Art: Promo/Hero image for website

[GaladWarder]

Making this issue to track progress on the hero image for the webaverse.com site.

Current design specs:

• Something epic
• Similar in style to Tokyo Machine covers
• Characters posed with logo
• Rectangular aspect ratio, possibly 1920x1080
• Homespace used as background #1395

Current starting refboard:

[GaladWarder]

Any style references you come across will be helpful too - anything showing the actual painting style you want the final to be in. Right now I'm gearing for light overpaint, so it'll look fairly 3D and close to the actual models once they are finished, but I can make it look like an anime, or an oil painting, or whatever else if that suits the vibe better.

Just figured I'd mention that; I've been doing a ton of research and setup today and it occurred to me that there's quite a range of 'overpainted' styles. I can do styletests too, if that's be more useful - similar to how I did for the early docs images.

[avaer]

I made this in 30 seconds to see if it would work and I think it could. It's just a big mis-proportioned mess.

[avaer]

I think all of the Scott Pilgrim covers are pretty good in terms of fidelity, background, props, and characters. I'm not thinking so much in terms of paint or colors yet, only composition. And I think these are all decent examples of an interesting compo.

For props we have the megasword, scissors, pets (mounts, like the dragon and smaller ones, like the blob), morpher (concepted at least), keycard, and a bunch of set pieces like the origin tablets which are all great.

If we are using 3d models as a basis, it wouldn't be quite as exaggerated as this, and we can paint it rougher than this. But getting painting right seems like step 2.

[GaladWarder]

Yeah, that all makes sense - the composition definitely will come first. I'll dig more into the Scott Pilgrim design influences too.

Are you just wanting Scilly in the image, or all the characters? I think last I heard we were doing all of them, but wanted to confirm.

[avaer]

Are you just wanting Scilly in the image, or all the characters? I think last I heard we were doing all of them, but wanted to confirm.

The more the merrier, including pets. Rather than trying to get any particular asset in though, I see it as more of an opportunity to make a more interesting/dynamic hero image.

[GaladWarder]

Spent some time messing around with this today after the Morpher stuff; I've done all the necessary research and have a refboard ready. It's essentially splash art, so I'll approach it that way.

Tried doing block-ins with Vroid-rigged mannequins, but it honestly didn't work well. Since vroids are shadeless, I'll probably have to handpaint most of the lighting information regardless, unless I'm missing something. Tomorrow, I'm going to spend the day doing thumbnails traditionally - since most of the 3D assets aren't ready yet, I think it'll actually end up being faster overall that way, then I can maybe get some help posing the assets according to the sketch once the needed ones are made.

Uploading this just for posterity; it's not going to be ultimately useful but since I made it I may as well upload it. I left it as soon as I realized that this approach wasn't going to work for now.

So, traditional thumbnails coming tomorrow assuming there's no more needed for the Morphers, then we'll probably want to just wait for the assets to be made, since a lot of the finer points of the composition will rely on character silhouettes which we don't have quite yet.

The more the merrier, including pets. Rather than trying to get any particular asset in though, I see it as more of an opportunity to make a more interesting/dynamic hero image.

I'm def noticing a trend in the ref images - lots of characters/visual interest. I'll plan to just fill the frame with motion. It'll be more dynamic anyway, like you said!

[Vianvolaeus]

Since vroids are shadeless

By default they use an emissive material, so won't be affected by lighting etc. If you want a fixed up one, let me know, won't take long. Just needs the shader swapped out and textures reassigned

[avaer]

A more game box art concept.

[GaladWarder]

By default they use an emissive material, so won't be affected by lighting etc. If you want a fixed up one, let me know, won't take long. Just needs the shader swapped out and textures reassigned

I'll def take you up on that if we end up doing a 3D block with overpaint; no need to worry about it until the models are made though. Super useful to know that it's possible to make them respond to light -- that'll make my life waaay easier for the final. Calculating light in multi-character scenes in 2D alone can be pretty brutal

[madjin]

I just noticed this is a duplicate issue, see reference art posted here: https://github.com/webaverse/app/issues/1317

[GaladWarder]

Ah, my bad - I didn't see the original

[GaladWarder]

Closed the other one to migrate here, hope that's alright. Figured this was more recent information and it's easier if it can stay in one issue.

