[Taristin]

As the rift between our species grew, so too did the frequency of attacks between our peoples. It seemed as though the 14 year war was about to be reborn, but with modern, deadlier weaponry.

[an0n]

The fighter-fire sucks and the green-beam aren't spectacular enough.

The fighter-fire should be ovular, smaller, less frequent and non-linear.

The green-beams should get waaaay bigger in the fore-ground and have white, chocolatey centers.

, make everything bigger.

And some motion-blur wouldn't go amiss.

[Taristin]

Those beams are propper perspective. Only the signature is post prod.

But yeah, the lasers are too big... And I didn't like the white center beams.


With enough comments, I'll re-work.

[Rictor]

I don't know whats happening in that pic, but its a very exciting and pretty something...

Just first impression, it looks really cool as a whole. The background is very nice.

Basically, make the beams more "powerful" by making them a bit bigger and have a white middle. The fighter bolts should be smaller and sparse-er. Also, try making them nonsymetrical, as in the left and right gun pods should't fire at the same time.

I would recommend re-doing the placement of the ships altogether. A few of the fighters looks ok, but the cap ships are too far off, and I don't know what that tringular thing in the top-right corner is. You need to make it either a "close up of a capship (not full view) with other ships seen fighting near it (like the FS2 cover art)" or a "fleet movement" where you get to see several capital ships moving in formation, essentially having the enemies "clash" in the middle. Think of medieval armies, with both sides charging each other, and in the center of it you have the fighting.

If however you want to retain the original concept of the pic, I suggest you take a look at some of Dark's art in the Image Galleries, he's got some awesome pics of this sort.

Hope that helps. Tha background really cool]

edit: the explosion are good, keep them. As well, it may just be my monitor, since it tends to show things as overyl dark, but most of the ships are just black silouttes. You should work on the lighting of the ships, make them lighter to shows of their details. If you could get the explosions  to cast light onto the ships, that would looks really nice.

[Taristin]

The darkness is probably you're monitor. And that "Triangle thing" is the rear half of a sobek. The image has a Deimos cutting a Sobek in half.

Thanks for the input. Any more?

[Carl]

why are the beams all pixelated?

[Stryke 9]

You know, I never trusted those damn Vasudans.

[Taristin]

Originally posted by Carl
why are the beams all pixelated?

cheep compression in PSP8

[Knight Templar]

Beams look like Tie Lasers

Otherwise, take an0ns suggestions.

[J.F.K.]

Apart from all the gripes already mentioned, very pretty.

[Xelion]

The Nebula is very Nice , on the other hand Beams look nice with the white , but a better idea is either to use a 3D prog to do them or think of some visual fx like use the polygon lasso tool and after creating a white selection, create a new layer and use a particles filter and change the blending modes to make the beam blend in nicely. You can also try cutting parts of the white as well - this can be seen done on the Freespace2 cover box...

btw some good advice that I find useful for renders that contain a lot of generic special fx... spend lots of time here and there thinking of what ways you can create prototype effects especially for weaponary, then chose the best one done in your PS/PSP/EQV editing program and fine tune that and wella you have effects that will always be there for re-use.

I haven't used PSP for a long time either so I with PhotoShop I know there are actions or command functions you can save and re-apply to the graphic, which in my domain saves time...

Still that is one Nice nebula

[Xelion]

I was going say 1 more thing - nearly everyone here does seem to use explosions premade, you can make those in PSP/PS and very nice ones might I add..

[Taristin]

Alright, alright...

I'll fix according to *gulp* an0n's advice...

Like that nebula, eh? I made it in TS too. Probably why it took so long to render.

BTW: Max, there is _no_ Post production. The beams are done in TS, it's just that I didn't want that cheesy cartoon look that TS likes to give me all the time.

[Ashrak]

just a few "maybe" stupid recommendations on explosions use volumetrix and HV partigon emitters and lotsa point ligts not copy/paste explosions the beams need a white inner part for that you should use the X beam method (better)..... and i like the fighter pulses how they done?

[IceFire]

If the fighter pulses were done post-render than just blur them a bit...I think that will remove any of the hard edges and make them a little less jarring....I love the picture and its sense of narative however.  Very well done.

[Taristin]

The beams are made by having 4 planes, 45 deg. -45 deg. 90 deg. 0 deg. The pulses are 3 planes stretched to make the 3 elipse system in FS, and if anyone is willing to show how to make better explosions I'll be willing to try it.

Remember: TS6. No Post Production.

[FreeTerran]

It looks great

[Corhellion]

I actually like the fighter lasers...

green beam needs work...

Shield impact needs work...

and try bringing the Fenris and...Aten (I almost forgot the name of that cruiser ) closer to the camera and get the fenris firing at the vasudan fighters, or something like that.

But other than that, it looks good...but it needs a bit of work, which is alright, no-ones perfect!

Cor

[Woolie Wool]

Originally posted by Stryke 9
You know, I never trusted those damn Vasudans.

Yeah. They're sneaky buggers.

As for the render, it's nice, but I don't like the fighter laser blasts.

[Nuclear1]

Originally posted by Knight Templar
take an0ns suggestions.

Three words I would never have imagined to see in a row.