A new scene I’ve been working on for two days. Not finished yet but I am looking for suggestions.
I plan to add a few more things.
Rendered at 132 samples.
1 Like
Looking good so far 
Since I can see the ground in between the blades of grass, I suggest scattering some rocks from the path around the visible area, so that the border between grass and rocks is less distinct, and it will look more realistic.
Here is my input:
- Get a hdri sky- they create very realistic lighting in a scene.
- The fire is too dark. It needs to be brighter and give off a glow.
- It looks like you haven’t put a bump map on the bark. Bark is much rougher.
- Add some colour variants in the tree leaves and grass. You will never find a field or forest to have only one shade of colour.
- Create a focal point for the camera, add depth of field.
- Use the compositor to add special effects such as glare chromatic aberration, etc.
From the title, I’m guessing that the path is the focal point of the shot, but your eye is led up off the side of the picture then back into the frame. The path area takes up, by my estimation, less than 25% of the picture. I would like to see more of the path. I would try to move the camera to the right a bit, rotate the camera to the left to center the path more and even tilt the camera down. I would also look into a portrait style framing with even a wide angle zoom (14mm or less) just as some suggestions. From what I can tell on this SUPER HORRIBLE monitor is that this heavily contrasted, but I know that some of that is the dumb monitor. Once I get home to my calibrated monitor I’ll take a look at this once again.
I like the trees but for me the gravel looks a bit too uniform.
Also, as mentioned above, my eye is drawn up the path but being pulled back to the right by the fire. It makes me focus on that area trying to work out what is behind the fire - is it a tent? a cabin? a pile of rocks?
Try to consolidate the two focal points and use the fire to light up the foreground.
I like the composition much better in this one. The path feels a lot more natural to follow. I personally would like to see more path but that is a preference rather than critique. I did get a chance to look at this picture on my home monitor and it looks WAY different. This computer I have at work has a MAJOR black falloff and makes every picture look like it has a bunch of black in it weird.
Looking really good, maybe add more randomness to the grass, changes in height and direction, colour. Now it all leans to the left side which could be cool if you had wind but then you’d need to add it to the trees and fire too!