Chichen itza- Blenderguru competition WIP

Chichen Itza is an important vestige of the Mayan civilization. any suggestions? :eyebrowlift:


It’s a good start, certainly. Are you using BI or Cycles?

What I would work on as far as the structure is adding first some bump mapping. Then, redo the texturing. The pattern you have looks nice, but if you can, separate it from the other stuff. Apply it on top. The texture is obviously tiled; it suspends the suspension of disbelief. I’d recommend procedural textures, but traditional ones are fine. If you don’t like Blender’s way of doing it, or want to decrease render time, I recommend NeoTextureEdit on SourceForge. It’s a surprisingly powerful node-based texture generator. As for the material, it looks alright. Add a little bit of specularity; stone is a little shiny.

I don’t know if you wanted it to look new, but it does. If it is supposed to be new, give it some life. Decorations, fires, if you’re feeling adventurous, people. If it’s not, then age the structure. Maybe the corners are falling off, maybe a whole part of the structure has collapsed. Remember to save a copy of the undestroyed building. Maybe grow some vines or something.

As for the environment, the most important thing I see is lighting. It appears that you’re using a traditional lamp, and again this depends on the render engine you’re using, but some more bounces would be nice. It appears to be sunset, but the sky doesn’t agree with that. Fixing the sky to agree with sunset will make it look much better.

The other environmental things would be to make the grass look better, and to add something else. When I think Chichen Itza, I think of jungles in South America. While they’ve cleared the area for touristing, I think jungle is something you should at least consider. Certainly, something else should be in the background. It’s apparent that you just have the building on a plane.

Overall, though, good start! I’d love to see more when you have it. Also, remember that all of this is just my opinion, and I’m not a professional or anything. It’s your project, do what you want.