I’ve started working on the background mountains/cliffs/islands and Im having trouble with creating a realistic terrain. I want it to look good but I dont want to have the islands super high poly because its way back and not the focal point. Im trying not to use planes with images on them (and thanks to Piet I will be making the clouds in blender too).
I started this project at the end of November thinking I would just be at this for a week or 2 then probably give up and move on but I didn’t. I don’t work on this everyday, maybe once or twice a week but it feels like a long time. I told one of my friends that Im only about half ways done (after showing him my last render), I was just joking but I do want to add/change a lot. I might not get to do those modifications but I am still proud of that I’ve done so far.
-Linked the rest of the ship to the scene
-new background islands
-added similar effects to the scene (sun/flare, lens distortion, mist)
The new islands and linking the rest of the ship has made blender unstable during rendering. I am able to do viewport renders reliably but doing actual renders (even at 100 samples and 50% resolution) takes 3-5 tries. For this render I ended up removing the subsurf + displacement modifiers on the islands and reduced the ocean subsurf to 3 instead of 4.
I was looking through all my renders and I realised I’ve never really shown the top of the masts and the flags. I have 2 sets of flags, one being the flags that were on the original ship and the other being the logo for AC:Black flag. I like the black flags better, what about you?
Here’s today’s render. I decided to go back to the clouds I was using previously (at least for now).
Some things that I don’t like about this render:
-Sails are to reflective, they look like plastic
-water near horizon looks weird because there are less vertices
-Repeating pattern in ocean sim is noticeable, this happened when I changed which frame I was rendering
-harpoon looks flat, need to give it some spec
Thanks Shakedown, I just saw your pirate character and I’m looking forward to see how it progresses. I don’t know if this is true or not but I’ve been seeing a lot more pirate related works on forum lately and I like it.
I don’t really like the vignette in this render, I will be changing that for my next render but I’m also thinking of having this view through a old spyglass.
My plan is to have several different shots of the ship, both with the islands and just the ship itself. I think it will soon be time to take a couple of renders over to the focused critique section and see what others think of it.
Thanks tommy1441, I like that render too and I needed to remove the subsurf on the cannon plus get rid of a bunch of edge loops so that when I duplicated it, it wouldn’t bog down my computer.
Hey… Yes I also noticed an increase in pirate stuff… For me it is early days at this point but I hope I can do my character justice! Your boat really does look amazing. In your last render I really like the addition of the treasure chest…it sells the pirate theme but does take focus off your ship. For me it tells a story about Pirate treasure and not a Pirate boat though. The sun and chest is compositionally better located to attract your eye and none of your compositional lines are drawing your eye to the boat. Angling your chest so it’s lines point towards your ship or angling your tree…or even maybe swopping location of the sun for the boat might help draw attention to your ship. I know you are experimenting so feel free to just ignore any suggestions… Looking forward to more renders.
Ps…Maybe my pirate can even catch a ride on your ship some day…lol
Thanks for the great advice. I rotated the chest and sunk it into the sand a bit more to hopefully attract less attention to it and moved the ship where the sun was. I got rid of the sun because I don’t think it was adding anything to the scene (I only made the sun because of the blender diplom lens flare tutorial).
I said in an earlier post that I would like to have different shots so maybe one will be about the treasure. Shots of just the ship will obviously be focused on the ship itself.
I was thinking of having a render resembling this or having the row boat in the water beside/in front of the ship. It’s kinda hard for me to think of something without a second ship or characters without it being just a ship in the water.
I think the shadow of the ship might be too dark and the chest is massive when you compare it to the tree and the ship. The angle of the ship still points towards the chest but you can see more detail than previously since it takes up more of the frame
Hey…The attention is definitely more on the ship with this composition…but as you mention the chest messes with the scale and your boat seems pretty small. As you mentioned in an earlier post having characters on your ship is the easiest way to get the viewer to tell scale. A few barrels in the water might help with scale since that is something most people know the size of. Your reference is really epic. I love the way that the clouds balance the composition opposing the mountain. With the birds leading your eye straight to the ship. Even the rowboat leads your eye to the ship and tells a side story. And the few characters makes it epic in scale when you see them being dwarfed by the boat size.
Okay I scaled the chest down and added the barrels. I think it would be better story wise if they were on the island so that it seems like there were people there instead of in the water (possibly from sunken ship or something). I also move the camera down and tilted it up so that it makes the ship look a bit larger but it toes give much more empty space in the sky… Maybe put the sun back in and have it above the tree and hopefully the glare will draw a line towards the bottom right.
Yea I like that row boat too. If I don’t get around to making a character than it would need to be just the silhouette/in the shadow of the boat. I believe the Golden Hind is much smaller than the Jackdaw (that reference img) so it wouldn’t totally dwarf the people.
you’re continuing to do an awesome job. But the thing I noticed about your last render is I don’t think a ship so large would be so close to a land mass for fear of running against coral or land. Great job Dragon. Maybe the perspective is making the ship seem closer than it is.
Your right, it is too close. I moved it closer so more detail is shown and to make it look larger. I think I need to find something between the image in post 72 and my last one.
Hey…Its getting better and better. I prefer the one without the sun. Would love to see a render with shallower depth of field. Not sure if it is the shape or the texture of your mountains in the back…but it is still a bit distracting. You are getting close now I think…:)… Oh and have you tried a square crop for this shot yet. Might help with your composition…also give it a bit of that old square format feel.
For me it is early days at this point but I hope I can do my character justice! Your boat really does look amazing. In your last render I really like the addition of the treasure chest…it sells the pirate theme but does take focus off your ship. For me it tells a story about Pirate treasure and not a Pirate boat though. The sun and chest is compositionally better located to attract your eye and none of your compositional lines are drawing your eye to the boat. Angling your chest so it’s lines point towards your ship or angling your tree…or even maybe swopping location of the sun for the boat might help draw attention to your ship. I know you are experimenting so feel free to just ignore any suggestions…
