Hey everyone,
This is a test render, haven’t thought much about lighting yet. My smoke sims for the dust cloud that comes from the impact of the footsteps didn’t render for some reason. But if you guys have any suggestions on lighting or other details that can add to make this render better, I am all ears. I want the effect of going to the dark side of the moon, but I still think I should light it a little bit somehow. Any thoughts/suggestions/critiques welcome. I am teaching myself.
Maybe I’ll add some gravel/rubble on the moon to make it look less smooth… The antenna on his helmet is supposed to be springy, but it didn’t work very well. I will animate the backpack straps and the patches on his shoulders so that they don’t clip.
Edit: do you see how the leg subdivision recalculates between frames when he extends his legs? I assume this is because I put more subsurf after the armature modifier. Is there a way to work around this?
You could maybe add a planet or two, or shooting star in the back. Or I guess a shooting rocket. Or add an alien popping it’s head up out of a crater real quick or something, or a moon buggy in the bg. Or something that he jumps over.
You could give him a colorful belt or flickering lights or visor light, or an emblem.
It might not be realistic for a moon, but you could add a slight horizon atmosphere that fades out into the stars.
Here is the file, so you can see how I placed the light. rim_light.blend (2.0 MB)
Also, I can tell by the look of the render that you are using Eevee. Have you tried activating raytracing in the render settings (ambient occlusion and screen space reflections if you are in an older Blender version)? It would give more detailed shading to the character, though I don’t know how cartoonish you are trying to be or not, so use it only if you want something a bit more realistic.
This! I think a rim light would greatly enhance the overall quality of the lighting and the scene, specially when the astronauts arrives at the dark side where the moon itself casts a shadow on him and blocks all the light.
@CaioFerreira A rim light is a genius idea. Do you think it should be stationary in the scene or parented to the camera or something so it’s at a constant angle for the entire animation?
And good call, I am indeed using EEVEE, I’ll mess around with AO and Screen Space Reflections.
It’s a bit hard to tell, because the lighting keeps changing direction. Maybe I would try using 2, one on each side, so there always is a rim light on the dark side, no matter what side that is. They would both follow the camera.
Y’know, I just think … “What do you want to do with it?”
There is no “better” here. Put on your artist hat, and try to surprise me. This subject could be absolutely anything that you decide it should be. Have fun!
I appreciate that! I love the creative freedom. There are some obvious opportunities to improve the lighting (working on it now). From my graphic design classes I learned the value of feedback and constructive criticism, which is what I’m hoping to get here!
2nd test render. Still eevee, but I think the final will be in cycles. I added a backlight which looks good in cycles, but is trash in eevee haha. I downloaded an addon called wiggle 2 a.k.a. wiggle bones for the antenna. I’ve barely used it, but I highly recommend because I can think of many uses for it in the area of secondary motion. I made the surface less smooth by plugging the noise texture into the bump map and added rubble using a particle instance modifier. (I need to force myself to use geo nodes because I am not getting good results with that.) I added bigger craters, but it is still kindof hard to see. The antenna magically disappeared. Will have to look into that.
I really like the result in cycles, still wanna do a visor light or something. I’ll have to figure out how to render it if I choose cycles. My 5+yo HP pavilion laptop would not like it very much.
Eevee isn’t good with very large area lights. Cycles is able to simulate them easily, because it uses the full realistic behavior of light, but Eevee relies on less realistic / faster to render methods and cannot truly emit light from every part of an area light.
This is why I had used a small, focussed spot light in my example, that does render fine in Eevee. But if you do have the render capability to use Cycles, it will always give a more accurate and predictable result with a smaller chance of bugs.
Ah, somehow I missed that you uploaded an example! This is very helpful. I didn’t know that eevee was bad at large area lights. Spotlights are working great:
