A Few Common Scifi Mistakes - Quick Ways to Improve

all right welcome to this video we're going to be talking about how to get your sci-fi to the next level you know some things that make sci-fi look generic or maybe are things that are holding you back when it comes to creating sci-fi so just to kind of go over this I found all these images on Google these are my opinions I don't really think there's such thing as absolute right or wrong in art but if you want to design commercial commercially or just get your sci-fi skills up these are some common beginner mistakes to help you make yourself stand out and maybe see sci-fi and a different light than you currently do you know sci-fi is functional sci-fi is aesthetic but most importantly the real world rules of making things don't change you know they involve well functionally aesthetically good sci-fi is grounded in reality and purpose both artistic and functional purpose that style and purpose is up to you but the choices and details you add should be with intent and reasoning it's really important to try and avoid total randomness visual design the idea of form balance hierarchy flow and composition these all apply to hard surface and hard surface design we wish remember that art is a visual communication language if we want to create production art we have to know how to interface with the audience and communicate with the ideas themes functions and aesthetics of our designs to do this we must build a visual library and learn about these fundamentals while we are not covering those fundamentals in this video I will give you a starting point to improve your sci-fi if you're struggling and also some addition for the next section in this video we're going to be talking about cliche details and things that I see happen a lot how people are getting in a sci-fi so let's start off with the bolt in every corner detail so my friend Kai who has gotten way way better since then let me his old sci-fi and so one thing I see a lot is people love to put bolts in every single corner of their design and they split every single panel along every seam I would say if you want to start making more appealing sci-fi find a more interesting way to place these here's another example just placing the bolts in every single corner I believe it makes it feel a lot more load and I'm not saying you can't do it but it's better to usually find a more aesthetically pleasing way of doing it for example here he does it in selective corners not always in the most of the corners and he also finds interesting places to put them that make it a little more complex such as between two parts so I think if you just try and avoid this detail you're going to be a lot better off and find a more interesting way to be placing your bolts so the next cliched detail I'd like to talk about is caution tape and basically when it comes to kasha tape I just say use a sparingly use it functionally and do it aesthetically you know it adds a very strong color to your scene a very recognizable pattern it's very intense and visually strong and it should only be used in functional places and places that makes sense you know when you see it on walls where someone doesn't really need to be afraid of the wall or you know they're not going to trip over some piece of metal that's up here on the scene right like think about why you're placing caution tape and do it aesthetically pleasing I like this example because I think it adds some color to the door which is otherwise monochromatic and it's very subtle and used in a way that basically is saying like as this door shuts like watch out you know it's very it's very purposeful you know when you place color in a scene usually you place or on a design you're placing it in areas of function or interaction or warning you of something or telling you some information right so color choices and placement usually have a very strong and intentional purpose so I think that's an AIC a lot try to avoid it another cliche detail I'd like to talk about is called the inset existing geo detail I don't really know what else to call it but here's some examples I made a lot of times when people are especially starting out right it's hard to break the box it's hard to make more complicated things and your visual library isn't developed enough but well your visual library might may not be developed enough it's good to know where you can improve one thing I see oftentimes in 3d art is people are going to start adding in sets and extrusions based on existing polygons for example here you can see that there's a box here and so it's very easy for a 3d artist to go select these politics and extrude it down but the problem is that's not very a very strong design choice it's a little uninteresting and a bit too easy right we'll talk about breaking the box later on but I suggest trying to maybe offset the shape add bevels to it add an additional detail just take it one step further to try and break that box and make it feel a little bit more unique and less like your artistic choices are driven by your polygons you know for example on this door you can see that this person's shape of the door guided how they made their extrusions and geometry choices I know that they had poly flows like this and so they had extruded these details in words and they extruded this panel in words it's just a typical thing that we do is we're learning to model right you know more complicated shapes take longer and are harder to figure out so if you see yourself doing these things you know try and just be mindful of it and see if you can find a better way because a better way isn't necessarily too much extra work you know for example around this doorframe I know that this person had this existing geo and so they just didn't set it yeah I would just say that if you want to make your sci-fi stand out try and push that out of your workflow and learn how to try and add a bit of you know extra elegance to your