Right, well, ok, here's what passes for me having a go at an outside scene, looking down a street. Before, most of what I'd done was insides, so I thought I ought to give myself a go at outdoors too. Nothing too fancy, just one vanishing point in the distance. I plan to have cars moving back-and forth along the road at the back, too.
(http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o33/Nedraed/streeet.png)
Something seems...odd somehow
I'm by no means an expert but I happen to have had a similar problem just the other day:
the pavement towards the vanishing point shrinks faster than the road does (i.e if you compare the proportions of the road and pavement in the front to those right at the end, i think you will find a big difference) I think you will need to about half the size of the road at the end of the street to get the proportions right.
also the pavements themselves are slightly different sizes (only by a pixel or two) but it becomes very noticeable towards the distance
about the sky, you should try to have more colors on it, blue at the top and more grey near the horizon. kinda like this:
http://optics.kulgun.net/Blue-Sky/blue-sky5.jpg
i think this scene might not look too good in game, it requires a lot of scaling towards the end of the street
Quote from: bog on Fri 30/01/2009 15:31:00
i think this scene might not look too good in game, it requires a lot of scaling towards the end of the street
Fortunately, the street isn't for walking up, just for crossing. I'll see what I can do about the sky, though.
Quote from: Aljoho on Fri 30/01/2009 14:29:10the pavement towards the vanishing point shrinks faster than the road does (i.e if you compare the proportions of the road and pavement in the front to those right at the end, i think you will find a big difference) I think you will need to about half the size of the road at the end of the street to get the proportions right.
That's just plain wrong. The proportions are exactly the same all the way, and they have to be, because all the lines go through the VP.
The bigger problem with the background is the wrong depth of the buildings. The front of the high building on the left is at least 5 times wider than the other fronts.
Look at this pic:
(http://img520.imageshack.us/img520/6045/explcatnb7.png)
By choosing a random secondary vanishing point I can easily add a duplicate of the yellow marked front behind it (green). You can see that the 2d-width of the green shape is less than half of the yellow shape's 2d-width.
I like this bg very much. But-
* You cannot really drive a car on such narrow street. Comparing door (thus guessing human size) to a lane left for car, everybody rides bicycles. There absolutely no way for a normal car there. And due shops, I guess you have to fit a TRUCK on this road. And park it, for unloading. How?
* Add more stuff to the horizon. distant mountains, trees or tall buildings or whatever
* Everything looks so dirty. In means of color.
I don't know how, but colors seem really random, and ugly. A color correction would help alot. Most out of place colored things are
- dark red/brown building on left - it looks downright ugly
- red wall on right - it's WAY too red
- garage door. Black w/ green lines? what?
I strongly suggest to keep some harmony around there. Then again, google image search for "street" came up with some US cities and yes, ugly streets like this DO exist, in San Francisco... :(
* Add stuff. Fire hydrants, trashcans, places to cross road, adverts, power/phone lines, cracks in pavement, birds, cracks-stains-dirt-posters on buildings, streetlights, etc
EDIT: KhrisMUC, you made me all dizzy... how do you come up with stuff like that? And who actually picks random vanishing points/does all the geometry rocket-science for such simple background? I guess experienced artists have better "eye" for it and simply make smaller mistakes, but I don't really believe everyone checks buildings like this...
@KhrisMUC:
The big building on the left is supposed to be set back from the pavement farther than the smaller one next to it, and since it's a warehousey sort of thing, it's supposed to be a lot longer. I think I might shorten it, though.
@InCreator:
I originally conceived this as a one-way street. I suppose the line in the middle of the road confuses that, but adding a "One Way" sign might contribute as a prop that this scene needs, too.
Much obliged for everyone's help so far!
Khris I don't understand why you would use a random second vanishing point. Anyone could choose a different random second vanishing point and get completely different results than what you got.
For example the way I've calculated it, the face of the burger bar is 156 pixels wide, while the face of the warehouse is only 168, a difference of only 12 pixels (making it only 107.7% as wide as the burger hut, not 500%+).
Can you please explain how your "random" vanishing point was determined?
Edit: Further, based on your image and vanishing point, the warehouse is barely more than 4 times wider...?
You can try this for yourself:
-choose another random vanishing point further to the left
-draw a line from that VP crossing the far bottom corner of the yellow rectangle (L1)
-L1 will intersect the horizontal red line at the bottom of the pic
-the distance marked "a" will be greater than in my pic
-double that distance, then draw from there to your chosen vanishing point
-the line will go through the far bottom corner of the green rectangle, no matter where you choose to place the VP
The explanation is rather simple: imagine two equal sized rectangles on top of each other; their diagonals will always be parallel, no matter what shape they have.
And all parallel lines meet in a single point on the horizon.
I didn't recognize at first that the original vanishing point you used was also used in creating the horizon on which the second vanishing point was placed. Makes a lot more sense now...though still not 5+ times as wide.... :=
I don't think the warehouse is absurdly wide in any case. Though InCreator may be right in that the street is rather narrow. Make it a single-lane street with a sign saying "ONE WAY" or "DO NOT ENTER" :P
Khrismuc is perfectly correct in the perspective model, but I hardly think the depth of the warehouse is a major issue.
Perspective-wise, my only gripe is that the white building to the right seems a bit over-sized. Scale it down a notch and it'll make more sense.
Apart from that...sky, textures (not generated such, but manually painted, thank you!), details...but you're definitely on the right track.