I'm preparing material for an animation and I realized that I needed some backgrounds references. The usual way is to go outside and take some photos from different angles to the outdoor I would like to imitate or copy... but that has some limitations... you have to limit your search to your own town...
There is a solution for outdoors reference when the landscape is based on a street or city... I will use google streetview as reference of any of the streets of the world...
Maybe that idea was not new for you but I felt so happy when I discovered it!!!
-G
Often enough just an image search with parts of the adress gives me enough of what I need.
Tiny corrction: google still doesn't cover all of the world, just parts of USA, Canada, Britain, and Japan, plus some touristically interesting spots. For other parts of the world, try OpenStreetView.
Well currently, street view covers also Europe
What I like from google streetview more than from photo references is that streetview allows you to select virtually any point of view/perspective of the subject, what is quite interesting for people like me, artistic-mind-blinded.
Brilliant thinking Genete! Who would have thought to use Google street view as a point of reference for selecting camera shots for use in an animation project!!! Great for storyboarding too. I will definately use this idea in the future!