shapes into your details so the next cliche sci-fi detailed like to talk about is the sandwich in effect it's not really a detail as much as as a phenomena so something that I see happens a lot is people start designing very evenly sized strips of vertical pieces and so they create like the sandwich effect right it's pretty hard to avoid at times you know it's it's very natural to start creating these things and so you have to be cautious about them and cognizant of what you're creating so it's pretty easy to start creating these similarly sized strips of in similar intensity detail right and so it becomes hard to distinguish all these plain changes you know you see the sandwich in effect happen in a lot of different areas so for example you know here we can see that there's a lot of evenly sized plane changes and details where if we had a bit more rest area here and then we focus a lot of our details and other areas or in maybe more concentrated areas it would have a little bit less of that sandwich in effect the next cliche sci-fi detail I'd like to talk about is the sawtooth designed and a sawtooth design basically happens when you have a line and you repeat this 45-degree angle tooth shape over and over I mean imagine if that was a saw blade right these are the little saw teeth and so it happens is when you tile this you're gonna be getting this sawtooth design I see this quite a bit and I think that the more that you work on expanding your visual library the more that you can find new alternatives to this you know play with different proportions play with different shapes don't be afraid to try and break out of these thing these limitations created by our tools rightly these are easier to model shapes and so it's very typical for us to stick within what we know but if you want to push out of this zone try and build up a new library of forms and functions and things to help you idat shapes and ideas right so I see this one a lot and I just wanted to bring it to attention all right so the final sci-fi cliche detail that I would like to talk about is vents this is my personal opinion I see this a lot I think it stems from the same reason as 45-degree angles boxy shapes sawtooth designs but it's events vents are a functional thing everyone knows what event does every student puts vents and then they put some sort of smoke coming out of it or something right and one of their scenes and I think the problem that I have with vents is while vents are functional I think there's always a more futuristic and aesthetic way to do them and they shouldn't be used as a way to fill space they should be used with intention and purpose rather than just some random thing to put there right remember sci-fi unless you're doing like industrial sci-fi and you don't care about aesthetics sci-fi is should look you know futuristic and functional but also cool and maybe unique or elegant right and so I think finding a more true manufactured way or a more interesting pattern or shape to your events will help to make it stand out so that's just my personal opinion yeah all right so we covered a lot of the cliche details I want to talk about cables and pipes and just my philosophy and thoughts on them so when it comes to cable and pipes I think that there's many ways to do them when we think about the types of cables and pipes that there are there's usually two different types there's you know sing I guess just like three there's singular pipes and cables so there's like one piece then there's organized cables that follow some sort of intention or so they're part of a larger system and they have some sort of flow to them and they're very functional or maybe they're like USB K or Ethernet cables right so for example we have like these types of cables and then we also have disorganized cables right and so I think it's really important to know when and where to use them and what makes these good and bad so a lot of times in sci-fi design I see people putting cables just like random electrical cables and pipes on their guns in ways that don't make sense functionally you know someone hit those cables they get ripped off and it just looks made it very odd to me where there's guns like this where it has a pipe but not only as I say its function but it's integrated into the design it's not tacked on to it it's not outside of it you know this would be protected by the parts around the gun this is a great implementation of a pipe into a design a lot of times what I see is usually very evenly sized pipes and then they just go from one side of a panel to the other there's no real integration there's no elegance or grouping or feeling of feeling of them being built into something bigger or actually integrated into a structure where this is a great example you know the pipes are tucked into an area they're protected they look like they're part of the structure someone took the time to model them into the walls I think that this is a great approach so I made these quick two images here to just talk about my philosophy versus one thing I see a lot so I always see this evenly sized pipes that go straight through these wall panels and they're on the outside of a wall I see us a lot in sci-fi corridors I suggest and the way that I like to do it personally is you know if you want to add a lot of detail right but you want it to be reading well you need hierarchy big medium small and so what I like to do is I usually have a master pipe and then I have a secondary one and then I have a tertiary smaller pipes right and so you can have one big one and a multiple smaller ones and you can group them together and you can start creating as more interesting combinations and that's not the only way to do it but it's just one way to think about it right don't try and think about pipes and think about what's the most cool pattern you can arrange them or like what would be interesting to look at and I think it makes more sense right like imagine if