Hey, I’m looking for the favor of your critiques here.
This is one of several short animations for a film I’m making, this particular one is a brief shot. There’s one thing I know is missing, and that is the light-fixtures that would be attached to the billboards, but…other than that? how’s it lookin to you?
oh PS - the walls of the alley way in foreground are black for a reason, as it has to do with the stylization of the rest of the scene
I love the angle, very nice. I do have a few issues I want to point out
-The sky is way to greenish, why is that? is it on purpose to show pollution or just the image you are using?
-The material on the plane looks plastic. Try to make it more metal/aluminium like
-I like the idea of using the flat black alley color. It would look like that because of the high contrast with the sky but take this idea to it’s fullest. Assign the same flatblack shadeless material to the ladder as it stands out and breaks this effect
Edeehem
Edeehem, thanks for your thoughts 
yeah…the sky color. it’s strange, i was going for a more yellowish, almost sunset look (from an originally blue afternoon photo), and somehow it ended up so green as a world image. i’ll try to fix that tomorrow and repost - funnily that’s been one of the trickiest parts of this image for me, controling the world image
the plane does look plastic, yes…i think i was having problems with plastic vs. over-reflectiveness, which made it look almost soda can tin-like. are planes actually white or reflective? i can’t remember atm
any more suggestions re: this plane? i want to try to keep the modeling of it simple
oh, about the ladder…i’m wondering if my monitor is calibrated, as i can barely make out any detail on it…maybe for you is more contrasted?
You can never have enough references.
The buildings are just cubes with maps, right? I think you should go on, take
the challange, and model them for real. You only need to model one or two floors,
then you can duplicate upwards. Modeling the building would give you a much
richer image. Textures just doesn’t cut it as well - especially not from an extreme
angle like this. Give it a go! It’ll be worth it for sure!
Keep it going. It’s looking very good!!
//Mathias
Mathias, thanks for those! that rocks - i kept searching ‘airliner’ and ‘jet’ and get sketchy results
yeah, the extreme angles…i think you’re probably very right about the maps
btw, i learned a lot from your ‘starry night’ some months back when i was starting on blender, but at the time some of went a little over my head…i think i’ll have to find that string again
Well, the first things that I picked out…were the plasticity of the plane. That really needs to be fixed. I also feel that you should take Mathias’ advice and build floors instead of just texturing them… it would look way more realistic.
Keep it up man it is looking good.
Looks good, great camera angle. But the lights on the plane are way to ‘solid’ as in they are too bright. I’d reduce the emit, and give them a slightly more neutural colour. Possibly even a slight trasperancy.
Also, the plane’s textures need work, + like Mathias said, it would be awesome to have actual modelled buildings.
Hope that helps.
Keep it up, it’s coming along really well!
Additional Details: Smoke from on of the building roofs or one/two birds (one of those one-box-extrude-six-times-low-poly-models) in the sky
It almost looks very professional. The angle, the lighting, the setup. Just some of the work is a bit rough around the edges. Most of the other people have covered it already, so I’ll leave that to them and say it’s looking good. :]
What strikes me most are the lights, especially the red ones - transparency could do the trick. By the way, I’m not sure they are in the right places.
The green in the sky could come from yellow image plus blue overal lighting. I often use blue, with several overlapping white and grey cloud textures, with no image.
If there were less contrast on the ladder, I think it would go unnoticed, even if it were more realistic.
The nose and rear of the plane seem to change angle rather abruptly.
A nice picture, from a nice angle
Thanks everybody, I appreciate it Right now I’m modeling a new jet, as I have a detail shot (a close up) following this one…so I figure I might as well use the same one in this distance shot as well…thanks M.h.p.e. for the reference materials ! Japan Airlines it’s gonna be
I like the suggestion about the birds and smoke a lot…and the lights on the plane do definately need transparency, etc. I’ve been having a little trouble finding a good tute-reference on creating realistic lights, say on a car or a plane such as this…? Also, if anyone knows about lens-flare…? I think it’d be real nice if we had the impression
You know, re: the modeling of the buildings…I do appreciate that thought a lot, and agree…but in my plan I know that this is such a short shot…maybe 3 seconds, in this case I’m gonna test the animation first, and in general find ways to draw the attention into the center of the frame, as the jet passes overhead. I like the suggestion of some birds, as in the first second of the shot, I could possibly have them draw the eye (with their flight path) right into the center…then taken over by the plane.
This green color…i’m still confused about it, but I know that Keith is on to that solution in general…I’ll have to check if the lights are blue’d and study up in general about lighting
After I’m finished with the new plane etc, I’m gonna repost this updated
The thing that strikes me about this image is that there is no depth of field (dof). Everything is in focus. imo, the sillouetted buildings in the foreground look very odd with sharp outlines. The upper part of the sky rises and the plane should be focused but not the foreground.
As has been stated by others, great camera angle.
I appreciate that a lot…can you help guide me to dof info?
This looks like a good link…
I’m not experienced in rendering or much else than actually modelling. I did a search in Composition, Visual Effects & Rendering for “dof” or “depth of field” and found what looked like helpful threads. You should give that a try.
I’ll be learning about all of this really soon, but not much help for you right now, sorry.
Happy Blending!
Thank you, Soter…I was just reading your notes on topology, which were very helpful also
Concerning DOF…
I don’t think much DOF effect is needed. Just a little for the very foreground may do the trick, I think. As it seems (to me) to be a 18 to 35mm lens, it should have very deep depth of field, so the foreground alley black building should use a little blur but not more.
Just my point of view
Cool composition, overall. Mmh, and I like the greeny sky. And I agree about all that has been said about the plane material. With this fixed it will be very good, already.
Be well
Thanks…and say hello to my friends in Paris, at l’Atmosphere…I miss them!
I think depth of field should be avoided as much as possible until purple finished his node… Faking it doesn’t cut it, just makes my eyes cross.
Had to quote it to fix the spelling… For some reason the edit button didn’t show up even while I was logged in 
