Gordon-Medieval set extention

[GordonTarpley]

Ok, so here's the start of my set extension. I'm thinking a vertical pan will work nice with this so i'll be adding to the top and bottom of what's here in the coming posts...


Right now this is the rough layout. I have a few more days of work ahead before it starts to come together completely. Here are my steps so far....


basic cleanup, stamping out all the junk...



removing the background bits (roughly, not sure if i'm keeping the trees or not at the moment)


Finding some background images that will work with my idea and combining them to get the cliff shapes I wanted










tossing in the building and roughly matching up the images' values




roughly cutout foreground photo i took at mt.st helens last year.



over all progress with some possible foreground trees. these might not stay... not sure yet. the godrays are all temporary to play with the look of things so don't mind that they look wonky at the moment

[eyecon]

awesome work man! Love the way it looks so far... it actually looks as if its half done!

[Secretpixelmedi]

really cool, and refine lightning a bit

[kaustavsinha]

Wow! Looks awesome!

[Suirebit-3DT]

really original and nice concept...just one thing tho - how will you pull the night shot since this is already very dark You will need a lot of artificial light....of course, it might get spectaculous if you make it right

[GordonTarpley]

ah, spectaculous! i like that word! THAT is what i'll go for!!

[GordonTarpley]

Alright, another progress update....
I've changed the aspect ratio to 2.35 and added a little extra space to the top and bottom of the building. I loosely placed a crapload of new elements. (i know, there's MAJOR clean-up and color correct work to do all over the image, which is MUCH more apparent in the high res version but still pretty noticeable here)
anyway, just a progress, i know there's a few miles to go before it makes it home.

I have a good idea how i'll be handling the night version too but i'll get to that when the day shot is complete.

[eyecon]

looking very very good!

I have a comment not a biggie just a little thing,

With that area being in a gorge and all, I think trees won't be able to thrive with very little or even less light.

But like I said, nothing really big, just something that might take out the realism form your image. But still altogether excellent work and amazing integration!

[Suirebit-3DT]

as eyecon said, plus the scale of the trees really doesn't fit with that of the gate.

I really love it overall as concept, but you need to make those trees smaller...the gate is like 30 m tall, about as a 3 stories building.

[swihartc]

Oh I dunno, the forest looks pretty good to me. The large trees remind me more of the Lost World or something. It also appears to be in a gorge, but its possible that behind the camera is forest or even plains and that the gate is merely an entrance to the gorge. Good job so far, further along than I am, I'm still ding donging around with terrain! Set the forest on fire for your night time ambient light and call it done!

CS

[GordonTarpley]

I appreciate the critique but CS is correct. I see the scene as being in a forest that runs right up to a cliff wall, within the cliff is a small ravine blocked by the gate.

I'm not sure which trees are too big.
The trees toward the center of the image are much closer to the camera, which as i'm sure you know would make them look bigger in the scene. (this should become more apparent once i build up the atmospheric perspective and add foliage, even better once i work out a camera move)
the other trees (the forest) to the left and the right sides are actually VERY scaled down and MUCH smaller than the real-life size of these trees.

I took the photos myself in the Hoh Rainforest. Many of the trees there are upwards of 250 feet and some were has high as 300 feet (91.4 meters)

Here's a photo I took of my wife and stepson in front of a decent sized tree (but not even close to the largest).



I comped it into the scene and scaled it so my wife (in the yellow vest) was about the same height and location as the girl in the pink shirt (just to the right) This should give a good idea how large these trees really are and what one would look like in front of our building. Notice that the lowest branches of the tree are still too high up to show up in the scene.


It's a shame to have to defend a "fantasy" scene when things like blue lava, cities on the backs of giant turtles and waterfalls flowing off of floating rocks are common place.

Let's keep it fantastical!


Gordon

[Suirebit-3DT]

it doesn't matter how they are in real life (ABSOLUTE), it matters how you present them in this scene via an eye reference point, and the reference is currently the gate and the close small stone wall - they create the RELATIVE guiding grid. If this were a movie and you the matte painter, then no-one except you would know how large are those trees in real life...

I don't have any problem with the fantasy nature of your scene, as I said - the idea is great...the problem is in the height/texture feature ratio, which doesn't work because YOU DARKENED them and the TEXTURE REFERENCE was lost. Feel free to have large trees, but make smaller texture and branches, make them look like really big...

PS: The main culprits are the left two trees

[Ibbo]

Looks awesome, but the actual building seems to stick out a bit - it looks a little out of place. Actually, thinking on it, its more the walls that seem out of place, do you intend to blend these into the environment at a later stage, or perhaps raise them in keeping with the daunting overshadowing theme you've established with the cliffs and trees?

-ibbo

[eyecon]

I think suirebit has a point. Even if this were fantasy, the image still would not be very credible with huge trees since:

1. Huge gorges have a hard bottom due to rock elements falling down.
2. The scene is still too dark to have huge trees
3. In mattepainting, sometimes reality has to take a backseat to "what may look believable"... and that is based from experience.

Here is a viable solution:
1. Make the gorge larger by expanding its width
2. make it lighter
3. remove the trees

Even your reference images tell you how that scene would look like and what type of plants or trees can grow on it.

However, this is mattepainting, since it is your theme and your idea, you can still go ahead and do what you want. If you think that it would look cool with trees then go ahead.

[GordonTarpley]

you guys are right about lightening the scene. looks good here at home but i looked at it at work and it was WAY darker (prob what it looks like on your screen too). i need to borrow the calibrator from work again! I'll get that fixed and repost.
GORDON