WoW Mosaics

[Zub]

hey guys,
i've been working on a side project, called WoW Mosaics.
Here's a little (low res) example of what images I generate.

Source (my guild tabard ;-)
http://tonicturtle.free.fr/oceania/images/octopus.jpg

Generated mosaic (small / low res):
http://lh3.ggpht.com/_toILJVIwGBg/S5G93diQ44I/AAAAAAAAAGI/rShuiHIfv5I/s1024/octopus-2.jpg

I can also generate them with icons twice the size, but that becomes REAL big, real quick

What do you think? any suggestions?

feel free to post some pics you want me to try this on below. (please start with small ones, or the generated resolution will be megabad). about the size of the original tabard image for example.

(also, if you have an idea where i can store those images for easy download, please suggest. my current bandwidth is going to die real quick if i keep them on my server :-)

Hope you like it,
Thanks
Zub / Ghur / Soap

[Zub]

here's another one i just finished, the WoW-wotlk logo:
http://lh3.ggpht.com/_toILJVIwGBg/S5G8yy7SRlI/AAAAAAAAAF4/RtBPsPuXqgc/s1600/wotlk2-2.jpg

pity photobucked reduces it to a width of 1024px.. it's double that size on my machine.
Anyone to recommend a good (free) photo storage website?
Cheers,
-Zub / Ghur

[Zub]

http://lh3.ggpht.com/_toILJVIwGBg/S5G-Fm9blWI/AAAAAAAAAGM/iuN2dvByZH8/s800/Murky_small-2.jpg

[lans83]

here's another one i just finished, the WoW-wotlk logo:
http://i909.photobucket.com/albums/ac295/adesmare/Mosaics/wow-mosaic.jpg

pity photobucked reduces it to a width of 1024px.. it's double that size on my machine.
Anyone to recommend a good (free) photo storage website?
Cheers,
-Zub / Ghur

Try imageshack.us. I haven't had any problems with my pics I've uploaded. They've all remained the same size as when they were taken. This includes screenshots from WoW. Great work btw. :D

[Maxion]

These look pretty sweet!
I assume you were inspired by the battlecry mosaic that blizzard did?

[Kang]

Picasa may also be an option. You get a gig of storage space and can up/download high res versions. I'm looking at Picasa to store my photos after I lost a bunch to hardware failure and my own stupidity.

[Poyzon]

Oooo! Nice job.

Can you do my avatar?

<----

[Zub]

hi all thanks for the feedback.

@lans83: i'm trying imageshack, but i'm getting lots of problems with their uploader.
basically it keeps breaking my uploads all the time :( didn't have that kind of problem with photobucket

@Maxion: yes indeed :-)

@Kang: thanks, seems Picasa is the way to go. All integrated, no hassle, even already had the google account.
Will update all links to point to the Picasa servers

@Poyzon: sure, will post it as soon as it's generated.

[Zub]

Oooo! Nice job.

Can you do my avatar?

<----
http://lh5.ggpht.com/_toILJVIwGBg/S5G-NOZjF2I/AAAAAAAAAGQ/bBJFFCc0ZLE/poyson-2.jpg

Need to watch it from some distance i think ;-)
either that or zoom in to see each spell icon

[Zub]

http://lh5.ggpht.com/_toILJVIwGBg/S5G9dlCxT9I/AAAAAAAAAGE/AEqMy55gREE/s1280/Blizzard-1.jpg

[Zub]

Picasa photo album where i'll put them all
http://picasaweb.google.com/104556570934191657636/Mosaics#

hope you enjoy it,
feel free to request some images

[Ughmahedhurtz]

http://lh5.ggpht.com/_toILJVIwGBg/S5G-NOZjF2I/AAAAAAAAAGQ/bBJFFCc0ZLE/poyson-2.jpg

Need to watch it from some distance i think ;-)
either that or zoom in to see each spell icon

Anyone else see this one and think, "Fruity oaty bars; make you bust out of your blouse..."?

[Zub]

Anyone else see this one and think, "Fruity oaty bars; make you bust out of your blouse..."?i'm thinking: "that poor priest, look at the number of forts he had to cast" :-/


also, for our aussie friends :
http://lh5.ggpht.com/_toILJVIwGBg/S5Hf2asawwI/AAAAAAAAAIs/kwacbfmpt90/s1024/australia-small.jpg

[Maxion]

Wow, that one turned out really nice!

[Zub]

yup the map looks kinda nice.


