Easy Stair Illusion Tutorial
 

Okay, today I thought I'd share one of my method to make anything look like a stair (basically on tiles uh).

It's easy, fast, free.

For that you will need paint.NET (Basic software, completely free.)

1)Open paint.NET, and create a new file, and choose it's size (if you're going to work with a single tile, then make that new file 16x16, etc...)
On here I'll work with a 32x32file.
2)Select everything, then use the eraser tool. "Erase everything", and you should see a checkerboard appear. That means your background is now transparent. It's what will make you able to draw an alpha line.
3)Now select the tool "line/curve", select black color as first color and set the color's alpha to 140 (140-150 is alright)
--->Attachment 49112
4)Select the size of the line on top to 6. That should be enough to make quite tiny stairs for graalians feets.
--->Attachment 49111
5)Draw your line and make sure the beginning and ending vertical pixels are brighter than the middle part (for a better illusion).
--->Attachment 49113
6)Finaly open the tile you want to work with in paint.NET ! Here's the tile I'm working with (32x32)
--->Attachment 49114
7)Select everything in your "line" file, then copy (press ctrl+c)
8)Go back to the tiles and do Edit->Past as new layer
9)Place correctly your line (wherever you want anyway)
10) Here's the result ! Now you can play with your new stair-styled tile !
I know it's not the best way to do this, but it's a very easy thing to do even for beginners and you can learn how to play with layers this way.
It's sure not pixelart, but might come handy sometimes.

--->Attachment 49115

Illusion !

Attachment 49116

That's actually pretty nice

Yeah and it's fun to do ^^

Weird illusion for me, works sometimes and other times it just looks so flat, would probably look better done with actual railings and floors and such to show height difference.

Nice work. :)

I can't seem to make that look like stairs at all :p

http://img93.imageshack.us/img93/1263/carpets.png

alot easier to see with a couple highlights.

I think you should make the shadow part a different color. Not the blackness but the color behind it. That would only work if you are going to use a carpet or something to use it with.
http://tbn2.google.com/images?q=tbn:...fore-after.jpg

If you look at the stairs the top of it is wood, the part where the shadow should be is white. As you can see, it makes it look more like stairs. Aekos is good for carpets, but I am just saying.

Well it sometimes look rather flat, but with some more work, things show quite good.
That tile has a weird design, and from my point of view a highlight on top is not necessary all the time.

Here's a better exemple, from what I did with GK's Stairs:

Attachment 49120

There is only one thing I hate about Graal and stairs, on Graal there is no gani for walking up stairs so it looks like you are walking on a flat surface. The player takes like 2 steps and is standing on the corner of the stairs which is weird. A gani would much improve this, also for your stairs would the graals avatar be able to bend it's legs that high to step on it?

Yep. I just think that's possible, if it's not then I'll reduce the black layer to 4 or 5, I did it with 6 on here too.
The cool thing is that when you draw a line bigger than 1 it will give you horizontal and vertical shadings (brighter pixels on sides) and it's quite neat on a tile, as the bottom brighter pixels will show as the end of the shadow and the top ones will show as a new plain surface beginning. That's how I see it.

Nice tutorial. Though I'm a little concerned about the placement of the shadows on ordinary tiles like the ones you used. It makes the pattern look like it's abruptly cut off.

What you should do is make the steps start out as small in height, I mean the top part of the steps above the shadow, and make it bigger as you go up so it gives the illusion of stairs.

I'm not looking to make stairs actually I just made this to try and help people with what can be used to do so. I could of course try to make better stairs, but I don't care about that right now.