I’m new in this forum and have been working with Blender for three weeks now. I am kind of an environment freak, so naturally my first ‘real’ project is a puny attempt to create a nature scene
It’s rendered in Blender Internal because I started out with it and didn’t want to screw all my materials when changing to cycles. It was a pain though to get the tree to work and I’m still not satisfied with how it looks… So yeah, any tipps and recommendations are greatly appreciated.
I think I am finally kind of satisfied with how the tree looks, considering this is BI, so no fancy node shaders. Now I have to try make this more interesting, maybe add some grass variations and boulders. And I guess I’ll have to adjust the BG image, the clouds look weird, kind of popping out of the ground. Please tell me what ya think.
Edit: Quickly turned down the specularity of the leaves so they don’t look as wet anymore, and also changed the colours a bit.
Edit*: Changed position of BG image.
Edit**: Smoothed the trunk.
There’s perhaps not enough randomness in the tree branches; they should be a little more irregular. Also the grass looks too uniform; I’d expect different strains, and maybe a few wildflowers. The sky looks good though.
Thanks for the input You’re right, I will definitely have to work on the uniformness of the scene. I have changed the terrain a little bit now, need to add some more grass variations.
I see what you’re talking about with the branches, seems I need to make a new tree again T.T
I think BI is restricting the realism a bit too, whole image only takes a good 3 minutes to render, with 1,5 million verts
On another note, if someone has an idea how to make the trunk look more realistic I would really appreciate it. I’m using the UV map generated by Arbaro, repeating the texture 3 times across x and 3 times across y. I have tried every number up to 12, but it just always looks blurry and nowhere as detailed as the photograph I’m using.
Looking great. I think Cycles supports hair rendering on the GPU now so you could use Cycles instead of the BI. I think.
I really like the mood of the image…one quick thing I might suggest is following the rule of thirds instead of putting the tree in the dead center of the image.
Wow, that looks both supernatural and surreal… Great toning, too. And as Goldenfrog said, moving the tree a bit to the side is a very good idea. I think it will add some more dramatism too, imagine this bright light passing through the branches:)
one quick thing I might suggest is following the rule of thirds instead of putting the tree in the dead center of the image.
I didn’t know about the rule of thirds, thank you and shame on me! <.<
Wow, that looks both supernatural and surreal… Great toning, too. And as Goldenfrog said, moving the tree a bit to the side is a very good idea. I think it will add some more dramatism too, imagine this bright light passing through the branches:)
Maybe I will try adding some volumetric lighting or godrays, I have no idea how to do that yet, but I will look for some tutorials :). I can imagine it would look epic! Right now I only have a sunlamp placed in approximately the same angle as the sun in the background picture.
Thank you both for your ideas, I appreciate it very much.
Edit: I think it actually looks better on the other side, but I’m, not sure:
As for the trunk, i would use a different, a bit brighter texture. To make it more visible might be a bit tricky, cause the light source is behind the tree, so it’s natural, that trunk becomes darker. you can help it either by adding some fill light in front of a tree, or use Gimp or Ps and adjust the shadowed area with dodge tool. Adding a normal map could help too. And, yeah should try to render this scene with Cycles:)
Thanks, considering I didn’t work for too long on the project, I think I can be quite happy. It doesn’t look that realistic anymore, but I think I just wanted more freedom in the colour composition and make it more atmospheric, so it turned out like this.
It’s probably time to move on now, although I am still not completely satisfied <.<
Just wanted to thank you for your critique and comments! And goldenfrog too, I still don’t know why I thought moving the tree to the center was a good idea -_-
They say, that true artist is never satisfied with his work… Good thing is that you can start any other project and come back to that tree anytime in the future. I do that all the time, hate to be stuck with one model. Curious, what your next scene will be like:)
Perhaps its just me, but the current surface looks a little too hummocky, like an overgrown graveyard. I think I preferred it when the crest of the rise showed more gentle curvature. It’s a little hard to tell its a hill now. Just an opinion, of course. YMMV.
You’re right, I will definitely have to work on the uniformness of the scene. I have changed the terrain a little bit now, need to add some more grass variations.
And goldenfrog too, I still don’t know why I thought moving the tree to the center was a good idea -_-