I had to think long and hard before posting this. The scene started from the broken mirror and the reflections it has (if you look very closely, you can see a door reflected). Now I don’t have a clear picture of where this is going, apart from trying to enhance the realism of it.
The walls aren’t alive and exhibiting blood veins, they’re made from tiles and then covered with cement (I think that’s how it’s done, some finnish speaker could translate “rappaus” for me). The window panes look like a leopard or something, I was trying to get a sense of the paint peeling away, but didn’t quite yet get there.
The plant is a placeholder, but there will be a dead plant in the pot in the end. The bed has no legs, yes I know. The outside has a similar wall, covered in moss (poorly done atm), and a black “gutter pipe” system (that’s what my dictionary came up with). And it looks like I have to add more tiles to the roof, the camera position changed and now you can see that I tried to save on object count there.
The misaligned textures on the loose drawer is on purpose, to simulate the fact that its put together, but there are some errors with it also.
So, any suggestions, corrections, advice? I don’t think I will dirty it up much more, I think I’m going for a “broken, but not smudged” look. Also, there is some rust allready on the metal materials, it’s just that they don’t look like it yet.
The many easy mistakes in the picture are due to the long rendertimes (or “long”, about 2-3 hours with Yafray), so I wanted to post this and get some feedback.
You already mentioned most of the stuff that needs fixing. The only thing I have to add is that the stucco (the bumpy stuff on the walls is called stucco) is too large (how did you do the stucco, by the way? It looks great, better than a normal map). Otherwise what you have is good, I think it needs more but not sure what.
(2) Cropping is your best friend. Also, the viewer’s eyes will be naturally drawn to the brightest and most contrasty part of the image. Their eyes will then want to follow a closed path from that point. Use these tools to draw the viewer’s eyes precisely where you want it to be, then ruthlessly crop. If it does not push the picture clearly forward, out it goes.
(3) If you look at the finished image with the histogram tool of PhotoShop or GIMP, there should be very little of it that’s pure-black or pure-white. There should be a smooth tonal-range rather like the familiar “bell curve.”
It’s definitely not dark. Maybe his monitor is screwed up, I have a dim CRT and I can see it fine.
As for the scale of the stucco, I know I’ve “remembered” things from my childhood being much larger than they actually are. It’s (I think) because you remember the size relative to you, and when you get bigger and still remember a relative size your memory makes it seem bigger. But not sure. I’ve never seen stucco that big.
What I’ve been wondering though, is that do you mean the size of the “islands” or the size of the nor? Imagine the walls as XY-planes, here the nor-parameter would control Z (offset from the wall) and the size of the islands would be in the XY-directions. I’m guessing you mean the islands.
I just took the stucco from a house my best friend lived in while we were kids. True, I could remember it way off (it’s been a few years) but it feels right the size it is now. The other thing is, did it have stucco in the interior walls? Can’t remember, and can’t seem to reason it for myself. It seems it could have had, or then again, could have been without, just plain plane (pardon the pun).
I cropped the image a little different now, cut out some of the slack from both sides. It makes it look a little busier, which I don’t know yet if its a good or a bad thing. Maybe bad. I’ll try to render&update it sometime.
The outside has a similar wall, covered in moss (poorly done atm), and a black “gutter pipe” system (that’s what my dictionary came up with). And it looks like I have to add more tiles to the roof, the camera position changed and now you can see that I tried to save on object count there.