hi all, ive recently started to create a short animation i have in mind, ive started work on the 1st opening scene and today finally completed it all exept the animation.
i have uploaded 2 images, both will be a frame taken from the animation, basicly im just after some critique and comments on what you guys think so far.
any comments are welcome =]
this one was taken before i updated the fence and backdrop (so ignore the crappy fence ;))
this is the latest render
It needs some compositing! Well that’s the first thing that came to mind, it still looks like a render. One thing I would do is make real roof tiles, since it has the nice texture and we have the real big blocks on the sides of the house I want to see the roof against the sky, not just a line cutting the divide, and the small roof tiles look projected, not themselves solid. I wonder if adding some miniature displacement on the bushes would be good.
I really like the clouds, though they are over exposed in places.
That’s all I’ve got for feedback, and I must say I like the mix of detailed textures on simple models. One more thing…think nice yellow-green grass would make it look more homey (if it’s a home.)
thankyou! your advice will really come in handy, and yeah ive tried various ways to make the roof better (eg. nomal maps, bump maps ect) but with no luck, i think i will re do it, at least the front half anyway. i forgot to mention the small side roof is yet to be finished, im working on that now…
as for the compositing, imnot exactly sure what you mean, ive never realy messed around with it =S
thanks for the great input =]
Composition just adds effects to the image that happen in reality like lights glare around them because of the atmosphere.
This is compositing:
On the left we have the render result from Blender and on the right it is composited with a single glare filter.
I attached a simple .blend that adds a bit of glare.
I would be interested to see other thoughts on compositing for this scene. Other than perhaps a little color correction I probably wouldn’t do too much as it looks great.
Start animating, cause I want to see the film! 
housecomp.blend (916 KB)
I think it looks great, and has a very nice style. A little post-processing as Ecrivain suggested, and you will have a nice result.
You simply need to decide, very early on, about a consistent “look and feel” for your picture. I would have no problems at all accepting a story that was built using a set like this one … tubular shrubbery and all. The house is particularly detailed, as it should be since I presume either that we’re about to go inside or that a lead character is about to come out of the front door. (And, let me guess, walk down to the mailbox, tripping over the newspaper.)
From the first shot, you’re saying to the audience: “this is a stylized world. Now, sit back and grab your popcorn, because I’m about to tell you a short story.” Click. I’m on-board. Seat belts fastened. Let’s go. Take me away.
I would suggest doing a rather un-adorned rough cut of the entire movie first, keeping to this highly stylized look, and maybe using OpenGL/GameBlender techniques as much as possible. Then you can go back, shot by shot and scene by scene, to decide exactly how each shot could be improved while maintaining the look and feel that you have established. You could probably do a very satisfactory film here, using comparatively simple rendering techniques, and have a very fine result if the story is good.
Yes, you can definitely compositing techniques to good effect … when the time comes. You can always take a fairly basic render and “add sugar and spice to it,” and sometimes a very small amount of sugar goes a long way. Instead of trying to get each shot to look perfect, “right out of the render-box,” you start with the basic look and then subtly enhance it … as needed, where needed, leaving the rest of it alone. This strategy of “successive refinement” works very well. The Internet is stuffed with “making of” films that demonstrate these techniques.
thankyou for the great response, i really appreciate it. this set itself is mainly for the intro and ending, as the main part of the film will be shot inside the house, (ill leave the story a suprise as for now, but i will be posting my progress as i go along)
ill carry on and should have this 1st set finished by tonight, then ill see what i can do with enhancing the visual side.
Thankyou sundialsvc4, i am trying to aim for the simplistic yet detailed feel to the film as a whole, you will see why when you see the main character.
and i now understand why compositing can help my image, however i have one last question… im using 2.53 and under the render settings i an opt to have colour correction, however the effect is a little bright for my liking, how exactly can i use effective colour corection on my render.
other than that i am truly happy with the support, im spending most my time creating the other sets, all characters are rigged and waiting, as i said ill keep you posted =]
never mind, i just tried Écrivains blend you sent, thankyou for that… =]
if i apply the same node effcts in my scene, i should get the same results as your blend. right?
thanks again =]
Yeah, but Blender renders have a much higher color range than regular images so some things may be different, or you might want to adjust the settings of the nodes.
That’s color management, for using the same scene across multiple display configurations but imo it washes out the colors.
There’s a composite node for color adjustment, Shift + A > Color > Color Balance in the node editor adds it. For example, one might do as I attach here to make the scene have a warm end-of-day feel.
You can do this with the lights in the scene but it doesn’t always look the same.
housecomp2.blend (917 KB)
small update to the roof, let me know if you preer this to the original, as im not too sure myself, and thanks for those blends guys, im experimenting with the nodes now and getting some wierd and wonderfull results 
I can’t really say, before the roof was a line, now it’s a jagged line. What I think makes it seem out of place is that the roof here lacks the freestyle of the house. Making each roof tile individual and then rotating it randomly would help I think but that might be a challenge to do because the uv mapping would be hard to line up.
One way I can think of doing it without spending hours on it is like:
And then you could line up all the UVs so that that each take up 1 tile in the texture and tweak things here and there.
rooftiles.blend (806 KB)
Yes, when you use “color management,” the colors may indeed appear to become “washed out,” but the key point is that there is now a linear relationship between the numeric (RGBA) values and the colors that you see on the screen. Thus, when the computer does things like “add” and “subtract,” to the numeric data, the visual effect that you see now matches the numeric change. Otherwise (due to “gamma”), it never will. Midrange tones will act one way (because the gamma curve is fairly flat there), but as they become less mid-tone (shifting toward either end of the curve) they go berserk. You see lots of “tricks” and “compensations” being used in many tutorials, including places where the narrator admits, “I don’t know quite why this works, but it does,” and this is basically the reason why.
Since compositing basically works by making these mathematical changes, color management (nee “linear workflow”) is crucial. Mathematically, this causes the process to go like this:
And the very nice thing about all this is … with Blender 2.5, “it just works.”
So, if it’s “washed out” or otherwise not to your liking, a simple RGB Curve node can fix it … and in doing so, the effect of that node will behave consistently across the entire image. If you try to do this without using linear workflow, you need to start with a full head of hair – 'cuz you won’t finish with one.