Need feedback

So I’ve been working on this render for way to long now and I don’t really know where to go from here. There’s definitely some stuff off about it but I can’t really put my finger on what it is or how to solve it. So it’s time for feedback! Please leave your honest thoughts about it below, thanks.


The first things I noticed were that the hands on the model don’t look right. Was expecting more apatosaurus type limbs, not little hands. I also can’t tell what the beam of light is coming from or why.

Yes I actually forgot about the hands. I’d rather not change the hands into something completely different because they are there for a reason. But you definitely are right about them looking weird. I’ll try to change them up a bit and edit the pose to see if I could get them to look a little better. Also now you bring it up, I can see how the source of the light beam could be unclear. It’s actually coming from a little flashlight on the side of the head. I’ll try to maybe make it shine some light on the head to make it a bit more clear. Thanks for the advice and let me know about what you think about my proposed solutions.

That looks really cool, much better than I could do. I’ve had a lot of trouble with rays like this, the only way I can get them is by turning up world density enough so that I can’t see anything else. How did you do it so well? I suppose I owe you some constructive criticism too. One way that you could make the source of the beam more clear is if you changed its color a bit, maybe adding just a little bit of yellow to distinguish it from the rays from the window. I don’t know if that would ruin your theme or not, but setting it apart from the rest of the rays would probably make it more clear that its a flashlight on the model’s head.

Thanks a lot. I’ve never really encountered any big problems when making rays, I just add an object with a volumetric material play around with the density and the lights a bit and then it usually just works out. But you said you were using world density, I take that to mean that you are using a volume shader in your world node setup. If that is the case than you should probably just add a separate object and give it a volumetric material instead of using a world volume. That’s what I did anyway.

Also thanks for you advice on the flashlight I’ll play around with it’s colour a bit and see if it works.

So I’ve just made some changes to the flashlight and got this result, please tell me what you guys think.



P.S I’m still working on the feet.

It looks better, just maybe dim the small bit of light next to his head. But now you can tell where its coming from

The scene looks great though, i really like the lighting!

Would you mind looking at my scene ive been working on ?https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?416839-BMW-i8-In-The-City&highlight= Please leave a comment.

Nice image. I think you could add a red, or blue diode on the head of the robot. That could brings more attention to the robot. The robot looks as if looking for something. Maybe you could add some kind of interesting thing found by a robot. And that thing should to stand out against the environment. :slight_smile:

Hi, I like your scene, and the modification you made clearly improved it for me.
But I think the composition is a bit weird : the robot is looking for something and discovered a bullet (I suppose it’s like a crime scene?), but the bullet itself if at the bottom, on the edge of the picture, with the circle of light created by the spot not entire. In my opinion, it would look much better if the camera aimed more to the top, showing better what’s going on around that bullet. You have some space at the top which is not very useful.

Other than that (and the “hands” looking a bit strange too), I love it and find the atmosphere very good.

i think your ok, but it looks a bit off just like DARPA’s robotic dog.
The reason we see something that looks like something we might think to understand, but it looks different.
Its a known effect by those working in robotics, but for artist this is maybe new.

Hi guys, I took a bit of a break from blender to focus on some other projects, but I’m back and I’ve made some progress.

I’ve changed the feet to look a bit more like somethings that’s actually meant to be walked on. I decided not to go with the apatosaurus suggestion since I do think it makes some sense for this robot to be able to manipulate some objects around it. I also toned down the point light on the flashlight a bit and I’m still thinking about how I could improve the entire flashlight a lot more. And I’m still thinking about how I would like to fix the composition.

this is my latest render


I changed the camera angle and moved some stuff around to make the bullet stand out more.


Made some extra little changes please tell me what you guys think.


Aesthetically I’d like to see some light reflecting off his back.
Physiologically maybe make his limb extremities thinner. Most creatures try to make the extremities of limbs a small and light as is practical. A nimble machine would be designed the same.
I actually preferred the old hands, but they should have been firmly flat on the floor as if bearing a load, and would look nice twice as big.

That’s my opinion anyway.

When talking about light reflections are you referring to a specific light source or just light in general? Because I’ve already got a lamp specifically for that purpose which I could definitely move around a bit to get some better results. The sunlight however can’t really be reflected of it’s back more than it already is because of it’s current angle which I remember really preferring over the more shallow angles which would be necessary for this purpose. It would be great if you could clarify your position on that.

On your second point however I think I’m going to have to disagree. I’ve tried placing the hands flat on the ground because I had the same idea as well, but it just doesn’t look much better than how it was. And on top of that making them bigger makes it a lot worse, if anything they should be smaller. I also started with the idea that it should be a highly agile robot (which explains the hands) but I quickly changed my mind. Of course it’s an exploration rover and it’s animal like but it’s no monkey. It’s more like a more advanced version of the mars exploration rovers.

This is an old version with the hands flat on the ground:



They look a bit better but still not right and scaling them up just makes them look ridicules.

Thanks a lot for your comment and please tell me if you think I’m wrong on something or if you still disagree.

Hi, your scene is better than before, though I still think composition can be improved. The head is a bit close to the top of the picture so I’d prefer a bit much space, so than you would have the same height between the top and the head, than between the bottom and the bullet.
Other than that, the render is still noisy, is it on purpose or do you plan to do the final render with more samples ?

Yes, the final render will have more samples and I might look into using the new denoising feature. The reason why these renders don’t have a huge amount of samples is simply because it takes absolutely forever to render this scene. And thank you for the advice, I’m quite busy at the moment but I’ll try to change the composition a bit more later.

Lower the levels of light pouring through the venetian blinds: whatever’s outside isn’t the subject, but they’re overpowering his headlight.

Consider the use of relatively-unsaturated colors in the lights.

The dinosaur needs front lighting, coming from behind the camera and probably in a three-point lighting setup.

Consider cropping several inches off the top and either or both sides. Tighten up the shot so that the dinosaur is t-h-e center of attention and remains so.

Thanks for the comment I’ll try out your advice. I’m not sure what image you looked at because my latest render can’t really be cropped at the top. I think you might have thought that my reply to David Gaze contained my final render but it’s actually the one above that. But I’m of course not sure about that, it would be great if you could clarify that.

When I look at this image I cant quite figure out the location. The foreground looks like a tile counter top but then there is no clear distinction from the background office? warehouse? The bullet looks relatively small it it is on a counter top. I guess it is the proportions of everything that kind of throw it all off. Hope that helps.