swamp-redo BIG update #2 11/21

Artwork Works in Progress
#1

This picture I posted under finished projects a long time ago. Many people offered suggestions for pushing it a little further and making it better. That’s what this thread is about. Steps I’ve taken, steps I plan on taking and just seeing how I can change it into something new and hopefully better. I plan on showing the steps I’m taking to kind of show the thinking and working process to maybe help others to improve their pictures,and to show a little of my thought processes and work flow. Here’s the original from my gallery. Click to view bigger.

http://hstrial-jgray1.homestead.com/files/swampfinal_T.jpg

The first thing I’ve been working on off and on is the skull. You can see the current state in finished projects Skull-model. The original skull in the swamp picture was done in wings and touched up in Blender. Because I
wasn’t happy with it I decided to rebuild it from scratch starting with the nose and eye area and adding polygons until I got it done. It still needs a bit of work so updates will go here. next post for more.
Paradox

#2

Ok on this post I’m going to show some of the things I’m going to work on. This picture is marked to show changes. I’ve worked on it some since I started working on the skull and I’ll show a current pic soon.

http://hstrial-jgray1.homestead.com/files/swamp_redo_T.jpg

  1. The tree texture while interesting was flat mapped and stretched in places. I discovered that the l-sytem trees had uv co-oridinates so this was easily fixed by changing mapping from Orco to UV
  2. I had shaped the tree some with porportial mode O key and had tangled it up and distored it abit. This is what
    I am working on now. Cleaning up the mesh. Some of it is fixed with subsurfacing. Some of it has to be fixed by hand. On such a complex object I found that hiding a large part of the vertex’s and working on portions helps.
  3. Some of the trees in the background were pictures on planes. I decided to just duplicate my tree and rotate and resize so real models instead of fakes.
  4. original skull see above and finished forum (skull-model) for what I did to it.

My next update will show some of what I’ve done so far with the new skull added in and the corrected trees.
Paradox

#3

Oooh! I remember this!
It’s already a great scene, I’m looking forward to seeing where you’ll take it.

#4

Thanks pofo, well here we go 1st update.
Thought I would show the latest progress. I first attempted to work on the main tree. Boy what a mess, branches going through branches, flat branches, trianglular shape curves, tangled messes, and branches attached to branches out in space - ha ha was pulling my hair out trying to fix working on one area at a time. Then I found an earlier version of the tree still a little messed up but not so mangled and messed up. After that it went faster.
here’s the WIP as it stands now. Kind of a roughing in of compostion.

http://hstrial-jgray1.homestead.com/files/WIPa_T.jpg

I replaced the tree (nearest to the skull) and added the newest version of the skull. Added a blue light to help light and color the skull. Reshaped the tree some more. used uv mapping on tree instead of ORCO.

Next to-do, replace back trees with corrected versions, rearrange and compose trees, make the tree bigger, the grass is just some earlier experiments with fiber I have clumps all over the scene outside of view, I’ll work on them later. And do any composition changes, add any new objects or details, adjust lighting.
Well until next time - back to work. Comments and suggestions are welcome.

Paradox

#5

wow I seem to be doing updates faster than comments :slight_smile:
OK on this one I replace the rest of the trees with unmangled mesh.
Resized all trees and lower camera angle for better sense of scale.
Got rid of grass on left side.
Added 2nd skull.
Oh yeah and added another texture to trees
Click on pic for larger version.

http://hstrial-jgray1.homestead.com/files/wipb_T.jpg

Paradox

#6

Very good!
The modeling and texturing are great!

:smiley:

#7

Very very good. :slight_smile:
My only critic is that… the sides of the skulls still looks flat… but at this point I take it for a style choise. :smiley:

Env

#8

Thanks dhanielc.
Thank you too env. I still agree with you and that is what I’m going to work on next. If I don’t get what I want then it will be a style choice :slight_smile: (at least until my next skull- this one being built from scratch is pretty messy and with the new tools I want to do a new one some day with all the anatomical details) Other than fixing the sides on this skull I want to adjust the lighting, details, last minute things then whoosh off to finished projects.
I’m not sure I like that shadow of the limb on the skull for example.
Paradox

#9

you might want to check those places where bracnhes join trunk… the forks, you know, or what they are called. lsystem makes pretty ugly forks…

.b

#10

Thanks basse, I will add that to my list of to-dos, I did overlook that. So complex a scene easy to miss something.
paradox