Using 3d elements to create concepts?

commador

I recently purchased El Coro weapon designs from Massive Black and thought it was a really cool idea to block out objects in 3d before the "concept" was finalized with a paint over in photoshop. I was curious if it is a method used often in creating work for enviroments as well? Is it common practice to use 3d primitives to block out forms and get correct perspective to then paint for a concept, which will later be rebuilt into the enviroment?

Snowfly

it is done

depends on the studio, depends on the artist, depends of the needs of the project at any given moment...

a good example is the level designers have blocked out the gameplay, and the environment artists need to populate and light the scene. a concept artist takes a screen grab and paints over that.

StJoris

I do it too sometimes, it can be a very nice base. Because of my architecture background I'm pretty comfortable making small non-digital maquettes of what I'm making too. Just using styrofoam to pump out some variations.

MoP

Oh yeah, painting over blockouts is done all over the place. It's really good for level design concepts, and a lot of great concept artists use this technique to quickly get an environment together without having to spend ages sketching perfect perspective grids and lines.

Jeremy Wright

Lately I've noticed more comicbook people using 3d to help their drawings:

http://www.brightcove.tv/title.jsp?title=687001235&channel=184253309

http://anotheraaron.wordpress.com/category/sketchup/

Joshua Stubbles

This is how Hawkprey does his concepts as well, iirc.

Mark Dygert

Our character artists have started using snap shots of our skeletons as a base to start painting concepts, its made it much easier to port animations from one character to the next.

In the environments we also block everything out with basic shapes then do paint overs mostly as detail and lighting suggestions, its just easier and faster to crank out a few 2D ideas then it is to spend weeks/month modeling.

I think Gauss started a thread about this also when he was playing around with it in this thread: http://boards.polycount.net/showflat.php...true#Post205231