-setup proper lighting of the scene. I can’t make good shadows. The light power balance of all sources looks to me wrong but trying to setup it properly I lost the shadows at all. Tried direct lights, area lights, sun etc. Everything does wrong for me.
-how to make the fire in the torches more realistic. I want to make it more ragged. And if you look at the my scene in the object mode it looks much better then on the final render using my material. So there actually 2 things I want to know. Most important is how to make good fire cycles material to achieve the result at least not worse then you can see in the object mode. And the second one is how to generate the fire to make it more ragged. In my blog you can see the sample of fire I want to achieve.
-the floor and walls. Are they really looks as stones? Especially the floor around the pool. Looks to me too flat. Tried to add more details with bump and normal maps but it just make it even worse
-wanted to make the dirty pool. Just imagine how people lived in medieval castles. Sewage was right on the streets. And it seems I can’t even make it to look wet
-good composition. I’m not sure I did it well. Just tried to put focused objects using the rule of third. But not sure the monk is really the central element of composition. Even not sure I put it right according to this rule
-anything you find useful to tell be about
I will really appreciate any comment. Please feel free to tell anything you think can help me improve this image.
If you want crisper shadows, you need to lower the value of your lights. The smaller the size, the crisper the shadows. Just don’t make them too small, or you’ll have trouble getting good renders without a lot of passes. Assuming you’re in cycles, that is
As for the stones, try with a bit of glossiness to make them pop more. In a place like that, there’s bound to be a bit of moisture on the stones, and also, if you take a look at granite, for instance, you’ll see small shiny particles inside the rock.
I do think the pools look wet, I think the trouble is in the stones. You need them to have a bit of residual wetness where they come in contact with the water. Try having a look at this, if you haven’t already
I like the composition, but I’m not very good at it, so I can only say that I like it - Fire also, is not a strong suit of mine
Also thank you for the idea about stones. More complicated for my understanding. But really good point for further tries to make stones more realistic.
The problem with shadows is not the size. The problem with multiple lights. There are at least 4 torches which emits some light and one central fire which should emit it as well and may be some light(s) out of view to distinguish needed objects. However when I set pretty big power light on the torches either as point light or make its material to emit some light the wall becomes too lit to make the monk and other objects drop good shadow. Otherwise shadows are almost invisible. Also when light from other torches and lights are mixed they kill all shadows instead of making many shadows from one object with different power.
When monk has good shadows the light kills the shadows on the wall. If shadows from the stones on the wall is good the monk looks flat etc etc.
Just I resolve one shadow problem I got another one.
I have tried to turn off all but the one light and setup it one by one separately. But finally when all lights get working together they kill all benefits of each other.
If you try to download my scene you can see I even tried the area light for some torches with one side invisible emission to avoid over-lighting the wall. However I still can’t find good balance to add more realism and expression for this scene due to lighting complexity.
- Fire also, is not a strong suit of mine 