desert scene

abcxyz · February 17, 2015, 8:03am

Hello!

Here is the old render with cycles in blender 2.73:

First render

Latest render:

I did this scene for some demonstration issues at school (e.g. show what a normal map does). Now I’d like to get some constructive feedback. Can you give me hints how to make it more realistic too?

I had some issues with the lightning (very dark and some almost white areas), even if I used cycles. How would you rate the lightning now? Another problem was the color mood at all; the normal maps made everything darker, but the Bright/Contrast-Node didn’t fix it and I had to decrease the strength of all normal maps. Do you always set this value to 1 as well? If no, how do you lighten your scene to get rid of dark areas then?

Thanks for your help!
Jonas

Lux · February 20, 2015, 4:55am

less bump in texture for the sand
make the color of the sand lighter
shadow should look harder
you should work a bit on the composition (Golden Ratio and composition … google it)
the roof does not seem right … I would not expect this kind of roof in a desert. Less is more. You could try to remove the roof.

abcxyz · February 20, 2015, 2:27pm

Ok, thanks for you feedback; appreciate it! I now have already deleted the roof. I’m recreating the landscape and use the rule of thirds now to get a better composition. I try to use all the models I created but it’s still a lot of work. If I have a second render I’m going to post it here!

Xanderzoo · February 21, 2015, 1:09am

I agree with Lux, but I would like to add that everything in real life has some amount of glossiness.

Gleb · February 21, 2015, 1:19am

Difficult to say something until you say, what did you wanted to achieve. It’s a nice beginning for stylized illustration, but if you’re into photorealism, you’d have to learn more reference photos of buildings and so on.

abcxyz · February 21, 2015, 2:07am

Actually I wanted it to be more photorealistic. For the glossiness: I first had some specular maps but I looked crazy. I will now try to create new specular maps that have a better effect…

Orinoco · February 21, 2015, 8:42am

Before the ruins were ruined, they were buildings that were useful to people living in them. There is nothing about the aging and weathering process that would move walls randomly around the landscape. Ruins deteriorate in place.

If you want it to look realistic, it should look as if it once was an actual building, not random building bits tossed onto a sandpile.

Ralmon_Meril · February 21, 2015, 2:11pm

if you want it realistic, then don’t kill the very dark and almost white areas. In a scene like this, those things are realistic. They are not a problem. The absense of those things in this image make this look very fake.
a simple background shader with sky texture + sunlamp is the best lighting setup for this scene.
that roof in the middle does not belong here. It does not match archeticturaly with the others.
that arch is not right either. That is not how arches look like nor are they constructed like that.
the pillars and the walls should have the same color/stone. Architectures like this is always made of the same stone. Decorative coverings like marble are often stripped off leaving the base material exposed.
the sky texture, I think, is wrong. It is rare to have such clouds in the desert. It also doesn’t create a good composition.
Give the ruins more thought. They have to be sensible. They have to have function that they have before they become ruins. Ask: is this a temple? A city? A residence? A castle? Yours might be ruins but I don’t know what kind.

abcxyz · February 21, 2015, 2:31pm

Thanks for the feedback.

@Orinoco: I first created the landscape and then I tried to arrange the ruins like a village, but as it seems it isn’t clear enough.

and @ Ralmon:
2. This is how I did it
3. Already deleted in my new composition (but the render isn’t ready)
6. I use another texture now and try to go more in the direction of a sunset. I was already told the clouds wouldn’t match into the scene but as I looked on some reference photos I thought it wouldn’t be unusual (there were few with clouds)

Ralmon_Meril · February 22, 2015, 5:19pm

You might like to decrease the strength of the environtment as it is washing out the shadows too much.
I look forward to your new render.
It would be better if you add the skies in post production using Photoshop or GIMP. You would also be able to control where the clouds would go. Also, the cloud feels wrong becuase this kind of desert is almost always cloudless. There are varities of desert and they have different weather systems. Look for pictures of deserts that matches closely to yours.

Also, try using film response. In Properties window > Scene > Color Management change the Look property from None to some of the presets. You could also try the View property from Default to Film. These properties try to replicate real film response which might look better and realistic (well photographic) than the default color management.

sundialsvc4 · February 22, 2015, 6:01pm

I just think that the entire presentation of this scene is … that it is, and should be, “a cartoon.” This is not a realistically proportioned scene from the get-go. In some pleasant ways, it’s “pleasantly absurd.” And, so, I wouldn’t take this arrangement of objects and try to make it “real-world realistic.” I don’t think that the eye could ever really accept that. It would seem (to me), forced, awkward, odd, therefore even a bit silly.

If you do want to create a new scene, the first thing you’ll have to do is to decide upon a real-world scale, the real-world size of the various objects depicted, and the real-world placement of these objects in Z-axis distance from the camera and from each other. Likewise the dunes: how many meters high are they? What’s the slope? Then, you must carefully consider exactly where you want to put the camera, and what lens (telephoto? wide-angle? normal?) you want to use. Only if the scene is correctly and realistically proportioned will it “ring true” to the eye of someone who’s seen plenty of photographs.

abcxyz · February 25, 2015, 9:39am

Thanks for the feedback.

Here is the new render:

I attached the scene from the top view as well.

Attachments

Orinoco · February 25, 2015, 11:47am

Here is a link to some Roman ruins in Libya. They are ariel photographs, so there aren’t too many detailed close ups, but you can get a good feeling for the way ancient builders laid things out.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturepicturegalleries/9909936/Roman-ruins-in-Libya-aerial-photographs-by-Jason-Hawkes.html?frame=2500348

One thing you’ll notice examining these ruins is that ancient builders weren’t big on hallways. There are roads between blocks of buildings, but within a block of buildings, common walls is the norm. Rooms connect to other rooms, or to interior courtyards.

Another thing you might notice (although it would be easier with closeups) is that arches do not remain intact without substantial support to the side. An arch creates forces pushing outward on its support, and if there is nothing there to resist that force, the supports will move outward, and it doesn’t take much movement (centimeters, not meters) to break the structural integrity of the arch, causing it to fall.

For closeups, you’ll need to use google:

https://www.google.com/search?q=photographs+of+ruins&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=Qx7uVNahBdLuoAT2z4G4Cw&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ&biw=1280&bih=585#tbm=isch&q=photographs+of+ruins&imgdii=_

What I’d like you to notice in the close up pictures of ruins is how they fall apart: stone by stone, the same way they were built. The stones rarely break, they just fall out of the wall, or, more likely, are taken away for some other building project. Even mud bricks have more strength than the mortar that holds them in place (if any mortar was used in the original construction) so adobe ruins have the same general pattern as stone or brick ruins: what’s left in place is whole blocks or bricks, weathered, to be sure, with rounded edges and corners, but not broken.

Finally, your scene is in a sandy location and there is wind. Now, if the ancient people built on high ground (the usual situation) the wind would have scoured all the sand away, and the ruins would be sitting on rock. If the ruins were positioned so sand would drift in, then it would tend to pile against the walls and in sheltered corners.

If you want a realistic scene, your going to need to take these kinds of things into account.

abcxyz · February 25, 2015, 1:24pm

Ok, first thank you for your feedback.

I will look on the reference photos you gave me and add some bricks in the scene.

For the sand: I already tried to make sand in some corners and against the walls by sculpting of the ground, but it worked better in the first render. I’ll add some more now.