the Pier

Well after a long blendless summer I’ve finally picked myself up and made this:

Old render, see below.
Slightly edited version, pure render doesn’t look anything like a nighttime pier…

Still in it’s early stages and very poorly lit with AO (lowered samples to reduce rendertimes) and one arealight, but I’m in the groove and have this great mental image of this pic. This is one of those renders I really want to finish, but probably won’t: wish me luck :wink:

Any feedback is appreciated, be it constructive or not :slight_smile:

Nice, needs a background of the ocean though.

Well, aside from not being finished, It certainly seems promissing…I hope you can finish it in the same flow that this came out… then it could be really nice…

Very nice.

Maybe add some rope to add to the nautical flavor.

I did notice that the deck appears to be made of brick, which would make it a wharf or landing, rather than a pier which would have a wooden deck.

Thanks for the comments. Timf - I’ll be sure to consult with my closest dictionary :D. About the rope, it was in my sketch, but I’m still figuring out how to model that. Meanwhile, a slight update. Quality rendertimes are horrible - 5h per render and rising every render… that’s why I haven’t yet fixed the stone textures.
Old pic, see below.
Any further suggestions are very welcome.
I hate texturing… :frowning:

:o

Good so far, still could use some water in the background.

An image of times gone by. See below.
I would really appreciate some critizising critical crits on this, I really want this to turn out great.
I know about the ghostly glow between the scene and the backdrop and I’m working on it, but I hate texturing and I really tried to give my best. Still wip-ish, but getting there. The brown blob (-edit- which you can’t see) by the wall is dirt :smiley: and I’ll have some semi-dead grass there as soon as I get fiber2 working again :slight_smile:
Oh, and there won’t be any water, because the horizon is so low. So there. Back to texturing…

omfg the textures are awesome! only the ground looks a bit odd, i don’t know why, maybe it is to bright or to flat(if you using a nor texture maybe it looks strange because of the flat angle the camera looks at the pier), it just looks odd to me.

Only thing i can suggest is add some more stuff you find on a pier like ropes, barrels and maybe the shape of a huge ship in the background.

Put a great big blue flood over the top of everything. The full moon is quite bright although it will not highlight.

the metal surrounding of the boxes looks to clean. it could use some scratches and other signs of use. and of course you should add more objects.

but it already looks good.

It looks very promising indeed. I’ve got 1 or two suggestions, to help you on your way. If this is not a problem…

First of all, if it is your intention that the moon is lighting the pier, then the direction of the shadows and light is somewhat wrong. But I’m guessing most of the light is coming from lanterns on the pier, yes? So, maybe make the moon not so ‘over-exposed’ because in reality the bright lanterns would block out most moonlight.

If you want to be very precise, you could try to use a blue spot at the location of the moon to mimic moonlight (it will cast shadows in the direction of the camera, and give a blue-ish glow on the exposed pier), and add a view yellow-ish spots lokated behind the camera (to mimic lanterns on the pier, they will light out the shed and details).

Secondly, you definitely need water. It will add depth to the image and break the composition of the picture to make it more interesting. At this moment your picture looks like a 3d scene with a picture as background.

Also, you said there would be no water, but this is impossible. If it is a wide river or sea, the water is at eye-level (the horizon). And in this picture the horizon is clearly lokated at the top of the highest box. Not adding water would be a big perspective error.

I LOVE the pier with wet, old stones and the shed. You have the right atmosphere, but you need to tweak the final details

Finish this cool and promising work!

Victor

The first thing I noticed about this picture is that there’s no depth. This is due to all the objects being about the same distance from the camera, and it makes it look flat and more 2D than 3D.

I strongly suggest you place something up close the the camera, and make it slightly blurred to add depth, because this is a great picture and has even greater potential.

omg. comments. :smiley: Keep it up, you’re helping a lot :wink:

Renderwahn: the huge ship would need something to float in, wouldn’t it? :wink: I’ll get to that later.
mifune: not metal, untextured wood ;). But I’ll have to redo that anyway.
victor: wow. thanks, that really helped me think ahead, what I want to do with this scene. A great help. I tried playing with the moon and the lighting, but I don’t think I’m there yet, I need to rework a lot of things.
Wiggie: I’ll see my sketch and see if I can fit something in there, great idea.

Now - I know I need water. I can’t create any water. If I create a plane at realistic sealevel, the concrete edge covers it all up. Water would be visible, it it was just 20 cm below the edge, which is just not realistic. I’ll see what I can do, it’d add a lot to the image, but I’m pretty stumped… In my sketch there is water with the shilouette of a city far in the background.

http://www.hot.ee/myhostisdown/6_wip_edited1.jpg
Meanwhile, a small update. Everything except the light is textured, I’ll start reworking some things and adding small stuff, ropes, grass by the wall, etc. I’m not really happy with this update, but what to do.

if you don’t get nice looking water think about stuff you can place in your scene so you don’t need any water. :wink:
maybe you make some mist floating around on the watersurface, make a ship that is docking on the pier or any other cheap trick that prevents you from showing the watersurface :smiley:

Renderwahn gives a good, valid suggestion, but you can have water if you want to…

Well, let me show it to you, because you’re line of reasoning is…well…flawed.

Here is a picture:

http://www.snertwerk.nl/plan.jpg

In this picture, I’m showing how the horizon would appear to the viewer, without it being blocked by the pier. If you create water at a realistic height there would be a horizon with water, but the main difference is the spatial difference. In other words, the pier WOULD block water from view, but only the NEARBY water. But since the pier would be at a big lake, river or sea, the watersurface is stretched so far it cannot be blocked fully by the pier.

So, you could create a watersurface with very small waves to fake the spatial difference. Easy as cake!

Keep up the good work!

Victor

that is looking awesome. I’m not sure if this was answered earlier but where did you get thos textures. I can’t find any good textures :expressionless:

Shopping list.

Things I like/love about this picture:

Texture of the brickwalls
Texture and modelling of down pipe
Texture and modelling of concrete corner post
Modelling of outside light on wall
Texturing of concrete side “railing”
Texturing of the wood in the wooden boxes

Things I think need more work:

Texturing of wooden door - it looks quite flat - no nor
Texturing of the outside light on wall - looks too clean
Texturing of the metal supports on the boxes - again too clean
Texturing of the ground - further comments below
“Ghostly Glow” as you put it between the modelling and the background
Texturing of the wooden ramp to the door - looks flat - no nor

Ground:
I really like alot about the ground but I suffer some confusion here - is it made of wooden planks? If so - it looks so rotten I imaging the building would have fallen through it by now. Also, there’s something wrong with the colouring, the brown seems wrong to me.

Overall scene:
I actually think there may be a little too much colour in a scene with this type of lighting. In this situation isn’t your view drained of colour somewhat?

Regardless of all of that, I really like what you’re doing here and looking forward to you fine tuning it to completion.

Regards
Caleb