someone built a conduit for piping and cabling chances are that a lot of those places those pipes and cables might go to similar places or to reduce the amount of internal structure that they have to build out to carry these conduits maybe they group them together right so like maybe this one carries you know some sort of gas or it carries a bunch of fiber-optic cables and then these carry you know maybe these are gas or something else and then this one's water you know it helps to bring a little bit more finesse to than just a simple pipe by itself and so when it comes to integrating them I see this one a lot where it's just barely integrated or it's not even at all and so I'm not saying this is the only way to do it but trying to build your pipes into your structures makes them feel a bit more elegant more purpose-built and more grounded in my opinion now if you're going for like a you know a current day military you know real world thing then yeah you can do this but I think keeping this idea of integrating it in a more interesting way is going to always be cooler it doesn't have to be crazy but add some elegance to it and I think you're going to be creating better pipes of cables add junctions you know try and just break the box break the repetition and try and make them feel like they're really meant to be there you know I like this these examples right like Papa Parra had a bunch of very organized very purposeful pipes that look very integrated but then he also has very busy and very or sorry not busy but more disorganized cables but they're tucked behind them they're of less intensity so it feels very functional it doesn't feel like random cables and so it feels like there's some sort of logic right in order to it all like for example these cables are designed to carry some sort of fluid to a system right like that's why they're loose they need to be loose because it articulates there's reasoning behind it these pipes don't need to be loose they need to be very rigid and you know Kerry may be air around or some sort of other fluid so try and find interesting ways to do it I think this is a great example like this is a cool way to make groups of cables this is a cool way to take a simple idea and elevate it right different shapes different patterns different ways of grouping them different connections so try and just find either some sort of organization or pattern or way to take the pipes and cables and give them a function and if they don't have like some sort of super aesthetic look and they are more like this try and at least make the shapes of the flow of the cable like try and make these things dynamic and interesting rather than you know a bit a bit static right so anyway that's my thoughts on pipes and I love six minutes but hopefully that's helpful I see these things a lot and I think he can help give your pipes which is a generic detail a bit of realism to it and more interest so find the coolest way of doing pipes it's gonna look cooler right so the next thing I'd like to talk about is breaking the box on breaking the box is a subject that I'm really excited to talk about and I like to talk about you know when people paint pictures right you generally want to hide your brushstrokes or when you sculpt something you don't want people to be saying oh I know how we've modelled that or I know how he painted that and so I find that this rule is really important for designing in both 3d and 2d and it's hard to do this for different reasons so one thing I see a lot of times is artists who you know don't have a super strong understanding of manipulating form and they're starting out with a 3d software drawing right when you're learning to draw they teach you to be very accurate very precise they want you to understand form but the problem is a lack of visual library and a lack of experimenting with form makes it hard for you to draw and imagine these and also accurately it takes practice right and so a lot of times people start out they they tend to gravitate towards more simple shapes they gravitate towards more blocky shapes when they're drawing and when they're modeling because breaking the box is hard to do you know it takes practice it takes time and so I see people a lot of times who get limited by this understanding of form and so I tend to call these people you know boxes and cylinder modelers whereas basically they can't break out of that arena very easily especially when they're designing like it's one thing to be able to model a gun from reference but it's another one to be able to design a gun and create interesting forms so like here's an example of a simple box that's breaking the box right you can't really I mean you can tell how it's made if you think about it but it's much more sophisticated right it's very simple there's these large bevels something you typically wouldn't see 3d tools creating easily unless you knew how to do it as very intentional yeah so I think that breaking the box is one of the harder things to do but basically the idea is to add more elegance right like these boxes may seem or these shapes may seem very simple at first but when you really look at the forms there's huge bevels and huge plane changes to help break this and give it some nice elegance right and that's something that I think is really important to do you know whether it's for product design or sci-fi you know you have to break the box you don't want to be limited by your tools or by your drawing like accurate drawing techniques and you can learn how to be accurate and create crazy forms but it's definitely a lot harder right like that's one thing I really appreciate about Brian some his forms are very good they're believable you know they make enough sense and there's enough structure and underlying like you know hierarchy understanding how to transition forms and like the understanding of forms and combining different shapes that's what makes this so good right and it takes a