I’ve been working on this mountain scene on and off for the past week or so and thought about posting some results. I plan on adding some plantlife as well and intend to render a full HD animation simulating an aerial camera shot when I’m done. I’m posting a still and an anaglyph (for whoever has red/cyan glasses).
Comments and suggestions are very welcome, anyways this is what I have so far.
Is that DOF i see?
Get rid of it! DOF only exist if you have an object close to the camera, then the camera either focuses on the object or the background. At least DOF that extreme. In huge scenes like this u have practically no DOF.
As for the rest if the scene… i think you might need to work on the lighting. As for 3D not everyone has tese glasses so the simplest thing to do is put left and right eye images side by side.(usually ppl put a dot in the same spot for both images to help eyes focus better)
like this one: http://arm0ur0s.deviantart.com/art/Stereoscopic-speed-racer-137835638
DDD is 100% right
The DOF you have makes the image look like a miniature model or diorama, therefore loosing the realism of a camera flyover of real mountains
Thanks for the comments everyone, I currently don’t think it looks nearly realistic enough to simulate an actual camera flyover of mountains but I’m open to advice on whatever I may improve upon. I’m posting a render of the mountains without depth of field, feel free to tell me what you think. Any suggestions on how I can improve the scene’s lighting?
As for the red/cyan glasses I am aware that most people don’t have them, I had rendered it as a test for myself and decided to upload that as well I don’t really plan on using any form of stereo 3D for the finished render itself. However thanks for the advice, it always helps.
I’ll try to get some time off work this week and try to add some strands of particle grass or tree models, if anyone has any idea on how I could go about doing that I would be very greatful. I might plan on adding extra elements further along the project, so as always feel free to throw out ideas, if I can make them I will certainly try them out.
Thanks for your time.
Grass ? How can you add grass if your mountain is viewed from 5000-6000 m high? I say you should just paint some texture or do a gradient based on height. . Looks better now without the DOF.
Good luck
yep much better without fod.
Not i think it is the clous that are the problem. Right now they look like packs of mist you see in a swanp or something. have a look at some reference photots, and i am sure you’ll see that clouds are not that transparent.
also i think the lighting still needs work, or maybe its the texture…
Thanks for the comments and suggestions, it took me a while to post an update but I decided to post a more recent render of the scene. Please feel free to give your honest critique and advice, it helps a lot. I still plan on improving the scene a lot before I decide to render the final animation.
I increased factor for the sun lamp and added trees, I was planning on adding a pile of rocks to transition from the mountain to the lakes, if anyone has good ideas on how to acheive that or anything else you can come up with. Please let me know, as always thank you for your time.
Argh, its the clouds mate!
Something is wrong with them, but the lighting is definitely better now. And the addition of trees is a plus.
Lol thanks for your comment DDD I couldn’t agree with you more. The truth is I really don’t know how to improve the clouds, if anyone has any advice it would be much appreciated. Any further suggestions please feel free to let me know, thank you and all the best!
The clouds still look like cotton blobs. They need to look more like clouds. Up the detail. Also, some of the shading is kind of off, but I can’t quite put a finger on it. Is it the smoothness?
Never made them myself but Andrew Price has a tutorial, maybe that will help.
http://www.blenderguru.com/create-volumetric-clouds/
Or do a search in google/youtube maybe you will find some good techniques/tricks
Hi Joao Yates
Try making the Clouds/mist in foreground little more transparent and increase opacity as they recede into background. Start with a very transparent layer then build layers on it or increase opacity a small amount with each pass until you get a nice look.
Thanks for the feedback guys, I’ve been testing ways to acheive better results with volume clouds. I’m still not sure what to do, however I decided to post a render without the clouds and a lot more trees so you can get a better view of the render.
DDD and Charlie D
Thanks for your advice, it really helps a lot. As for now I plan on focusing on the lakes, if anyone has any suggestions they would be much appreciated. I’ll also keep on testing volume clouds on a separate file to append later, but currently I’m not getting the results I was hoping for, so perhaps prioritizing the lakes is a better idea at this point.
Once again thank you for your comments, they are very important and have been helping this project develop.
I think its looking great, the water especially. My only crit would be that I think the trees look too big in relation to the mountains.
The last image is beautiful!
I agree tress could be smaller, water looks fantastic, and lighting looks good too.
Thanks for the coments guys, your feedback is always appreciated. A few people had mentioned that the trees were off scale, and to be honest it was bugging me as well. My main concern was that with smaller trees I would maintain little or nothing of the original detail while having to increase the amount of trees/render time. However, as it turns out my computer is up to the task so I decided to upload a render with smaller trees.
The next thing I plan on improving in the project will be the lakes. I’ll be adding a pile of rocks transitioning from the base of the mountains to the lakes. I was also thinking of some gradient based texture that would make the water close to the mountains more transparent and fade out.
Again, thank everyone of you very much for you comments, they keep me motivated to continue this scene. If anyone else has any comments/critique, please let me know so I can work on improving the scene. You guys are a big help, thank you for your time.
The shadows look kind of funny to me. If you look at the thumbnail, it looks next to perfect. When you enlarge it, the shadows seem to be a little too harsh. Also, the lake on the left, the lighter areas would approach the shoreline more. That’s just my opinion. I would like to know how many faces your final model is though.
The waves in the lake seem too big for how far we are from it. From that distance, water just looks like a little shimmer. Otherwise, it looks incredible.