New image added at the end.
(http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/var8.jpg)
Very nice beegee! Did you model this, or made it differently?
I would change the way the castle's stones are textures. Give it more randomisation. Use a larger texturemap, so it adds more realism to it.
Maybe you could add some more single grass to the side of the castle. Like plants growing to the wall.
I can see grass through the window of the right-tower?! Or isn't that grass? hmm..
furthermore, I think you've done a pretty good job!
Minimi,
Thanks for the ideas! The tower is modeled in Rhino3D and rendered in Flamingo; the grass and the background was added in Photoshop.
In one of the tower windows you can see the grass, as the tower windows don't have glass and they have a single interior (this is intended.)
I was thinking about adding more detail to the walls, but that's kind of hard to do with textures only. I'll have to probably model corner stones so they can have a different texture. I'll try to get some plants creep up the walls, see how that would look like.
Few things:
Textures: You need a bigger texture. :D The one you're using is way too small and the tilling is apparant, it's really ruining the image overall. It screams out "this is a CGI render!".
Lighting: There seems to be one spotlight, but no global illumination. Most modern 3d art packages have GI built in, so it shouldn't be hard to add some. It would do wonders for this.
Ground: I would try to give some height to the ground on the outside of the castle, some small bumps, hills, anything. Anything to give it life, as it is it's a plain flat giant rectangle. Also try to add some trees. Maybe google a search for free 3d trees, you should be able to find some I think.
I like it! Perhaps some weathering (dirt, streaks of rust from the roof, etc) would help for realism - right now it looks quite brand new :)
Also, are those modern buildings in the background? If the game takes place in medieval times, they would need to be photoshopped out.
Thanks for the ideas, guy, I'll try to make these changes and post it when it's done. (It may take a few days as just rendering itself takes ~15 minutes each time.)
Kiddie: the light is not a spotlight, but the Sun (Flamingo has a Sun object that shines perfectly parallel rays of light.) I'll try to use a lightdome to see if that changes how the image feels. I was thinking about doing it even for this rendering, but that will shoot rendering times through the roof. I'll also add some trees.
Janik: the buildings in the background are old buildings in some countryside. Unfortunetely, the image that I used has a bit too low quality and that works against the background. I wasn't sure how strongly they stick out, but apparently, they do. :)
Just popped in to my head while checking this out at the bg bliz.... It seems a bit odd that the path that goes round the castle, is always wayward with the wall, I think that if someone would walk around it, he wouldn't follow the waal, but the shortest way which would be directly from a tower to another
You're right, I never thought of that. I'll change it to be wider and more path-like.
I think it might give it an added hint of realism if you magnetic-select the castle, invert the selection, and do a light Gaussian blur on the buildings in the background. This would serve two purposes:
1) Depth
2) Hide the fact that you are using real buildings in a CGI render.
just to show what esper means
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v54/oversizedchicken/editss.jpg)
Quote from: Chicky on Wed 05/10/2005 14:00:02
just to show what esper means
No, no. I'm pretty sure he meant the background, as in the photo background. Blurring part of the castle just looks odd. I'm not sure blurring the background would look very good either though...
I also have problems with effects that try to emulate optic phenomena.
Especially when parts of the castle itself is blurred, it seems like a miniature model more than ever. Only the background could work, but I'd recommend using colour-perspective instead to establish some sort of depth, that is, add some soft bluish hazy tone to the background.
I think blurring the castle gives the image a depth of feild that is far too small.
I think it really needs some character, the castle itself looks far too clinical, id suggest using a layer mask and perhaps try detailling the walls and roof using some brushes, then possibley toy with some lighting and shadow, try to imagine the type of light the castle would be bathed in given the colour of the sky etc.
I made a new version of this image; I added some details and changed the camera position and angle, so now there is no background in the distance.
This is not a finished image, I still want to add some "use" to the castle, as well as some grass and some structures (parts of a marketplace), but those will be done in Photoshop (or perhaps partly in Rhino), but before proceeding, I need someadvice in lighting the scene.
I'm relatively ok with the castle itself (unless someone points out something obviously wrong that I missed), but I want to finish lighting first so that detailing in Photoshop won't have to be redone if lighting changes.
The scene is supposed to be a cold, threatening place (not necessarily evil) just a source of power and will.
(http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/var02.jpg)
All ideas (paintovers especially) are welcome.
That castle is excellent. I can't fault it.
But it doesn't strike me as a cold place full of power. To me it looks more like the goody-goodies stronghold, with the lawn beautifully mowed and the tower tiles just replaced. In fact I expect a princess' face to pop out of one of the windows any minute now...
Well, not really, but perhaps some signs of weathering and overgrown vegetation would help. And maybe you should make it night time, and add some darker shadows (like in your first image). For some reason I equate darkness and neglect with mystery.
A moat wouldn't hurt either.
But as I said, I think it's fantastic.
I think the angle needs to be even lower to give it a brooding, powerful look. Also, some foilage on the walls and perhaps a moat would help. A green, slimey bog-like moat.
And the lighting seems to... Drab. Not powerful, just boring.
Also, make sure you are not cropping out the castle at weird points. You're cutting off the tips of the tower caps on both sides, and it really hurts the image.
