"planetstardragon (7/29/2013)ok, I'll play ...... one of the hardest things I find to do, is to set a good stage and background for a scene. I've come to appreciate how much work goes into design and layout for something that is subliminal yet so in yo face at the same time.

Any tips on what makes a good location, and the best practices / theories/concepts to create one ?"

"best practises"

Start with the basics:

Get the horizon & perspective as if you were actually there:

1) Select Grid (Screenshot 1)

2) F Keyboard Key; to get the horizon & perspective. (Screenshot 2)

3) Add a Character/Dummy

3) Add Camera (1) & temporarily lock it.

Then you have a basic setup to start building your scene in Preview Camera, with foreground, middle & distance..

Screenshot 1:

Screenshot 2:

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Hi Colour!

that makes sense, a good view of the playing field.....but the thing that gets me, is sometimes when playing video games, these games / lands are huge ....the depth of everything just gives you this sense of awe and aliveness in your set. it first appears common sense to replicate it in theory, but in practice it's not....

Take for example this animation - especially when he dives down from the building to the street below, @ around 2:20 that shot is spectacular - It boggles my mind how to go about creating a set like that. It looks easy enough to do, but when you try it - it just doesn't have the same feeling - i can't figure out what I'm missing ....

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I wouldn't bother attempting to imitate Scenes that have been created by "a cast of thousands".  Eg.; the Blender Foundation.

Just start with a very simple Scene Project & build on it. Otherwise you'll continue to procrastinate & end-up accomplishing nothing 

Post Post Screenshots at intervals of your progress so that others can offer suggestions, giving you the incentive to keep going.  

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@planetstardragon,

Consider backdrops and skydomes.

You don't need to actually model a lot of the background, but instead use an IMAGE of the background you want.

And remember, you don't have to model what the audience never sees.

So you can literally have an image on a plain in the background that will look like a building.

At first I was frustrated with the horizon, but I was trying to use a lot of high aerial shots where you could literally see the "end of the word" (or at least the end of my terrain).  But using reasonable camera locations, all you need is a slight hill, some trees, or anything to mask the horizon itself.  And as I implied above, from certain angles you could actually have some horizon painted on your sky.

Think of movie-making methods, like when Dorothy walks down the yellow brick road on her way to Oz.  They didn't actually build a 700 acre stage, and you don't have to either.

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iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
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Nice Tips Here Guys,
Really really liked the "Azureus Rising" Clip- a lot of action and atmosphere in there. Thanks

@Colour - yeah, I hate to admit it ...but you are right - it's one reason I've slowed down on making new animations - my imagination far exceeds my cpu lol ( which will be fixed in 3-5 business days!!!! )

@JV - Thanks! Yeah, I've played with that before - with amazing results actually - like for instance instead of a skydome, I've used the standard ball in iclone and added sky to it - the simple action of rotating the sky brought a ton of life to the scene. Also after watching the video I posted a few more times, it does appear when the character is sliding down the building, he's sliding down a matte and not an actual building prop - so I guess I need to come up with some sleight of hand tricks instead of trying to fill the whole set with props.

@nlprod1 Glad you enjoyed!! It's scenes like that which inspire me - here's another for you if you haven't seen it yet - just posting link, because I've posted it in the forum before - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7Nf-m6WGl4

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Here's an old article that I very much enjoyed seeing that's related to this post.

The 50 Greatest Matt Paintings of All Time

Using a smaller sky dome is something I often do.

For objects in the distance, a bunch of billboards often looks better than one big background image. If a 1-bit mask is enough, try putting tree or building images in the grass planter. Set the grass to a much larger scale, and give it some variability. Be aware that "grass" has no shadow casting option. It will receive shadows, though.

the game guildwars has shadows on the grass, and it really does add to the lively environmental effect - but it also looks cheezy when you use it on low settings, so it's one of those things that either it's done right and adds a subtle yet impactual depth...or a low quality distraction that takes away from the scene.

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How do i get a good mirror? like a bathroom mirror.... I read the online help files and the mirror was terrible. Very little reflected in it and the images were huge. Any help would be great.

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