Updated: November 15, 2013
All right fellas, prepare to be blazed. Proper blazed. Here's my best work yet, and while hype does not always live up to the expectations, I guarantee you will be satisfied with today's art. As you know, I love ArmA II, and play it quite often. So I decided to combine my appreciation for the game with my artistic inclinations, and the end result is something that can easily belong in a video game. So let me show you what happens when you take a decent, realistic model and plant it in a realistic setting. Alternatively, I suck. Or rather, I, suck.
What I did ...
I took my Kill Mobil model and placed on a road near an intersection in a ruined part of a typical urban setting, the kind you will often encounter in modern media these days. Next, I spent about 10-12 hours designing buildings that would adorn the street sides. I made sure to include a whole bunch of details, like the roadside curb striping, asphalt texture, including broken and worn patches, mortar hits and debris, road signs perforated by bullets, street lamps ever so slightly dislodged by the passage of armored vehicles, buildings with their facade and doors pocked by shrapnel and gun rounds, shattered glass, and more.
Then, on top of that, I added fresh new camouflage to a pair of Kill Mobils, and placed a third one, featuring a burned-out chassis further down the down, so it looks it was lost in a dire street battle. Throw in some broken concrete blocks, bits of roof tiling, pipes, tires, and a hundred more genuine textures from real photos, and you're in for a splendid show of great. The inspiration cometh from here:
This is what the model looks like in SketchUp:
This is the model in Kerkythea, before any renders:
And here's the bestest gallery EVAR
The change is stunning. If you could not relate to the model's authenticity on its own, it all becomes so much more like in real life with other objects around it, which simulate the situation where you might observe the model. And then, your brain does the patching and splicing it needs to reason it out. And so, this is the very first image I made - yup, this is not footage or a screenshot from a game, this be mine own creation, of my loom, loin and imagination - and it gets better:
More or less the same, with even more random effects and details on nearby buildings, including extra debris, more varied rooftops on the low workshop sheds, extra new signs, door and window paneling, and such.
But you must be wondering about the colors, sort of. All right. With full colors and wide angle view:
Here's a gritty one, with focus on the destroyed APC:
Morning fog, sand or whatever you fancy:
From what I've seen in real photos from war theaters around the globe, this kind of thing is possible, especially where's quite a bit of humidity and low-level clouds and fog. The visibility is somewhat reduced, and the colors are muted, but you do get glare and shadows. Now do you think this would look better without any shadows, or would it make the image too flat and ghost-like?
Let's change the camera angle now - Uncle Sam wants YOU!
Notice the STOP sign, and the hanging shop logo on the right and whatnot:
Here we have the ruined APC sitting there on the cracked road, collecting dust. More work to be done here, for sure, like oil spill and soot smears on the road near the ruined vehicle, where it met an untimely death to an RPG rocket, or something.
And the top view, with the assortment of shops in the background and all that.
Finally, with a mountain backdrop, a buildings skyline and rising smoke! This can definitely be improved. And I'm also working on adding a proper, authentic skyline from real photos. If you have any ideas, it would be great. Y'know, some tall buildings and such.
Lovely jubbly, ain't it. Well see ya!