enviro destructo - Burham Street Station
polycounter lvl 18
gauss, i like what you've got in your portfolio, but where are your environment concepts? where are they?!
a question i have been hard-pressed to answer for so long... until now. that's right, you can bear witness to me developing the environmental portion of my concept art portfolio. that's the idea, at least.
but what does enviro destructo mean, exactly? nothing, i just like the sound of it.
<u>CONCEPT #1: Burham Street Station.</u>
My first major enviro concept i'd like to tackle here will be called Burham Street Station. Burham is the fictional company that produced these very fine auto-mobiles. so the basic starting point is an elaborate, even majestic train station exterior. i'm also vaguely going off the railway station in Wellington, New Zealand, because i've got a picture of it handy that i took. where possible i'd like to develop concepts from my own reference, and not more google image searching.
initial thumbnail, just to get the idea down of a big facade with colonnade and clock with bas relief kind of sculptural elements:
magnificent, isn't it?
normally i might not post that image, but i'm also trying to document some process along the way here.
so a little later in the evening, I sit down and give a bit more concentrated effort into fleshing out the front facade.
to really make this pop i think i'll mock it up as a 3d model and then paint it up, but taking a page from my own advice book i want to have a better idea of what i want before i fire up Max. which gets me this:
where i know this will already likely cause trouble is in Max, when i'm figuring out what i want that goes behind that colonnade. but hey, maybe i'll just cheat and make it real shadow-y. from the initial sketch i added four statues, which lend a somewhat art deco-y feel to an otherwise uh... tech-classical look? who knows.
i know this kind of stuff is what i'll be embarrassed about later once i've studied more about architecture, but looks good to me at this point. i know i like the classical reference, though. i've seen enough of Rome to know what i'm shooting for as far as that goes...
so that's where i'm at right now, but i'll continue updating as i go along. now i'm going to go into max and start getting things blocked out.
i appreciate comments, crits, and encouragement... i've made a few abortive attempts at more enviro-related work in my folio, but it's never really amounted to much
a question i have been hard-pressed to answer for so long... until now. that's right, you can bear witness to me developing the environmental portion of my concept art portfolio. that's the idea, at least.
but what does enviro destructo mean, exactly? nothing, i just like the sound of it.
<u>CONCEPT #1: Burham Street Station.</u>
My first major enviro concept i'd like to tackle here will be called Burham Street Station. Burham is the fictional company that produced these very fine auto-mobiles. so the basic starting point is an elaborate, even majestic train station exterior. i'm also vaguely going off the railway station in Wellington, New Zealand, because i've got a picture of it handy that i took. where possible i'd like to develop concepts from my own reference, and not more google image searching.
initial thumbnail, just to get the idea down of a big facade with colonnade and clock with bas relief kind of sculptural elements:
magnificent, isn't it?
normally i might not post that image, but i'm also trying to document some process along the way here.
so a little later in the evening, I sit down and give a bit more concentrated effort into fleshing out the front facade.
to really make this pop i think i'll mock it up as a 3d model and then paint it up, but taking a page from my own advice book i want to have a better idea of what i want before i fire up Max. which gets me this:
where i know this will already likely cause trouble is in Max, when i'm figuring out what i want that goes behind that colonnade. but hey, maybe i'll just cheat and make it real shadow-y. from the initial sketch i added four statues, which lend a somewhat art deco-y feel to an otherwise uh... tech-classical look? who knows.
i know this kind of stuff is what i'll be embarrassed about later once i've studied more about architecture, but looks good to me at this point. i know i like the classical reference, though. i've seen enough of Rome to know what i'm shooting for as far as that goes...
so that's where i'm at right now, but i'll continue updating as i go along. now i'm going to go into max and start getting things blocked out.
i appreciate comments, crits, and encouragement... i've made a few abortive attempts at more enviro-related work in my folio, but it's never really amounted to much
Replies
I am liking this so far. Maybe develop the pillars a bit more and the trim on the outside. I would take a look at Balboa Park in San Diego, CA for awesome reference.
I posted some pics in the thread a while back.
Here is a link so you don't have to dig through.
balboa park
I will be following this thread for sure!
edit: just saw the 2006 on the sigh guess I wasnt there, surely the're not still renovating.
obviously i'll be following it to see the beautiful Gaussness that be aswell! [duh]
thanks for the reminder of Balboa Park, i remember when you posted those pics. very cool stuff, but a little too ornate for a first go... i want to keep things fairly classical/restrained on this piece.
IronHawk: i generally wouldn't, but i had that mental image so i put it down like a visual post-it note, just to hold the idea down
mikebart: yeah that was... november of 2006? scaffolding is still there. i'm not surprised that you have some background in construction though, by the way, given the fabulous attention to detail you give your environment art!
indian: do what i say, not what i do. at least for now
small update:
current state of the mockup, weenie little test render. haven't even thought about camera angle or lighting, so don't worry about those.
got most things roughed out, all i need to do is get the fiddly parts of the clock more detailed. i'd leave them for the painting stage, but i know from past experience that circles/ellipses are always a jerk to paint. so i'll save myself time later by detailing it now. and besides, how hard is it to throw a bit more beveled cylinders into the scene?
design revision: at the top of the front facade, i intended to put a steam locomotive... but i didn't like how it was fitting into the facade, and i didn't think that a steam locomotive has the right look for a Burham.
so, with a little googling (oh we're lazy again aren't we) i found this excellent, burly russian locomotive design, and then did this updated detail drawing:
so that's how things are going. very shortly i should have a more or less complete mockup, which i will leave mostly grey, i think. though grey renders give more trouble than they're worth for getting colors into the picture, so i'll actually be giving some basic colors before rendering.
hope youre going to work out those concepts in more detail at some point
I like the way you're going, and I'm a sucker for massive buildings with grimy ornamental facades
There are some really interesting stations around... You might like Nyugati in Budapest: http://flickr.com/search/?q=nyugati
Keep it up!
well, here's where things typically start to get sticky for me. before i kvetch, here are a couple of renders of the more or less completed mockup. i need to do a little surrounding area, a few scale indicators so i can draw people to the right size, but the station itself is pretty much done for modeling.
trouble i've been having: nothing major so far, just a little bit of fiddling with the lighting such that the upper facade looks good and dramatic, while at the same time not throwing the whole colonnade into shadow.
still haven't figured out where i'm going to put the camera for the best balance between dramatic effect and readability for the concept (always the question, right?)
and i've already started a little bit with fiddling around with color in maps, and i know it's just going to drive me nuts.
the biggest problem is that i never really learned Max all that way, and have been gimping along with what i learned when i made Boomer, and that was 6 years ago. Max has come a long way, my understanding of the program, however, has not.
so i might do some test paintovers to not only establish a rough idea for the color scheme of the building, but also whether or not it's going to do me any good to assign materials in Max.
i know this is a lot of prep work for an image, but i'm really going to be shooting for a high quality piece. heaven knows i can't lay down perspective guides worth a damn
and yes, the clock is intended to look something like a large radial engine, and (somewhat) unconsciously, the whole front part of the building resembles a locomotive, with the locomotive crowning the top sort of making a repeating element, almost fractal (
not entirely sure about the statues or the area of the facade immediately behind them, but i may just end up redrawing that myself (gasp!). we'll see.
From the very first initial sketch, to the words you've used in describing your process, I'm not sure that the heavy locomotive motif surprises me all that much.
Overall it's looking very cool, and I'm definitely liking the steam locomotive motif, especially the clockface detail, but (and this may just be me) the fact that the columns are so heavily dwarfed feels a tad uncomfortable, for lack of a better word. Who knows, though, the scale may grow on me.
Also, some of them surfaces that are so empty could use some decoration, or breaking up into large slabs of stone. Maybe a relief with the same motif as the row of statues on top of the collonade? "proletary" type fellas with huge wrenches and hammers?
but that's a good suggestion, zenarion. light fixtures shoudl definitely feature in the scene, it'll be a question of how and where best. and yes, there will be relief sculpture work on at least part of the facade.
a little update on some max and photoshop shenanigans:
unsurprisingly, the two lighting setups i had didn't quite satisfy, so i just hauled them both into photoshop. the first one has lots of nice shadows, but detail gets lost completely within them. so i tried a different setup with some different lights and some radiosity, which has nice detail but no good shadows.
that first render is the last one from the previous post. still not final lighting/composition, but there's more here to work with at least... best of both worlds, ideally.
and yes, i'm so poor at using Max that i have to muscle my lighting in photoshop.
also, bonus viewport grabbin' so you can all glory in my horrible polygonal butchery
backlighting will solve your woes. some ambient occlusion
think about other buildings casting shadow onto the structure it's self. This could give you your "shadow puppets" for dramatic lighting.