I've now created the map of the USA with wow icons.

http://lh3.ggpht.com/_toILJVIwGBg/S5LSDqXmIVI/AAAAAAAAAKU/jsVakObRf3I/s1280/usa-5.jpg
http://picasaweb.google.com.au/lh/photo/uaIs2g-BdkRxpb8XOH-D0g?feat=directlink

seems you guys got alot of Swiftthisle hehe

enjoy
-Zub / Ghur

[Zub]

For those not afraid of big files, here's my version of the Battlecry mosaic:
http://lh4.ggpht.com/_toILJVIwGBg/S5TVoy_EFzI/AAAAAAAAAN4/JVMC13GuPMU/s576/battlecry-small-left-2-mod.jpghttp://lh5.ggpht.com/_toILJVIwGBg/S5TdIgCyz9I/AAAAAAAAAOI/6bQju5g20HU/s576/battlecry-small-right-2-mod.jpg

left : http://picasaweb.google.com/104556570934191657636/Mosaics#5446212746255537970
right: http://picasaweb.google.com/104556570934191657636/Mosaics#5446220987508117458

The links above are reduced in size, to get the full size images (~4.7MB each) you can either click the download button in Picasa, or try the links below:

left: http://lh4.ggpht.com/_toILJVIwGBg/S5TVoy_EFzI/AAAAAAAAAN4/JVMC13GuPMU/d/battlecry-small-left-2-mod.jpg
right: http://lh5.ggpht.com/_toILJVIwGBg/S5TdIgCyz9I/AAAAAAAAAOI/6bQju5g20HU/d/battlecry-small-right-2-mod.jpg

67500 Icons used for the battlecry ;-)

enjoy
-Zub / Ghur

[Maxion]

Nice!

[Poyzon]

Very cool stuff.

[WaffleFrie]

i think my roomie would appreciate one of these, i can email it to him and he can continue his closet addiction to WoW. he doesn't really like admitting to people that he plays wow

he's famous(in wow atleast) for his pet tanking a raid boss(i guess?)
link to article:http://www.wow.com/2008/10/22/hunter-pet-tanks-gruul-the-dragonkiller/ (http://www.wow.com/2008/10/22/hunter-pet-tanks-gruul-the-dragonkiller/)

so here's what i'm thinking, can you do a mosaic with his char and a pet gorilla with like "Durante & Bubbles" under it? or maybe "B F F"?(or both) it'd be so EPIC and i think he'd appreciate it after i made it his desktop bgr EHEHEHE. i'll toss you a few bones for it(if you have pp)

char pic/profile: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Hydraxis&n=Durante (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Hydraxis&n=Durante)

[Zub]

Hah, i'll see what i can do :-)

do you have a picture where you see them both well?
The one from the forums (pic#4) is a bit small/blurry.

If not i'll make one up from his armory and pics of Ungoro gorillas (it's an ungoro isnt it? seems so from the vid/pic)

Are you in a hurry for this? it's just that i go on holiday for a week tomorrow, not sure i'll have time before that

[Zub]

I made this image to use as a source file: (unless you have another you prefer)
[/URL]http://lh3.ggpht.com/_toILJVIwGBg/S8EH6f6AuXI/AAAAAAAAAPY/WeYabAXnYe8/durante.png

and here's the final version of the rendered mosaic (~9.8 MB Jpg file, 3800x3800px, 40 thousand icons)

Here's the Picasa link, feel free to leave a comment
[URL]http://picasaweb.google.com/104556570934191657636/Mosaics#5458658643207040594 (http://lh3.ggpht.com/_toILJVIwGBg/S8EH6f6AuXI/AAAAAAAAAPY/WeYabAXnYe8/durante.png)
click on "Download > Download Photo" for the full sized version.

Limited size version (1600x1600px, use the link above to download the full version)
http://lh3.ggpht.com/_toILJVIwGBg/S8ENHWJ4rlI/AAAAAAAAAPs/xm9zHCdd1fE/durante-large.jpg


hope you like it, feel free to send me a different pic if you want something else.
No need for any tip, it was my pleasure.
(but If needed I indeed have a paypal link, visible on my www.wow-ratings.com (http://www.wow-ratings.com/) website ;-)
http://lh4.ggpht.com/_toILJVIwGBg/S8...ante-small.jpg

[Zub]

(duplicate post, i now edited the one just above)

Gah, just noticed Durante changed his armor since last time i checked (shoulders/helm)

[WaffleFrie]

Bahahahaha awsome!!!!!!!!!!

[Seldum]

This is awesome!

I would love to have my avatar done like that. Which would be difficult I guess since its a gif... sucks.

[WaffleFrie]

sent it to him a few minutes ago. "this brings up so many questions, a. what the fuck and b. what the fuck" explained how i got it "let us never speak of this again".

HAAHAHAHAHAH loved it! so worth it!

[lacitpo]

You inspired me to write my own...

Here's my version of Durante & Bubbles. Mine uses 40x40 pixel icons, each replacing a 4x4 pixel section of the original. I'm considering a rewrite for a higher resolution with each icon representing a single pixel in the original but my work computer is SUPER slow and takes almost an hour to process a normal size image.

I want to write this as a web application but I'm not sure how well my web server would handle the load. BTW, what did you write your in. Mine's in python.

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/A8EC2g7WJZTFU_vKLVrwx-KqyFRBRxr9XC288G0yOGQ?feat=directlink

http://www.dual-boxing.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=188&stc=1&d=1271271652

[lacitpo]

One more. Picture of me dressed up for a costumed bike ride. Wanted to see what a real person picture turned out as.

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/W9Id1iYu5RMgRpsM5cYhhOKqyFRBRxr9XC288G0yOGQ?feat=d irectlink

Original
http://www.dual-boxing.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=190&stc=1&d=1271275887

http://www.dual-boxing.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=189&stc=1&d=1271275840

[lacitpo]

This is awesome!

