Duimon - HSM Mega Bezel Graphics and Presets - Feedback and Updates

Yeah it looks pretty good. I think the gamma on the bezel needs to be tweaked, I want the darkened corners of the bezel to almost disappear into the background. (Check the earlier image as reference) but it is really close.

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In the end I think I’m going to take a different approach. Over the last few days I finally figured out how to reliably color my vector bezel I made for the RA Overlays. Since it was a clone of HSM’s default bezel, (More or less) it was stupid simple to lower the bezel and frame opacity to zero and tweak the screen/bezel size and curvature.

So after applying my lighting effects to one of my RA overlays…

This also means, of course, that we can have night versions of the RA overlays. :wink:

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I ran into a little snag doing the colored bezels. I can’t do anything brighter than 50% gray without it getting washed out. :frowning_face:

I will be busy for a while doing a lighter version or two of my original bezel. I am hoping one of them may be actually easier to color than the original. :wink:

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@Duimon thank you for making these graphics for the shaders and overlays, I’m really digging the Dreamcast one - have not gotten around to trying the others just yet. Also thank you for providing the sources for them. It’s helping me learn more about creating them, and giving me things to learn about in GIMP as well. :smile:

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I am glad your enjoying them. Keep in mind that what you are seeing in gimp is just the raster graphics, most of the real magic is in vector. Also, I work in Adobe CC. Some of what you see , (Both vector and raster will load strangely in other software.) looks more difficult than it really is for me.

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OK… who knew that designing a bezel would be so hard! :face_with_raised_eyebrow: (Besides HSM)

Here’s a few shots of colored bezels both day and night running as standard overlays.

You can use the last Night WIP SShot to get an idea how awesome they look in HSM’s shader.

These night files are huge! The lighting effect pushes the color count way up. For this reason they will only be in my HSM repo. They are the standard RA overlays with the edge drop shadow added last. (With the exception of the Wii, that has a different graphic for HSM’s shader) The night mode template will also be in my HSM source repo.

The original overlays with the dark bezels have been replaced by the color ones, the source files contain both bezels in case anyone wants to change back. (I won’t be including both… I am worried about redundancy down the road causing the repo to grow too large.) Not all bezels were changed. If I liked the black I kept it. :grin: (As you can tell by the screenshots)

Now… on to some new art!

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Hello @Duimon. Thanks for this, really digging the night versions here. Can you please advise how are you setting this up? I set bezel and frame to 0 and then applied this as an overlay, but unfortunately that also hides bezel reflections.

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First you need load one of HSM’s shaders and create either a game or core preset. Then use the night version graphics as the background in the shader. (By manually editing the background image path in the preset *.slangp.)

slang edit1

I have all my graphics in an “images” folder in the root of my Retroarch folder to make it easier to get to them.

Then using the shader parameters.

  • Set the bezel and frame to 0% opacity.

  • Tweak the 2D curvature (I haven’t tried the 3D) and Non-Integer scale. (It should be really easy to do)

  • Finally you need to fine tune the bezel height and width to tweak where the reflection falls. (This is easiest to do by playing a game until there is a good amount of reflection going on) (I also have the retroarch UI background opacity turned down by default so I can see the game better during parameter adjustments)

  • Ideally you also need to set the bezel color value to match as well as you can but the default dark color should work if you are not fussy)

HSM an I have been talking some more and this may get far easier to do in the near future. :wink:

When the shader eventually hits the repo I will be releasing presets for all my HSM graphics. (For just the HSM Dr. Venom shader. :upside_down_face: I may do a poll to decide which shader to use.)

I have just now included these instructions in the night repo README.

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Aaaaaaand, I have new default presets! Thank you for the detailed explanation, this looks gorgeous now :smiley:

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How would I get two separate cores (Genesis Plus GX for Genesis, and bsnes-mercury-accuracy for SNES) that I use the same shader (crt-guest-sm) on , have their respective graphics? I did what was mentioned above about saving a core/game preset, but the preset only says this in the file for both presets:

#reference “…\shaders\shaders_slang\crt\hsm-mega-bezel-reflection-crt-guest-sm.slangp”

Genesis works fine, as that is the background image I have in the crt-guest-sm.slangp file. But if i go to load an SNES game in bsnes-mercury and apply the shader, it will show the Genesis overlay graphics.

Did I miss a step? TIA

Whenever you load a preset with the intent to save it right away as a new preset you need to change at least one parameter, any parameter. Otherwise it will just reference the shader, which is what you are seeing.

I usually change the bezel brightness by a fraction. You can always change it back later.

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@Duimon Thanks again for the awesome work. I’m looking for the day version of the HSM images, are those in your github?

Yes. In a folder named “logo”, or “plain” if you prefer. :wink:

Well this was a “fun” one. :grimacing: Still have a bit of work to do but I thought I would share the current WIP of my new graphic…

The DOSBox vector!!

Monitor is a bit more modern (At least the inside part.) than my raster version. Still deciding if I want to change it. I will be including one with just the background so you can use the default bezel if you like.

This graphic kind of blows my mind. It’s crazy that vector can look like this. :open_mouth:

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Some new magic is happening!! :astonished:

HSM did a bunch of things which will make night mode a breeze for anyone to do.

I will have a “Night_Overlay.png” and source in my HSM Graphics repo. All night bezels will be moved to my RA Overlay repo. Instructions for applying night mode will be in the night repo readme.

I am working on some ideas to keep the lit LEDs in graphics that have them. (Fingers crossed. :wink:)

I am also working on some alternative lighting overlays to give you more choices. :grin:

An example of what can be done with this is setting a simple night mode preset using a thebezelproject image, then using my scripts to generate 1000+ night version presets of the graphics in mere minutes. :grin:

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Here is the DOSBox WIP in night mode using the new method.

And with a lit LED!

The Lit LED requires a modified top layer image overlay. I will be including them for systems that have lit LEDs but, since they are derived from existing source, there will be no individual led source PSDs. (They are 51MB each. :astonished:)

Note that without lit LEDs the bezel can be freely resized, but with lit LEDs, if the bezel intersects an LED, (Gamecube) they will have to be a specific size. So you can make your own choice of top layer image.

I may do a tutorial PDF on the method I used to derive them.

I will notify you when the repos have been updated. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Here is one with the new Bezel + BG gamma turned down a bit.

I think it looks even better. (Lots of room to play now that the shader does most of the work!)

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I’m loving your work. What are you planning for mame, naomi, mvs and other arcades?

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I have a few ideas for MAME that are waiting for things further along HSMs shader roadmap.

For Naomi I will probably do a vector version of this…

From my “Arcade Originals” project.

Maybe a Candy Cab also.

I’m really just concentrating on RA core system graphics so when it comes to breaking down things like “Arcade”, it’s not really part of my mission, and I’m not planning on doing any per game stuff.

Of course when the time comes, there will be source for the MAME graphic, so maybe some other enterprising artist will do a bunch of per game stuff with it. :grin:

(I will design it with this in mind.)

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First off,I really like your work. and just always check what you have come up with. Anyway, I’ve been doing some vertical mame game bezels. And I like the consoles that you have been doing and just wonder (not request), what you would do with a vertical version of your overlays. have you tried? just curious, but do hope you might have some experiment laying around you might want to share :wink:

keep it up and stay safe…

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