I have been working on this one for a while. The project has been modeled in Blender, Sculptris (for the lion) and Ivy Generator (vines). Rendered with blender internal, and post processed in Photoshop. The textures are a combination of Photoshop and blender procedural. I was shooting for photo realistic, but I feel like it is far from it. All advice welcome :yes:
The cloud backdrop destroys the whole image.It absolutely doesn´t match the light and mood of the image.
The stone material seems too glossy and smooth for photorealistic, and the caustic reflections of the water seem too bright.
Texturing and modelling seem really nice, but the materials need tweaking for photorealistc.
Thank you for the reply! I will work on these things today and post another render soon.
In my opinion a little bit to bright, lion is too glossy and there should be bigger difference in lights between part behind columns (darker shadows?) and in front of them. Though really nice and interesting scene.
I was thinking the same thing about the lighting difference, sftd. Perhaps it will look better with less ambient occlusion
Wow! Impressive!
I dissagree about the whole ‘it needs darker shadows’ thing - light must bounce around a lot in that place with those lightish walls, so the shadows wouldnt be very dark… The clouds and sky are attracting attention in the background because they are so unexpected - I think the sky should be plain blue (with a bit of a gradient)
Looking closely, the water looks too perfect, take a look at some photos of public water fountains in italy or something.
The lion seems too shiny, perhaps make it more concrete-like material (keeping the green)
And lastly the caustics seem a little to contrasty - they aren’t too bright I think, the parts between the bright bits are just too dark - think how those bright caustics will light up the spaces between them like shining a torch on a wall in a dark room will light up the whole room.
Do you have advice on how to adjust this? By texture? Model? I’ve created the water with the fluid simulator. Water is tricky. Thanks =D
Here is another render. Rendered at lower settings for the sake of time. I wanted to show how the image looks fresh from the render with zero post processing. I think the colors are being degraded with post processing… but without post processing the image appears faint.
Updates:
-Stone material specularity and diffuse intensity change, stone texture normal value increased
-Lion material specularity hardness and intensity adjusted.
-World: real sky changed to blend sky (horizon: light blue, zenith: darker blue). Ambient occlusion value lowered slightly for darker shadows.
-Water reflection lamp: image texture contrast lowered as well a lamp energy value
Thanks again for your help 
Nice.
Im not too sure about the fluid sim, but there are some settings you can change to add a couple droplets. I cant remember which settings these are exactly, so I suggest you check out the blender guru tutorial for it.
I’d also brighten up the sky a bit - if you’re going for that dark eerie look, then you should adjust everything else to go with it.
You should use the node system in blender for post processing if there isn’t anything too complocated to do. Saves time and keeps all your renders consistent.
What?
Sorry, but it looks horrible now, no contrast left anymore. Looks like an image bleached out in the sun.
How´s it called in englisch… verschlimmbessern… hmmm. yeh, a disimprovement =)
The first one had really nice lightning, but the overall illumination was too high. I guess that was meant with darker shadows.
It had the feel of a day with cast sky with the sun not really coming through… kinda twilight.
The first one was really good, there was just more contrast needed between light and shadow and less energy from the waterlamp.
Stay on it.
I am shooting for a clear sky or nearly clear sky day look. I am having trouble adjusting things to look bright but not washed out in blender.
It primarily depends on your light setup, second on your material settings and last on your postpro effects.
So you can basically screw up everything =D
What blender version are you using?
I’m using blender 2.54. I have a Sun lamp with ambient occlusion
Use the nodes!!!
Just increase contrast or play with an RGB curve
Theres a little rgb adjust which literally took 5 seconds and look what it did
BTW!!! The lion has no shadow - this is probably because of the caustics lamp… so try fix that
My opinion on that is:
make something decent > enhance the experience with nodes
not
make something wonky > try to fix it with nodes somehow
If your lightsetup doesn’t work out from the beginning, you´ll only have troubles with materials.
BI might also not be the best option for a photorealistic still, but it can be done.
Don´t only use AO, also use Environment Lighting and Indirect Lighting.
Arexma, I played with the Indirect lighting and whatever setting I used it seemed to degrade the overall image (to be fair I have no experience with blender’s indirect lighting). I applied environment lighting and balanced the levels between that and AO and IMHO it’s helping the image contrast a great deal.
I have not baked any more fluid so I left that part out.
Updates:
-AO: Darkened ambient color, decreased AO factor
-Turned on environmental lighting using sky color with low energy
-Slight increase in sun lamp energy
-Adjusted sky blend texture for better gradient
The first image is without post processing, the second is with (nodes: rgb curve, brightness/contrast).
Here’s an updated image. I’ve decided to give yafaray a try for this project. The lion texture has been changed (crashed for some reason with yafaray blend texture). Let me know what you think.
Attachments
Muuuuch better! Even if the water now have no caustics and the lion still doesnt seem to have a shadow
Thanks! I avoided using caustics because it seemed impossible with path tracing and using indirect background light. Also, I could not fake it… I believe you can’t apply textures to spot lamps in Yafaray. And I think most of the lion’s shadow is hitting the green leaves on the lower part of the arch making it hard to see… but the part just below his main should be more defined.
Yeah… its just that seeing that harsh shadow from the arch fall on his head makes one think that the lion should have a harsh shadow too… oh well, cant beat the physics 