I made this for the Weekend Challenge, but I didn’t win… 
I decided I’d post it here though, to get some advice on what I can do to make it better.
Click to view full size!
its really not that bad…
just the grass could be a little thinner and maybe a more sandish texture. the sky could be darker with more stars, the moon looks good, maybe just a little more detail.
thats just my opinion…
sand dune? Have you ever saw sand dunes?
Thanks for the feedback.
@Terminator: thanks I’ll work on the grass, I think it needs the most work.
@namekuseijin: Yes I have. There are some at my condo that look like this. I’m not talking about desert sand dunes if that’s what you’re thinking of.
I think it looks like you need to duplicate your emiiter mesh and set it to a material that looks like sand, since right now it looks like I can see only the sky from behind the particles/grass.
i just think it needs to be lighter and you should edit the particles to be less even. and try using parents for the particles too.
I still think you need a sand dune under that particle grass is all I’m saying… if you duplicate your emitter mesh and render with another sandy ccolored material, that will add to the illusion.
Very good.
just add a light at energy 0.2 so in a way so that we can see the grass
Its a start. I have seen plenty of dunes like this. I don’t know how far you are planning go with it, but here are some suggestions.
You might want to map a Noise texture to Normal and maybe to Color a little both to break up the sand some.
If you add more light you might find that the grass looks really harsh. To fix that you can use a Blend texture and ramp the color(darker at the bottom of the grass). Just make sure you map the Blend texture to Strand/Particle. Making the grass somewhat transparent at the bottom and fade in might help too but it might not be necessary for a dark scene. There’s also Width Fade.
Making the background a little darker might also make the foreground pop a little more so less light is needed for the foreground.
Also, judging by the size and width of the grass it looks like the camera is close to the dune. If that’s the case, a depth of field effect might look good.
Hope that helps and good luck.
Ignoring my suggestions is perfectly normal, I do it all the time:confused:.
at first glance i was like:
Whoah, blank black image with a circle… That’s how a sand dune looks like?
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Sounds like someone needs a new monitor. To me it looks like the Oregon or Washington coast around 10:21 PM sometime in July. Give or take a couple of seconds.
on the odd occasions that it rains in the desert sand dunes can look at that, its been raining a lot here in Namibia where we have the oldest desert in the world and some of our sand dunes currently look like that it bloody amazing seeing the desert green
Overall it’s really boring. There’s nothing really interesting going on the scene. The grass/dune should look super realistic or otherwise cool to make this image stand out at all. I’d do at least this:
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Make an interesting night sky, by either doing A or B:
» A) Find a decent night sky photo and use it as a texture for the sky. Do the same for the moon. Maybe add some clouds even.
» B) Go way over the top and make the sky look scifi. Google “sky planets” and something similar: add one or two huge planets into the background, covered by clouds and halos. -
Spend helluva lot of time with the grass and try to make it as realistic as possible. This is to make ppl go “wth, wasn’t this a real photo!?”
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If no. 2 fails, go as far as you can with the realism thing I talked before, but instead of trying to achieve 101% perfection, add a point of intrest to the sand/grass dune. This could be an object or cool looking plant, like a neon Avatar-like flower or something. It doesn’t have to be anything too distracting though, just something to make the scene pop a little more.
Just my 2 cents 