Help creating a basement background *Updated!*

[Jakerpot]

Hi, i'm creating this basement background, but i'm without any inspiration, i googled some images of basement's but nothing that look like mines, what can i add to it? It's the background good by the way? I wanted to add a walk-behind area with some boxes to add more immersion to the room. What can i add that may have in a basement? Help me please!

basement:

[Andorxor]

A fusebox
A boiler
A water hose
Some tools
spiderwebs

[GarageGothic]

A lightbulb hanging from the ceiling - your background doesn't have any visible light sources.

[alex]

All the walls have exact same shading.  Maybe try a radial gradient gently making the corners of the room darker.  If you have a central hanging light the walls will be darker in the corners anyway, but only slightly.

[Jakerpot]

I was thinking where i gonna put the light bulp, in the middle? Well, a fusebox where? I will add some tools on a box, maybe.

[SpacePirateCaine]

Hi Jakerpot,

Just wanted to point out that you're running into perspective issues again with this room, similar to what I showed you in the other room you posted in the Critic's lounge a month or so back. You've got it relatively closely with the bookshelf on the left wall, but the boxes and shelves aren't following your perspective that you set up.

You can accomplish a much 'cleaner' looking background by keeping linear perspective in mind. As you probably remember, your 'room with cage' was a great improvement when you took that into consideration.

Without getting too crazy with advanced linear perspective, I'd suggest that for the elements in your room, you just have all the boxes, shelves, bookshelf, walls and so on and so forth use one vanishing point. I can almost guarantee that it'll feel better when looking at it.

Now, in regards to stuff that you'd find in a basement, it's really all dependent on whose basement it is. In my basement where I grew up, there was a lot of hobby related stuff - an air compressor and airbrush, easel, toolbox, corkboard, workbench, various types of cable and hoses, some electric tools hanging on the walls, gardening tools (Rake, shovel, spade, etc.), my Dad's bicycle... Now, the basement we had was actually used as a work space, so we didn't get the rest of the house dirty when working on projects.

Some people use their basements for storage instead. If your character is a collector of wines, you could have wine casks or wine bottles on a rack, if they're a scientist, you could have empty beakers, maybe an old lab coat, whatever they would likely to have extras of or not really be using anymore.

[Jakerpot]

Thanks Pirate!  Do you have some vanishing point tutorial to give me? I never used that, so i barely know how it works, i will add a old lab coat and some cables too. I`m having some dificulties with the tools, i can't draw them! Well, i almost can't! And well, it's a mansion, so if he like wines he probably would have a wine cellar (Good idea  ) I will add some cables falling from the ceiling and correct the perspective too (In my next game, i won't use the whole screen to draw the background, i will put it on the center and put a black area, it's much easier  ) Thank you!

[SpacePirateCaine]

I'm fairly certain that I already gave you a brief tutorial on linear perspective in the last Critic's Lounge thread that you started, but I'll gladly reiterate, since some people may not have read that one (Even with the link above).

Linear perspective is a simple technique which follows the principle that all parallel objects (objects whose edges run exactly the same direction) point to an imaginary point in our vision which is called the 'vanishing point', which falls on our 'horizon' (where the ground and the sky touch, in our vision, assuming the ground is a flat plane.

Drawing art using a single perspective point is simple. I've put together a really short animation to demonstrate the most basic principles.



The steps demonstrated in this animation:

• Establish a Horizon (Above your horizon, lines will go up. Below, lines will go down).
  
• Establish a Vanishing Point (All Parallel lines on your z axis will converge at this point)
  
• Any surface 100% perpendicular to the 'camera' can be created with straight horizontal/vertical lines
  
• All parallel lines follow the corners of your room and other square objects to the VP
  
• You can create simple 3D objects by creating 'boxes' around them and filling in the necessary details.
  
• Remember, every object with parallel lines should converge at the same VP.

And you're done!

There are also techniques to make sure that your objects are proportioned correctly, but I'll save that for another time. I didn't want to spend too much time on this, and only really wanted to demonstrate the principles of One-point linear perspective.

Hopefully this is useful to you. Feel free to take the animation and open it in an art program to get a better idea of what's going on, as (for example with the table) I kept things moving along at a pretty steady clip.

[Jakerpot]

coincidently i had this subject on Arts class  (It sucks to do on paper  ) It's exactly the same thing (The tutorial you made, wich is awsome  ) what my teacher said, now i understand it. i will try to remake the bg. Thansk SpacePirateCaine!

EDIT: Here is my dillema:


how i continue the shelves?

here is the last image for you:


help me please!

[Khris]

First of all, all the shelves' short lines at their back are supposed to be horizontal, not angled.
This is the most common error of all times, so don't worry about it. Just get it right from now on

You'll find that your other problem will magically solve itself now

[Jakerpot]

ok, i will try it   

[SpacePirateCaine]

Definitely pay close attention in art class, if you want to hone your skills. You'll learn a lot of really useful theory there. Linear perspective is a great place to start if you want to work on architectural drawing. Anything that's man-made or geometric can generally be represented pretty well with linear perspective, though things get more and more complicated as you start to do things with tilts and so on.

Honestly, I'm much more a pen/paper kind of person myself, when doing background art - back when I started with AGS, I put together a good number of pieces, and all of them used linear perspective (useful inside buildings, not so much so in 'natural' settings. But with a ruler, a light and easily erasable pencil and a little patience, you should be able to get something really nice done, especially if you practice for a while.

