Those are amazing! Can you give them a bit of a drop-shadow around the edge of the card to suggest thickness?

They are all really great, but I agree that the people in the last one are a distraction. The girl on the left seems too large in proportion to the car behind her and I don't like the pose. The bicycle looks fuzzy, and the other girl on the far right looks cropped (around her shoulder). The other two people that are furthest away look fine. Otherwise it looks awesome! I kinda like the first one the best!

My advice is to start using SketchUp, and try to do as much as you can without plugins, for as long as you can, so that you learn what the program can do (which is a lot). Then, once you are familiar with it, you can browse the plugins and better understand exactly what they do and how they can help you. Try out a few that will help you save time, and then try out a few to solve specific problems that you may have.

@cyberdactyl said:

Very nice!

My only comment is the vertical bands in the blue make it appear a bit like tightly stretched coated canvas with vertical supports behind.

The vertical bands that you can see are actually very close to how it actually looks. They are blue plastic panels and each one is slightly bowed, giving it that appearance. Thanks for the comments!

With the hot weather and all, I've been making a lot of visits to the Dairy Queen (ice cream store) in my town The old building, which was put up in the 60's was torn down a couple years ago and replaced with this one. I kind of like the design, there are a lot of nice details and it is colorful, but not too garish. Anyhow, here are a couple Kerkythea renders that I did of the model I made.

"Google SketchUp for Dummies" by Aidan Chopra is an excellent text, and I love his writing style. Also check out his videos on YouTube and the other SketchUp tutorials there. "Google SketchUp for Site Design" by Daniel Tal is also a really helpful book.

These are totally amazing...I would love to know how you did the landscaping, because it is absolutely perfect!

That is an amazing model and a great render!

@hieru said:

I've uploaded the model to the 3D Warehouse and it includes all the stages of the modelling process, including the proxies used to create the final organic elements with Artisan

I've just started working with Artisan, and this was a helpful tutorial for me....thanks!

@krisidious said:

could I see the base of the castle and can I see or know how you went about flaring out the base?

good looking model by the way.

Thanks guys, for the comments! Unfortunately, I can't show you more views because I only modeled what was necessary to produce the scene I wanted, which is unusual for me - I'm usually obsessive about details and finishing a model, but I was anxious to move on to something new.

The castle is loosely based on a sketch by the artist Roger Dean (who is most famous for doing 70's album covers for "Yes"). To create the castle, I mostly used Push/Pull and the scaling tool to taper or flare out the sides.

I decided not to start at the bottom, or the top, but rather at the first level (the mid-section of the image) and then work downward and upward. I think that was the best idea I had, because it made it easy to see where I was going and how much room I had left for the scene I wanted.

I made a flat plane that I imagined to be a horizontal cutting plane through the castle and drew the profile outline for the front and side facade that would be visible in the render. For the back, I just squared it off. Then I sectioned off the tower nodes in the outline and made them unique groups so I could extend and scale them independently. After that, it was a matter of pulling sections down and tapering them outward to make the base, and working in the same fashion going upward and narrowing to finish it off.

I left some of the edges sharp, and smoothed others out, and made a line drawing export from SU that I used on top of the render image after I applied the watercolor processing in FotoSketcher.

I hope this info helps! Thanks again for the nice comments...

SketchUp -> Kerkythea -> Fotosketcher

Wow...that looks great!

Thanks for sharing! My comments would be that on the house pictures, you need to use less people in the scene, and add variety by using different figures and not having them face all of the same direction. Also, the face-me figures look funny when viewed from above, so I wouldn't use them in overhead scenes.

@slimdog said:

Great detail and nice renders. Did you copy it from a picture or do you own one? Flat bar for the forks seems a bit flimsy.

I own one... Yeah, the fork design is interesting, no other unicycle brand is made that way. The only negative to the fork design is the sloping crown - it makes it difficult to do some tricks, but it isn't flimsy...the Schwinn uni is a tank! Thanks for the comments!

@unknownuser said:

Nice one!

Thanks!!!

Very cool! I had no idea that NASA provides 3D models for public use...the Cassini assembly looks like it would be fun to play with.

And here are a couple renders in Kerkythea

Wow...I REALLY enjoyed looking at these! Wonderful creativity and drawing skills. Made my morning!

I spotted this on Cafe Press...I kinda want one

Link: http://tinyurl.com/6fcraxo

Wow...beautiful...I don't think it could be done any better than this!