by admin on November 28, 2009
If you look at the top selling 3D pictures of a microstock site, you will notice that some of them are just plain Earth globe pictures. This is a relic from the early days of microstock, where agencies had to build up their stocks and were eager to accept just about any picture that met a minimum quality standard.
Today, none of the major agencies will accept such pictures anymore. As most of the imagery is based on NASA pictures, they don’t want you to make money just by copying a plain picture. And they are right, in my opinion.
But with some creativity you still can create pictures that will get accepted and will be sold. Projecting the picture onto unusual objects is always a good place to start. Or try to put Earth into unusual situations or an everyday scene where it can replace something round. And if you can give it a symbolic meaning as well, even better.
Earth is a timeless subject. The things you can do with it in microstock graphics are only limited by your own imagination.
by admin on November 23, 2009
Luminous materials are a great addition to Vue. With these you not only can create interesting night time scenes but also useful microstock-worthy pictures.
I just told you that white is the favorite microstock color. But black has its uses as well. Bright colors just look bettter on a blackground, and by using luminosity you can further enhance this effect.
While white backround pictures appeal more to the general mainstream media, the combination of luminous colors with black leans more toward technological and youthful topics.
Creating luminous materials in Vue is so easy that you don’t really need a screenshot. Just open the advanced material editor and select the effects tab on the far right. Setting the “Luminosity slider to a non-zero value turns on the effect. Just play around to see what looks good. Also the combination of luminosity and glow can give interesting results.
As an example I included the green glass material from the first picture as a free download.
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download: Luminous Green Glass (7.89KB)
added: 23/11/2009
clicks: 138
description: Transparent green material with luminosity turned on
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by admin on November 20, 2009
I just installed the upgrade from Vue 7 to Vue 8. One of the first things I had a a look at is the new planet feature. Now it is possible to have true planets with spherical terrains and their own atmosphere. In the previous versions there was only the workaround to simulate a planet by using a sphere primitve.
The feature is hidden in the main options dialog. Here you can select if your scene should be spherical or not. If you don’t select “planetary terrains” though, the spherical view will only be simulated. Otherwise you can zoom out and see your planet in its full glory.
The above render is the result of my first quick go. As always in Vue, tweaking parameters will result in even better pictures. But as this is a new feature, it takes some time to fully master it, so I decided to let you know about my first impressions right now.
I have noticed two things that could have been solved in a better way:
- You are forced to use a spectral atmosphere. I fully understand that a realistic rendering of a planet can only be done with a spectral atmosphere. But I was also hoping for the possibility to create unrealstic toon-like planets. It would have been better that artists could choose the degree of realism that they wish to inlcude in their works.
- To create the geography of your planet you are more or less forced into the use of an infinite procedural terrain. This means very high polygon counts and render breaks with “Building procedual terrain…” that are pretty usless most of the time because the camera is usually placed in a satellite orbit altitude where the planet surface basically looks like a map anyway. This becomes very noticeable at higher resolutions.
But still the planet feature is a great addition to Vue and will create a host of new opportunities for great pictures.
by admin on November 17, 2009
Its only November, but Christmas is almost over on Microstock! Preemptive uploading is one of the key factors for success om mircostock sites.
Upload Early…
The early bird catches the worm. This old saying is especially true for microstock. Planning advertising campaigns takes time, and magazines need to stock up on topics early enough so they won’t be forced into rush jobs.
Right now, the first decisions are being made about what to publish in next spring. Help publishers and advertisers by supplying them with seasonal pictures as soon as possible.
Evidently, this holds true not only for spring but for any other seasonal topics as well. Last year’s pictures may not yet look outdated, but something fresh is always better than recycled material.
But Not Too Early
Now perhaps you think you’re clever, so you start pumping out halloween pictures. But uploading them right now will most likely backfire. Of course it is good not to be too late. But to be too early is just as bad. Campaigns for next halloween are most likely to be planned in late summer, so any pictures uploaded now will get buried under a heap of fresh material that will come in later.
Many buyers of microstock images have their search results sorted by “newest first”. You have to take this into account when uploading pictures. A good time to upload seasonal material is about three months in advance.
For us digital artists this means that now is the time to create our spring pictures, so we have enough in stock to start uploading around Christmas.
