Hi everyone,
I’m submitting this piece for critique. This scene turned into a Lothlorien/Rivendell-inspired scene, and I’ve been using it as a way to hone my modeling and texturing skills, particularly making some assets from scratch. I used some textures from Poliigon and the Graswald addon as well as the Real Trees addon from Wolf on the market, but I ended up making some of my own tree trunks and stumps because I wanted a sense of some larger trees.
I used a texture mask to paint a gradient between the dirt/clay banks up to a forest ground texture around the rest of the terrain, but most of that was in vain since I covered it with grass, rocks, flowers, and moss from Graswald.
I modeled in some old wooden benches, but they’re a little tough to spot (need a better position for them or just eliminate altogether). Wanted to make this feel like a place to sit and reflect, but I’m not sure if that comes across at all.
The water is just a rectangular cube with subdivisions and a rippling water shader, which I modified from a CGCookie lesson I saw ages ago. It looks great from certain angles, but I don’t have any white water, foam, or bubbles, and from high angles the edge between the banks and the water is too sharp…plus I don’t have a wetmap on the bank, so it looks phony. Thinking of running a Flip Fluid sim, but I’m still getting used to that. I also added leaves and some sticks to the water for extra texture and breakup.
Lots of stuff on the bridge were modeled using curves with beveling and then a mirror modifier to get some curvy repetition. Same with the ivy, which was made with a home-made leaf model and texture and curves. I used a shrinkwrap modifier to attach the ivy to the top portion of the bridge, but I was getting strange side effects with that–certain portions of the ivy would lock into a straight line vertically or horizontally.
Color and little lens flares performed in DaVinci Resolve. I used a fog glow node and a few other slight color adjustments in the compositor first and then added a touch more diffusion in Resolve.
The deer in the background of the older renders were done with silhouette deer images with alpha masks dropped in as an image as plane.
I see places for obvious improvement, but I’m looking for fresh eyes. Thank you all in advance!
Early renders in chronological order:
