MP3-Henge

Artwork Focused Critiques
#1

Hello All,
I’ve been working on this for a while, Its inspired by Stonehenge, but obviously features one of our products. It has been pointed out that it could use more detail, maybe other MP3 players on the top like the ‘real’ Stonehenge, but I think it will look kinda awkward, and from the side, people might not know what they are.

Rendering the grass took ages to get to look right. The sky was photoshoped in later.

This is my first real ‘serious’ work. I just wanted some feedback on it.

Any comments would be appreciated. Thanks

Attachments

sansahengeraw_web.jpg1022×528 66.4 KB

#2

Taking a real close look at the grass it looked like you used planes with alpha.

It may actually be better to use static particles for grass, make a particle system with tons of particles, select the vec. and static buttons. Then give it a starting speed and some random variation in direction and life span.

It’ll really increase your polygon count but this can make fairly convincing grass.

#3

Looks pretty good.
One critique is that from the angle we’re viewing it from, it is not immediately apparent that they are layed out in a circle. I think maybe if they were rotated 90degress so they were facing eachother (kind of like dominoes), you could space them closer together to get the circle more obvious. Then you could also lay one of top of each two neighbors to get an even more stonehenge looking thing.

One more thing is the they seem to be floating in the grass rather than setting on the ground.

#4

Thanks for the response. The grass is done with particles. It kept crashing a P4 with 2 gigs of RAM.

I’ve photoshoped some blades onto the bottom of some of the MP3 players to get more of a ‘Sat in the grass’ effect.

I was considering turning them sideways, but I don’t know if it would present the product correctly. I think it has to be facing outwards towards the camera for maximum impact. I tried doing it with more players but I didn’t like the look of it. Also parts started dropping off the render. I’m not sure if this is material problem or a memory problem.

I’ll try lowering the players and try adding more.

Attachments

sansahengerenderfaultvistascreen.jpg1024×819 125 KB

#5

To help optimize the grass you may want to only have the ground emit grass where it can be seen with the camera. Also, you might want to try putting grass particle emitters in different renderlayers and composite it together with the compositor.

You could also try having planes with less particles the farther away you get from the camera.

#6

Nice rend, I see some white lines under a couple of the mp3 players… mainly the middle one. It doesn’t look right to me.

#7

I’ve not got around to using the compositor yet. I’ve tried separately rendering the grass and the players. The white strip under the player is where the usb connector goes in on the real version.

Attachments


#8

Ha, I like :slight_smile: Nice model, looks great…

#9

Try making them stand a bit more random on the ground, thus resembling stonehenge better?
(have some of them tilted over etc.)

Just an idea…
//Mathias

#10

Thanks for the comments. I’ll give that a whirl.

I’d already hit on making small area emiters near the camera and larger ones further away. It still crashed out a 2Gig P4 on render. Eventually I realised that if the items were smaller, it would render faster. Then I had to fiddle with the grass again as it looked weird when scaled down.

#11

Isn’t there stones that are horizontal at Stonehenge? Or I think some are toppled as well. Maybe an idea…
I like what I see, and hope your render happens without crashing anymore!!

RyC

#12

Looks good. Nice grass. And I really like the sansa e players. So it’s all good for me.
Maybe just one wee thing the reflection looks a bit fuzzy on the players but thats probably from shrinking down the image and the players float around (especially the right one).
cheers

#13

almost bought this mp3 player :slight_smile: but bought an ipod video :smiley: