[WIP] Standing Out

Enlightenment · Post by **Enlightenment** » 2002-12-05 08:13pm

Planning this as a christmas gift for some of my family and associates.

The building/spear thing on the right isn't finalized yet nor is the ground texture. Any comments or suggestions?

Zaku-chan · Post by **Zaku-chan** » 2002-12-05 08:14pm

It looks nice...but I don't get any kind of message from it or anything.

salm · Post by **salm** » 2002-12-05 08:38pm

nice
the first thing i thought was cold windy day at the ocean. for the ground maybe a rough sand beach texture (same color and shade) which let´s you figure that there´s water further back.

the object: the shape is cool. i´d keep it. the surfact should be "bumpy" on the dark side as well.
the legs of the object should weld better with the ground. little sand hills around them or something like that.

and it would be cool if the persons hair would be "flying ind the wind.

Post by **Kuja** » 2002-12-05 08:39pm

I like it. And I like Salm's suggestions.

XPViking · Post by **XPViking** » 2002-12-05 09:06pm

Can you read my mind? You've managed to capture in art what I've been thinking about for a short story.

XPViking

salm · Post by **salm** » 2002-12-06 07:29am

salm wrote:nice
the first thing i thought was cold windy day at the ocean. for the ground maybe a rough sand beach texture (same color and shade) which let´s you figure that there´s water further back.

the object: the shape is cool. i´d keep it. the surfact should be "bumpy" on the dark side as well.
the legs of the object should weld better with the ground. little sand hills around them or something like that.

and it would be cool if the persons hair would be "flying ind the wind.

i just reread my post from yesterday and changed my mind. the sand beach texture wouldnt fit in because it wouldnt be abstract enough.

btw, may i ask how you made the sky?

Einhander Sn0m4n · Post by **Einhander Sn0m4n** » 2002-12-06 07:31am

Nice rocketship!

Evil Sadistic Bastard · Post by **Evil Sadistic Bastard** » 2002-12-06 07:42am

CAPTION:

I have *got* to lay off on those "happy pills"...

Crown · Post by **Crown** » 2002-12-06 10:13am

I like it, it has got that 'old film' quality to it. Very nice.

Enlightenment · Post by **Enlightenment** » 2002-12-11 02:02pm

Next update:

Textured the spiky thing, added some ground fog, made some adjustments to the ground texture to make it more like bare bedrock.

Salm: the sky is done with Lightwave's Skytracer (for the clouds and basic color, a volumetric spotlight (for the diagonal streaks), and a ground fog effect (to brighten the horizon). If you have Lightwave I can give you more details but otherwise the exact methods won't be of much use.

Will post another update either tomorrow or friday. I still need to work on the ground texture, the model's pose, and her textures.

TrailerParkJawa · Post by **TrailerParkJawa** » 2002-12-11 03:07pm

I like it. It looks like the structure/craft is leaning to the left. Is that intentional?

The Dark · Post by **The Dark** » 2002-12-11 10:42pm

I like the silver tower better, just personal opinion.

Enlightenment · Post by **Enlightenment** » 2002-12-13 04:05am

A minor update

Mostly trying to get a decent distance fog effect. Also brightened up the ground and did some texture tweaks.

The spiky thing is really an unfinished spacecraft hull mesh that I decided to borrow as an obelisk. The full ship is completely symetric; what's sticking out of the ground here is just about half of it.

It's not supposed to be leaning. If it looks that way then I've created an unintentional optical illusion because the mesh is pointing directly skywards.

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2002-12-13 04:07am

Looks good.

Your name is Coridon?

Enlightenment · Post by **Enlightenment** » 2002-12-13 04:11am

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:Looks good.

Thanks.

Your name is Coridon?

(checks credits on the image) Uhh, yeah.

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2002-12-13 04:15am

Damn, that's a cool first name. Almost sci-fi-ish.

Robert Treder · Post by **Robert Treder** » 2002-12-13 05:52am

Enlightenment wrote:It's not supposed to be leaning. If it looks that way then I've created an unintentional optical illusion because the mesh is pointing directly skywards.

Looks like it's leaning to me. The chick also looks like she's leaning. Perhaps there's some sort of slight fisheye lens effect unintentionally put in there.

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2002-12-13 05:58am

Actually, the woman almost looks like she's hovering a few inches off the ground to me.

salm · Post by **salm** » 2002-12-13 08:53am

hmm... no i dont have lightwave. i work with max.

actuall i liked the first texture of the obelisk better.

are you sure that the obelisk isnt leaning? if you look at the second picture, the one in which the edges are more pixelated (anti aliasing turned off?) you can see that the pixels on both sides of the obelist create different "stairs" if the were in the same angle compared to the bottom end of the picture they´d create the same "stairs"

how do you call these stairs?

you also might want to add some shadows to get rid of the impression of the hovering figure.

Enlightenment · Post by **Enlightenment** » 2002-12-16 01:46pm

By popular demand the obelisk in again white.

This'll probably be a short-lived update. In terms of artistic quality it's regressed in places, particularly the sky and ground texture. I intend to fix both of these problems for update #5.

I had to rework the entire scene for the objects' shadows to be visible. In the earlier versions both the character and the obelisk were on reverse slopes away from the camera and as such their shadows were obscured by bumps in the landscape.

I think I've finally got a decent fog setup here; now I just have to fix everything else that got broken in the process of getting the fog and shadows right.

The obelisk is absolutely vertical as far as the geometry is concerned. If it looks leaning then it's an artifact of the LW camera model that I can't fix.

Spanky: she's on the ground but because of the reverse slope thing there was no shadow to make that clear. This version is better (there is a shadow; it's small, but it's there) but still not quite perfect.

Salm: 'stairs' = 'aliasing.' AA has been turned on in all these renders although I have used lower AA settings (faster rendering) in some of the shots.

Thanks for the comments everyone.

salm · Post by **salm** » 2002-12-19 12:17pm

Enlightenment wrote:
By popular demand the obelisk in again white.

The obelisk is absolutely vertical as far as the geometry is concerned. If it looks leaning then it's an artifact of the LW camera model that I can't fix.

what´s the problem? cant you rotate the obelisk or the camera a couple of degrees? as you can see in the image below, it does appear to be leaning in the image.