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Woah, neat! Coincidentally, I'm going to be at PAX Prime! I'll look you up

Uh, so guys, you weren't supposed to do this. You were supposed to make it easy for me. Keep it simple. I'm an artist, not a math... person.

First Place: Jwalt - Babar (6 votes each)
Second... uh... place? Jwalt - Babar (again... 6 votes each)
Third... next? Gingersnap. (5 votes)

So, the only logical thing to do to determine the winner is a fight to the death. Obviously. Unless you guys can come to some sort of accord or agreement or something. You guys are both winners, but it will be up to you to decide whether you are going to host the next blitz jointly, or to concede to the other. I'm going to busy for the next couple weeks (holidaaaays!), so I really don't have time to sort this one out (as much as I'd like to hold a death-cage-match) and I won't have internet for most of it. Good luck!

(Watch out, babar, jwalt's got a bear. And possibly a cow.)

Get yer votes in, here, get yer votes!

The end of today, so sure, midnight. Would you like an extension to Sunday?

Hum, this isn't quite as strong as I would like, but this is what it ended up being. Ended up being an experiment with only using texture and not colour. Except, well, the obvious.

Hahah, use 'bear' with 'laptop'; and now you're left with a grizzly AGS game

I'm glad to see some interest. I have had to narrow my ideas down drastically, but I think I've got something I want to run with. It always good to submit something, a good way to practice.

Time to cast your votes now!

Please use the following criteria:

1) Concept: how creative or effective is the juxtaposition? Is the idea interesting, possibly unique? Does it make you think or feel anything?
2) Artistic merit: Composition, values, etc... Does the image read well? Is the concept well executed? Do you like how it looks?
3) Play-ability: Would it work as a background? Does it have walk-able areas, obvious exits and/or points of interest? Are you already furiously clicking the image hoping to explore it further?

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Ladies and Gentlemen! It is time to stretch those well trained brain cells and do what adventure gamers do best; combine two unlike things in a creative (and possibly terrifying) way!

Juxtapose: to place side by side, especially for contrast or comparison
(in art) two or more contrasting styles/colours placed next to each other for stylistic effect

Like some sort of vast metaphysical inventory puzzle, you must take two different 'things' (concepts, styles, places...) that become more interesting when placed next to each other. Just as an oasis in a vast sandy desert is more interesting than your local duck pond, the drama of these backgrounds will come from the comparison or contrast. No technical limits, but these are the criteria by which the backgrounds will be judged:

1) Concept: how creative or effective is the juxtaposition? Is the idea interesting, possibly unique? Does it make you think or feel anything?
2) Artistic merit: Composition, values, etc... Does the image read well? Is the concept well executed? Do you like how it looks?
3) Play-ability: Would it work as a background? Does it have walk-able areas, obvious exits and/or points of interest? Are you already furiously clicking the image hoping to explore it further?

Good Luck!

Well, righteous win or not, still nice to hear nice things said. Thank you. I've got an idea for a topic, hopefully people have time to participate. Hopefully the idea isn't too 'out there'. Cya guys on the next one :p

Here we go. Hope I'm not the only entry

I have something I'm working on for this, but I need a bit more time. Sunday (29th) should do it, if no one minds.

Hahah, haven't read the tutorial, but managed to get through my wall of text? I'm honored. I'm pretty impatient with tutorials. I just look for the pictures that seem to be doing the things that I want and read the associated blurb. Three point lighting (ie, Rule One) and ambient occlusion are the major take-aways with the one I linked. Most discourse on film lighting will give you an idea of how to strongly light a scene. The best thing to do is look for pictures you like and then analyze why.

Oh my, so much back and forth. Porting things between programs is a nightmare. You never know how they're going to tag things, or how they're going to interpret. Obj files seem to be the most common for cross transfers, but I don't know the details. And then there's all the things you don't notice until too late. I like my geometry clean

Max is not a bad program (in fact, it's rather good ). If I'm not wrong, it has v-ray and mentalray. Those are as good as, if not better, than cycles. I think. Cycles makes some weird artifacting, and I'm not sure if that's a samples quality thing or what. Still, all very heavy on the cpu (and gpu, if it supports it). If you have access to Max I might pursue that over blender. User-friendly is an asset in this case, unless you like scripting. Blender's strength comes from an active and free community, and the many plug-ins they generate. Those are the flames this humble moth is pursuing.

Yeah, for work space I would minimize what the view port has to render real time. I just use little render previews to tell what's going on, switch to wire frame/shaded when the scene is too heavy.

