A new project based on some concepts I drew this time, which I would show to you but they were drawn in paint and are painfully bad. :o Still useful for getting ideas down I suppose. Anyway, this is my progress so far:
Please note that materials are just to give you an idea of the rough colours (apart from the building which I haven’t decided on), I will be texturing this properly. And the ocean won’t be visible as being connected to the skyline, that’ll be changed.
The sphere of rings will house an explosion, and particles zooming off into the sky. This scene is mainly to concentrate on cool particle effects.
Thank you both for commenting, at the moment this is just the basics for the scene, it’s looking a bit empty at the moment, but I will be adding more trees and complexity to it.
I’ll write down some thoughts on your scene as they come to me.
It’s starting to look interesting. I don’t know what you’re going to be doing with the orb, so I won’t comment on it just yet. The boundary between the beach and the ocean, and the one between the ocean and the grass, both are much too straight. If you added a slight random curvature to each (just model whimsically; it will probably look right), those will look much better.
Your building will need some bevelled edges, but it doesn’t look done yet – so worry about that later.
I like the fresnel transparency on the orb and the support pieces; it makes it look almost like molded soap bubbles. I don’t really like how you connect the curved pieces and the orbs, though, but don’t act on that crit yet. I want to see what you do with it before you change it.
<harshness level=“very-high”>
The path, though, really drives me nuts. Those stones are enormous – if a human could walk through the door on the front of the building, those stones would be something like 20 feet long. Can you do smaller ones that are shaped differently? They look like giant badly spaced tangrams right now.
</harshness>
Why don’t you post the concept drawings? We’ll all know that they were drawn in paint, but they’re not what we’ll be criticizing anyway. They could give us some good insight into what you want to be doing, and we could suggest better ways of interpreting them in Blender.
Thank you very much for all the crits! Appreciated
Hmm… you’re right the boundary is too straight for the beach and grass, I fractally divided the beach mesh (just a plane), but I didn’t select the bit which connected the grass because then it didn’t match up. But I’ll work on it and adjust it, shouldn’t be too hard.
I’ll bevel the building later, I made sure there are no tri’s when modelling
I’m glad you like the fresnel. Ah, the connected bits. I want to give the impression that this breaks the laws of conventional physics, so I thought that therefore it’d be possible for it to be ‘held’ together this way. I’d planned to add glow to all the sphere structure and orb for the final render, basically make all the red glass type bits glow slightly using the sequence editor, to give it a slightly energy based appearance. The central orb will house an explosion, and will also shoot streams of particles into the sky.
The path: What I was aiming for with the path/building both of which are very square and industrial, was to contrast with the organic shapes of the orbs and trees further back. You’ll notice the two trees by the path don’t have leaves on, that was to increase this sense. I’m not sure what you mean by the path, is it too wide? Or are the pieces too long? Or do you just not like the shape? Would a straight path be better? I don’t want to do a curved path, because again I also wanted the path to contrast.
Hmm… you asked for it!
Please no mocking, they were drawn with a mouse in paint. This is the reason I use blender to express my ideas, no coordination! I think what I’ve written should hopefully express my plans better than these, as they really are very crude. They were just to get the idea down so I’d remember. Thanks very much for taking the time to give good useful feedback.
Thanks for commenting. Actually this is in perspective view. I’ve just organised the models in a laid out way.
I quite like the sky texture. I’m not sure what you mean about the horizon being straight, not sure why that’s wrong. If you look out along a flat landscape (which the sea is) then it’s bound to be straight on the horizon isn’t it?
Glad you like the concept. I’m having a problem realising it at the moment, apparently halo’s (being used with the particle system) aren’t supported when raytracing for some reason, so I need to find a work around.
I like the glass ‘sculpture’ but that, in addition to the textures below it, makes the building look like a miniature. To elaborate, it seems to dwarf the building nearby, without any real ‘explanation’ as to its purpose.
In reality, I believe from that perspective the horizon would appear slightly curved, maybe just a degree or so. Are you going to work on more detailed textures on the ground objects? It would make it look much more realistic.
I also noticed that the shadow of the building looks odd, like it should be longer, but I could be mistaken.
The sphere dwarfing the building was intentional, to make its power more significant. I tried to provide a point of reference with the trees, as I hoped they’d give a sense of scale. The purpose of the sphere and explosion can’t really be explicitly explained, I thought I’d just leave some things to the viewers imagination.
Hmm… I’m not sure how to make the horizon curved. I’d be happy to hear any suggestions. This hasn’t actually been textured at all except for the sky, sea and sphere. The rest is just colours to give an indication, I’m going to texture it properly.
The shadow of the building is short because the light isn’t really uni directional as a true sun would be (at least so far away to give that appearance). But it’s mainly because the lamp is quite high up and shining down at a steep angle.
Ah, after a few days of vacation, I finally have wrenched myself from this omnipresent laziness, and will reply!
…ok that was frightening. Anyway…
I like how things are coming. The explosion while not necessarily realistic, looks cool. I like how you have made it angular, with flame spikes at intervals. I’m not sure how much I like the glass spheres yet, but don’t touch them yet. I’m hemming and hawing about whether or not you should put them in curved, maybe parabolic or hyperbolic paths.
That explosion has to be pretty bright, so I think you should put some lights in its vicinity pointing toward the building. That way you’ll get a campfire-like shadow effect, which will enhance the effect of the glass structure dwarfing the building.
I’ll elaborate on my issue with the path now. I don’t mind that it zigzags – in fact, that’s just fine with me. However, the blocks are too big, and are oddly shaped. I haven’t ever seen a path made of blocks that look like the archetypical parallelogram (yes, a square and a rectangle are parallelograms…but I mean the other kind, with opposite angles being equal and adjacent angles being unequal ). Also, the shadows next to the blocks show me that each one would be maybe 6 inches in real life. That’s a pretty elevated path.
Hmmm…at this point, I can’t think of an alternative to the parallelogram blocks. It’s possible that just decreasing the height will help.
Nice concept/idea and well executed, but as has been pointed out, the sky is all wrong. From that angle all you would see is water, no sky.
It looks like the sky is on a plane coming out of the water at 90degrees. If you were to extend the water out to the edge, and map your sky image to the world, it would look heaps better.
I think what I’ve written should hopefully express my plans better than these, as they really are very crude. They were just to get the idea down so I’d remember. Thanks very much for taking the time to give good useful feedback. 
). Also, the shadows next to the blocks show me that each one would be maybe 6 inches in real life. That’s a pretty elevated path.