First post (critique appreciated)

Righty, first post here, 'ello! ^^; Been learning and poking around with Blender off and on this year, not really being serious about it 'til the past few months. Anyways, I did this scene last night (based off a scene in the story my boyfriend’s writing), and I’d like to know what people think of it. Any comments and critique of what I can do to improve are much appreciated. Thanks. ^^

http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/9814/scene12uz8.jpg

Salaiek, you finally got around to posting:)

Okay, now on to the critiques.

1). If you’re using halos to make the glowy lines on the building then you should make them a lot more dense (I mean really really dense). This should greatly minimize the appearence of the lines on the building (you may need to turn the alpha down as a result)

2). You could tweak the lights to bring out more depth, set shadows on your main lamp and turn the AO on (in the world buttons labled ambient occlusion)

3). Can you tell me what the blue things are supposed to be, it looks fine if it’s supposed to be some sort of weapon thing but I’m not sure?

4). Use a particle system utilizing emitters pointing away from the plane to give the appearence of vapor trails behind the plane if it’s moving.

heyy and welcome to blenderartists…
and its great to have another female user on the forum these days…a little sparse these days…this is a great peice of work but maybe you may provide us with some information about the storyline so we can understand what mood and feel your going for.
Good Luck anyways!

Mkay, yeah, I was realizing that I need to mess with the halos a bit more to get it to look right. I’ll be doing that, of course. I’ll have to poke around the alpha a bit then, eh?
Blue things… are s’posed to be jet flame. I was able to get it to look like blue flames a while ago, then I messed with the settings and couldn’t figure out how to get them to look like flames since. ><* It’s the particles system and halo as well.
And I’ll check out about that vapor trail, too. Definately need to poke around more…
Thanks, CD. ^^

Well, I can’t say much for the storyline, since it’s not my story (I’m just helping work on it a bit with some of the visual things, since he uses Flash and not Blender). I’ll be getting his feedback about the look of the render hopefully soon… Only reason why I posted this is because it’s one of my better Blenderworks so far, and I’d like to get some tips for future renderings.

Ah, jet flame.

Good flames like that should end in a point. I’d create an empty and in the particle interaction tab with forcefield, vortex ect… set it to sphere and set the radius of influence to affect about half of the particles which you probably should use particles for the flame. When I say point I mean if you made a profile it’d be like a concave bell curve with a highest point being pointy.

Also, search for information on material IPO’s and play with setting keys for particle alpha and color.

Just so you know, when I did the chorus of the candles image I used the sphere affector to make the flames end in a point

Well, I’ve been fiddling with the particle system, halos, and ambient occlusion, and here’s how it looks… (don’t know why the jumpjet’s red, the mesh itself is blue X3 Think that happened when I turned the ambient occlusion on with ‘Skycolor’ on for the diffuse energy). I also attempted to make the halos behind the windows denser, too. What’s with the funky lines?

http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/6264/scene13zy6.jpg

When I say denser halos, I mean the lines of verticies have to be so dense that you would from a normal zoom see a thick line that would make up the verticies. I mean don’t be afraid to have a few thousand halos per line. You should turn the alpha way down if you do this though.

Take one of my images for example
http://gallery.mudpuddle.co.nz/view_photo.php?full=1&set_albumName=kansas15&id=0202_G
While it has been Post processed note the green halo lines hugging the meshes making up the background. Because of the density you can’t really notice the lines which I had when they were less dense.

As for the red jet I think the AO may have just emphasized it. Your origional image showed the jet’s bottom being just a tinge red. I think a possible cause is the color of the lamps combined with the color of the AO. Like a white plane will look pink with a pink light on it.

Oh. D’oi. x.x Alrighty.
And I seriously have no idea on the red. I mean, the fraggin jet’s blue… Very blue. Meh, I’ll mess with it more… Thanks, CD.