long time to get to this level or even close to this level but it's just you have to learn how to break the box you have to learn how to try new shapes and forms and so I think that this is one of the things that I see people struggle a lot with right like if you can take a simple box and break it I think that's when you're gonna start being successful right you don't want people to look at your model and immediately know how you did it in one or two operations that's just my personal philosophy that's why I appreciate people like vitaly bobrov or you know papa Parra you can't easily see how they model these things they feel natural and they have that technical execution and that design of these compound and complex forms that that that makes it feel exceptional both artistically because they it unlocks his ability to create things that are grounded because he can make more interesting shape right because of the technical skill so learning how to break the box and design and our technical side is crucial in my opinion and you don't have to be doing anything crazy to break the box you can make a box design very simple and very pleasing but that's also an art in itself so one thing I thought was really interesting when I was learning about design is somebody said oh like this you know like my coworker jehoon said oh this is a good box design this is a good cylinder design and I ever thought about like that like yeah that's really important like if someone can make a box look cool what else can they make look cool right so that's just my personal opinion I think that not every design has to be some crazy complex thing but even in you know very very simple product designs let me pull it up really quickly even in simple product designs people break the box constantly like something like a lot of these things right like for example this corner I I'm hard pressed to find somebody who is designing in a polygon modeling software who would do a form transition like this because these are things that are not easy to come up with especially in a modeling software right for example transitioning this form from back here like these types of bevels these soft transitions to these harder cut these harder shapes like understanding how to do all that on a technical level isn't easy for everyone and so designing it and knowing how to model it is even harder but if you want to push your sci-fi learning how to do these things in your designs and in your modeling is what's going to take it to the next level you know break that box break out of your tools like restrictions so that's my thoughts on it and hopefully some people found this helpful alright so the next thing I'd like to talk about is greebles greebles are essentially random detail plastered all over something they don't have function and they're generally sort of boxy shapes not all the time but this is something that's very typical and generally more retro art and especially in sci-fi you know only think of greebles where 99% chance going to think of you know star wars right and it's not that greebles are necessarily bad but i think that if we want to create more modern more futuristic more elegant sci-fi we need to be trying to break the box and if we're going to have greebles give them some purpose and give their placements on purpose right you know I think that it's to me personally I think it's more important to add something with intention then not than to add something without knowing why I'm adding it artistically or functionally so for example on this piece you know I don't understand what a lot of these things do especially these pieces they feel like maybe they're mechanisms but they're really just sort of these random of details writer what is this piece here do what is this mechanism do it where if you look at someone like pulpit Parra's he does have a lot of details he has a lot of things but they all look like they have a purpose or they're supporting some sort of functional thing right they're placed and very organized and important focused groups and areas you know there's rest area and then he places these functional detailed pieces and so there's a nice balance of all these things it doesn't feel like anything is lacking purpose right it feels like there's sort of logic behind the placement and so it's really important to be having a either an artistic choice like for example it's important to group your details when you group your details you naturally create areas of rest in areas of complexity he does this that's an artistic reason of choosing to place details in a place or maybe he goes by the rule well this is where you know this structure the pipes are ending here they're going to be transitioning a fluid or some sort of or serving some sort of other mechanical function for this mechanism here so there's many different ways you can think about stuff but you want to have like a functional purpose or an aesthetic purpose to it and reason as to why you're doing what you're doing in my opinion greebles can be done well like this is a Mike Nash piece or sorry Mike Hill piece I think that he still picks enough shapes that break the box with enough good hierarchy for example he has more medium cuts and big medium chunky sizes with very subtle surface details it doesn't feel overwhelming to the eye there's a lot of depth to it there's lots of material changes it just feels very purposeful then you know there's groupings of detailed functional pieces they communicate with the idea of this engine here and so to me I think there are ways to do so-called greedly parts and there's also ways to not do them so just be careful you know when you're placing details try and place them with purpose right so this is a good example to me there's a lot of rest area and then there's areas of detail as well so try and think about why you're placing details and I think if you're not sure why you're placing something it's better to hold off then just