Vector Graphics Offered

[Scifinity]

Hi Guys,

I'm a graphic designer working in Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop and Blender. If anyone has a project going and needs a bit of help making attractive image assets I would be happy to volunteer my time. Even if it's just some pretty text or a particular set of symbols you want designed or converted from photos, jpegs into vectors for clean lines I'm happy to offer some help. I'm not looking for any credit. It's good for me to practice various styles so that's my only aim.

Out of interest what kind of final images are used in these projects? I imagine you have colour and transparency maps for the emulator but I don't know much about how it's done yet. If there is a thread about this I would appreciate a signpost.

 

Cheers!

[johnparker007]

6 hours ago, Scifinity said:

Hi Guys,

I'm a graphic designer working in Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop and Blender. If anyone has a project going and needs a bit of help making attractive image assets I would be happy to volunteer my time. Even if it's just some pretty text or a particular set of symbols you want designed or converted from photos, jpegs into vectors for clean lines I'm happy to offer some help. I'm not looking for any credit. It's good for me to practice various styles so that's my only aim.

Out of interest what kind of final images are used in these projects? I imagine you have colour and transparency maps for the emulator but I don't know much about how it's done yet. If there is a thread about this I would appreciate a signpost.

 

Cheers!

I'm sure there are some machines worthy of a redraw - maybe some other layout artists will come along with requests!  

Quite a few of the source images for the less common machines can be on low res photos/grainy flyers etc, that's likely where your redraw skills will be in demand  

Edited September 16, 2025 by johnparker007

[Damian6666]

Hello and welcome to the forums if your up for a challange ive been trying to get a decent image of club temptation 1991 bfm ive played around in gimp but im not an artist lol think im at my limit would be nice if you could make a decent image for a dx 

[woodsy]

On 16/09/2025 at 18:55, johnparker007 said:

I'm sure there are some machines worthy of a redraw - maybe some other layout artists will come along with requests!  

Quite a few of the source images for the less common machines can be on low res photos/grainy flyers etc, that's likely where your redraw skills will be in demand  

i have a redraw i am hoping to get made, i'll senf the flyer, i'll be happy to dx it and work with you step by step to show how i do it.

also i need to make new reel numbers for current wip, if you fancy that.#

thanks, i'd really appreciate learning more about ps if thats cool too

[woodsy]

On 16/09/2025 at 18:55, johnparker007 said:

I'm sure there are some machines worthy of a redraw - maybe some other layout artists will come along with requests!  

Quite a few of the source images for the less common machines can be on low res photos/grainy flyers etc, that's likely where your redraw skills will be in demand  

this is very accurate. please dm and i'll send my intial requests, you will be a very welcome addition my friend

[johnparker007]

Tagging @Scifinity so he sees your replies  

[slotsmagic]

On 16/09/2025 at 12:05, Scifinity said:

Hi Guys,

I'm a graphic designer working in Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop and Blender. If anyone has a project going and needs a bit of help making attractive image assets I would be happy to volunteer my time. Even if it's just some pretty text or a particular set of symbols you want designed or converted from photos, jpegs into vectors for clean lines I'm happy to offer some help. I'm not looking for any credit. It's good for me to practice various styles so that's my only aim.

Out of interest what kind of final images are used in these projects? I imagine you have colour and transparency maps for the emulator but I don't know much about how it's done yet. If there is a thread about this I would appreciate a signpost.

 

Cheers!

Hi,

So basically what you need for the artwork for a fruit machine layout layout are lit and unlit images of the machine, with enough resolution to make small text visible. 1440/2160px tall are more common than the older 1080px tall layouts these days. I think you can go to a maximum of 8000px or thereabouts but that's absolute overkill really. Not that there is any harm in keeping base artwork at that spec, but for a layout it's a bit excessive. Then again, we are all individuals and there's no set rules

Quite often what I (and presumably others) do is make make an 'unlit' image - might be a scan of a flyer, might be photos of the machine, or might be actual scans of the machine glass.

We'll then try and get a decent looking unlit image, using whatever tools we have, might be a case of adjusting brightness, contrast, maybe copying and pasting bits, all with the aim to get an image that looks like the machine in a totally 'off' state, and save that image.

We then set to work about 'lamping' a clone of that image -  going over all the areas that would be lit on the real machine, lightening them using our tool of choice. I'm a mix of self-taught and oldskool, I use new layers in Photoshop, colour dodge and brush tool, to 'brighten' the areas of the machine that are lit, and apply different colourisation as needed (to replicate red, green, blue or yellow lamps).

Once you have lit and unlit artwork, you can actually (but I still don't, I'm oldskool) just load them into MFME and it'll generate a set of lamps based on differences between the lit and unlit.

