Hello, first time poster here! I’ve been working on this scene for a school project, and I’d love some critique and advice on how to improve the final image. Specifically, I’d like to make it appear a bit more detailed and gritty, with some decay on the buildings and more objects in the scene. Also, any suggestions with the lighting would be really appreciated -anything that would make it appear more realistically underwater and more visually appealing.
Everything seems too much clean to be underwater. Add some grunges and some props like sea grass, kelp, algae etc…
And
Refractive caustics is must for underwater scene.
Here are some suggestions. Do a google search on “underwater city” to see some references for under water cities. How deep is this location under the water? I think the deeper you go the more limited the visibility will be. Also what’s the light source? Is it from the surface? I would imagine that you’ll have more rays showing. You have some, but maybe a bit more pronounced. How long has this city been under water? The buildings are too pristine? Maybe they would be more destroyed? I guess that would depend on the story you’re trying to tell with this picture. Just some thoughts.
Add floating particles and maybe a lightbeam from above. Can be rendered separately and comped in post. It’s not clear to me what motivates the lighting. Not a lot of light here, so nothing suggests that wide DOF.
So far the lighting doesn’t make me feel anything. Given the fact that there doesn’t seem to be any surreal activity (like the city being alive and occupied) (I mean ok, there’s a mermaid, but now what ?) nor any mysterious architecture from another civilization (which is not a problem at all !), to me this image is a great candidate to convey spookiness. But that’s really not the case. Now tell me if there’s something else we can do but we’re in the remains of a human city that is now submerged in deep water. That sounds pretty scary.
To me, if you want to take the “spooky” path you could improve your image a lot by :
making it look like it was in deeper water (no sun light)
adding some submarines exploring it and litting some parts, scattering light in the marine snow
inverting the silhouette between the buildings and the background, making them look like giant, dark… empty vessels, full of ghosts or whatever. Something you don’t want to get close to. But not even too discernible silhouettes. The buildings would be black and the background would be still very dark (and considering we’re in the deep water this is already cheating, but I still believe it would be more interesting, apart from removing a LOT of otherwise necessary detail work on these white cuboids)
adding as much erosion and vegetation detail as needed to make the lit parts look like the Titanic. Sounds like a lot of work and geometry but I’m sure microdisplacement and post-processing can be very helpful in this case.
making the 4 street lamps unequally lit and one or 2 turned off (good idea to let them lit by the way)
Since this is a school project, I may be too late for the critiques, but I find the subject interesting. I hope you will work on it to give a great result.
Good luck !
