Desert Storm

IchII3D

I started work on a new scene recently and looking for general crits as I go along, its still a bit early yet but I like to blog my development. Its nice getting a second set of eyes on things as I'm fairly bad for getting very narrow vision when working on something for a long period of time. Its also nice listening to other peoples opinions as it helps spark ideas.

Here is the mood board I put together with some of the ideas I wanted to convey, followed by an early block out.

I still have a fair bit of time left to sort out my composition and major colours. You will see a lot of temporary textures, I use these to get an idea of my composition colours and also to give me an early indication of the scaling I need to be working at when I sculpt each texture.

Oh and last thing, I'm not to sure about the 'modern military' assets at all. They are very temporary, I was thinking more along the lines of a Killzone or Starcraft style assault but unsure yet.

ariofighter

I like what you have going so far. The thing that I would mention is that you have tanks and A-10s flying to somewhere in the rough center of the screen, but there is nothing there. Maybe you could put an oil fire on the horizon or something showing what there doing to kill or defend? Just an idea. Keep it up.

IchII3D

Just a quick update of this afternoons work, just focused more on getting all the major elements in to form the composition, still got lots more blocking out to do. I have a picture in my head of everything, but because my drawing skills are very much limited to stick men, its sort of a changing surprise.

EMC3D

Good stuff, really nice to see you blocking out instead of going in and refining and blocking out as you go along.

I take it that's a big ship in the distance? I would probably put it higher and a little to the right to fill more of the composition and eye candy elements, again, just keep refining until you're happy.

scotthomer

I love where this is going, I could totally see the A10's kicking up loads of dust. I watched a talk about the development of Operation Flashpoint: Red River last week, and they spoke about the best way to convey depth in desert scenes was using layered ridges defined with arial perspective and height based fog.

Im not sure how relevant that is/will be to the scene, but it would be pretty cool to see some variation in the relief of the land.

Like this:






Cant wait to see where this goes, going to be in-engine?

IchII3D

I was really struggling with the alien ship position, I think a lot of it boils down to its shape and size. I was playing with it for a few minutes and couldn't really get it right. I resorted to asking the misses what she thought and managed to get it in an all right position. I was even playing with the idea of having it look like it was smashing into the ground, but still undecided.

I can see what you mean Scott, I might try and get more of a parallax effect on the left side and amp up the mountains on the right, arching the composition a little more. Although a lot of the rocks on the left all need repositioning as its a bit linear at the moment. The aim is for it to be more along the lines of the top middle image on my mood board.

Oh and it already in engine, its just my rushed alpha for the skydome makes it look a bit flat.

Thanks for the crits guys, really appreciate it. I'm going to follow up tonight with a bit of work. But until then I'm eagerly waiting the start of the Monaco Grand Prix!

scotthomer

Yeah I think that putting some rocks on the right will definitely focus the composition on the ship, silhouettes in the foreground would probably empasize that too. Oh yeah, the top middle image (and the bottom right image) are my favourite, I can feel this is going to be awesome.

Anyway, its a great idea, totally love Independence day.

See you on tuesday dude