Building a Toolbox

Hey guys! Welcome back for another blog post. This week has been a week of reference pictures for me. I've started a project which involves a building. There's a local building that I saw a few weeks back, and when I saw it I thought I should make it into a 3D model. So, now I'm tackling that.

I made a special trip out just to take pictures of the building. I spent around an hour walking around the building getting all the shots that I wanted; or at least the best I could do. Of course the difference in how it works in your head and how it works in real life is always bigger than you realize. And so was the building.

I was lucky. There is lots of open space around the building. But... since the building was so large, that wasn't as helpful as I had thought it would be. So, after taking the pictures, I've now spent my time stitching the pictures together.

The amount of variance in scale and lighting surprised me. The lighting of course, could have been solved by using last week's Exposure Triangle. I didn't know the camera particularly well, and was dealing with the sunsets imposing time limit, so I didn't take the time to figure the camera out. Also, given these pictures were purely reference, I wasn't too worried about it. It did create a marvellous example of how the exposure settings really impact the image, and it illustrated the potential hazards of leaving the camera on auto mode.

Scale has been the true issue though. Because I was walking around the building, and always trying to include as much of the building as possible in the shot, I was not always the same distance from the building. When viewing the pictures individually, the difference is only noticeable if you're looking for it. Stitching them together digitally on the other hand, reveals how distant things truly are. It also revealed strengths and weaknesses of my software.

Some time ago, someone I respect declared that The GIMP was not for him and that he was going to use Krita. So I decided to try it out. I liked the ability to easily draw squares and circles and the like. That is definitely something that The GIMP is terrible at. However, in this situation I was wanting to scale a layer to match it up with another one. Krita seriously failed there, while The GIMP excelled. The GIMP allows for scaling to be done visually with the drag of a mouse. This makes it possible to scale the image within one operation. In Krita, the visual method did not seem to be available, so I had to adjust the height and width numbers, hope I was right, and wait to see the results.

In the end, I settled on using The GIMP. It was software that I knew, and it made my work flow easier. Now I know The GIMP is my preference, and I can shelve Krita for now. But don't take my opinions on software as your own. Try different software and find what works for you. I've been using The GIMP for years, and Krita just a couple of times, so my opinion is biased. But at some point, I'm still going to have to actually try Photoshop!

--CGWise
       aka Charlie Griffin

Stick with me, and we'll get wise together. 
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