A long time ago, I read that whenever you have a foreground scenic feature, such as a road or a stream, that is going to continue onto the backdrop, you should not have it intersect directly with the backdrop because it will not blend well with the backdrop and not look realistic. As a general rule, that is good advice, but there are exceptions to most rules. This is the waterway I finished recently and posted on the latest WPF.
The original plan was to for the waterway to bend out of sight hidden by the covered bridge and a thick stand of trees. Then I found a perfect photo online to use as the backdrop for the river and decided to see if I could blend it with the 3-D scenery. I think this works for several reasons. First the river in the photo continues the bend of the 3-D river. Second, at the bottom of the picture, the river begins a cascade with some white water. I decided to continue the cascade and use another line of cascading white water to disguise the joint. I painted a few ripples of white water onto the backdrop to help blend the two together. It turned out so well that I decided I didn’t need to hide the intersection of the backdrop and the waterway. Obviously, if you look at it hard, you can tell where the backdrop portion of the river begins but it isn’t so obvious that it draws your attention to it, which is what I think the is the purpose of a backdrop anyway. You want to suggest that the scene continues beyond the benchwork but you want to keep the viewers attention on the 3-D scenery. I think this works but you tell me.
Now if viewed from other angles, it might not be as convincing but it is only visible from straight on. As you can see from these next two photos, taken from eye level just a couple feet left and right of the first photo, the covered bridge and the hillside hide the joint from any other angle.
Well for what it’s worth my wife and i both thought the whole thing really outstanding when we saw it in WPF, looks spot on to us, so there you go, NICE WORK![bow][tup]
Nicely done. You did some wise things here. First you created plenty of strong visual interest so the eye is not fixating on the area where reality meets backdrop. Second, the entire scene is not placed on a perspective plane – by which I mean the scene is not a sequence of hard right angles – where the eye is drawn to the horizon point, or whatever it is called (art class is a long time ago). I think the eye focuses on irregularities where the rest of the scene is highly regimented. That is where you notice even slight differences between the 3D scenery and the backdrop.
I saw your photos in this weeks WPF and I was so impressed that I didn’t even notice that it melds back into a background photo. That is some BEAUTIFUL modeling.
And yes, rules are to be broken. I learned that as a music student in first-year College Music Theory. First you learn the Rules, then you learn how to break them. You’ve done both just beautifully! [bow]
That definately is a sweet looking scene! A fleeting glance and I would not have guessed that you have a picture backdrop there. Even when scrutinizing , looking for it, I had to look at other areas and follow it over to confirm it. It’s right at the bridge,…right[swg]. Again, well done!!! The big drawback to this is now you set the bar pretty high for yourself [:)]
The first line of whitewater is on the photo backdrop. The second line of white water is where the 3-D scene begins. I brushed a few whitecaps onto the photo backdrop to help blend the two togehter.
Thanks to all you have given compliments. I do think I have a knack for doing nature scenes. I’m not so good with structures and other man made features, as you can see by the rough road. You need to be much more precise with man made features while nature scenes give you a lot more freedom and you can make it up as you go. The other advantage with nature scenes is that if you mess them up, you can either remove them fairly cheaply or cover them up with another layer of scenery which often gives you and even better effect than what you originally planned.
Great job and excellent explanation. I have the perfect spot to plagiarize your idea. Your highway color is very convincing as well. What techniques do you use there?
Actually, I think you may have followed the “rule” without realizing it!! [swg]
What you read was probably talking about not having a road or river running straight from the edge of the layout to the backdrop at a 90 degree angle from the layout edge and backdrop. That situation can be hard to make look real. By having the stream and road turn and twist, and having the river meet the backdrop on a curve, you avoided that problem. Nice work!!
I’ve used several types of paving material but I’ve settled on Durham’s water putty. The next step is to decide how light or dark I want the road to be. Asphalt is black when it goes down but it bleaches out to a light gray or even a dirty white in just a few years. I have several shades of medium gray acryllic for the base coat, depending on how old I want the road to appear. The older the lighter. I don’t know how well it shows up in the photo, but the side road in the second picture was painted a little lighter than the highway. After getting the base coat down, the next step is to bleach it out with weathering powders. I use A.I.M. white for the first coat and I have a 1/4" wide paint brush with the bristles worn down so it is very stiff and this allows me to work the powder into the surface. It will look just awful after this step so don’t worry about it. I then follow up with a coat of the medium gray powder applied the same way. The next step is the key. I dry rub the powdered road with an ordinary paper towel which blends the the gray and white powders and removes the streaks and splotches. This is when it begins to look decent. The last step is to apply black weathering powder down the middle of each lane with the brush turned sideways. I then repeat the dry rub with a paper towel. If I want a road that is really bleached out, I’ll skip the medium gray and go with just the white. If I want a newer looking road, I’ll skip the white powder and go with just the gray. I’ve also used a light coat of earth powder as the first coat and that gives the road a little bit of a dirty look.
I wish I could learn to smooth my roads as well as I color them. I got a great tip from MisterBeasley to smooth them with a wet foam brush as the
The photos look good, but you can’t tell much about how difficult it is to spot the joint between the river on the backdrop and the layout because everything is 2-D to the camera - backdrop AND layout. So the sudden change from 3-D modeling to 2-D backdrop cannot be seen. Only a look at the layout in person, or perhaps via a stereo camera, would give an accurate impression of how well the joint works.
Your point is valid. As I stated in the original post, if you look hard at it, you can see where the 3-D scene transitions to the 2-D backdrop, but that is true with all backdrops. The key is that the transition isn’t so obvious that it draws the viewer’s attention to it and destroys the illusion. A good backdrop will keep the viewer’s eyes focused on the foreground scenery.
Thanks for the road construction and weathering note. Very poor of me to forget that I asked the question until this morning[#oops]
I have a tub of water putty and have used it myself and was not too pleased with the results. I struggled to get the surface that I wanted. Time to try again as your results really look good.