[GaladWarder]

Also, took a swing at some thumbnails today in between other stuff and a brief sync-up with Jin.

This will definitely be one where we'll just have to get the final assets into 3D, but I think there are a few really cool compositional ideas here. Also, since Vian mentioned that the models can be made to respond to lighting, we can play with some really interesting color and lighting ideas once in 3D.

These are rough compositional thumbnails, hopefully they still make sense. If you want, I'm happy to tighten them up too - it's just a balance since this probably won't be done traditionally, any time put in there won't be useful in the final.

[avaer]

Those all look sick and viable. One more that could work is “staring ahead into a vast landscape centered around the street”.

[avaer]

I think it is worth tightening these up and possibly painting, even if it is not used as the final. More shots/angles of the characters + terrain could make for good reference content and could loop back to improving the models too.

[GaladWarder]

Sure, I'll spend some time today tightening things up then! And I'll add the landscape type establishing shot you mentioned too, that sounds super cool and will make it an even 6

[GaladWarder]

Added the other thumbnail as suggested:

Also, Vian sent me some vroid bases that would respond to lighting information, so I messed with blocking a few of my favorite ones in Blender to flesh them out a bit more.

Have another one started but not quite finished yet, will send more through tomorrow.

Also messing around with some styletests for painted test images/refined thmbnails; I know there are a few ways to do color comps, just need to find one that will result in an alright end product - a bunch of them are either over my head or take far too long; I'm out of practice on some of the trad. illustration skills. May just block them in 3D and do lineart or paint massing over top; that's pretty straightforward comparatively

[GaladWarder]

These are mostly just greyboxed for now, but we can essentially drop in assets as they get finished, replacing the placeholders.

Lighting will need fine tuning as well, but these give the gist of the mood I have in mind

[Vianvolaeus]

Just to throw this out there in response to lighting, the current workflow for materials allows usage of pathtracing rendering (ie Cycles) in Blender. I'm not too familiar with it since I've been limited by hardware until recently, but, we can definitely put it to use if we want to.

We can render out with transparency even with a HDRI present still:

[GaladWarder]

Just to throw this out there in response to lighting, the current workflow for materials allows usage of pathtracing rendering (ie Cycles) in Blender. I'm not too familiar with it since I've been limited by hardware until recently, but, we can definitely put it to use if we want to.

We can render out with transparency even with a HDRI present still:

That's going to be extremely useful! When we are doing the final pass on the hero illustration; at least on the 3D part of it; I am definitely going to see if I can bounce some stuff back and forth with you, I can generally have an idea of what I want lighting-wise, but my rendering knowledge is limited. This looks like we could have some extremely fine control over lighting and masking though - even just being able to pose out the scene and export characters as PNG 'cutouts' with consistent lighting will make the overpainting process so much easier, and will give a ton of control on the 2D side.

I'm so hyped

[avaer]

https://github.com/webaverse/app/issues/1443#issuecomment-906855918

IMO the lighting is a bit too dark and muddy here. It should be either bold and bright, or bold and dark, or better yet both of those composed together (e.g. the lisk is very dark but everything else is bright). But the aim should be crispness of they key features, rather than foggy ambiance.

[Vianvolaeus]

A brighter sky like enviro and stronger rim lighting would probably help achieve that. Depending on what lights are being used, you can effectively change the hardness of the shadows by decreasing the Specular value and upping the power of the light itself

[avaer]

Prioritizing this issue, in terms of creating composed/over painted scenes with our assets to establish style which can guide the other projects. We’ll be blocking out in 3D as part of the process.

I think having at least 3 complete images would be a good goal, but this issue should run until we have enough of a volume of content that the brand and symbols are presented clearly for replication in downstream art.

All the compositional concepts presented so far look good, and we agreed this morning to try some more downtempo/single character mundane poses too, like buying something at a vket market or sleeping, while keeping the general themes of adventure, weirdness, darkness, and games/economics.

