Harsh Criticism Needed!

I already know this work is a piece of junk, but I just need advice on how to make it better. Here are my problems with it:

  • The hair on the tree isn’t shaded like “glowing hair” should.
  • The texturing on the plant in the front looks too plastic: I wanted more of a “felt” look.
  • The texturing on the pool of orange liquid looks too flat. I tried to go for something that looked like water but had the SSS of milk.
  • The ground looks too busy and too flat.

I guess mostly what I like are the yellow things off to the left. (I don’t want to call them eggs). I’m also proud of myself for messing with the compositor to get the result I wanted (mostly).
Any advice on how to make it better? This is my first complex scene I rendered without my computer overheating and crashing, so props for my computer’s hardware for sticking with it. :smiley:


1rst thing you need are bump maps, normal maps or displacement maps. you can use either diffuse maps for that (stone) or use generic textures such as distorted noise. That’ll make everything look worlds better within just some secs. then use the compositor to get your colors into some kind of unity (contrast and saturation are too different.)

[ATTACH=CONFIG]128637[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]128636[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]128635[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]128639[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]128640[/ATTACH]

not sure if any of these will help but your welcome to them.

I don’t know if you’ve been there before, but CGTextures.com has a ton of awesome photo textures of just about everything. They’re not tilable initially, but most of them can be made to be fairly easily.

…I think you’ll have to use the compositor to make the hair actually glow… unless you render it in Indego or something that can fully use GI to make the hair actually emit light. I could be wrong on that, but just a thought.

~David

Yeah, I did use CGTextures for the ground, but I guess I used the wrong one. :stuck_out_tongue: I guess my main problem is that I need to do some bump mapping with stuff like clouds (I usually do that, but for some reason, I didn’t this time). Any tips on the plant? Should I solidify it?
Thanks for the feedback, by the way.

if you have a high quality stone texture you won’t need any generated maps, just use your color map (diffuse) as normal as well! then you can refine it with textures like cloud or distorted noise. Same can you do on just about any object and not only with the normal mappings, but also with the specularity or even slightly with your alpha (glowing tree) and displacement or shading (stone & plants) if you want to you can send me your scene and I’ll spend 10 min on it to demonstrate how much potential your missing with your current maps :wink:

PS: solidify is always a good thing if your working on a render (and not on a game scene).

ok, so the ground needs bumping for a first, that’s already been said but i thought i’d throw that in there.
The pool needs reflections and transparency. we want to be able to see the rock beneath and a reflection of the tree above.
The tree could also do with bump mapping or sculpting if you are good enough with the sculpt tool.
Also the roots of the tree need to splay out a bit. It looks like plasticine atm.
I’d turn on Ambient occlusion as well. That will help a bit with the global illumination… (the way colours next to each other bleed into each other a bit.)
Finally, the pool seems to rise up a bit like its very thick like custard or glue…

Hope that helps…
x

Thanks for the comments. :slight_smile: The more I look at this the worse and more embarrassing it gets. :confused:
I did use ambient occlusion, but I didn’t seem to get the effect. Also, I did rough up the tree a bit but it didn’t seem to show in the render for some reason. I agree with the roots, though.