Painting object up in sky ?

repstyle

Hello

I am currently working on an image representing game screen of the game i'm working on.
This image have to represent a drone in static flight upon an environnement where an ennemy is placed.

For now, i've done this (don't pay attention to the laser wrongly drawn) :

I've done some grayscale tests giving different contrast to each plans involved (ground & sky) in order to create a feeling of  altitude but i don't feel it at all :

That being said, i have specfic unavoidable constraints to represents the view i will give to the player :
- i can't use blur on any plan because player must have the possibility to observ the enemy on ground as clearly as the drone in sky
- the drone is in height but not as much as an airplane? Let's say it is at 30 meters in height
- drone has to be seen in perfect top view

So, do you know how i should represent this feeling of separation due to the flight of the drone ?
What am i doing wrong ?

Thanks !

AtticusMars

Depth cues is really the most obvious answer. Repeating elements receding into the distance or converging parallel lines (like tall buildings), putting clouds between your flying object and the floor is another example. Also cast shadows from the object in the sky onto the floor.

If this is just pre-viz for a game with a moving camera I wouldn't really worry about it that much, even rudimentary parallax does a very good job of conveying distance.

repstyle

AtticusMars said:

Depth cues is really the most obvious answer. Repeating elements receding into the distance or converging parallel lines (like tall buildings), putting clouds between your flying object and the floor is another example. Also cast shadows from the object in the sky onto the floor.

If this is just pre-viz for a game with a moving camera I wouldn't really worry about it that much, even rudimentary parallax does a very good job of conveying distance.

Well, maybe i missed some details. So the game windows will only display this view and the drone will stay still so i have to find a good way to achieve the depth/height.

Your proposition of parallel lines converging is good. In fact it's a very obvious one i couldn't think of and i feel a bit shameful
I can't use builings here (because it will be out of context) but i can use trees or cliffs.
I'll try that and share result.

I also discovered taht i can increase the effect by giving less details on the groun and more in the sky. The difficulty is to don't erased too much details in order to keep the enemies on ground always clear and distinguishable.