Sketchup BG critique needed

[GlassHeart]

I made my first background for my game, Last Summer. Originally I wanted to use modified pictures but yesterday I decided to try Google Sketchup and I loved it. It's true, it took me almost the whole day to make just one background. I used a trial renderer to make the picture but I only have it for 15 days so if I want to make them all, I'm going to have to be fast.
So my question is: do you like the look of this? Should I do more? I really need to make up my mind quickly.
If anyone else uses Sketchup and can recommend a free renderer that would be awesome.
Critique on the sprite is also welcome

Should I make a game development thread for this? I wanted to but I figured no one would follow it since it's my first game.



The backrground:

Same thing but within the game:


PS: I know it says spired instead of sprite, I was just writing something for the sake of the picture I'm too lazy to upload it again.

[Alera]

It looks pretty nice!! I just don't like the texture of the bed and the cupboards above it. It looks weirdly blurred and off to me. ^^;;;

And I didn't know about this program! *fail* I checked some videos and it looks really cool. I might try it. ^^

Ah, and about the sprite- looks nice too. But Maybe the arms and hands are a bit small and tiny.

[mugenjohncel]

NO! NO! NO! YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG!!! but don't worry... Uncle Mugen is here to help!

Let's see... where should we start... first of all a renderer for sketchup is optimized to mimic real life which is not what you wanted for your BG-CG which I assume you wanted to make it look more hand drawn... right? The correct way is to use the renderer as a way to generate shadows and highlights instead of doing it the hard way and manually shading them...

Heres how I do it... it's not perfect but this should be help you find that right spot... at this point I'll assume you already have your model prepared, properly textured and got that perfect spot...

Go to sketchup and go to window > shadows and turn on the shadows then turn off show shadows but check the, use sun for shading and put the time at 12:00NN so the sun is directly above. Adjust the slider and lower the light settings and increase the dark settings until there is not much difference between the light and dark spots. Go to view > edge style and turn off edges. Export the scene as texture.png

Next... go back to window > shadow and turn on the show shadow and adjust the sliders so till you can have that perfect shadow you wanted. Then using your renderer, go render it in clay mode. When you say clay mode, you render without textures so you'll end up with a textureless image with proper shadow and light behavior... Export the scene as shadow.png

Next, hide the shadow window and go to view > edges > display edges to show the lines. Then go to view > face style > hidden lines to hide everything except the lines. Now go to windows > styles and click the edit tab... remove the sky and change the BG to pure white... Export this scene as lineart.png

Now go to photochop 7 and open the file texture.png... adjust the colors and make sure to blur out severely sharp details. The open the file shadow.png and put it above the thexture.png... set this layer to multiply and reduce the opacity till satisfied... then import the file lineart.png and put it above shadow.png set this layer to multiply and reduce the opacity till satisfied... then create a new layer above the lineart.png and manually draw some more highlights like the sharp corners of the cabinet being struck by light and the light from outside... add some details like stickpads and magnets or other stuff...

There!... Total time 30 minutes no kidding... cheap but quick... Lol!...

I seriously should make a more detailed tutorial for this someday...

"POOF" (Disappears)

[GlassHeart]

Alera thank you for pointing that out. I wanted to do something about that texture but I forgot. I made the texture bigger to stop it from looking so... patterny and I will sharpen it a little.

Uncle Mugen I will try out your method right now!

[Miss-Mae]

I don't know much of anything about lighting, but I think you did a really great job with the room composition.

[RayRayTea]

... Uncle Mugen is here to help! ... "POOF" (Disappears)

An additional step can also be to keep the shadows as an alpha channel of a color chip layer, this way it's easy to have colored shadows and lighting. I also think adding a slightly cartoony treatment to it helps it integrate it with the character once it's all in the game.

I made a quick movie to illustrate the point (and also glued a character from Princess Battles so it's easier to see how it works with characters), the first bg is the direct Sketchup treatment and the second is the one that uses color chip layers. I overdid the colors a bit to make a point.