The statues appear to be holding big wrenches. Those look very cool but what about 2 of them with some heavy sledgehammers? Remember this guy?
John Henry
For detailing this here is one of my favorite reference sites. Its mostly Gothic churches but the detailing is insane. The site is mostly in Ukrainian but just click on the ( the world ) button on the right first and then poke around. The site is full of great architecture and decent sized photos. The cemeteries section is pretty cool too.
Gothic Arch Site
If your using max 9 there sun sky setup is pretty cool now and fairly easy to setup. This would help to get a decent lighting setup to work off of for the painting. Here is a tut from Evermotion.
MR Sun
IronHawk: thanks for the continued comments and support. that tutorial looks great--i don't have max 9 installed on this machine right now, but i should be able to change that in a few days or so, at which point i can do a better render for the final version. cool links, too--i agree that at least some of the statues should be holding big sledgehammers
alright so after monkeying around with my virtual camera, i realized that a wide, landscape composition is just not going to fly with a building whose primary strength is a vertical composition. so i started off with a sketch, since monkeying around with cameras can blind you:
and then followed variations on that basic composition, trying to get the best angle with drama but showing off the facade as the majority portion of the frame.
i should also mention that about halfway through doing these, i scaled up the wrenchmen statues vertically quite a good bit--helped give them presence on their part of the building.
and we end up with this one:
which gets turned into a quick black and white paintover to see what's what
so now i'm feeling pretty good about how the final version should turn out, once i've got a solid render with decent lighting set up to base it off of. still an issue of color, but that's all for later. i need to get some sleep.
thanks everyone for commenting, i appreciate it. be back soon.
Yeah, I think I'm totally sold on the scale relations now. :]
i really love the clock face thingy.everything from its sharpness to the tidbits that stick out and whatnot.
only one crit i could offer has been done by marine already.
looking 'good' otherwise
peace
Until I saw the last image I imagined it being alot larger, possibly even dwarfing the wellington train station reference you used, I personally think the columns are fine but now that I see the scale compared to the people it just doesnt seem as intimidating now.
Looking forward to the next iteration. Great job man!
-caseyjones
I think Marine is right, those columns don't feel "massive" enough at the moment, they're getting dwarfed by the statues, and the people seem a tad large to me.
Also I might consider trying to move the big statues back into the wall a bit rather than having them completely free-standing - most buildings of this type tend to inset the statues in alcoves or work them into the actual facade itself, I think it might work in your favour to make the whole edifice seem more massive, since you could bring the main upper wall forward to ensconce the statues.
Just a thought
Keep it up!
Americanese: Duuuuude.
With what MoP suggested about the statues, I agree. Right now they make this look like a 'coo-coo Clock' and not a planted building.
What about incorporating them in to the pillars? Have them be the columns?
My only other comment would be for the 4 smaller circles that square off the main clock piece. Their angled positions are pulling me away from a solid design: Everything else is squared off on either 0 or 90 degrees yet these point outwards. When I look at them they seem out of place.
-2cents
Keep it up Jack!
edit: Plleeaaase throw a backlight in there!
edit #2: Have you tried a camera angle from the ground? A lower angle will help dramatize it's height. Another ange that may work is from right above the top of the clock that narrowly looks down to where the columns meet the ground... That's probably a bad explanation though
Teck: thought you'd see it my way
Rooster: yeah, I'm not sure, but I might do the final image (or a variation) in that sort of style, a lit-up nighttime city scene should look great.
Marine: haha, oh you're the first to catch it of many. the problem is definitely the scale of the people. I was going to draw them much smaller, in proportion to the pillars, but then i noticed that it would make the stairs roughly waist-high. so on that paintover i just went ahead and made the people way too big... but i got called out
indian boy: thanks man, i hope the finished version turns out well.
mikebart: as i said with marine, the scale is indeed quite a bit larger than i indicated in the paintover. the people should be about a third of the size they are in that image.
casey: yeah, good eye--as it happens, i'll end up fixing the stairs, not the columns.
hawken: yeah, i know you meant buildings casting shadows.. we'll see. i just don't know what kind of lighting scheme i'll end up with overall, but it's probably still a good idea to introduce those sorts of vagaries to the lighting, especially in a city setting.
