The straw filling of that cloth on the Right side (if thats what it is), since this is a render, not a game engine, I would sugest adding vertices there to make it come out, rather than appear flat.
its animal fur XD Still applies? And I need to fix this wood before anything else, any more wood suggestions?
Current poll: 1 perfect, 6 good, 1 needs improvementâŚ
I guess you could add some light on the far left that it would light just a little bit. Everything looks too dark, dirt doesnât look good, either the rain. If you could send the scene files that would be nice.
One thing Iâll say is, this render is very grainy, but that might just be because you gave it a lower sample cap, since this render is just for critiques. Other than that, I would suggest you add some normal mapping on the wood; itâs looking a little flat, there. The lighting is kinda dim, too, but thatâs already been pointed out. Overall, this is very good, though! Well-designed, and good texturing on the sandbag.
Dirt isnât even textured yet, its just a diffuse color XD I realize the rain doesnât look good, if someone could tell me how to do it better that would be nice. Lighting will be increased in the sunny scene, thanks.
@Jellypox: Thank you for the feedback! The sandbags were probably the hardest to texture so far. Iâve actually improved on the unwrapping and added a normal map to them since this post. The wood will have a normal map applied soon, Iâm working on that next. I tried to put as little detail into the wood as possible, so that it wouldnât take any focus away from the smaller objects. Unfortunately it seems this isnât working, because there is going to be so much wood in every scene.
I suppose it would be possible with a small cube and a boolean modifier. We would just need the bit where the ground and the cube donât overlap, as long as the cube was the right dimensions to fit in any hole that needed water in it.
In the version with the rain, everything looks dry (I suppose it could have just started to rain 
). Some gloss needs adding to all the wet surfaces. I havenât done it before, but Iâm sure itâs possible to create the fac for a glossy/diffuse mix node via vertex painting (and then some math trickery to clamp it to a range that you like). All exposed surfaces should look wet, and certain recessed or sheltered ones should be dry (or drier).
I do need to dampen the wood. I tried making dynamic paint affect the puddle on the left, but it wonât look too detailed, due to my polycount. It is animated along with the rainâs collision, just wonât create little wave effects.
Wood has been displacement mapped, and I upgraded 2 wood textures and added 1 mud texture.
Planned improvements: the textureless stuff at the bottom left will be textured and shaped as mud. Sandbag UV unwrap #2 will be redone. Any suggestions / comments?
Good work. Keep at it!
The bump effect may be a touch too strong, but it will depend on your final material and lighting as to whether it is appropriate. Itâs easy to try and overcompensate for even lighting.
Just a thought - have you tried using ambient occlusion? The style of your render may suit it (if done appropriately - i.e just a very subtle amount to help delineate where the wood boards meet each other).
Wow!!! Now youâre really starting to get somewhere! What do you use for making normal maps?
@Blender Matt: I havenât considered ambient occlusion yet, since my render time is about 5 minutes per frame, at 60fps, for a 6 minute movie is already 30 hours of rendering, for 1 small trench segment. My goal is to make enough progress to release a demo of my work, then try to get some render volunteers. These volunteers will determine the amount of expensive effects I can add.
@Zombie: I use crazybump, but if you donât want to pay the $20 you can try a gimp plugin I suppose.
@both: thanks, its encouraging to know that my work doesnât suck. Or maybe it does, and the vast majority of the viewers are keeping quiet? 0_0
60 frames per second seems a little extreme to be honest.
The standard frame rate for film is 24 frames per second, and thatâs plenty fast enough in my opinion. Directors like Peter Jackson and James Cameron have been experimenting with doubling that speed to 48, but it is hardly necessary as there isnât much noticeable difference.
I think in your case it would be best to settle for the standard speed, especially if it means cutting out a lot of render hours from your project. It seems that you made quite the miscalculation when working out the total render time? 6 minutes of film at 60fps would be 21600 frames. Taking 5 minutes to render each would equal 1800 hours of render time! Thatâs about two and a half months of solid 24-hour rendering.
Oh crap lol yeah I miscalculated badly, I calculated for 6 seconds not minutes! And hold on, two and a half months to render just this trench segment and none others? My computer renders cycles more than 5 times slower than internal, so if I can get a bunch of volunteers with nvidea cards we can do this 
If anyone here has a good cycles render speed and may want to help, please contact me at [email protected]. I will send you a sample of my scene to render and you can tell me the time it takes. You will be included in the credits and for that matter, we wonât even be able to render the credits without your help XD Itâd be nice if I could offer you something else but I really canât think of anything.
I know I said this earlier, but you didnât seem to notice. You REALLY only need 24 frames per second. Rather than taking two and a half months. the same film would render in about a month. It is still quite the while, but like you said, if you have a few people with nVidia cards helping, the time would be about the same, if not less, even once you have characters and the like in there.
Nah I noticed, just forgot to say anything. Im going to do one run at 24 and one run at 48 fps, and Iâll see if its acceptable at 24. Iâm going to use a lot of motion blur, but you donât want to overdo it in action scenes (cough, hunger games) I might do 24 in trench scenes and 48 during battle? Also, still looking for volunteers and here is my current progress:
This is at 110 samples. I donât really know how to make this look more realistic, besides blending the mud and the boards a bit more?
By all means give it a try.
As for the scene, the materials look excellent and the lighting is looking good too!
One thing that I canât help but notice is that objects appear to have a black outline around them. Most notably, the sandbags to the bottom right. I am not sure whether this is intentional or not, but when viewed at full size I found it to be distracting. Is this something to do with AA settings?
Thanks, thatâs the first âexcellentâ Iâve gotten.
The lines are a freestyle pass. Its distracting? I can cut it out if this is true. It helps define the objects that are shrouded in mist, for example look towards the back and you see outlines on everything. Would it be better without outlines?
make one without freestyle, just to see how it looks likeâŚ