This is a work im doing for a school project and i can’t quite get the grass right but please let me know what else needs to be fixed and on the grass if you have any suggestions let me know please
Ok, never try to show something off and take a shot facing your light source, puts everything in shadows. The background does not help show off your chess set at all, I’d like to see a closer look at your pieces to be able to better c&c it.
Yeah, you’ve got this huge, bright sky that is not the subject and that has nothing at all to do with the subject. The subject is actually in the foreground, utterly washed-out by that huge, bright sky. It would be an impossible photograph, too.
If the subject is a chess-set, then the chess-set is good but the setting is working against it. “Simplify, simplify…”
thank you for pointing out some obvious problems and for the critique but i only have one request could you please also maybe give me some ideas about where and how the background should look like. the actual scene i have is like a little table in a “park like area” on a table with some benches. My teacher just wanted a close up of the chess set and so i uploaded it. as for the lighting i will change that and post tommorrow if you have any ideas for a new scene or setting i would appreciate any ideas that you may have.
The scene as it is, is fine, just zoom in more on the chess table andmake that more the focus, and perhaps make the sunlight coming from behind the camera instead to highlight the table and pieces better.
edited i got sidetracked need to stay focused oh and will do when you say more focused do you mean like on a certain piece or what, i want to focus more on the chess board but if i zoom in it cuts off some of the chess board and it makes me feel like its incomplete it might be a just me thing but i just am not exactly sure how to focus in on the chess set with out losing some pieces off the edges
Most of its in the angle - you’ll closest being right apove the opject but that would destroy all your back ground effects. trie rasing the angle to 60 deg it and come in from a coner. if you lose one or to peices towards the edge it will not detrack from your picture unless thiers no focal point. you should the be able to see fronts and backs of pieces on the oppisit teems. if you place some game acction it will cature the views atention, depending on what you do, e.g. play the first move kings pawn could draw the viewers eyes in to the centre of the picture. And i a gree with the others change the lighting - its hard to give adives on silowets.
nice work so far though
okay only like 30 minutes left on the render lol will post soon
if you really want to showcase you project, render each piece in 3/4 perspective, then the board, then the scene, and in ps make some kind of composite, that would give us the best images to critique by. But lets see what this next render looks like first 
yes i know no shadows lol i got done rendering it and realized the grass was brown gosh, so here it is is the view okay and the lights are pointed in the other direction now
here is a quick one with ray
The black pieces could use some more reflection or spectra to make some of their details come to life, most of the pieces I can see pretty good from the white side, except for the knight which is hard to see. Not really feeling the texture you have on the board (other then the checker) looks like a cloud tex applied to the color to grey it up a bit?? Other then that everything is looking a lot better!
ok will do but i can’t till monday the files is at school and even if i brought it home my moms computer sux and mine is broken right now lol
the grass is quite dark (being your origenal quesion), it looks good along the edge but its hard to distiquish in the middel. It’s also like you’ve just straped it to a plane. either rse you angle and put amound in so it doesn’t goes to the horizon, even giving it a bit more shape could make it look like your playing on the side of a hill, or loose the sky and increase your angle but that will loose your best impression of the grass.
but love wat you’ve done, it looks much beter
You should put the king and queen on their correct spots.
Both black and white Queen start on their own color, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess
lol i remember thinking i better put the chess places in the right spot, my fault, and which angle were you talking about the cameras and does it need to go higher or lower. And on the grass what else should i do with it any suggestions on how to make it more believeable this is my first grass render so anything will help thanks a million so far
Finally sorry it took so long i did a 7 hour render and forgot to turn on halo lol wow that sucked but here is a moderate quality picture of what i have changed.
Good model. Lousy composition.
If the shot is about a chess set, get rid of the lawn.
What’s the brightest, most contrasty part of the picture? The lawn! Which looks like a highly magnified image of indoor-outdoor carpet. And the cloudy sky, with its visible barrel-distortion caused by a fish-eye lens.
Therefore, that becomes my “subject area” … where … absolutely nothing at all is happening.
Why is the camera so close and so low? Why are you having to use a 17mm lens to fit it all in? Pull the camera way back and put on a 120… a zoom lens. Try that. Do animatic-style lo-res shots (so you can crank them out quickly) from eleven different angles, without background. Heck, try a shot looking straight up from underneath the table. How many places can you find to try to put the camera?
all he really needs is some DoF and that would eliminate your eyes being drawn to the grassy knoll, but personally I could go for a higher angle on the board. The pieces look good, now you just need to find your best shot to show them off, the current lighting scheme you have is kind of weird, there are two distinct shadows, which I would turn on ray or buffered shadows to soften them up a bit, and why not use a bit of GI or AO if your not already.
to get GOOD shadows you need to put an area light in there. then you need to turn on AO to transition from the object to the shadow. i get really nice shadows using that method, the longer render times are worth it.