This all very experimental so it would be great to try new techniques, but let’s not get bogged down in perfecting any idea yet.

[avaer]

One additional idea that would be good to try is holographic ui projected by d-bugs. This ui could show the stats of an item or a person’s level, illustrating the gamelike aspects of the universe, since the characters all know they are simulations in a game.

[GaladWarder]

This all makes total sense, I'll be tackling these images this week!

A few clarifying questions:

• You mentioned 3 images as a goal; what deadline do you have in mind for that? I'll adjust the process accordingly.
• How experimental do you want me to get with them? Total blue sky, or do you want the images to all be in a similar style/color palette/approach?
• For the holographic UUI, do you want that shown in one of the images specifically, or are you referring more to a separate concept sheet?

I'm really looking forward to digging into these this week; it's going to be a blast!

[avaer]

You mentioned 3 images as a goal; what deadline do you have in mind for that? I'll adjust the process accordingly.

At about the same time that Vian is done with all of the avatar bases (not the generative variations).

How experimental do you want me to get with them? Total blue sky, or do you want the images to all be in a similar style/color palette/approach?

They don't have to be the same style as long as they are the same assets, so trying different things would be best.

For the holographic UUI, do you want that shown in one of the images specifically, or are you referring more to a separate concept sheet?

A hero image for now, we don't need to really flesh it out yet. In the future, we might want to put it into an actual concept that makes sense in a game context rather than a hero shot.

[Vianvolaeus]

@GaladWarder - version of the Hacker char should be ready for use for posing etc.

It's using some constraints to bones for accessories so we can easily switch them out and have a rough idea of how it'll be in game, too, but you should be able to still hide them if needed.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1TamnUl-qxQbaTN_PrwTbqE5qwun5yAyh

[GaladWarder]

Just putting a list here of the progress this week; since there's not a standup channel anymore.

First off, I spent a day's worth of time doing research into splash art illustration workflows and approaches - specifically as it applies to 3D>2D workflows. It looks like there are two main approaches: either it's almost entirely done in 3D (More like a 3D render), or it's greyboxed in 3D and traditionally painted over.

There are a few approaches that are in-between, which use custom shaders or materials to get a sketch-like or paint-like render, which look promising.

I spent about two day's worth of time trying to get a render out which would translate easily to overpaint; using custom shaders and node groups especially. There are some really cool setups for crosshatching or dot-tone shading (manga-style) which could work depending on the end style. I think I could also render out a two-tone render, and paint into it using the black as a shadow mask and the light as a light mask. Definitely plan to try that.

I also wanted to have something to show in the Monday meeting, so I started a very traditional illustration process for a single-character splash, using Scilly since her design is mostly locked-in. I thumbnailed out the composition, blocked in in 3D, did a rough sketch, then final linework. Next will be values, lighting, color, then rendering until it hits the point we're happy with.

Here's the linework I came up with for now, as well as a few rough block-ins for approximate color/mood/lighitng.

All is on-track for the deadline, and I have this upcoming week planned out; it'll be a longer one hours-wise. Can go over it and some other stuff not mentioned here in the meeting too so this post doesn't get too long.

[avaer]

In case it's useful anywhere, here is the logo I've been using. AI file here: https://github.com/webaverse/assets/blob/master/logos.ai

[GaladWarder]

Just updating here with a bunch of work; this has all been shown on the Discord and is in the Git repo.

And some shots from the most recent scene, still WIP.

I spent some time today messing with toon shaders as requested, but wasn't able to get a good result out of them; I don't think my shader knowledge is strong enough. I can revisit it but didn't want to spend too long on it unless otherwise instructed.

Overpaints for these scenes will be coming as soon as I can finish the scene itself, there was a mixup with the rock and plant assets from Dream so I am currently blocked until I can get those. Starting a new scene instead, these can be updated as soon as I'm unblockarino'd.

[GaladWarder]

Adding these refs for archival purposes:

[GaladWarder]

Some of the renders from the past few days, again for archival purposes. All have been uploaded to the relevant repos.

[GaladWarder]

Since Tids is currently working on this, I'm going to archive this issue for now. Can reopen if needed