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Steam train in Designer from camera photo


NotMyFault

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Hi,

This post is a mixture of share your work and lesson learned.

To get some practice with vector art, i start with photos of real world situations, and try to trace the curves manually.

My goal is to stay 100% vector, and reach a high degree of accuracy even for small details (e.g. badges and symbols), but using as much simple shapes as possible (e.g. stars and ellipses for curves).

After working several hours after business work for the last weeks the result is a mixture of nice / promising, and stuck in too much effort.

Below you find the current state, missing lots of the under-carriage and fine details like tubes, nuts, color gradients.

 

Lessons learned:

Real photos always have a perspective distortion. This leads to some complexities: every wheel of the train differs, and ellipses don't accurately match a wheel viewed from perspective. So everey wheel needs to be adjusted individually, and every shapes needs fine tuning after conversion into curve.

It might be easier to render this in 3D vs. trying to achieve this level of accuracy with Designer (lacking tools for perspective correction for pure vector documents).

Some objects needs to be partitioned to correctly render the Z-axis / 3D

Designer gets slower over time, after 2-3 hours you need to restart. Especially blur filters (or Layer FX) are taxing to the performance and lead to Designer become less responsive, even on my PC which is quite beefy.

Now I'm curious how you rate my work, and what you recommend to improve the workflow (or artistic direction accuracy vs. abstraction vs. realism vs. imagination).

 

This is 100% fun work, no intention to go commercial.

 

Photo used as basis: own work.

RBB is an active small steam train public transport with fixed schedule, used by tourists and commuters on the island Rügen in north-east Germany.

 

 

RBB-pixel.png

RBB.png

Edited by NotMyFault

Mac mini M1 A2348 | Windows 10 - AMD Ryzen 9 5900x - 32 GB RAM - Nvidia GTX 1080

LG34WK950U-W, calibrated to DCI-P3 with LG Calibration Studio / Spider 5

iPad Air Gen 5 (2022) A2589

Special interest into procedural texture filter, edit alpha channel, RGB/16 and RGB/32 color formats, stacking, finding root causes for misbehaving files, finding creative solutions for unsolvable tasks, finding bugs in Apps.

 

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Another example is the 372 DES, source image to be found here:

https://www.gwsr.com/enthusiasts/miscellaneous/Diesel_Locomotives_1.html

 

 

Yorkshire train.png

Mac mini M1 A2348 | Windows 10 - AMD Ryzen 9 5900x - 32 GB RAM - Nvidia GTX 1080

LG34WK950U-W, calibrated to DCI-P3 with LG Calibration Studio / Spider 5

iPad Air Gen 5 (2022) A2589

Special interest into procedural texture filter, edit alpha channel, RGB/16 and RGB/32 color formats, stacking, finding root causes for misbehaving files, finding creative solutions for unsolvable tasks, finding bugs in Apps.

 

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Fun work, but you didn't choose the simpler ones :)

I woud suggest not using gradients, since they give more reality to a drawing, but the bad side is you need to add a lot more if you wan to give the feeling of someting finished.

It's "easier" with flat design, there'll be less contrast between flat and gradiented (🤣) parts.

In the first one (since we've got the original), it's possible than adding tubes and light could "easily" (that's always relative) give a "finished" result, that trying to do all with gradients. The old trick of adding enough details in the parts with light to "bluff" the spectator, so he won't mind the other parts more simple.

 

I had fun last year, needing an old locomotive without background... In fact, it took time to get rid of the background, of reflects of foliage, people,  etc., and I was happy to finish it... and not sure I would decide to do it soon again, since it took a little too much time that I thought.

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It’s your choice what style you want to go for, of course the more realistic you make it the more work it’s going to be. If you decide on more realistic you normally need to do more than a single gradient for a part, while it is tempting as it’s easy it often isn’t realistic if you compare it to the reference. Wheels are always different whatever they are on but you can sometimes copy them and make some adjustments to the aspect ratio and highlights/shadows. There’s no reason you can’t make it as realistic as you want in a vector app, you certainly aren’t forced to go to a 3d app even if you want to achieve photorealism. It just takes some practice.

I’m not sure why you are getting slowdowns, you don’t have many objects yet and very few blurs by the looks of it. Not sure if that’s a Windows AD problem.

 

Marc

ArtByMarc.me

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After some more practice, i hope the result is a bit more pleasing for your eyes.

Now i get used to quickly

  • build 3D objects up by stacking lots of 2D layers
  • creating brushed (e.g. rail is open curve with brush for rail gradient)
  • master 3D overlap (e.g. the fender chain) by using helper curves to crop off covered parts
  • building assets for simplified re-use while keeping them editable
  • create shadows (blend mode multiply, reduce opacity, gradient or layer FX if required)
  • Avoid blur / layer FX and use stacked layers and gradients where possible

The next area where i want to improve is

  • Color grading, by building a document palette instead of color picking to often
  • scaling objects like rail brackets which gets closer in the distance

1695172163_Yorkshiretrain2.thumb.png.6303f013613ac026e17c76331eece796.png

 

image.thumb.png.fbcef34b39c2de879383d1b81b43eabe.png

Mac mini M1 A2348 | Windows 10 - AMD Ryzen 9 5900x - 32 GB RAM - Nvidia GTX 1080

LG34WK950U-W, calibrated to DCI-P3 with LG Calibration Studio / Spider 5

iPad Air Gen 5 (2022) A2589

Special interest into procedural texture filter, edit alpha channel, RGB/16 and RGB/32 color formats, stacking, finding root causes for misbehaving files, finding creative solutions for unsolvable tasks, finding bugs in Apps.

 

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There's no one right way to do things however, to me, that's an over complicated workflow for something that's not particularly complicated (at least at the moment). I'm not yet sure what style you're aiming for, it's sort of in the middle of styles. Of course you don't have to follow any particular style at all.

Personally speaking, depending on the style: You don't want a colour palette, you do want to pick them all the time, as real life doesn't use one. You do need to use blurs as edges in real life are not perfectly sharp. I wouldn't rely on multiply or fx for shadows, I only use them very occasionally (or any fx other than blur).

 

Marc

ArtByMarc.me

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