Vol.
2, Issue 10
February 17, 2000
Painting
on Polygons:
Critiques
by
Rick "Flatness"
Grossenbacher
ince
Im a bit backlogged with critiques on readers artwork,
I thought Id take this entire week to devote to that. Again,
Id like to stress that the opinions I give are based on
my background in traditional and video game art. Im not
an authority on what is good or what is bad, but I think Ive
acquired enough experience over the years to give some good feedback.
So, with that said, Im going to jump right into it with
a look at a graphic made by O.DOGG.
(click
for a larger view)
Here are
some questions O.DOGG asked about his image:
How
can I add more atmosphere to the image and how can I make the
base seem more real and not so plastic-looking?
For the
first question, there are several things you could do to make
the base seem less plastic looking. For starters, you could definitely
alter the material more and see if you can refine it to have a
more realistic look such as messing with reflective parts, or
tweaking settings using the Raytrace material (if you are using
3-D Studio MAX 2 or higher). But, this is a lot of tweaking little
numbers and spinners to see if you can get something better. So,
besides that, I would try another approach. I would not use the
same material on the entire image. It looks like you used a plug
in which adds little boxes and hi-tech looking gadgets on the
mesh (I cant remember what the name of this plug-in is offhand,
but Ive seen it before). Those boxes look pretty cool, actually,
but besides that, what I think would really liven this image up
is adding windows emanating light or just little lights scattered
in certain places. To understand what Im talking about,
take a look at the Death Star from Star Wars. Because of all the
lights, it really gives it a feeling of having life
to it.
Or another
thing you might want to do is make the shape of the base more
complex. Maybe make it much skinnier in the middle or have antennas
or rods extending from it in certain places (which you kind of
already have, but could add more to maybe). The high-tech boxes
protruding from the skin of the base definitely make it look more
complex, but I think the overall design needs more complexity
rather than just making the outer skin complex (just a thought).
But overall, I still think this image looks very cool.
How
do I make it appear bigger, but still fit on the rendering?
To do
this, I would mess with camera lenses. Specifically, altering
the Field of View will really change how your 3-D images looks
on the screen. With a really crazy field of view, you can make
something tiny look gigantic. Again, this boils down to a bunch
of tweaking of settings and seeing what looks best.
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