go crazy the next thing I'd like to talk about is tangents now a tangents are something that if you're into 2d and you've done a lot of 2d you know exactly what a tangent is but when it comes to designing we need to be thinking in the same way and I'm not saying obviously oh if you do a tangent at the end of the world of course not but in my personal opinion I like to avoid them and so a tangent is when basically four lines intersect now it happens as we create these points so for example here we have all these lines intersecting and so I think it's important to try and limit these to three lines just removing this line here would be enough to make this feel a little bit different and try and get rid of that point and make it read a little bit easier on the eyes I see it a lot too and 3d write like it's very easy to take the existing edges alongside of a like where the poly splits are over the edges of corners are right and start splitting your geometry like this I think it's really important that when you're making panel work avoid breaking it on every edge you'd be very very intentional where you're breaking your panels and I have vote I would personally avoid making it look like you used the geometry to guide your panels because when you are limited by your 3d software you're really letting the 3d software do the designing you're not pushing past it's it's easiest functions and so if you want to get the most out of your design don't be limited by these these restrictions of software try and build more aesthetic and interesting panel work so some more examples of tangents we have a lot of converging lines like this I mean it's usually when there's like four of them here's okay we have three of them but this area is a little bit unclear you know we have a still quite a bit of lines here and so I see this all the time though when it comes to panel cuts you know this one is another panel cut that's creating a tangent with these form changes in these bevels same thing here so I think it's usually good if you're gonna have a panel cut maybe offset it so instead of deciding to place it here maybe place it here so it's offset from that corner another one that I also see is when it's just the placement of details where they split it may not be a very clear line but because these are split here and each new detail starts on the same line like so this is a detail area this is a detail area this is a detail area where they end is almost same points and so we create these lines and so what I suggest is trying to maybe make one line that flows past the other ones or you know instead of a rhythm that's like this sorry so that's like this maybe offset the outside panel so where this detail ends is right here right so we get more space in the middle of empty space and none of those details are going to be ending on the same the same lines some more examples here and these are areas where a lot of these lines are converging into tangents and so I think it's just really important when you're doing your panel cuts to try and avoid these areas so that's a basic elective Sam tangents feel free to let me know if that makes sense and comment below all right the next topic I'd like to talk about is illumination whether it's placing lights or it's just adding lights in sci-fi all the time I see people adding lots of random lights on circles on capsules all over a scene you know typically what this does is it makes things distracting but it also feels less functional right sci-fi is about function still lighting is going to be lighting whether it's the year twenty billion jillion one trillion or it's like you know 1500 BC you know the Ice Age dinosaur time so lights do a few things they usually tell you like they're an indicator of something right like if you see a store light it's to call your attention and say hey this is a store here or it's to say oh this device is on or this device is off or it's to provide illumination yes sometimes light is aesthetic absolutely but it's usually used very sparingly and very aesthetically so be very careful and cautious of why you're placing your lights try not to go crazy and realize that light sources are the most strong part of your scene and they're gonna attract the eye so when you are doing them try and do them with as much purpose as possible and don't go too crazy think of their function or think of their aesthetic reasoning all right so the next thing I'd like to talk about in this video is aligning your diagonals and avoiding random diagonals I think that you know it's very normal for people when they're getting started to start adding lots of crazy angles and well angular design is cool and you can do it right like Deus Ex I think it's really important to be trying to not add diagonal just add detail like and to organize them so that they have some sort of structure to them so for example you know have only a few sets of diagonals don't have 30 different diagonals in your in your model try and align these diagonals across your design it helps to organize everything and make it feel a bit more simple even though you have lots of diagonals you know doesn't mean every single one has to be aligned there's always reasons to break every rule but I think that the more that you stick with trying to keep things aligned I think the more professional and organized your your art is going to feel there's definitely times not to do it but it's about knowing when to do those right versus doing it and make them all unaligned because you don't know why it's also important to like you can add counter angles so for example this is a nice counter angle it's almost perpendicular to the dominant angles you know yeah these ones aren't matching any other diagonals so there are some that don't but overall I think it's really important that just from an aesthetic standpoint that you try and not make too many online diagonals or just crazy diagonals you know be very careful with your angle