Nothern road - In progress

Hi everyone,

I’m working on a new project, a fantasy scene in a snowy/rocky landscape.

Here is the latest render. I’m only halfway of finishing it, and I need to add much details on the rocks, the ground which is so far untouched and the characters silhouette.

I would like to know what you think of the general concept: composition, lighting, perspective, etc?


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looks good so far, but on the perspective side of it, you could drop the frame a little for a better feeling of the awe the travelers are processing? They would be seeing huge “rocks” as they go, we see normal sized rocks and small people. I’d vote to “make the travelers the main focus of the render” but then take them out of focus to give the viewer a better understand what they are feeling.

I lowered the camera, and used a wider focal. It’s indeed better, thanks Verybinary.

I started working on the ground then.


Feels like your scene needs some small and middle details to have more of a sense of scale, and the shapes seem to be to repetetive. Adding some smaller stones, and middle sized ones would let the big ones stand out more.

Thanks Cosva. I tried to improve it with your comment. I added some smaller stones, and sculpt each face slightly differently.
Nearly finished now!!!
Just a bit more work on the rock faces, the traveler and add a wind effect to the scene.


for me the sculpted face looks too modern and smooth,it needs erosion.rocks look squat and colour and texture is not convincing.it remainds me of Manpupuner rock formation http://www.amusingplanet.com/2015/09/the-manpupuner-rock-formations.html

The scene is really coming alive! It’s great how you have actually taken critique and changed your scene, quite rare.

Some ideas.

  1. Too much empty space/sky. lower the camera more and push in some on the man.

  2. USe more of a mist pass, and push the distant objects toward blue/grey.

  3. reduce saturation of the sky, and push hue away from purple.

  4. THe rocks have too much rede in them, red and blue clash temperature wise. I would make them more grey, and use the color part of the texure to increase the disp/bump

  5. HAve osme other object/building/natural element (hill, mountain,…) beside the face stones, they are too repeticive.
    6_) add some middle ground detaisl, grass poking through, fallen tree/ ice/icicles.

  6. give a hint at some idea of what the man is doing. I can’t figure out what he is holding. it could be quite simple: a tent, a sled, a rifle.

  7. wash out the entire scene (in post) with some low opacity white noise to give the feeling of cold snowy mist.

Can’t wait to see more!!! It’s excellent so far. :cool:

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Are you promoting drug use?.. Those guys look really stoned.
But really like the last one . the lighting looks much better.

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Thanks guys good critics! Need to work on the color grading indeed

Hey guys,

I added some details in the rocks, corrected the position of the traveller and added some misty wind effect using Blender smoke simulator.

I might make some more corrections on the lighting and color grading, but it’s nearly finished!!!


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I really like the concept but I agree with @Remade on the look of the sculpted faces. They remind me of mannequins in a clothing shop. Also the one on the left looks kind of funny with the 2 big ear-looking rocks, which was probably not intended.

I think they should have a more symbolic/stylized look rather than a modern realistic beauty canon look.
Of course that’s my personal taste. After all, the Greeks sculpted realistic faces according to their beauty canons, but I think more stylized faces are more mysterious and intriguing. Here are some examples to show what I mean (click to enlarge and navigate with the arrow keys directly in the forum :+1: Yay Discourse!):

Also, how about adding a female figure in your sculptures ?

Thanks everybody for your critics!

After a break working on another Blender project, I finished this one today. I will post it in the finished project then.

@ChameleonScales stylised look could have been a good choice too for sure. I had this kind of reference picture below, so this kind of look I was aiming to, but the pic you posted are cool too. Next time ^^

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I really like that last image. Im not in the same line as what others said about the sculpts of the heads, it your imagination and they like fine. Perhaps they could use some more wear and tear. Some cracks, perhaps one has parts broken off.

PS how did you do the snow on those big rocks and the ground. It looks really good, is that all sculpted?

What i just noticed is that the shadows arent correct i think. The sky has the sun quite high, but when i look at the shadows of the big rocks. They are quite low and long, that means the sun should be lower or am i wrong about that sky? Also the shades go from almost total left to right, yet the sky is light more to the front. The shadows should go towards the viewer than.

Hey @rombout thanks for your feedback.

I used different methods for the snow on the rocks and ground.

For the snow on the rock face, I first sculpted the rock. From there I duplicated the rock, smoothed it, and sculpt it further to turn it into snow. Finally I added the snow material to it.

For the snow on the ground, I first sculpted the general shapes: small hills and valleys. Then I added the details like the waves sculpted by the wind or the traveler’s track with bump textures applied with Blender adaptive subdivision/ micro-diplacement feature.

Concerning the lighting you’re completely right. I didn’t use the same picture for the sky background as for the HDRI lighting the scene. This was on purpose, as I thought it’s creating a more interesting picture, with more contrast where I wanted in the sky. This difference in lighting was not very noticable… at least I thought it wasn’t, but you noticed it haha :wink:

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