Now, in regards to the edit you made, just as KhrisMuc said, there are some issues here. I have a feeling you may have learned a bit about two-point linear perspective, but just to reiterate:

All lines, when everything is square or rectangular should either A) Lead to the Vanishing Point or B) Be horizontal or Vertical.

The main issue there is that shelves of your bookshelf are tilting down. They should not be on an angle. Let's take a look at how linear perspective in relation to the horizon should show us the top and bottom flat surfaces of objects.



On your bookshelf, you're trying to take shortcuts and missing a few crucial steps in the process. Always start with your simple steps, and don't get rid of your lines until you're absolutely sure you're done with them. Take another look at the 'table' in the image during my tutorial above. I didn't delete any of my lines until I was completely done with the object. I actually jumped the gun a bit and didn't put in the footer in the wall. I would've had to redo my floor lines otherwise.

[Jakerpot]

  thank you very much SpacePirateCaine! i'm now understanding almost everything! Ok, i will try to don't use shortcuts, as my teatcher said, to make the objects. I will make the boxes, and then i will post the steps here  thank you! (Are you a PRO at making GIF's, you really like helping me, or you just don't have anything to do? Because the GIF's are colossal, and probably they took a time to make hun?)

[SpacePirateCaine]

I'm glad I could help out. If you can put together some awesome backgrounds with what I've taught here, I'll be happy. When you've worked out some useful shortcuts, by all means take them - however, it's just like I said before (again, in that last thread), you've got to know the rules before you can break them.

And I guess my motivation is a mix of a few of the above. Though I'm by no means a pro at animation (though I'm trying to get there), I do like helping people - not just you, but anyone that I can help learn more about art, or whatever other trivial lore I can impart. And though I do have projects I'm working on, I find taking breaks and muddling about in the Critics' Lounge is therapeutic. Gives me things to focus on aside from what I'm obsessing about at any given point in time.

I'm glad you like the animations - they're meant as teaching tools, and I really hope that someone else can learn something useful as well. I'm flattered that SSH has already found the 'Simple One-Point Perspective' animation and posted it on the AGS Blog. They take maybe an hour, maybe less. I don't really pay attention to how long it takes when I'm animating. I lose track of time when I'm in the zone.

[Jakerpot]

that's good, you are a good heartered person so.  Well, i finished the boxes, hope it doesn't have anything wrong...

[SpacePirateCaine]

Good stuff, Jakerpot,

It's coming along nicely, and you seem to be grasping the single vanishing point linear perspective technique much better now. There are minor issues in the depth of your 'stacked' boxes, but they aren't glaring, so I think you can probably survive without having to tweak them too much. If you do want to work out early on how to make sure one element isn't going too far back and messing up your perspective, I'd actually suggest working up from the ground, using the corner of the floor as a guideline, then doing your vertical lines on each box and other objects sidled up against the walls.

It's by no means a commonly accepted art term, but I refer to the objects I make in 2D space within the confines of mock-3D (in linear perspective) as being within 'bounding boxes'. Reckoning back to my days of level building in Quake way-back-when. A 'bounding box' is a cube around a physical object that sets the limits of its clipping planes. So by building a bounding box around an object in your 2D room using the walls as guidelines, you'll be able to make sure that nothing looks like it's going too far up, down, back, forth, left or right and invading another object's personal space.

One thing I'd suggest, actually, is getting your base colors down earlier on, instead of doing a full b/w outline of everything - otherwise it's going to be a nightmare to clean up all those black lines - unless you're planning on having black outlines around everything in the game.

As it is so far, the background seems to be coming along nicely. I'm looking forward to seeing it continue to grow.

[Jakerpot]

Thanks pirate, i'm now updating an animation with more objects in the room, i will make a color pallete first, and then add some colors if necessary before painting it.



any issue say!

OBS: The walking behind area it was just to see if it would work, but i think not... Having some problems with vent shaft and the tools, they are soo ugly! Do you have any tips to make them look nicer? Thanks!

[alex]

I would make the vent shaft a couple of pixels wider on the right so it lines up with the invisible but implied right hand face of the locker beneath it - or - move the whole vent right about 2 or 3 pixels.

The tool rack is to the left of the hood above it.  Either move the whole tool rack right or the hood left.

Also, the box directly to the right of the tool rack on top of the other box is wrong on the bottom back left corner...  The back edge should extend down until it meets the top of the underneath box.

Anyway thats just what I see.   I thought the walk behind area was a good idea...  Maybe try it a bit wider too, instea of a pile in the middle, make it stretch across the whole screen from left to right.

That is what I would try.

[Jakerpot]

well the box isn't wrong ( i think) the line reach the bottom of the box, but on the same line as the edge. I don't liked much the walk-behinds, they look ugly, yeah, i think i will make the vent a bit larger and smaller. Thank alex!

EDIT:

Here is the new basement:

Added much more stuff to it. The colors on the upper box are just for me remember of the original 

i'm thinking on posting the whole process when finish it, adding colors and everything. Then beginers could use as a guide, help, or something. Just for fun 

OBS: I transformed the rack into a window, YES A WINDOW, please dont ask what the hell is this window, because you will know if you play it.

[alex]

Well, compared to your first picture at the start of this thread, your new one is a definite improvement and it's not even fully colored yet.

Nice work, I am interested to see where this goes.

edit: Can I just add I really like the way you've animated the development process here...  It would be a good educational tool for anyone reading this thread wanting to make their own rooms