I would love to have my avatar done like that. Which would be difficult I guess since its a gif... sucks.

I think you're would benefit from a single pixel approach over my 4 pixel approach. Still fun. Looks good from a distance.

http://www.dual-boxing.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=191&stc=1&d=1271276774

[Zub]

hah, sorry i was on holidays for a few.

I wrote mine in php :( just because i had the platform ready and half the code for the database and pic handling etc. Probably not the best choice, but should be easy to integrate in my wow-ratings.com website.

I use 21x21 icons otherwise the resulting image is just too big. i also have all the 43x43 icons so can actually swap from one size to the other by commenting one line.
Same thing with the number of pixels i read, by default i take every second pix, but depending on the size and quality of the original image i can easily go to every, every third, fourth pixel or whatever.

i noticed you'er using a fully black icon for black pixels, I thought about it as it really makes the images better looking, but voted against it as i considered it as cheating ;-)

How many icons do you have? i'm using a pool of about 4600 which i slowly crawled from the armory :/

in any case, here's my result for Seldum's avatar
http://lh4.ggpht.com/_toILJVIwGBg/S87wkZA0CRI/AAAAAAAAAQY/aKf3PUsprbg/seldum.jpg

http://lh3.ggpht.com/_toILJVIwGBg/S87xEnUyOYI/AAAAAAAAAQg/fj4GWrxuVts/s800/seldum-2.jpg

Cheers,
Zub

[Seldum]

Haha nice Good work!!!! You guys are a w e s o m e !

[lacitpo]

hah, sorry i was on holidays for a few.
How many icons do you have? i'm using a pool of about 4600 which i slowly crawled from the armory :/


I downloaded an icon pack from somewhere out there on the internet. 6003 icons. I should probably remove the black icon because I totally agree with the cheating point. It was something I did in an afternoon for fun-sies. On the same line, I scraped 4chan images for 48 hours and have a 15,000 size image library to make mosaics out of nothing but porn which is extremely hilarious. I've got my first image processed this morning. PM me if you'd like a link. The picture is pretty much safe for work as long as you don't zoom in :P

[Zub]

I downloaded an icon pack from somewhere out there on the internet. 6003 icons. I should probably remove the black icon because I totally agree with the cheating point. It was something I did in an afternoon for fun-sies. On the same line, I scraped 4chan images for 48 hours and have a 15,000 size image library to make mosaics out of nothing but porn which is extremely hilarious. I've got my first image processed this morning. PM me if you'd like a link. The picture is pretty much safe for work as long as you don't zoom in :P
actually i wouldn't mind a link to the pack of 6k wow icons ;-)
Is that available in all sizes? 21/32/43/51/64 ?

[thmsn]

Thats pretty cool, how do you map each icon to the color of a pixel?, I haven't worked much with image manipulation :) so this is rather interresting :)

[Zub]

Thats pretty cool, how do you map each icon to the color of a pixel?, I haven't worked much with image manipulation :) so this is rather interresting :)
The way i do it (which is not exactly very smart) is that for each icon of the pool I have, i pick a number of sample pixels and average them.

For example, for each icon that is 21x21 (441 pixels) i pick ~30-40 pixels at regular intervals and for each i record the Red, Green and Blue values.
Then I average up all reds, all greens and all blues separately and I get my average RGB color for that icon.

I store all that info in a database, and then, when i parse the pixels of the image to render, i select the 'closest' matching icon by comparing the R, G and B values.
the closest is basically the one with the smallest difference = ( (Abs(Ricon - Rimage) + Abs(Gicon-Gimage) + Abs(Bicon-Bimage) )

As I said, not exactly very precise, but it work reasonably so far. In a future version i might try and map areas (left, top, right, bottom) and have separate RGB averages for each of those to try and make the images smoother. But it feels like alot of work and I can't be asked so far ;-)

[lacitpo]

I found i got slightly better images if I treaded the RGB values as a vector in 3d(R3 space) and used distance formula to find the 1 dimensional distance between the two vectors. The difference was small but noticable.

IE: distance = sqrt( (Roriginal-Ricon)^2 + (Goriginal-Gicon)^2 + (Boriginal-Bicon)^2 )

The other thing I did a bit different from you was rather than go on a pixel by pixel basis to analyze my original image, I used a larger block of pixel. Instead of averaging the entire icon as a single RGB value, I analized it as a 4x4 grid of RGB values, in effect, simplifying it to a 4x4 pixel image. I then compared those 4x4 values to a 4x4 block of values to my image being mosaic'd and used the same vector formula, but in a 48-dimensional way to find the closest match.

Here's the icon pack. I've hosted it myself cause I can't find the original. http://video.cliffmonkeys.com/WoW_wExp1-2_Icons.zip

[Zub]

Thanks for the icons!
they are much better quality than mine it seems (funny since i actually got mine from the armory) with a neat black border instead of my crappy brown/changing one.
Pity they are only in 40x40

Good tip on the formula, i'll give it a try when i have time. just got myself taken into another web project... for babies. >.<