Exotic Locations

[Vagabond]

I have been studying Parker's tutorials today and created three quick examples from his techniques. I downloaded pics from the internet and recreated them AS.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeCv-yCn8EU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_duLiW5vNeQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brXOmR0SUQ4

I think they're a lot better than what I've done before. But I'm still struggling on rocks and grass and distant trees and depth of field and a bunch of other things...

I made the stars sparkle with noisy line width keyframes.

I rendered the layers with noisy fills and imported them back into AS before the final render.

[Mozbo]

Nice work!
I think the star flicker is a bit too intense, but it definitely is a technique worth further investigation.

[Vagabond]

Nice work!
I think the star flicker is a bit too intense, but it definitely is a technique worth further investigation.

Thanks for commenting M!
I agree about the stars. For some reason I thought .01 was the lowest I could set noisy keyframes for so I never tried going lower. But after reading your comment I just entered .0001 for scale and amplitude! I will be experimenting more.

V

[PARKER]

Your BGs look promising, good work, it really shows you have been watching the tutorials .

For me the best one was the Midnight on Alien Moon, did you create your own brush to create those leaves? they came out pretty well.

Also i think those planets stand out too much, you could reduce the alpha of them so they really look like far planets, also the edge shouldnt look that sharp so if you add a little bit of blur, that would solve it, i think only 1 for blur should work.

I hope to see more of your BGs soon.
Rightnow im creating a new style, it has taken me 3 days so far, i hope to have it ready soon and i will post my first BG with that new style in a few days.

[ruscular3d]

The lake all move as one unit. I don't know what version you have but i see a shear mode on the tool set and you could shear the lower part of the lake and leave the background of the lake right there. to give the illusion of distance and space of the lake, during your animation. So can you animate the shear effect?

I am new so I am asking, not authoritative on the subject.

[Kedric]

I really like your third one.

I struggle with depth of field as well.

Perhaps I should check out more of Parker's tutorials.

[reneuend]

The 3rd one was a good experiment in depth of field. I thought it you did a good job with it.

The only suggestion would be to try and and some objects in the foreground that are closer to the camera. Might even have them blurred to tighten the area of focus.

Definitely something I need to work with more!

[PARKER]

I really like your third one.

I struggle with depth of field as well.

Perhaps I should check out more of Parker's tutorials.

Achiving a nice depth feeling for your scene can be very easy, you mainly need to variate the size of the objets in your foreground and background, modify the alpha and also adding a little bit of blur can help.

[Vagabond]

Your BGs look promising, good work, it really shows you have been watching the tutorials .

For me the best one was the Midnight on Alien Moon, did you create your own brush to create those leaves? they came out pretty well.

Also i think those planets stand out too much, you could reduce the alpha of them so they really look like far planets, also the edge shouldnt look that sharp so if you add a little bit of blur, that would solve it, i think only 1 for blur should work.

I hope to see more of your BGs soon.
Rightnow im creating a new style, it has taken me 3 days so far, i hope to have it ready soon and i will post my first BG with that new style in a few days.

Thanks sensei. Your tutorials were VERY HELPFUL! seeing you make the brush inspired me so I made an .anme file just to create brushes when I need them. The brushes in the alien moon vid came out too square for me. I've since remade them to be more natural.
I've been working on my characters this week so I can practice with bones next week then go back to backgrounds after that. But reducing the alpha and blurring the planets is a good idea. That shouldn't take too long. It will help bring the focus back to the ground where the action will be.


@ruscular3d- Good idea for the lake. I'm going to try that too.
@reneuend - Yes some blurry bushes in front of the camera should do the trick. Great suggestion.
@Kedric- Parker's tutes are excellent. Even still, it will take some time to go through all 21 hours. I've already watched a few more than once. I'm a little slow and need things repeated sometimes.

[PARKER]

I've already watched a few more than once. I'm a little slow and need things repeated sometimes.

Im slow as well, i normally dont understand a book or a manual at once in the first reading, i have to read it several times to understand it completely.