Heh, of course story comes first, these are just my observations. I'm personally not a fan of 3d cell shading for characters. There isn't enough control of where the shading goes, and they seem out of place if the background isn't cell shaded the same way (and Unlady's background is some pretty premier stuff, much more painterly. Oh the troubles with quality!). The biggest thing driving my comment is that perhaps by minimizing the character shading, he won't look out of place in different lighting conditions. Less versions of animation for more payoff I would also make him a tiny bit brighter? Maybe? He looks a tad grey. Maybe change the lighting color? I don't know exactly what would fix it, but he seems a less saturated than the background in this example. The adjustments are minimal, which is why it is so hard to pin down which direction I think you should go. I'm getting nit-picky!

I like the third option. The shading really fades away and strengthens the lines. He barely looks shaded at all, and yet is clearly defined. The shadows don't seem nearly so directional.

But really? I just... want to know what's in the desk. And. Why he's there. You just know that those damn drawers are locked.

Totally agree with the lighting values thing. The background puts me in mind of stuff from 101 dalmatians. I really like it.

Just wondering, going with the cartoon angle; what if the character didn't have any shading? Most cartoon characters don't have self shading, and we're used to seeing them that way. I would make him a little bit brighter and take away the self shading. He might also need some tweaking to make his silhouette stronger in this case (shading gives a lot of form and it would probably need to be compensated for).

These are gorgeous. I... really don't think I can say anything constructive about them. They do seem a little flat, but in a way that is useful to a side scroller. I just like them, they have charm.

Hello! Couple points to clarify:

Ambient occlusion is usually (I say usually because I am not familiar with Autocad) based on the shader/material you use. It does not take any of the lighting information from the scene. Instead, it calculates the distance everything is from everything else and darkens the surfaces accordingly. So, if you have a simple room with four walls, the surface will get darker as it gets closer to the corners. This is usually a stand alone render pass that you will then composite onto your final image in order to cheat light bounce/scattering. Ambient occlusion is a cheap way to really add some softening to the corners. I happen to be a fan of it. I usually save out a separate scene and change the shaders on that one so that you can delete transparent things and not lose any of your material data.

Here is a quick tutorial found (I don't vouch for it, it just has a picture of ambient occlusion on it). It is set up for Maya, it looks like, but it briefly talks about 3 point lighting as well as ambient occlusion. At the bottom is an ambient occlusion pass (the black and white one)

http://ucbugg.github.io/learn.ucbugg/lighting-a-scene/

Shadow mapping is a cheat for render time (just to clarify, 'cheats' are good , they just usually have minor side effects). Instead of making the program calculate it all out while rendering, it generates shadow maps first (watch the resolutions! You can end up with aliasing and jaggies if it's too small) which are lighter weight for rendering. Shadow maps have the advantage of being able to be 'softened' (ie, blurring the edges) which is a fast way to simulate area lights. (Area lights are resource heavy. They also have different names depending on the software, I think, but imagine a point light like a small incandescent bulb and an area light like one of those fluorescent sunshine ceilings. The software has to calculate light coming from a whole area rather than one point, so it's like using 50 lights all at once in one area rather than one point light. Area lights soften shadows the further you get away from the light source.) Shadow maps have a limitation with transparent objects; they don't do them. You get solid black shadows for glass same as you would opaque.

Now, onto my own personal preferences! (Oh man, this is an info dump... )

First off, destroy all ambiance. No ambiance on materials, no ambient lighting, no default light. You can add it in later if you decide you want it, but it tends to make things flat.

I like to light scenes with spot lights. Let's take this scene, for example, and take a look at your reference image. It looks like there's a fair number of lights shining straight down. The upper parts of the scene look dark, while the floor and mid height items are well lit. You can even see the shape of spotlights shining down along the walls. Again, unfamiliar with Autocad, but you should be able to soften the edges of a spot light and adjust the cone angle. I would start by identifying where you want the main light to be coming from (in the reference, it's coming from the ceiling. So for the sake of ease, I'll imagine that's what you're going for) So, I would start with one spot light shining straight down. I'd fiddle with the cone angle, softness, intensity and falloff until it makes sense and looks nice shining down the wall (look for that nice parabola). Then I'd duplicate the light a couple times and arrange them in a two by two grid from the ceiling.

Softness: by this I mean whether the edge of the light is a hard line or a blurred line. Could be called something else.
Falloff: How quickly the light loses energy. Imagine a two axis graph: Linear falloff is a straight line diagonal down. Exponential is a curve arcing down. Exponential falloff is more useful simply because you should be able to change the exponent used (my program starts with an exponent of 2.) I like higher exponents for lights like the one you have there on the wall as it localizes the light, and I like lower exponents (1.5 - 1.8) for lights like you would have in the ceiling. It goes further without blowing out the nearby geometry.
Intensity: depends on the falloff. Linear needs less intensity, Exponential (depending on the exponent) can need hundreds of times more. When playing around, I like to work in extremes in order to nail it down. For ease of use, on an old computer, you might want to start a new scene and just play with light falloff/intensity until you have a rough idea of how far and bright you want the light to go. Just set up a simple room with two walls and a floor roughly the same size as your scene here.