You're probably limited to your 3D software and hardware, but a bit colored lighting, (less ambient and more directional) and also some bump mapping wouldn't hurt this otherwise really great-looking picture.
Ah, and being as constructive as I possibly can - grass texture simply sucks. Because of boring coloring and bad tiling. Change it.
About bumpmapping... I'm not sure if you're using it or not. If so, make it stronger to make its advantages work. If not - and program doesn't support any, well, with so nice modelling skills, you should consider getting a stronger software. Just a quick bumpmap example I whipped together, so you'd see what I mean:
(http://www.increator.pri.ee/i/critshelp/castle_nobump.png)
No bump mapping, just a cylinder with boring texture
(http://www.increator.pri.ee/i/critshelp/castle_bump.png)
Bumpmapped in 3ds Max 4, 200% and used same texture for map, just black and white one
Guys,
Thanks for all the replies.
InC: the grass is not done yet; what you commented on is just a ground plane that will serve as the basis for the grass, that'll be added later. I tried the grass that comes with Flamingo, but it's not that good and Flamingo doesn't give a lot of control over ground cover type plants, so I'll do it in Photoshop or Painter.
Bump mapping is used in the rendering but it's probably not apparent because the walls are quite far away from the camera. I'll see if I can do something. Maybe I have to add some more reflection to the walls to make them more realistic.
[lgm]: you're right, I never realized that the side towers were clipped. I worked so many hours on the model that I just don' t see these flaws anymore :) Thanks for pointing out.
I wouldn't mind if someone did a quick sketch about lighting, though. I'm not very experienced in lighting, and it took quite a while for me to come up with the current lights. I'll see if turning the scene to dark (with a hint of purple) will do the trick.
There's always a chance your gfx card might nto support bump mapping/pixel shaders.
Chicky: When rendering 3d images, the software doesn't use your graphics card. It's all done with the main CPU. Only when playing 3d games where rendering has to be realtime the 3d card gets used.
Traveler: I have used Rhino/Flamingo in the past myself. While i absolutely love rhino, the renderer, flamingo, on the other hand, is quite crappy to work with. Global illumination sucks, Depth of field looks akward (sp?) and there are a lot of lighting options missing that would ease your task of bringing some atmosphere into this scene.
There is a little trick to fake Global illumination:
- Make a spotlight, place it some distance away, but pointed at the scene.
- Select the spotlight, use the command ArrayPolar, select the center of the scene and about 15 copies or so.
- Select all of the created spotlights and lower their intensity and color.
Now create a main spotlight (or directional light) with normal intensity that will cast the shadows. Try this technique on a simple cube first to get a feel for it. (experimenting using this scene take up too much rendertime)
Now about the scene itself:
- The shooting holes in the guard tower aren't usually that wide and open. They should be just wide enough to shoot an arrow through:
http://carolien.ulyssis.org/fotodir2/Tunesie/ribat/Image-34.JPG (viewed from inside out)
- Extend the model to add a moat (as already suggested) and a drawbridge.
- Use an even bigger stone texture for the walls, as this one is still quite repetitive.
or better yet, open the current one up in paintshop pro, photoshop or whatever, enlarge the canvas and copy, mirror and modify the existing image so that it gets tiled. Then try some cloning where you copy little parts of the image (say a couple of bricks) and place them at random places in the image. This technique will give you a bigger texture, without a tiling effect that is as noticable as it is now.
- Make the camera shot even wider (set the camera further back, don't change the lens length.)
- Concider using a sky background from a sunset (purple, orange, pink) to make it more gloomy and adjust your lighting accordingly.
- With the light levels down, maybe a couple of torches and lit room interious would add to the scene aswell.
Okay, that's enough for now. Please understand that the model itself is solid and i think it has good potential of becoming a killer background!
good luck!
Oneway,
Thanks for your ideas, they're quite helpful.
I'll try to play with the light setup that you suggested; right now I have only the Flamingo Sun object in place, but I agree, it's hard to get a nice lighting using that. I experimented for hours and never liked the result. (It's good for sunny, light scenes, though.) I also tried using a lightdome (of 5 point lights) but didn't really work out. Maybe it's good when using a ~100 of them, but then it's more for studio lighting.
You're right about the shooting holes; I'll see if I can modify them. (It takes a bit of work to do it :) I'm not sure I want to go through it again. I already modeled the towers ~5 times from scratch... :-\ ) I'll add a moat and a drawbridge, as that seems to be missing for everyone.
I don't think I'll enlarge the wall texture anymore, it's already big and I don't think it's that repetitive. What I WILL try though is adding some more color to it, because I think the all-around gray color makes it look repetitive. (In fact, the texture already has a bunch of procedural components, so if you look closely, it is actually not repetitve at all, because of little details. Some more colors there will help bring out these details.)
I'll also go with a darker environment and some torches. It seems that everyone would only consider this a threatening place if it was dark.
I'll post a new image in a day or so; for now thanks everyone for the ideas. :)
Quote from: Oneway on Fri 14/10/2005 14:00:10
Chicky: When rendering 3d images, the software doesn't use your graphics card. It's all done with the main CPU. Only when playing 3d games where rendering has to be realtime the 3d card gets used.
Learn something new every day 'ey :)