Ancient Fantasy

using my “world of darkness” as the base to create this fantasy world.

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The composition is somewhat confusing.

The composition is somewhat confusing.
I think you need to do some work on the materials and lighting.

Id say the lake and planets look awesome but the rest could use some work. Particularly in the textures and lighting.

I think it’s too busy. Try having a single object that is the center of attention, like the moon, and add some depth of field. The water is also a little too transparent. It kinda looks like a thin fog. try adjusting the ior value or just make the water blackish, you can’t really see underwater at night anyway. I would also agree with the other two guys on the lighting. I really like the concept and I think that it will be a great render. Also, very good modeling!

My first impression was that this was an amazing image. All I thought that needed improving was the compostion, it looks a bit too crowded. But now that i read the comments above mine, i can see that it needs a bit more work. Do what they say and the image will look fantastic.

Awesome work!

It looks like something from World of Warcraft. Simple, but it gets the job done. :slight_smile:

thanks! how about this now? I fix some lighting, the water transparency and add DOF. still thinking about what should i do with the composition and as for the texture-- I am not good at it at all, any suggestion?

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adding some vine on the column


Is the pink moon thing supposed to be in front of the tree branches, otherwise it looks odd and could be put behind everything?

The scene could also use some ambient bluish lighting (from all directions) like typically seen at night, another lamp to create a pink ambiance from light bouncing off the pink moon, and also another one to get an orange lighting from the orange planet and moon.

On top of that it won’t hurt to enhance the lighting by adding some slight AO.

I think you have a good start to an image here, but there are a few issues that I can see.

Firstly, what is/was the structure? Everything in a picture ( as opposed to a photo) generally has a reason to be there.

Why the fire?

What are the bricks/blocks? Are they part of a wall, or a building site, or what? They seem to be there because they are, and for no other reason. They are a different material to the original structure, but do not form anything in themselves.

There is a facetting on the rings around the columns. Is this intentional? It looks out of place with the rest of the texture.

There is a light which seems to be coming from the middle of the group of columns, this makes no sense as there is nothing there to shine a light.

Both of the moons should be far further away than they are. They seem to be only just behind the columns, which is affecting the lighting, and making them seem in front of some of the scene.

I think you may have now overdone the DOF, as the foreground is now so blurred that without knowing the original image, it would be hard to tell what is there.

From a compositional point of view, you have too many focii. Either you can have the central moon framed in the columns as the centre of the image, or you can have the fire, or you can have the secondary moon. Choose one and either remove or resize/relight the others to emphasise the main one. It also helps to ask yourself what is the picture meant to tell us. Is it a picture of a campfire, in an old structure? Is it a picture of the moon rising? Is it a picture of a new wall being built? … Or what? Make that the key to the image. The norm is to place the primary focus at 1/3rd of the way across and/or up the image. If you choose to place it centrally, you can, but it tends to make the image a little contrived looking, so there has to be a reason for the symmetrical viewpoint. You then need to stick to a more strict symmetry, and if youwant to place something like the tree, which is asymmetrical, it has to be placed at the focus, as a contrast. Placing an assymetrical object off centre in a symmetrical image throws the symmetry, and should only be done if that object is the focus of the image.

The focus does not need to be the centre, or the nearest, or the furthest. It is usually the part at the centre of DOF, and is usually the part that is obviously lightest, (or obviously darkest, occasionally) and has the most effect on the other parts. For example, if the fire is the focus, then it should be in focus, and also be the main source of light. This emphasises it’s role. If the moon is the focus, then this should be clear.

I would suggest that if you want to keep the basic structure of the image, firstly, shrink the tree and place it R of centre. Then make the fallen column fall in towards the centre of the image, crossing the moon’s circle. These will both draw the eye back to the centre of the image. Reduce the DOF effect. Place the fire and some other man-made objects in the xtreme foreground, framing the rows of columns. Perhaps add another couple of pairs of columns, to emphasise the symmetry further, if that is the general composition. Consider scale. There is a rule of thumb that nothing in a real structure is made of larger pieces than can be handled by the people making them, so blocks tend to be manageable sizes, columns are made of segments, etc. This makes things look real, rather than having been somehow grown in situ. I suggest you rescale the actual objects so that they are all say, iBU=1m, or 1BU=1ft, and then look at each item and ask if it is the size you intended. Make it the right size, then movve it so that it is the size you want in the image. If you size an object to fit the image, rather than sizing to fit a reality, then the image tends to look illogical, subliminally.