Alright, so you've established your main lighting. You'll probably notice that there's a lot of dark shadows now. I notice you've lit the scene with a light shining directly on. This is a great secondary light. I would either lower the exponent on it or change it to linear falloff (while lowering the intensity). You want an even sort of light illuminating the shadows/ceiling. The amount of light coming from it now is good; too much is hitting the desk, but the stuff hitting the far walls is good. It will bring out detail in the shadows. If it's not too bright by this point, I'd also keep those lights you have on the far wall. The variation is pleasing.

And now, onto the third direction; rim lights. I would try one out this, but they aren't always necessary. Take an infinite light, do not put shadows or falloff on it. Change its color to be complimentary of the other lights (if they are orange, make this one blue, for example). Now, point it almost directly at the camera. In this case, make sure it is either level with the floor or pointing up, and then point it slightly to the right. What you want to see is an edging of light on the darkest surfaces; it should be showing up on that far corner of the desk, thereby distinguishing it from the shadows. The rim light tends to need to be bright, so start bright and work down. Maybe even mute the other lights to see what it is doing. Rim lights add a bit of drama and definition to a scene, they are very important in dark rooms. If this scene ends up being quite bright, you might do away with it all together. You can also soften it (lower intensity) and tilt it more to the right to soften the effect of shadows and make the scene seem more ambient without sacrificing tone depth.

Another point: you should(?) be able to make a light only associate with certain objects. This is useful for rim lights if they are too bright on one object, but perfect everywhere else. You just get rid of the light association on that object and carry on your merry way.

This isn't all there is to know (say), not by a long shot, but it's a start for this scene and I *know* how difficult it is to start figuring out how to use a 3d program (I'm trying to start with Blender, and oh what a learning curve that is. So humbling. Can't even move properly yet). Not to mention working with a chugging computer. Maybe check out some ways to optimize your work scene. Are you working in wireframe? Might be a good idea while manipulating lights. It also looks like there's some high tessellation in some of those objects, maybe you can hide the most resource-hungry while you work? There should be some viewing options which will strip your scene down the bare minimum while you're still working in the 3d space. Don't know Autocad though. I would suggest consulting the almighty google and looking for autocad tutorials, and tips on optimization.

Lighting makes *the* most amount of difference with the least amount of work. Nail it down and it is always worth the effort.

I really hope there was something useful to you in there. I look forward to seeing this progress!

Oh, I would like to play too! And here I will submit what I have before I think better of it.

So far, not a lot of texturing. I might come back to it before the deadline, but I'm also trying to get other stuff done. Hopefully the image explains itself.

*Edit: More textures. And I think I'm done with this one.

yes Yes YES! Bought it on steam I am almost afraid to play it because then it's over...

Congrats on the release. I've really enjoyed the whole series so far, and I'm really looking forward to playing this one.

Hey, cool to see some interest in this thing. I'm very excited to be working on it and I think it's going to be great I absolutely adore adventure games and am very stoked to be part of making one, and I don't even have to figure out the scripting.

Those backgrounds are beautiful, and I'm curious as to the combination of programs and effects you used to create them. They look much more natural than other 3D game backgrounds I've seen

Thank you very much Everything is rendered out from the 3d package itself, textures created in photoshop. I went to school to learn how to use the 3d programs which goes a long way towards a more 'natural' look. Forced practice and an explanation of all the powerful features

Dem. Backgrounds!

Thanks! Can't wait for everyone to see it all together. Heck, *I* want to see it all together. I don't even know the whole story! Sunnypenguin plays his cards close to his chest.

[Background Artist - 3D Environments]

Background Artist - 3D Environments

I'm interested in being involved in any sort of project what wants 3d environment art. Give me a simple sketch (just to show layout, contents of the scene and proportions) or a very detailed description (with reference images preferably) and see what I can do for you! I'm looking for fun little challenges to stretch these 3D skills of mine. Just a little bit of deadline, a hint of accountability and bam, I'll feel like a new artist!

Looking for someone to block out a scene in 3d? That's me!

Looking for someone to finally build that sketch that's been sitting on the edge of your desk? Guess what, me again!

Looking for someone to 3D-ify your pixel art and obsolete-ify your pixel characters? I can totally do that! (You know... if you want...)

Looking for brilliant lighting and models? Making an escape the room game? I am SO TOTALLY THERE!

Looking for fine organic modeling and characters? Uhhh... not so much. Maybe a plant. A little one.

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No project is too small! Will work for entertaining stories! Send PM for a link to my gallery.