Archives for posts with tag: 3D

Creating Fantasy Worlds

Dec 29, 2011 //
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One of the main tasks of a computer graphics artist, particularly if working with 3d, is the creation of fantasy worlds. No matter what the industry, games, film, video or any other, creating backgrounds and environments plays a major role in making the actors or animation look good. In more traditional media such as animation and live film, entire teams specialize in creating sets or backgrounds for the scene. In the computer graphics world there is the same tendency to have people specialize in creating the “sets” and environments for the computer graphics actors.

The first thing to consider, even before discussing design issues, is the meaning of the word “Fantasy”. If we can understand the notion of Fantasy, coming up with the design of fantasy worlds becomes a more natural process.

The second thing to consider is the specific attributes of a 3d computer graphics environment. While fantasy imagery is not a new concept, 3d computer graphics differs itself from illustrations and paintings for its spatial qualities. Creating 3d worlds in the computer is somewhat like designing architecture, except there are not natural and physical barriers to deal with.

To create rich, beautiful fantasy 3d worlds, it is necessary to understand these two concepts before anything else. An overview of the process of coming up with ideas and making them work will also be explained later on.

Concept of Fantasy

Fantasy or fantastic means anything that is different from our mundane, obvious daily lives. The words “our mundane, obvious daily lives” are stressed for many things that exist in our world but are not commonly seen tend to look fantastic to our eyes. Plants, for example, can be quite exotic, especially if foreign. Our minds are used to seeing everyday things, people and places that surround us up to a point were we take it for granted. The next time you walk into a flower shop, take a look closely. Many flowers will seem pretty bizarre when analyzed closely.

While this definition seems a little simplistic (like most of the concepts explained here), it takes some time to let go of our beliefs in order to create those exceptionally fantastic worlds. To create things that are different from our daily lives, we must first understand what are those things that we take for granted. What is fantastic to one person may not seem so unusual to another. That is why most artists work with extremes, which are unlikely to be common place for the majority of people.

Fantasy is also breaking the rules of nature. Nature dictates certain laws that most objects and living creatures comply to. The law of gravity is one of the most obvious rules. When breaking the laws of nature which we live under, we can for sure create things and places that are different from our daily lives. No wonder we are so attracted to space and other planets; we can’t help speculating about the differences these other worlds with have with ours.

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Categories Fantasy Design

Painting custom textures

Oct 11, 2011 //
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In today’s 3D industry, great value is given to organic modeling. Many believe that the more complex the model, the better the artist. In fact, a good artist does not have to create complex organic models to be a good artist and to show a lot of detail.

Look at the following image, created for the whimsical interface of a game.

Observe carefully this image, which seems to contain a lot of detail. However, upon closer inspection, notice that almost all of the objects in this picture are either planar or cylindrical in nature. What makes the image look intricate is the overlap and texture work.

Of course, there will be times when the project demands specifically the creation of organic-shaped objects. However, the artist should strive to make things easier, not more complicated, whenever possible.

Notice how many of the textures in this picture were painted SPECIFICALLY for each model, that is, custom-made for each geometry shape.

 

 

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Categories Creative Textures

Texture art gives personality to 3D objects

Oct 05, 2011 //
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Look the following model of a regular chair. With the current texture applied to it, you have no indication of who it belongs to, where it should be placed, or what is the context of the story it was included in.

However, once you create custom textures made especially for it, then you can really determine a lot about the owner, context and location. (Perhaps this chair is owned by a cartoon character, in a whimsical type of setting! The story is probably fun and cheerful!)

 

Textures indicate materials and add interest

Textures are also responsible for letting the viewer recognize the type of material that a specific object is made of. Besides identifying materials, textures also add detail and interest to otherwise plain models.

 

Textures disguise imperfections and finish off models

And finally, textures can greatly hide the imperfections of a poor model and can also help to add trim and finish off geometry that otherwise would look computerized and artificial.

Observe the two identical models below: the column on the left has a simple texture applied to it. The column on the right has texture that contains careful trims and decorative borders placed in strategic locations. Notice how the faceted polygons of the simple column are much more visible, while the intricate column’s texture disguises it a bit. Also, the connection to the ground and ceiling are much nicer and finished on the column at the right.

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Categories Creative Textures

Taking lighting into account in texture art

Oct 05, 2011 //
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Question and answer regarding the nature of lighting in texture art:

>>Student question:  I guess I’ve always had the impression you need to consider the interplay of light with your texture during the process of creating the texture.  For example, if I’m developing a texture in PhotoShop, and cast the shadow incorrectly, then I would think the texture would be bad if I later cast the light from a different direction?

Answer: Yes, absolutely, in that case you do need to take lighting into consideration. But that is only important if you are making textures that have “dimensional quality”, that is, that have a lot of depth to them. In fact, “dimensionality” is one important decision one needs to take into account when creating textures. If your textures are rather flat, then the lighting is independent of texture creation. Of course you would want to imagine in your mind how you are going to work the lighting, so maybe a colored or dappled effect will add another extra layer of interesting features over the texture work.

Generally speaking, the amount of dimensionality is directly dependent of the amount of independent lighting you are able to use: for projects which can rely on real, 3D software created lighting, there is no need to create such dimensional textures. For projects which have little or no true 3D lighting, it’s advisable to paint in some of the effects.

Above you see an example of a very dimensional texture created for a wall. Notice how it includes painting of the lighting effect, with deep shadows and dappled effects. Generally speaking, we have the impression that most of the light is focused on the bottom portion of the wall,  however, it’s not specific — it’s BEST to keep painted lighting effects non-specific as to not conflict too much with any truly 3D lighting existent in the final project.

 

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Categories Creative Textures

An Alien Bouquet

Oct 03, 2011 //
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This image was created in 1998 (that’s a long time ago!) as part of a tutorial article for Serious 3D magazine. The software 3D Studio Max 2.5 and Cebas Optic Suite (for the flares) were used.

Every single object you see in this image was created using the ‘box method’, which consists of the following: create a box with 3 to 5 segments and modify its vertices and faces until it resembles roughly the format you want. Then apply the command MeshSmooth, which makes it look nice and smooth, with a very organic look. All the textures were hand painted especially for each model.

The branches can be created by extruding the faces out individually, and then rotating and scaling them.

The inspiration for the image was a flower bouquet. I tried to organize the various different elements in a way similar to a traditional bouquet of flowers, but using different “kinds of flowers”.

Here is a sample of one of the textures which was applied (for the smaller plant elements).

 

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Categories Creative Textures, Fantasy Design

Why bother developing textures for 3D art?

Sep 29, 2011 //
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One of my favorite subjects of computer graphics used to be painting and creating textures for 3D models. Working carefully the texture and color of a model is important because:

Textures add intricacy that modeling alone cannot achieve

Consider this model of the interior of a room, which contains a very modest 300 polygons. Without any textures, it is plain and rather pathetic.

However, add a few chosen textures and the modeling acquires another level of intricacy that would practically impossible to create with modeling alone.

Adding textures to it creates such level of detail that would be very impossible with such low amount of geometry or very taxing on the system. Every 3D artist aims to optimize their models, so that they will be faster and easier to manipulate, and therefore more efficient. The image above contains only 7 textures, and no further modeling was done. Here are some of the textures that were used:

Notice the intricacy and level of detail. Even if an artist had the time, it would practically impossible to reproduce all this amount of detail with modeling alone.

Images are copyrighted, please do not use or distribute without authorization.

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Categories Creative Textures
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