I make lamps from scratch and then apply transparency. Extra work and probably not as good an effect, but you can't teach an old dog new tricks  

 

Edited September 18, 2025 by slotsmagic

[Scifinity]

14 hours ago, slotsmagic said:

Hi,

So basically what you need for the artwork for a fruit machine layout layout are lit and unlit images of the machine, with enough resolution to make small text visible. 1440/2160px tall are more common than the older 1080px tall layouts these days. I think you can go to a maximum of 8000px or thereabouts but that's absolute overkill really. Not that there is any harm in keeping base artwork at that spec, but for a layout it's a bit excessive. Then again, we are all individuals and there's no set rules

Quite often what I (and presumably others) do is make make an 'unlit' image - might be a scan of a flyer, might be photos of the machine, or might be actual scans of the machine glass.

We'll then try and get a decent looking unlit image, using whatever tools we have, might be a case of adjusting brightness, contrast, maybe copying and pasting bits, all with the aim to get an image that looks like the machine in a totally 'off' state, and save that image.

We then set to work about 'lamping' a clone of that image -  going over all the areas that would be lit on the real machine, lightening them using our tool of choice. I'm a mix of self-taught and oldskool, I use new layers in Photoshop, colour dodge and brush tool, to 'brighten' the areas of the machine that are lit, and apply different colourisation as needed (to replicate red, green, blue or yellow lamps).

Once you have lit and unlit artwork, you can actually (but I still don't, I'm oldskool) just load them into MFME and it'll generate a set of lamps based on differences between the lit and unlit.

I make lamps from scratch and then apply transparency. Extra work and probably not as good an effect, but you can't teach an old dog new tricks  

 

With vector graphics made in a program like Adobe Illustrator, they are infinitely scalable. They aren't pixels until you decide to export them as such.

When reproducing any artwork, the source material is key. Often tracing is the most solid start. Get an image, trace out elements to get the forms, deal with exact colours at after that as well as drop shadows, inner and outer glow gradients etc.

I initially thought the emulator might be acting like a 3D renderer with at least a colour map, and a transparency map. If it in fact uses it's lamp positions to define a mask between the unlit and lit images then these can be reverse engineered. Take a colour image, place it into a 3D program like blender, place lights as per the machine layout, render out images in both the lit and unlit states and feed them into the emulator. Correct me if the emulator works in another way.

Once I understand what the emulator is actually doing with images I can show a proof of concept for creating the necessary artwork.

[Scifinity]

19 hours ago, Damian6666 said:

Hello and welcome to the forums if your up for a challange ive been trying to get a decent image of club temptation 1991 bfm ive played around in gimp but im not an artist lol think im at my limit would be nice if you could make a decent image for a dx 

Looks interesting. Using this image alone would take a fair amount of interpretation. Still there is nothing super complicated going on. What do you have so far in the way of artwork or other source images?

[Scifinity]

On 16/09/2025 at 18:55, johnparker007 said:

I'm sure there are some machines worthy of a redraw - maybe some other layout artists will come along with requests!  

Quite a few of the source images for the less common machines can be on low res photos/grainy flyers etc, that's likely where your redraw skills will be in demand  

It seems drawing is indeed in demand! I look forward to helping out with some projects.

[johnparker007]

41 minutes ago, Scifinity said:

With vector graphics made in a program like Adobe Illustrator, they are infinitely scalable. They aren't pixels until you decide to export them as such.

When reproducing any artwork, the source material is key. Often tracing is the most solid start. Get an image, trace out elements to get the forms, deal with exact colours at after that as well as drop shadows, inner and outer glow gradients etc.

I initially thought the emulator might be acting like a 3D renderer with at least a colour map, and a transparency map. If it in fact uses it's lamp positions to define a mask between the unlit and lit images then these can be reverse engineered. Take a colour image, place it into a 3D program like blender, place lights as per the machine layout, render out images in both the lit and unlit states and feed them into the emulator. Correct me if the emulator works in another way.

Once I understand what the emulator is actually doing with images I can show a proof of concept for creating the necessary artwork.

The (current) emulator is all baked.  So I guess it'd want to be a 'lamps off' vector art image, e.g:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mw_P-VuywYnRFkJXsEq9_VbdUtZlBvvm/view?usp=drive_link

And then a matching vector/layer of the lamp mask, e.g:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MWnDV_A7q1tnVBHQiXtf30c2mS2zRBxy/view?usp=drive_link

And then the MFME layout creators would rasterise them at the resolution they needed.

I am working on a different system (modern 3d renderer using alpha layers, light shaders etc), but it's a long way off, so best to just go with what works for the MFME 2d baked image stuff I'd say  

[Scifinity]

17 minutes ago, johnparker007 said:

The (current) emulator is all baked.  So I guess it'd want to be a 'lamps off' vector art image, e.g:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mw_P-VuywYnRFkJXsEq9_VbdUtZlBvvm/view?usp=drive_link

And then a matching vector/layer of the lamp mask, e.g:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MWnDV_A7q1tnVBHQiXtf30c2mS2zRBxy/view?usp=drive_link

And then the MFME layout creators would rasterise them at the resolution they needed.

I am working on a different system (modern 3d renderer using alpha layers, light shaders etc), but it's a long way off, so best to just go with what works for the MFME 2d baked image stuff I'd say  

Now that is what I was expecting to see. Flat colour and alpha maps. Great artwork!

