I’ve been working on this scene for the past couple of days. Any suggestions on how I could improve it?
Hey! I promised I would help if you helped me, and I never knew you were competing.
Anyway, good start. I say the buggy is too plain. Try adding some grunge maps. The ground looks too procedural (Veronoi Crackle?) try using something from CG Textures. I like the fog, but it cuts off way too sharp at the middle of the tires. Also, unless your mars is completely flat, use proportional editing to add slight hills and valleys. Add some rocks or something to make it less plain. Add some faint, small stars in the sky to give it some variety.
Well, that should definetly be enough to work on for now! Ill come again when you update. Good lucK!
I will definitely update all of those things, although in fact that ground isn’t procedural, I got it from cgtextures
Okay, so I’ve updated the textures and the ground. Turns out I had forgotten to enable the subsurf and displacement modifiers on the ground. I didn’t put the mountains in since i thought it conflicted with the mood of the scene. Either way here it is
http://i.imgur.com/LI7zS.jpg
I think it looks pretty good myself, but what’s your opinion?
That link goes nowhere, but I think I will, thanks for the idea
Better, but everything still screams plain. The ground is too uniform, the cracks are too deep, and the edges are very rough. The tex on the transport is also uniform. I know you are not done yet, but just giving some things to work on. Also, you may not add mountains, but I would suggest at least some very gentle hills. Perfectly flat ground has never, ever been found naturally. I agee with the rocks, that will deffinetly add some much needed variety.
Okay, I’ve updated it. I think this’ll be my final version, but if any of you seen any glaring problems I’ll fix 'em
Well, how bout it? I dont see any update.
Some hills made from deforming the ground furthers from the camera would be good I think… also a particle system to throw in some random pebbles etc would really add to the scene I think… I’d also try using bump mapping over the deformed plane, not sure it will be ‘rough’ enough but the plane doesnt look quite right atm. Though I think the scenery side it self really has potential…
Imho atm, the model of the rover is sub par though, I think it will let the scene down… Its a problem I often find too, im better at backgrounds than detailed foreground objects usually.
One idea you might want to do is look at proposed mars landing vehicles from NASA or other sources and perhaps redo the model from there so it has less of a ‘ice cream van with big wheels’ look…
Will keep an eye on this thread though, interested in seeing how it pans out as I’ve found there are not many pieces in the current competition that stand out for me, this one I think could nicely.
I had originally tried to make a complicated mesh, similar to one of the mars landers, but I sorta ended up with this one. I’m not particularly good at concepts, so I went with this. I like the idea of the pebbles though.
Simple because its a weekend and I was bored, I wanted to have a stab at the ground using a similar method to what your using to see if I can help improve it… The antenna I took from blendSwap just so I had something to whack in the foreground… rendering was done in cycles.
It demonstrates the less flat landscape I was talking about (though a lot more work would need to be done on the ‘hills’ to make them look realistic… but I got bored 
Ah, I kinda see what you’re getting at. Right now I’m actually rendering my most recent version, with pebbles and hills. The hills I put in though, are farther back, and much more smooth
Okay, I’ve updated it again. I think I might have too much dust/fog, so I might scale that back, but I still think this version’s an improvement http://i.imgur.com/7COtx.png
The hills make a big difference. I still think some micro-rocks using a particle system would be good and that the terrain could do with being a bit less severe in terms of the cracks… as in lighten the displacement mod. a tad… but thats just me, its been a while since I went to Mars so I dont recall what the ground is like.
make the terrain as random as possible. those hills you added seem a little uniform. same height and width etc. try goin through it with a huge textured brush to break it up a little.
Updated once more. I did add some micro-rocks, but they’re pretty much invisible at this resolution. Since the competitions ending soon, I think I’ll do one more revision max, and then render it at full resolution. http://i.imgur.com/CFE0E.png
