Almost finished with this WIP in my opinion. Still want to get a few updates out. Please, your help is what keeps me going!!! Thank you everyone for your opinions, answers, comments, and critiques!!!
Updated:
Update #5
Having trouble getting the right feel from the kite. Here is my current node setup.
Attachments
Update #7, I completely replaced the old kite, give it MUCH better topology. Also played around with this in photoshop for fun. Rendered at 6000 samples in cycles, not sure how long it took, I started the render and went to bed.
If anyone knows how to get a few real looking clouds in the background please tell me!!! My old HDRI wasn’t actually and HDR image it was just a large PNG, I also prefer the lighting with this background, is there a way to combine both the old environment image and the new gradient light setup?
Right now my world node setup is, Sky Texture>Hue/Sat/Val>Bright/Cont>Background>WorldOutput
EDIT: I just added a mix node. Anyway still would love to find a way to do better clouds!
Still a WIP, please help!
Why don’t you just render the background as alpha, and add the PNG image into the background with the compositer?
also, have you tried using a translucent shader instead of a glass shader for the kite? i may look more realistic.
Not sure how to do the first part you mentioned, I never use the compositor, will look into it, thanks! I’ve tried glass, translucent, and transparent shaders, the most recent image has a transparent shader for it, along with most of its previous renders. I’ve been watching a few of Blender Guru’s/Andrew Price’s Focused Critique videos and the two problem I think I’m having is the rather boring background and possibly the lack of good lighting, which I’ve played with quite a bit and currently have, a rim light, fill light, and backlight.
Thanks for the reply ^
Update #8!!! I did what Tekrom suggested, rendered the background I was using for light as transparent and added a JPEG image for a visual background. Made the cloudy sky JPEG in Photoshop CS6 as I couldn’t find an actual photo that fit what I wanted.
And… Update #10!!! This looks to be getting close to finished in my opinion, not done yet though!!! No changes were done in blender on this update, just a few addition in Photoshop.
Just noticed the kite itself is a bit to blurry, that was an accident, I was trying to reduce noise in photoshop. This was rendered at 1000 and had a tiny bit of noise. The final render will be at least 6000.
Not really update but, how does this post pro done in photoshop look? I know the kite is REALLY noisy and all, but this is more focusing on the clouds and lens flare.
Still looking for feedback on this.