Artwork
I've always enjoyed dabbling in 3D artwork, and VGA Planets has provided an excellent source of inspiration. A galactic war scenario on an epic scale provides plenty of opportunity to express yourself. Even better, the game's creator has allowed 3rd parties to create their own races within the game - and those races need artwork!
I've done a few pictures for various yet-to-be-released races. Rather than post them here, I'll point you over to Crayon World (look in Roger Norris' area for my stuff), Olly Harlow's VGA Planets artwork repository. From there you can view work from a wide variety of VGAP artists, and even see the source code that was used to generate the images.
The tools I typically use when doing artwork are the following:
- Paint Shop Pro - It may not have all the features that the industry standard programs have, but I absolutely love its interface. Clean, simple, efficient. It's indispensable.
- POV-Ray - A freeware, open source raytracer. The primary interface for describing scenes is not a GUI, but rather a (very powerful!) programmer-friendly scripting language. Steep learning curve at first, but well worth the effort if you stick with it.
- Pencil and paper... preferably graph paper. No image processing program has yet to top the perfect interface of the good 'ol P and P.
POV-Ray tips
For those learning to do POV-Ray, here are a couple tips. Note that you might want to look at my images over at Crayon World first, to decide whether you think my advice is worth taking :)
Tip number 1: Just like in "real" programming, avoid hard-coding numbers. Use variables, constants, and equations instead. It makes your code more versatile. POV-Ray has a ton of useful math functions built-in, such as all the basic trig and vector functions.
Learn to use the #macro and #while commands! These can save you a lot of time and typing. Look at the source for my Derelict ship - there's a lot of detail there, and yet the source code is small. Although I don't recommend trying to decipher my twisted logic :)
Tip number 2: Good textures are incredibly important! Don't just slap a marble or agate texture on something and call it done. Use image maps. Use bump maps. Use layered textures. It's all about the details.
A good method of drawing image maps is to first render your object using an orthograhpic camera projection, and then use that as a template for your image map.
Also, I am a strong advocate of texturing your objects AS YOU GO, not after you've finished the whole model. Get a feel for what you want the texture to look like before you even start modelling.