Hope that helps.

Matt

looks like I still got lots of work to do. this version is readjustment to the lighting, make the DOF lighter and move the purple moon out of the way.
@travellingmatt: you are right (and to others) that this image is kind of messy, it might be because that I don’t really plan ahead (like the composition). And yes, this image is about a campfire in front of the ancient ruin. focus is the moon in the center


Better, even for the small changes you have made.

On a purely technical point, the ‘vines’ on the columns stop as they cross the grooves on the columns. This looks a bit odd.

On the subject of composition; If the image is about the fire in the ruins, then the fire is the focus, not the moon. Otherwise the picture is of the moon shining through the ruins, and the fire is superfluous.

Thus, given that the focus should be the fire, I would do the following:

Firstly, lose the purple moon, or better yet, lose the orange one and put the purple one slightly R of centre, near or half below the horizon. This keeps the brightest light source as the fire.

Secondly, add a couple of extra rows of columns but shrink them all. If that fire is say 3 feet across, then those columns look like they are 20+ feet thick and hundreds of feet high. This is an illogical structure, because being so tall and narrow, it serves no function of protection. - Rain etc would blow straight through it. Rotate them slightly, so that they don’t aim at the centre of the image, but at the fire, increasing it’s imortance. Also, bringing the tops of the columns in to the image adds a diagonal line to it, rather than the columns simply cutting the image top to bottom into sections.

Thirdly, move the tree to the Right of the picture, to balance the fallen column.

Possibly add a small boat with a lamp crossing the moon, near the horizon, heading for the fire. This gives a reason and a story to the picture. Putting the moon behind the boat and/or partially behind the columns produces a more interesting outline, and also helps to make the fire more important.

Other possible options would be to add a tree or other object in the foreground between the viewer and the fire, on the right of the image, forming a curve around the centre of the fire, helping to focus attention onto the fire, and filling the othewise empty space in the righthand corners of the image, and to add either a person, or a tent, or a vehicle, depending on the scenario, close to the fire. This gives the fire a sense of scale, and a reason. Campfires don’t usually exist without a camp, after all.

Also, if the pattern in the background is sky, then the moon(s) should be more obviously behind it, lighting it. At the moment they look like they are in front of the sky. This is partly because they don’t seem to interact with it, and partly because they are so large and have so much light and glare.

Hope these suggestions help.

Matt

travelingmatt: I get the point you want to help ForgottenWorld improve his image, but your long list of suggestions for improvement almost sounds like micromanagement of what his picture should become and what features should be in it, telling how it should be done, rather than a description of general improvements that could be made.

I would try to avoid that because assuming all your suggestions are followed, the image may not seem like it was mostly his idea then, I’d just try to list general improvements and maybe a few, (usually minor), things that could be changed or added and what skills should be worked on to make it better according to what his ideas are.

You stated everything I would have liked to put as suggestions on the render TM.

I think it is quite neat, sometime ago I also experimented with planets across a desert type scene, with a materials thrown on the sphere. However, mine was less detail than here.

add more columns, mountain in the distance and make the moon feel more outer space… still more to come tho.
about the size of the columns, they are suppose to be this big and seem almost impossible to build.



one question: how to get the aura behind rest of the object? every time I use mix node, it just overlapping two layer together

looks fake

you mean the northern light glow? I think it do look a little fake but I am still testing with it, hopefully will make it better next time.

edit: okay, for some reason that the post don’t shown so I will post the update here:

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i would probably move the mountain away from the dead centre of the image and moon, maybe move it across a bit and add some more mountains beside it. You rarely see one mountain by itself

Use the alpha channel for the main render-layer as the input for the mix factor for the mix nodes, this should ensure that all pixels with an alpha of 1 are over the aurora.

Also, to make auroras more realistic, you would use curvy lines that are nearly horizontal on the start point on the Z-axis, these lines would emit a sheet of particles that slowly fade out after they get to a certain point (which to do that in Blender is map the alpha to a particle’s lifetime)