Secrets of Scenic Depth | Workbench Wednesday

Wide Open Spaces when we model a railroad that's a lot of what we're actually modeling the space between things and that implies a certain amount of Scenic depth but what does that mean why should we care about it how can we fake it how can we simulate it and how can we actually model it for real well stick around to find out because that's the topic for today's workbench Wednesday [Music] Howdy Folks Dave here at Thunder Mesa Studio on a workbench Wednesday hope your day is going great whenever and wherever you happen to be watching so scenic depth what are we talking about here um basically it's the idea that when you look at something like a model or diarama uh things that are closer to you appear closer to you and then there are are things that appear to be farther away giving the illusion of depth and distance so there's a foreground a middleground and a background now this gets into the idea of staging scenes I'm going to talk about that briefly before we get more into the scenic depth idea when you stage a scene uh it's generally conceded by most people in the theater and movies and television and uh you know Illustrated and things like that people that know about this kind of stuff that when you stage something that's kind of flat and parallel uh to the viewer with very little perspective revealed that tends to read as comedic and you know think about your favorite comic strip or uh situation comedy for good examples most of the time those are staged very flat with without a lot of depth now go and watch a an old western by you know Howard Hawks or John forward where these these vast distances the scenes have an enormous amount of depth and drama and that's the key word there drama because when you stage things with a lot of depth and distance the human mind reads them as much more dramatic and scenes with depth and distance are at least to my mind much more believable now if you're just building say a locomotive or a single Standalone structure a piece of rolling dog for a contest or something like that you don't need to think about Scenic depth but if you are trying to create a a little miniature world something that brings people into the story immerses them in this little miniature Universe you're trying to create then you really do need to give it some thought if you're building a layout or diarama like that and are there ways to simulate Scenic depth because without it your scene's not going to look very realistic are there ways to fake it and is there any way to design for it and plan for it so it actually happens naturally well yes there are and we're going to get into all of those in recent decades there's been a real move towards shelf type around the walls layouts as opposed to Island style layouts like your traditional you know 4 by8 sheet of plywood and you know there's a lot of good reasons for that it's can be seen as a much more effective use of your ailable space uh everything is within easy reach but it does come at a cost you sacrifice a little bit of Scenic depth when you do that you can have a backdrop behind it in fact with a shallow shelf type or around the walls layout you almost have to have a backdrop um and that will add to the illusion of depth but that only goes so far because with a shallow scene there's something very important that is is missing and that is Parallax well what is Parallax well that's a fancy word for how some things appear closer to you and some things appear farther away we've all had the experience of you know riding in a car down the highway or even a train and things Close to You are going by very fast while things further away are going away are going by much more slowly things in the middle distance travel at a different speed things way off in the background travel much more slowly if the moon's up in the sky it can appear not to be moving at all that's Parallax and it's our one of our ways that our brains process you know distance what's closer to us and what's farther away it's one of the ways that we perceive that and with shallow scenes No matter how good the backdrop is there's simply no Parallax you can't fake it not unless you've got something like Lucas film's you know LED screen volume where it's all computer controlled and you can you know artificially create Parallax as people move around you know but you you can't do it on the budget of most model railroaders that's for sure so shallow shelf type aroundthe wall style layouts often look very good in still photos but they lose a little something when people are interacting with them in person when you're moving around through the space because the Parallax just isn't there and even though we might not be able to articulate that we might not know the concept or know what it is we instinctively miss it when it's not there because that's what we're used to seeing as an indicator of depth and distance and that's why I remain a big fan still of the old school Island style layouts or layouts with peninsulas like the Thunder Mesa layout here a lot of uh around the walls style layouts also incorporate a peninsula or two and that's a great thing uh it makes a great use of the available space but a modern trend has been to bict the peninsula with a backdrop right down the middle of it like a two-sided backdrop basically rendering the peninsula nothing more than a couple of freestanding shelves in the middle of the room and cutting off the Long View that depth that it would naturally create there are some instances where it might be appropriate to BCT a peninsula with a backdrop uh but most of the time I I think it's actually a design mistake a better option in my view is to plan for Scenic depth from the very beginning you can use the dead space in the aisles between peninsulas and wall sections as Found Real Estate effectively separating things into foreground middle ground and background with everchanging Vistas as people move around and interact with the layout paying close attention to sight lines and the vertical separation between the highest scenery and the lowest can result in deep dramatic scenes that look like they go on forever combining a Scenic Peninsula with sections of the layout which are up against the wall or the backdrop gives you a Best of Both Worlds opportunity creating deep dramatic views while still keeping the operational advantages of an aroundthe walls style plan and the foreground scenes in one area can also play the role of distant background for other scenes that are across the aisle not every scene on a model railroad can or will be perfect but it is possible to pick out a few special viewing angles where everything comes together circling back to the idea of a backdrop whether it be painted or photographic it is a great way to help extend your miniature World off into the distance to create that illusion of Scenic depth but you're faking Scenic depth here you are tricking the eye with a painted surface a flat 2D