, won’t use anything else on my Physical arcade builds!
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PapaShine — beautiful work. I love the inclusion of a few tastefully rendered signs of wear and tear. Authentic looking stuff!
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Looks great @PapaShine. I agree with @Thoggo as well, it would be good to get a range of perspectives at various locations across the panel. I was also thinking we could create a set of standard CP’s for use with games that didn’t have any CPO artwork, or for which we have no ability to locate it. We could then use those for users who prefer the CP over coin door look.
There are also quite a few branded CPO’s from companies like Taito and Capcom that you could use in the same way you plan to for Neo Geo.
In terms of the little signs of wear I think it looks great and adds some subtle realism without being distracting.
In terms of the lighting once again I’d personally prefer more diffuse light and at less of an angle, but would like to get others thoughts on that too.
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Yeah, totally agree @Dreamstate , the light on this is just my rough set up - it always helps to reach a level of realism, then pair it back to get the look I’m after - diffused light all the way 
Just dropped a test/WIP diffused light pass render into that lovely Metal Slug 3 overlay (very rough Comp)- having the direction of the light coming from the screen seems to work well for me, let me know how it works for you guys.
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yes sure, it’s just a quick placeholder, don’t worry! - actually not as deep as it looks, its the edge that’s a little too sharp and it renders weirdly because of it, I’ll swap them all out tomorrow/Thursday when I have more time to polish. Always the issue with showing something in WIP/Dev I’m sure you’ll agree, The main thing today was working out angles and lighting - thanks for the feedback @Dreamstate, also @ArsInvictus, @Thoggo and @benlogan, very much appreciated.
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Wow, that looks amazing @PapaShine! That’s the great thing about 3D rendering, you can get a level of realistic lighting/shading that would be difficult to pull off in Photoshop. I’m sure that takes quite a bit of time to set up and many not be practical on every cabinet, but it looks lovely. I like both versions but the one on the right is probably a bit more practical for showing the CPO art, to the extent you want to do that (perhaps less important for some Neo Geo games).
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