Hi,
This is my first compete scene I’ve tried to put together.
Please comment/criticise/give tips as you see fit!
Thanks,
Tom
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I think it looks great…but would look a little better with a better light set up. Try more to turn up the environment lighting and useing less lamps or suns
Yeah, I can’t seem to get the lighting right, which has resulted in quite a few lamps - I’ll do as you suggest and go back to basics!
I use pics that have colors to fit what im trying to do and use them as environment maps and use the environment lighting to light my scenes. I know this wont work in all cases but this is how i light my scene. And i render in straight alfa as well. So i very rarely use any lights at all. I think is gives a more realistic look.
Or another thing you can try is to adjust your ray shadow so the edges of the shadows fade and not just stop. There are tons of things you could do find what works for you.
Oooh, that’s pretty awesome 
I would say maybe add some texturing to the red parts. Also the bricks and stones on the road look too uniform. I love the muzzle flash.
Looks very nice,are you using cycles or blender internal.
Cycles creates more realistic lighting but it has problems with image textures.(or at least i haven’t found out how to create a UV image in cycles)
Thanks for all the positive responses!
Collinsboy, I’m playing around with different shadow/environment lighting settings, trying to find what works right. I might try an environment texture as well.
Owldude, I’m rescaling the brick textures, and will add some better bump maps and try to tweak it to make it better.
DCBloodhound, I’m using BI. Cycles is a lot better, but my computer just isn’t man enough to render it noise free :(. It isn’t too hard to put in UV textures with cycles - there are some tuts on blendercookie/blenderguru that can help with that.
I will post an update when I’ve finished playing with it!
Well good luck hope it works out for ya or you find what works.
Update:
I have played with the lighting, and I think I’m happy with it now:
Now concentrating on the background textures:
Any tips or ideas on how to make this look more realistic?
Thanks!
Just my thoughts, feel free to ignore 
- The top view makes the walker look like a toy. Put the camera near the ground looking up at it. Maybe a bit of DOF would help with realism.
- More dramatic lighting. Muzzle flare from gigantic guns should produce some really sharp shadows.
- It’s very noticeable that the rocks are the same ones repeated. Consider using less detail on them so they’re more like rock chunks and less like spitwads.
- Where’s all this debris coming from? Make some holes in the walls or street. Group rubble into piles where it fell rather than evenly distributed.
- The gray texture on the walker should be more subtle, while the red texture needs to be more beat-up. Maybe add some wires & cables at the joints?
- Give that windshield something to reflect or make it dark.
I agree with all this.
Cool, thanks for that :D! I shall get right to work!
Make sure to show us a new update soon. The muzzle flash you’ve got on those guns looks great by the way.
Right now, it looks like someone came along and sprinkled the bricks and rubble evenly across the road. I’d suggest just putting piles of bricks on the sidewalks where the buildigns are. Whole bricks are not often found more than a few yards from the building they fell from. Also, I’d tone down the rest of the debris in the middle of the road and put a lot of it on the sidewalks.
Also, another good element would be some smoky haze around the image and in the background. If the city is being destroyed, you would see a whole bunch of smoke everywhere.
Also, on the walkers, there is a cockpit where I assume a person would fit, but there is no entryway into it.
I like the lighting alot better…but i still think its a little to bright. It makes everything look fake. When the lighting is that bright you cant see bump maps. Plus you will see the muzzle flash shoud produce a lot of the light in the scene. Just a thought that maybe a even better lighting would set this off.