surface and there are a couple of things a couple little tips and tricks I want to share on how to do that more effectively maybe this should go without saying but the colors in your backdrop should match the colors on your 3D scenery and a really easy way to achieve this is like I did here on Calico mountain is to use the same paint however the colors on your backdrop should be a little bit more m Ed they shouldn't be as saturated as your painted scenery if the colors in the backdrop are more saturated or brighter than the colors on your scenery it's going to bring all that forward and you're going to destroy that illusion of depth you don't want the backdrop scenery to clash or look like it's closer to you than the foreground scenery that's a good thing to remember with photographic backdrops as well sometimes they can be a little bright a little garish a little bit in yourr face and trct from the modeled foreground scenery and a way to get around that a way to mitigate that is to desaturate that photographic backdrop a little bit another Pitfall you want to try to avoid is having the lighting be wrong on your backdrop uh I made a decision early on with the Thunder Mesa layout and I talked about it in my video on layout lighting that the sun in this world is up high and to the left so all the Shadows on the backdrop will be on the right hand side and then I arrange the lighting the track lighting up above to match that angle to the best of my ability so you don't have that visual contradiction it's something that people might not pick up on intellectually but their brain will pick up on it and it'll just look wrong to them so pay attention to where the lighting is com coming from and keep all the Shadows consistent on your backdrop keep them all on the same side even if it winds all the way around the room the shadow should always be on the right or on the left and they shouldn't swap places another thing is to try and create depth using atmospheric perspective can you see how each layer of this Canyon each Cliff face looks like it's a little bit further away and that's achieved by mixing more of the sky color in with the paint color as you go back so this has much more of the sky color in it than this and this has much more of it than that and so on until you fade off completely back into the distance um one thing you want to avoid is mathematical perspective that's where you know it's precisely calculated so that it looks right from one angle it won't work when you're moving around the layout and looking at it from different places there'll just be one spot where that works we've probably all seen this uh but that's why you want to use atmospheric perspective instead which is kind of a cheat it's a bit of Illusion earing but believe me it works now those places on the layout where everything comes together where there's something interesting in the foreground uh in the midr and vast expanses of model real estate in the background I call those primary viewing angles and as I move forward with thunder Mesa 2.0 I'm always checking the sidelines to find the areas of maximum interest of Maximum Scenic depth for the most dramatic and interesting scenes I've gotten in the habit of using uh the camera as a design Aid especially on an area of the layout I'm not sure exactly how to proceed I'll take a lot of photos and I'll go back and look for anything that you know anything any visual contradiction that uh destroys the illusion of depth and distance sometimes it might cause me to you know build the fascia a little bit lower so you don't see that it doesn't take you out of the scene when you're looking from one side of the layout to the other so if you haven't used the camera as a design tool I highly recommend it it can really help clarify things for you when you look at them through the viewfinder a rather easy way to enhance the illusion of depth is to have things that are in front of the track so that the trains will pass behind those so you have scenery in front of and behind the trains it's been said that um the modeled landscape that we do is the stage and the train are the actors so you want to have your actors passing behind some of the scenery as well as in front of it you just you don't want to just have them traversing along the edge of a Shelf with all of the scenery behind it it'll really really enhance the illusion of depth to have scenery trees uh rockwork whatever cacti out in front of the trains as well as behind them since I'm modeling Canyon Country here on the Thunder Mesa layout it's easy for me to think of the aisle as deep uncen Canyons between the peninsula and you know the parts of the layout up against the backdrop and as I move forward on Thunder maesa 2.0 and get ready to construct new sections of layout back here I'm keeping in mind as I mentioned earlier where that fascia is going to be located where the scenery is going to end because when I look across from you know say track level on that side I don't want to see fascia up here I want to see Rock work because seeing fascia would take you right out of the scene and you know really destroy that illusion of depth and distance naturally there are a lot of variables that work here including the relative height of the viewer but using your own eye level as a benchmark is a good place to start as any for me uh my primary viewing angles are designed to have their most impact when looked at from very close to eye level now it's worth pointing out that this technique of you know looking through a peninsula towards model scenery in the background to create maximum Scenic depth that's not limited to modelers of Canyon Country or mountainous scenery in fact you know most of the world is not flat even places that seem flat are really not flat you know there's Rolling Hills everywhere just about even if you model the Great Plains there are still some low Hills Ravines stream beds and things like that that you can use as a separator between scenes I suggest you give it a try so it is possible to you know create the illusion of believable depth and distance including Parallax and a rather modest amount of space but you have to plan for it and use all of the tips and tricks at your disposal to pull it off you know have a painted backdrop or a photographic backdrop that doesn't clash with the forr use atmospheric perspective uh use your peninsulas to create parallel so when people look through the scenery in the front at the scenery in the back they get that illusion where the things closer to them are moving faster than the things back in the distance that will make their brain think that this thing goes on forever and is much bigger than it actually is anyway those are my favorite tips and techniques for Scenic depth I hope you enjoy the video if you have techniques of your own that I left out or anything you'd like to discuss further you can put it down in the comments below if you enjoyed the 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