I’ve been using Blender on and off for about 4 years, and finally started to get serious. Even though this render is more of a doodle than anything, I think it really exemplifies my progress with the program. I’m looking for crits particularly on the lighting and compositing. I recognize that there is a glitch with bones causing the racket to be wavy, I tried to correct this with b-bones, but it didn’t change anything.
So… yah. Don’t go easy on me. I think I know everything that I did wrong modeling-wise, but I really need to know how to improve the look beyond that.
I really like the photographic look that DOF gives, but does it look like I’m just hiding mistakes in the background?
It looks good so far. Try using Ambient Occlusion if you haven’t already (select approximate from the menu that has Raytrace set as its default). And yeah, you really should try to find a way to fix the racket thing; my guess is it doesn’t have enough vertices around the area that the bones are affecting. As far as the depth of field goes, I think it works pretty well in the scene; you just might want to adjust it a little so that the badminton birdie is more in focus. Once those things are fixed, I see pretty good potential in this image. Are you going for a cartoon or realistic look?
I really can’t figure out the ripple thing. It’s not a lack of vertices, I can tell you that much. The rim has a ridiculously high polycount because it was made by beveling a NURBS circle. Is there a way to smooth out bones along a curve based on IK or something?
My only other suggestions are to either re-model the racket with a Cylinder or circle, or to adjust the vertices manually and use proportional editing. I tried to re-create the problem, and I have the same issue. I’m not sure what’s causing it though.
I think you need some more fill lighting or at least stronger additive AO. The shadowed areas look way too dark, and the lighting is somewhat flat.
The material on the shuttlecock looks pretty fake, possibly because of the lighting. The texture on the string looks excellent but the model of the string does not appear to be tied in any sort of knot. Try getting some motion blur going on the shuttlecock as well, even just a tiny bit.
I fixed the ripples in the racket simply by adding more bones
I totally agree with the thing about the way the string looks. Unfortunately, I “applied” the curve modifier early in the modeling because I thought the beveling was causing long render times (it wasn’t, but I couldn’t go back to the old version). The string is now vertex-based, and it was very tedious to make in the first place. I learned my less here, I won’t make the same mistake next time I use curves.
I do need to fix the lighting. What I need to figure out is how. Looking at it now, I personally think the whole image is too dark besides the backdrop, which is the opposite of how it should be. I need to use more spot lights, I’ll get back to you on that.
Finally, the birdie/shuttlecock: I’m not sure what to do with this thing. In an earlier version, I had motion blur on it, but it just didn’t look convincing. That was back when the camera was overlooking the whole scene from the side. I scratched that idea because it failed to focus attention on the way the racket was pulled back. I’ll work on the shading on the birdie.
Fixes in this one:
*Better lighting with focus on the racket head and string. Only one shadow-casting lamp now to give a sense of depth. The shadow shows a good side-projection of the scene, adds parallax.
*Shader on birdie made less reflective (real birdies are almost completely matte)
*Adjusted color on spike/nail in an attempt to make it look less like it’s splattered in blood, and more like it’s slightly rusty.
*Brightened background, decreased visibility of spotlights on walls and floor.
*Higher quality AO (I think…)
Further things to do:
*Improve color correction
*Motion blur?
*Any suggestions for alternate color palates? I had the orange background envisioned very early on for some reason, and I like the way it turned out, but there’s always room for improvement.
Did I just write release notes on an image? I think I did. :o
Very nice moment, great tension. great improvement on the lighting.
A few things: the racket strings seem too many and too thick, but maybe it’s a different type of racket than i’m used to.
I think the shuttlecock should be way less blurry. it also looks like the shuttlecock has some wrong facing normals or maybe that’s just the shadows?
and maybe give a little more space at the top of the image? try changing the layout to portrait? just a thought.
nice work.
a few nitpicks here :
1 - strings are woven over and under to increase the area of optimal tension
2 - unless you have a reference image of the strings being so numerous you might reduce the count (and thickness)…
3 - there are usually less strings in the quadrants, like top/bottom quadrants a few of the horizontal strings are frequently left out ( because it’s not a great place for the shuttle to be anyway ), as you come close to the left/right quadrants the vertical strings are not needed either for the same reason.
4 - i think the rim of the racket is a little wide.
In terms of visual look of the image, one rule of colour is that warm colours come froward in an image whereas cool colours drop backwards.
This may largely be to do evolution and how colours fit in nature. Bright colours like greens and oranges (more likely to be warm) are close to you, and blues are nearly always backgrounds.
Your image uses both a warm background colour and a warm racquet colour which minimises the feeling of depth.
May I suggest cooling off the background colour a bit and seeing what happens. It doesn’t need to be bland, it could be bright blue.
my own thoughts:
i’ll add more space in the upper part, maybe i’ll do a vertical composition, some motion blur on the ball, and maybe rotate it a little bit to appear to be falling down (just a little).
Hey everyone! I’m amazed by all the helpful comments, I expected a few crits maximum, but you guys have been great!
Anyway, just wanted to check in. I haven’t done a lot with this since my last post, so I don’t have anything to show just yet. School is ramping up for me due to finals, so I’m a little preoccupied.
I took treatkor’s and zeffi’s suggestions so far. The current version of the file now has a a portrait-oriented camera, and there are now fewer strings, with varying density. Sorry I don’t have an image to show right now, I’m supposed to be writing a paper about Mozart.
Here it is. I tried out a blue background as per Alltaken’s suggestions, and I think it really enhances the contrast. Thanks a lot for that one.
I added trailing to the birdie, but motion blur fails to composite correctly because I have a multi-layer setup, and there are issues with alpha-over. I think I may have a solution, but it’s really, err… sketchy?
Obviously, the orientation is now portrait, which allowed me to show more depth in the movement of the birdie. Thanks to treatkor for that one.
I honestly have no idea what the weird shadows on the birdie were from, I think it may have been caused by an incorrect use of lighting falloff. Now that it’s on its own layer, I’ve been able to make it look more acceptable, but not quite right.
