Dragons at Dawn.

Two Dragons sing as the sun rises above the rooftops of Cardiff.

If you thought the dawn chorus was just bird-song, think again.

So, after (many) months of not using SketchUp, I finally got an excuse Just the rooftops in this image, which I put together very quickly using some old models I had lying around. The rest is Photoshop / hand-painting.

If you'd like to see more images from this series, please take a look at my Kickstarter campaign here: http://kck.st/2hWArhZ

Thanks for such a kind and generous response guys.

Here are four new images from the same project...

Thanks Solo.

If I have to do any complex 3D blocking, I still use SketchUp - nothing else comes close for that job. But for simple perspective layouts, SketchBook Pro has some really neat little perspective sketching tools. There's a video here if you're interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngLhGySVYLQ It means I spend less time switching between packages, which is always a good thing. It took me a while to overcome my natural aversion to anything 'AutoDesk'(!) but I have to say, SketchBook Pro is a great tool for my purposes.

A

Thanks guys.
Rich: if you decide to tackle a sketchup version, I'd love to see the results!
A

Hello, and Happy New Year.

It's been a VERY long time since I last posted here, but good to see some familiar names still producing amazing work.

The main reason for my absence is that SketchUp is no longer a major part of my work, although I do still dabble from time to time.

Anyway, I thought I'd share some stuff from my latest personal illustration project: The Dragons of Wales. Lots more info and explanation on my website: http://www.dragonsofwales.com and also on Twitter and Facebook, if any of you ever venture over there

A mixture of traditional media, SketchBook Pro and Photoshop.

Hope some of you will enjoy this, and thanks for looking.

A

Quick bit of messing around with a model I'd started for another project, but never got to finish.

A

Love the illustrative style. Model is obviously awesome as well

Lovely, clean renders, with a nicely limited colour palette.
It can be tricky to get a good angle on a restricted space like this, but you've really made it work. If I was being really picky, the only thing I'd change is the cropping on the left of the image: cropping tight to the edge of the TV feels a bit awkward. I'd try a slightly loose or tighter crop. But that really IS being picky . These are great!
A

Thanks Hornoxx! If you could see the sloppiness of the modelling, the 30 minutes might be a lot less shocking
But I'm really flattered that you like the design, as that was what it was really about.

A

Thanks Mike. To be fair, the modelling was half an hour.
The rendering and PS took a bit longer!
A

Thanks Daniel.

Haha - I wish

Did a bit of post-work on one of the renders.

I try to avoid cheesy lens-flare stuff, but just once in a while.......

A

Had a half-hour of down-time, so thought I'd have a bit of fun...

A

I've tried doing this stuff both ways to be honest mate, in the render set-up and as a post-pro thing. Personally I find doing it post- in Photoshop is, for me, much faster, and allows a lot more flexibility to try out different options. Best of all, it allows for those 'happy accidents' when you layer stuff up and suddenly find an effect that just 'works'. That said, this is also partly a reflection of my lack of real in-depth rendering expertise, and I'm always in awe of those people like Solo who seem to get amazing results straight out of the render engine, with minimal post-work.

Lovely modelling as usual Ken. And great designs of course. Looks like that was a really fun project to work on.

Cheers

A

Thanks guys..

Richard: the weathering effect is just a grunge map from cgtextures, converted to grey scale, and overlaid in Photoshop, with the layer blend mode set to 'screen' and the layer opacity set to 25%. It's a really fast way to add this kind of dirt

Cheers

A

Thank you Bryan

Only had a couple of hours to throw this together, so "simple" was the order of the day

Hi All,

Has been a while. Not had much chance to use SU recently, or post here,come to that, but have had this little project that I can share.

A quick concept development (that ultimately never made it any further) for an independent movie, to show how a very ordinary factory building could be digitally enhanced - also gave me a chance to play with SU's photo-match tools - something I rarely do.

Modelling was all done in SU (I can't take credit for the Helicopter model which I was provided with), then rendered in Thea4SU, before final additional texturing and touch-up in Photoshop.

Anyway, here are the WIPs and final image. Hope you enjoy

The untouched photo:

The SU model, set up with photomatch:

The textured model, set up to render with Thea4SU:

And the final result after rendering and Photoshop touch-up:

A

I know this hardly helps resolve the issue, but I got into the office this morning, and my image import issue has fixed itself. Back to full-speed. Total mystery. Oh well....

It's possible. There have been a few windows 8.1 updates recently.