MoP: good points... so far i have moves the statues back to be less free-standing, though i'll probably work up the facade a bit more so that the building comes out a little more as well. that's one of the remaining areas that i'm not so hot on with this design, the bit where the roof of the colonnade meets the upper portion of the structure. might need another sort of roof segment, not sure yet. and yes, the people will be smaller in the final version, keeping a much grander sense of scale.
Ruz: thanks man
Lupus: cheers mate. or should i say right on!
adam: as regards the high polycount, why not? this is all prepwork for an enviro concept, not an enviro model. the only place i'm really letting the polys fly is on the roundy bits, because they're always the most time consuming to draw properly, so i'd rather just let the render do that part of the work for me so i can concentrate on other stuff.
i hear what you're saying about the four circles, but refer to the earlier concept--the facade is meant to be more organic than it appears in the render. the finished version will incorporate the shapes more smoothly into the facade.
the angle is a tough one--i have tried and would prefer a ground-shot, but the trouble with that is that you lose all the detail with the clock and can barely see the train at all. i've tried some top-down shots as well, but while dramatic they tend not to highlight the scale or emphasize the features i want to focus on.
currently i'm still working on the lighting and materials, especially, something i've never really learned much about in max. fixed the statues a little, though they might need a bit more downscaling. also need to fix the stairs--they're still gianty steps right now. here's a quick render from a side view that i rather liked... now featuring the human scale block!
started out as a coloring test, but with an uprez and a little finer tweaks to the scene (like in the background), i think i've got more than enough to get to a final quality concept.
Jesse, Xaltar, tinman: hey thanks guys, it's really been rewarding to work on.
and so time for the update: haven't been working on this as much in the last few days, but it's coming together. rendered out some background elements and stuck that in there; gave it a crowd, worked on the upper facade some more. still need a bit more work on the columns, and the statues are still basically untouched.
will have this out the door and onto the next concept soon!
just wondering though: the column that is farthest from the viewer, it seems to be slanting towards the inside the further up it goes. So its leaning towards the right the higher up it goes.... might just be me though?
other than that, great stuff. i even like the background buildings!
Only thing I'd point out is along the lines of indian boy's comment, in that the wide view angle is making the pillars further from the camera look a little funky. It's probably "correct", but feels uncomfortable, and for me anyways, it almost immediately drew my eye away from the awesomeness that is the upper facade.
though i was hoping for some realitime destruction =P
Anyways, a quick paintover to show what I mean.
Sweet work dude.
Look out John Walin. hehe.
What are your plans for the sky?
i think a night scene would be cool, just for fun? i'm interested to see how you'd light the face of the building, like with spotlights from underneath or something. i dunno. seems like it'd look really cool to me.
indian: this is a distortion due to the 3D camera's "lens" FOV. i would rather not have distortion, but in order to get the dramatic angle i was looking for, i decided the distortion was worth it.
everyone re: distortion and the background buildings, particularly Xaltar and his paintover, thank you. i was aware of the perspective effects the distortion was causing and wasn't sure whether to keep them actually correct or intuitively correct, and Xaltar showed the latter course to be better. so here, with the final, i've changed the background to fit what the eye thinks looks right
so here we are with the final Burham Street Station concept:
Well, honestly I would not be so nitpicky except that my eye WANTS them to be the center piece.. other than that I love the concept, and I love the degree to which you have finished it
now that that's cleared up...
wow! i'm loving the concept. i don't think i really need to stress on the "wowz!!!111!!!!oneoneone!" cuz i think u already know? [lol]
the only things i was hoping for was some sort of carved decorations on the two outcroppings above and below the "text", and those 'bumps' that we find on columns [though that might be too detailed?]. But then again, ur looking at a particular style of architecture that i may not know too much about.
peace
PS: i just noticed... leaving the top section grey [steel?] is nice, but for some reason, it just looks like it didn't get any treatment during the colouring phase.... know what i mean? maybe a hint of the 'gold-and-corroded-copper' combo u've got going? just anything to make that place look coloured.