changes it's very important that they're not super random all the time try and have some sort of order and structure to them and and reasoning behind it yep all right so the last thing I'd like to talk about is rest area and 70/30 this is part of a broader topic and is actually a lot more deep than just this but I'm gonna break it down in two simple ways so the idea of rest area is very important and I could talk about this in a great detail but I'm going to try and not go too crazy essentially rest area is the area of your design that is simple then there's the part of your design where the detail is that is complex and yes I'm writing this as a mouse so you want to think of the proportion of simple to complex so generally if you think about Halo or Bungie or something else you know usually they have 70% simple and 30% complex so you need 70/30 in many ways and what it really means is more of this than that it means hierarchy primary secondary tertiary I could go into that in great detail but today I just want to show a few easy ways to use this so for example when you have simple you can have this maybe instead of being 70% simple on a design you have it complex and then this is simple and so this would be when you see something like gears of wars right it's more complex than this simple where if you see Kayla or destiny it's more simple and complex but the point is there's always that contrast between the two it's never 100% simple and it's never 100% complex I mean less you're talking about super super pure product design but you can also use this for your primary color so like this could be in this case it's great on this piece and then the rest is a black so black is that secondary color and then if we had to have the like small five 10% it would be this yellow caution tape as the tertiary there's hierarchy to it so here's another example this is one of my environments that I made it's just a color view so you can see that most of it is great that's the primary the secondary is about you know 20 30 percent the white material and then I have a smaller percentage of red and it's only in functional areas and then the black is used very sparingly in between transitional areas so there's this idea of hierarchy you know it's not all even so that can also be when it comes to simplicity and complexity right so here's a concept and you can see we have no more simple space more clean space then we have detailed space using this idea of 70/30 in this way is going to help simplify all of your designs now for example if we were to take this piece here there's not any rest area anywhere so if we were to just for example take this floor and just simplify this a bit and if we started adding just some nice strong value change along it and we have a nice simple piece in the middle it's gonna start feeling like we have a place for our eye to be guided instead of being thrown all around the scene with even amounts of detail so it's very important to have rest area 70/30 can also be used and I this is the final way that I'm going to use 70/30 and talk about it but proportionally so like let's say you have plain changes let's say like this is your plan change this plane change being big medium and small so we have the 70% the primary the secondary and then the tertiary I guess there's no percent out of 100 left or let's say for example that you have a line and you're placing a detail on it let's say this is like some sort of sci-fi latch instead of just placing it right here in the middle where it's at 50/50 and if we place it up at the top or at the start or the end of the line I'm not saying that you have to do this and it's a hundred percent rule but you're gonna find that by doing this you create areas of detail in areas of rest because now we have this nice line that guides our eye along to this detail instead of placing them in the middle and killing the directionality we have there's more reasons why I think it's important to place it up there but that's just another quick tip and way to use it so 70/30 big medium small but more importantly rest area you know don't make your stuff too busy it's very common thing to do alright so I'm hoping that this video is helping people who are just getting started or just getting into sci-fi to maybe start thinking about it differently you know trying beyond the things that I mentioned just try and think about these as real-world things you know when you design a sci-fi weapon it's supposed to be held by somebody or it has to serve some sort of purpose it's not you know magic or make-believe there's reasons behind choices I'm going to include some additional design resources in the description if you'd like to learn more about things beyond this video you know artistic rules are you know architectural rules like the book form space and order is great and you can apply all of these concepts to you know hard surface design you know my I'd like to thank my friend Kai for letting me use some of his old sci-fi in the video I'll have his art station in the description feel free to comment and let me know if you have any more videos you'd like me to make if you thought this was helpful I recorded this at like 1:00 in the morning so hopefully when I read it again it makes up some sense and hopefully you guys find this helpful so yeah I'll see you guys next time maybe I'll make some more videos like this if you would like me to yeah let me know so you know any thanks for watching you

Channel: Alex Senechal

Views: 177,353

Rating: 4.9026794 out of 5

Keywords: 3d, scifi, tutorial, lecture, cg, 3d modeling, design, concept, concept art, art, mistakes, tips, 3d art, game art, environment art, video games, unreal 4, 3ds max, modo, blender, polygons, adivce, garuda, alex senechal

Id: AkYnoaSB5xw

Length: 41min 20sec (2480 seconds)

Published: Thu May 31 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/romanpapush]

Really great video, thanks! Hope there’ll be more.