Cover Art and Computer Graphics

[Radthorne]

These are RICH pirates. They get others to do the dirty work for them.

Yep, I can scruffy 'em up. I just wanted to play with the new ship as soon as I could get the PC up and running. Since just a picture of the ship didn't seem enough, I had to have pirates. (Lise and I really like Pirates of the Caribbean, both the movie and the Disneyland ride...).

Someone sells a 3D pirate hair-and-clothing outfit that matches Captain Jack, Johnny Depp's character, from the movie. Might just have to buy that...

[Radthorne]

As usual, I came across some things I liked, and thus had to create a picture... In this case, I really liked the building and also the outfit. I think a good name for this image is "The Bouncer" With a sword, a dagger, and a polearm, I'd say she's ready to kick some rear end.

[KatG]

Great! Now put a guy in the outfit.

[Radthorne]

I would, but the clothing model in question (Fantasy Thief, by Vikki Dawson and Steve Shanks) doesn't fit any other character model except Victoria 3.

I should point out that, of the 3D clothing models that are available, the vast majority (I'd guess about 60%) are all for Victoria, which is also the most popular character model. About 20% or seem to be for Aiko, which is the smaller Asian female model; and about 10% are for Michael, the male model. All the other 3D models make up the rest. So if there is a preponderance of female clothing going on here, it is in part because that's most of what's available. About half of the artists creating these things are also female, so it just seems to be what folks want to create.

I have a few sets of clothing that fit both Victoria and Michael, but none of them are fantasy related. I have a very nice Star Trek late Next Generation set, and I just downloaded a Royal Canadian Mounted Police set. Plus the jeans and t-shirt set used in the Chopper picture on my website has versions for both Mike and Vic. Most of the Mike stuff seems to be related to the tunic set, such as the two swordsmen on my website (although I also found the pirate set recently too).

[KatG]

Interesting -- so it's not that flexible, though you can alter the features, hair and such of each model. I'm not surprised to hear that women are more predominant in these models. The female form seems to fascinate in art, though I find that male faces have a wider variety, and thus can be more interesting.

[Radthorne]

That's correct; you can adjust the character models extensively, as shown by these two images, both of which are of Mike with some rather different morphs applied. But the clothes have to be designed to fit a particular character, in order to be able to conform to the character's movements when you pose it. Each character has its joints in different places, necessitating a different clothing model for each character model.

There is a utility you can buy to modify the clothes to fit other characters, but it's about $40, and I haven't wanted to spring for it yet. I probably will eventually, though.

Here's one more before I have to pop out of town on a business trip for the next four days. This is the first Mike, wearing a wizard robe. I particularly liked the texture for the outer robe, which is a neat semi-transparent gold chain effect. (And we'll call that a sun rather than a moon, Kat )

[KatG]

Well of course that's the sun -- it's a sunset. I think one of the interesting things is that you can play around with a lot of different effects in texture, lighting, etc. Fantasy art has often been beautiful but very set in styles. It's nice to see a wider range with photo elements, different layers, unusual color schemes, and so on, going on covers these days.

[Radthorne]

Been busy with business trips and visiting relatives, so haven't had much time to make pictures. But, here's another view of the "clean" pirate ship.

(More moons, because I have a shortage of backdrops that include water...)

[Radthorne]

Here's another one. Just a little Middle Eastern domestic scene. (Is he telling her to get out, or just to go milk the goats? Hmm...)

[Radthorne]

Ok, here's my most complex picture to date: A Day at the Market. It has a lot of stuff in it, and it's hard to see all of the detail with the picture at the size I can reasonably post here. If you want to see a larger version, you can check it out in the Artwork section at my website.

[KatG]

Ok, why is the lady pirate trying to look through a telescope at night? Granted she has a big moon behind her that is casting some light, but it would seem to be a difficult enterprise. And she seems to agree as she is holding the telescope too close to her face, so that it seems almost stuck there. So I'd suggest making it a sun, with that sunset thing again, and moving the scope back so that we see more of her face, if you can do that. Otherwise, very pretty.

The Day in the Market one is very cool, but I think you might want to change the title, because you have a market in which nothing is being sold. You have a guy with a hooka, some women drawing water from a communal well, some animals, but nobody seems to have any goods, booths, etc. It seems more like a little plaza outside a church or something, than a market to me.

I'm carping but the scope and set-up on the pictures is quite nice.

[Radthorne]

You're just being an editor. (Gary's already discussed editors recently over in his forum, I believe)

However I do have a somewhat different perspective than him on this particular subject, and certainly welcome the feedback.

The only reason I used the night scene for the pirate shot was because it was the only one I happened to have that had water in it for the ship to float in; I actually wanted to make it a day time shot. I do need to work on finding (or creating myself) some more backgrounds (without moons!).

Good point on the telescope. It's actually lined up correctly with her eye, but it highlights one of the things about the 3D nature of the work - even when things are lined up and/or sized "correctly" they can still look incorrect. Artists who paint or draw can make an adjustment as they put it together, but it's not always as easy with the 3D objects, unless you re-size or otherwise manipulate them directly. I have an example of that which I'll post later this evening, once I get home from work, that will show what I mean.

On the Market picture, you're right. My original idea there was to make it more of a bazaar, with awning, bolt of cloth, pots and pans, etc. But I changed direction based on some of the objects I was working with, and just never changed my idea of calling it a Market. "Day in the Town Square" would probably be better.

[Radthorne]

Here's an example of how one sometimes needs to "manipulate" the 3D objects in a scene in order to get it to look visually correct. You may call recall, from several pages back, this particular image:

When I was composing this, I had difficulty with the left hand figure in getting things to come out the way I wanted. My solution is evident when you view the scene from a different angle:

As you can see, the lady on the left is not only nowhere near the chain, but is also not actually atop the table; she is floating above it. When she was on the table and over where the chain is, she looked far too small and too low, compared to the right hand figure. So my fix was to trick the eye by lining things up with my chosen camera view so it looks like she's on the table and holding the chain. That way she seems more in proportion. Now, a painter would probably do this instinctively, applying their artist "eye"; but with the untrained such as myself, one first tries for the realistic placement, gives it the eyeball test, and then starts moving things around until the desired result is achieved. (Saves a lot on drawing and erasing a preliminary sketch for a watercolor...)

Another common trick is to use 2D objects in place of 3D ones, when doing something like a forest. 3D models are necessarily much more complex and take up more memory than flat models. If you use a good enough image of a tree, and line it up just right in your 3D scene (and don't have issues with shadows, etc) then it can look like you've filled the scene with trees, at a fraction of the cost in rendering time.

[Rocket Sheep]

When I was composing this, I had difficulty with the left hand figure in getting things to come out the way I wanted.

I'm not surprised, she has terrible dress sense.

[Radthorne]

Well, yes, I never exactly intended her to be viewed from this particular angle... Not her best side, certainly.

That outfit was actually designed for another figure, and this picture was partly an experiment in trying to get the clothing to fit to this model figure. It was not wholly successful, and I ended up having to do a lot of post-work in Photoshop on the front-facing image to patch up "poke through" and other problems with it. This picture above is taken directly from the 3D program (you can see the bounding box around the right hand figure, which means it has the active focus for moving it around in the scene).

Of course, if you're speaking of ladies wearing revealing clothing while trying to pull heavy chains to close a massive door on a nasty dragon, well I would have to agree that it is not the most practical attire for such an activity. But at least they won't get too overheated...