Perspectives on perspective

[Igor Hardy]

Andail and Ascovel -- Would either of you be willing to make a process post showing your work from Sketch-Up to in-game? I've tried working from a CAD program, Chief Architect, for my indoors scenes, but find the perspective and camera placement to not function in a usable way for me.

I'd prefer not to show the Sketchup version. It's just a bunch of primitive, textureless, ugly blocks to represent the placement and sizes of specific objects and a lamp post made of 2 poles stuck together with hell knows what. It might be difficult to unsee it.

[Bishy]

While we're on the subject of Sketchup, I did happen across a really nice tutorial on using a combination of a Sketchup render and digital painting to create nice backgrounds. Of course it's cheating (it's more editing a render rather than painting a background from scratch), but the results this artist got look really nice and stylised. The slight use of fisheye probably helps to keep the scene from looking too boxy and 'neat'.

http://yuumei.deviantart.com/art/3D-background-Tutorial-316500996

[Anian]

Thanks for the example Eric and I didn't know about the trick of the perspective on a curved surface so that's a bonus. I really don't have anything to add, I'm terrible with perspective, I get the "theory", but when I try to draw (without 3d base) it always looks weird.

Of course it's cheating (it's more editing a render rather than painting a background from scratch),

Well if you download somebody else's model, then it really is cheating, but ALL 3d gets post processed in an image or video editing or both software. It's just a difference in what skills you have. Besides that, it's not like you're saying you have brilliant painting technique, you're making a background that looks good and you're using tools at your disposal.
Besides, the shown technique in the tutorial you posted is ok, but it's not very diverse in style for backgrounds, it could use a bit of texturing to make it cooler and making the lines tighter would make more adaptable to putting sprites in.

[Eric]

Ilyich: It's amazing how tight your initial sketch is, and how much is translated in the final form. Are you setting your color layer to Multiply over your "pencils"?

BishyT: That's a pretty good tutorial. That and the one that Ilyich posted earlier in the thread will give me a good start on learning to use Sketch-Up properly.

Anian: That page is from the Famous Artist Cartoon Course module on perspective. The whole module can be found here, and the whole course can be found here. There was another Famous Artist Course for fine arts that had some amazing resources as well, but I can't remember if there was one on perspective. The one on drawing folds and drapery was indispensable though.

[Eric]

I'm just going to drop this useful link in here for any future visitors to this thread.

[ProcioneSx]

I started using a 3D software (Blender) to do my rooms and the frames of the walkcycle of my character. I find it very useful because you can take shots from various point of views instead of re-drawing every time the room.

And for the character's frames you can just film the 3D character walking (from the desired angle), and save the animation in frames. Once you've learned the 3d software, it's a very fast method.

(I hope my english it's good enough  )