Baked lighting makes sense to make the emulator lighter on memory use.

[johnparker007]

1 hour ago, Scifinity said:

Now that is what I was expecting to see. Flat colour and alpha maps. Great artwork!

Baked lighting makes sense to make the emulator lighter on memory use.

Yes, that's how the new renderer I'm working on will work - flat color and alpha (prob a bit fancier with more of a PBR/SubstancePainter thing, as there's other effects like glitter, mirror, etc).

But for the MFME renderer, it's entirely basic 2d techniques with prebaked brighter 'sprites' to represent lamps.  If you do end up drawing some fruit machine art, please do make it proper flat unlit color, as the guys who make the MFME layouts can do the baked lighting effects themselves, but pure unlit flat color is then reusable for modern renderers (like mine  ).

Edited September 19, 2025 by johnparker007

[Damian6666]

Hi Thanks for you reply these are the best images i have i keep looking online for better ones 

[johnparker007]

1 hour ago, Damian6666 said:

Hi Thanks for you reply these are the best images i have i keep looking online for better ones 

A youtube search for:

bell fruit temptation 

yeilds a few decent quality videos - a lot of patient cropping and scaling would give a much higher quality base image (though unevenly lit).  Not checked them all, but this one is well lit and the machine lamps are off:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWj2uWB4Vws

Using a plugin to download frames at native resolution, they've got a lot of detail   e.g:

[Scifinity]

3 hours ago, johnparker007 said:

Yes, that's how the new renderer I'm working on will work - flat color and alpha (prob a bit fancier with more of a PBR/SubstancePainter thing, as there's other effects like glitter, mirror, etc).

But for the MFME renderer, it's entirely basic 2d techniques with prebaked brighter 'sprites' to represent lamps.  If you do end up drawing some fruit machine art, please do make it proper flat unlit color, as the guys who make the MFME layouts can do the baked lighting effects themselves, but pure unlit flat color is then reusable for modern renderers (like mine  ).

My workflow starts with flat colour so that's fine. Using Blender I can then use the flat images to drive an emission shader. I used a sample image to do this today to see if it worked as planned. I added some noise to the emission (perhaps too much!) to simulate a real printed image. All of it can be tweaked, light colour, light falloff and shape, saturation of the lit colour etc.

With regard to drawing assets, perhaps I could create a reusable pack of the common sprites to be used by everyone. Flat art and the baked versions.

Edited September 19, 2025 by Scifinity

[Scifinity]

1 hour ago, johnparker007 said:

A youtube search for:

bell fruit temptation 

yeilds a few decent quality videos - a lot of patient cropping and scaling would give a much higher quality base image (though unevenly lit).  Not checked them all, but this one is well lit and the machine lamps are off:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWj2uWB4Vws

Using a plugin to download frames at native resolution, they've got a lot of detail   e.g:

A video is still good enough to pull out still frames and interpret the graphics. I'm guessing nobody is going for pixel perfect representations of the original!

[Scifinity]

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ur42R8UNDKTM1XKA5IB1t8McU5c1D44G/view?usp=drive_link

This is a video I rendered out. It shows the lamp brightness being animated just to demonstrate brightness possibilities. It was lit with a simple feathered circle image map but could easily be driven aby what would appear to be multiple bulbs for a large sprite. Take two brightness values and you have your lit and unlit images no need to brute force it in PS. Of course you need to start from a flat colour image.

[johnparker007]

13 hours ago, Scifinity said:

A video is still good enough to pull out still frames and interpret the graphics. I'm guessing nobody is going for pixel perfect representations of the original!

'Pixel-perfect' is a tall order   not sure what the DPI is of the printing process that made the original glasses - perhaps it varies... I suspect some early ones might have been screen-printed, I believe some early pinball glasses used that same tech (and had same stuff like full+half silvered mirror parts etc..  The more modern ones, I see that 'rosette'  pattern on a zoomed in scan, along still with the semi-trans mirror features - so some special form of CYMK maybe - not really my area, I'm sure others know far more about how they are made!   

12 hours ago, Scifinity said:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ur42R8UNDKTM1XKA5IB1t8McU5c1D44G/view?usp=drive_link

This is a video I rendered out. It shows the lamp brightness being animated just to demonstrate brightness possibilities. It was lit with a simple feathered circle image map but could easily be driven aby what would appear to be multiple bulbs for a large sprite. Take two brightness values and you have your lit and unlit images no need to brute force it in PS. Of course you need to start from a flat colour image.

Yeah, the guys who make they layouts here all have their own variations on techniques for building their 'lamped' image - a lot of different ways to illuminate.  But as you say, one of the critical parts is that flat color image   Then that basic on/off transparency mask - though the real ones have areas that are semi-trans, and mirrored etc.

[thealteredemu]

Yeah, I’d say glass printing in the 90’s was maybe 150 - 200dpi.

The main issue with reels in mfme is you can’t create decent lamp masks as it doesn’t support transparency maps sadly.  You can only do it by setting a transparent colour and going round the edge of the symbols and it has to be a solid pixel.

J