Sai's Background Workshop

[ashewalton]

Sweet! Thanks a lot then~ [/derailed thread]

[kinougames]

I'm not really great at judging 3-D stuff, but...please paint over this carefully with 2-D. The biggest problem with using fast backgrounds in 3-D and then putting them in VNs is that more often than not, parts still look 3-D and they look completely odd with the normally vectored, high saturation sprites on top. I always get this very huge sense of the old meme "my hed is pastede on yey".

Is 3D really so out of place when many visual novels use photos as backgrounds?

Yes. Most of the altered photos people use as backgrounds look just as mismatched as poorly done 3-D.

Just because people do it often doesn't mean it's done correctly. The hugest problem between using photos and 3-D is that most sprites are made with black vectored lines and highly saturated colors. Real life doesn't really have lines. It has tones. 3-D doesn't have lines either, on top of the texture being completely different from the usual cell-shaded color styles.

Heck, as a test, I even tried using a background from a highly experienced 3-D artist who used a 2-D painting style over it, and because he didn't cover all of the 3-D with 2-D color, it still looked weird.

To make backgrounds work, you need 3 things:
-Matching/highly similar drawing style (as far as lined/unlined and line weights. I've seen so many games leave here in which two different artists did sprites and backgrounds, both very good individually, but when put together looked like a mess because the individual styles weren't taken into consideration)
-Matching textures (3-D textures are a real annoyance to feasibly replicate with 2-D, and doing 3-D coloring in a 2-D manner also isn't something everyone can do)
-Matching color palettes (as in, don't have a very warm-yellow-red-colored character sitting in a field of very blue and purple ice.

[winternight119]

I do agree that 3D is very difficult to tackle for backgrounds. Perhaps you could use 3D as a reference. I am thinking of doing this for my project where it is absolutely needed.

@Samu-kun: Great. Glad for your "shameless self promotion" - hahaha. XD

[dstarsboy]

I began writing a detailed response yesterday, but eventually Kinougames and Wintermoon summerized what I wanted to say.
In short:



If you want to learn 3D and use VNs to motivate yourself, than ignore us and keep learning. If you want quick results, draw the backgrounds by hand.

That graph seems way off to me.

I'm pretty sure an experienced 3d designer can create a "good enough" scene in a fraction of the time that it takes an experienced artist to do one. Not to mention, once the scene is done, the 3d artist can render foggy/night/day/sunset scenes with a small amount of work as well as the ability to make additional scenes from different angles in no time at all.

[Topagae]

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[HumbertTheHorse]

It is my experience that an original, professional, image done in 3d takes considerably longer to do than its 2D equivalent.

A sophisticated 3d scene takes many stages to create. Starting with prep (collecting reference, sketching the scene or character); next to modeling (moving back and forth between programs for hard surface/organic and form/detail); usually this is followed by resurfacing (retopo) and laying down UVs; texture painting will be done now, if not before; shader creation and lighting next; camera and rendering; compositing. This is for a still image. If that image has a character you may want to add rigging, weight mapping, morph modeling ...

A reasonable but original scene tends to take between a week and a couple months. Many artists draw a mostly finished image as prep, just to be able to plan and speed up the 3d process. Of course with a scene simple framed from a new angle, or built using parts already made, the already completed stages are skipped. This is why programs like DAZ and Poser are so popular - the 3d version of clip art.

I have always been envious of people who could draw and paint well.

Sailerius, you have a good start there. If you plan on taking it further, keep posting updates, I would be happy to critique/help if I can.