I'm working on the image above - its inspired by Peter Elson's "Vulcan's Hammer". I have yet to add vapour trails and explosions and so on - yet somehow the basic composition lacks the punch of the original...

Any suggestions on how I could make the composition more dynamic?

Message edited on: 02/03/2005 13:01

Maybe if you move the camera up and tilted it down so the ground is visible in the bottom of the image there would be a better sense of scale and hieght. Cool ships.

I don't know much about composition, but my guess would be to move the building either left or right, not so centered. And I like the idea of tilting the camera like Tobin said.

Yeah,........put the building off center and add some moition blur to the ships.

Also the foreground ship (also centred) is pointing straight out of the image (both ways). It takes the eye away from the centre of interest.

Not having seen the original, I have no idea what it is you are trying to achieve, so I'm afraid I can't try to help much more than that.

Bear in mind the following: the centre of interest should be somewhere near a point which is 1/3 of the way from an edge in both the horizontal and vertical directions. Sort-of like the corners of the centre square of a tic-tac-toe (or noughts and crosses) board..

Cheers,
Diolma
Edited to try to make more sense...

Message edited on: 02/03/2005 15:04

Tilting is good, but panning also can provide a lot of interest. Rochr almost always uses the panning. Nice ships. Like a cross between the Nostromo and a Star Wars medical frigate. Diolma's remembers school. I was there that day too. :-)

Thanks for all the suggestions - I will give them a try in several different renders and re-post the best here to see what you think... Drawbridge has a good eye!!! The ship is indeed a cross betwen the Sulaco, SW Medical frigate - and 6 other craft.... I don't have a 3d modellling package - and boolean modelling just does my head in. I have followed Rochr's robot lesson a dozen time, and I'm just a drooling case at the end of it. Thanks again for taking the time to post garryts

It has parts of the nostromo, well actually it is almost the complete ship with added extra's (and flying backwards by the looks of it) ^__^ Oh and would let those ships fly in formation, especially the large ones, they will cover each other with their gunturrets.

I either have a good eye, or I'm incredibly anal and rather sad. I like to think the former.

Attached Link: http://www.currys.com/knowledge/landscape.asp

This link has been posted on the forum before...it is rules for landsacpe composition but they help in general too. Good stuff to keep in the back of your head.

And then over do the lens flares too lol

It's not possible to over do the lens flares!

Attached Link: http://www.google.com/search?q=The+Golden+Rectangle&sourceid=mozilla-search&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-

The landscape rules are excellent. Aslo you might like to check out "Golden Rectangle". Heres a google on it. Nice start. ICM

Haven't had too much time this weekend - but here is a quick 'n dirty render after taking on board all of the feedback - and thanks again for taking the trouble... Tilted camera angles, more city for perspective and particularly tried to obey the "rule of 3rds" stuff.... Few things left to correct - particularly, I have somehow managed to bugger-up the engines on the ship in the foreground :-( Thanks for looking Garryts

That is a much more interesting image!

Very nice!!!