Cliff Scene

b1skit · Mar 2011

Hi guys,

This is a screenshot of my current work in progress UDK scene. I'm starting to like how it is shaping up, and I'm about to move on to my final polishing pass. I was hoping to get some crits or feedback before I start.

Cheers

PHArt · Mar 2011

It looks very appealing, but I don't see much of what's there.

Could you make more screens of more angles? With and without lights? Wireframes?

Thanks!

BARDLER · Mar 2011

I like it a lot. Few small suggestions would be to make the moon brighter especially since it is full, because it looks a tad flat on the sky. It also seems a tad low in the environment and might look better higher up to. Last would be I think you underestimated the ability of the moon and should maybe kick the light up in your scene a tad so we can actually see what you made.

Good work though.

glottis8 · Mar 2011

Your water in the cave is not being lit by the orange, and you can have a little more back light to show all that is on the cliff.

b1skit · Mar 2011

Awesome, thanks for the feedback guys. You're actually echoing what I was already thinking, I'll make some changes tonite and post another image

b1skit · Mar 2011

Hey everyone, I spent some time tweaking a few things:

Visceral · Mar 2011

not sure i agree with the heavy contrast of colors. Blue tones, varm red tones and the green in the foreground dosnt looks visually appealing to me.

b1skit · Mar 2011

Thanks for the feedback, can you be more specific or do you have any suggestions to fix the problem?

I chose the colors because they are a triad... They match each other and highlight the contrast between foreground, mid ground and back ground. I like the idea of the contrast between ocean, caves and land, light and dark etc.

I guess I could try using another blue light on the fore ground instead of the green, but I'm interested to hear what some other people think?

glottis8 · Mar 2011

I would say that you can make your clouds a little more interesting, different tones and shape. So they still look wispy, but add to your composition. I dunno why there is green back light on your rocks. and it would be cool to see some highlights on the pine trees on the cliff from the moon.

b1skit · Mar 2011

Yeah, it seems that nobody likes the green lighting eh? I see what you're saying, I'm going to try replacing it with a cooler soft blue light.

When you talk about the highlights on the trees from the moon, could you be more specific? Are you talking about the trees in the background of the shot, or the ones in the foreground? Do you happen to have any reference images that might explain what you are thinking?

I might try tweaking the clouds a little too... We'll see how energetic I am

Cheers for the feedback guys, I appreciate it!

glottis8 · Mar 2011

I think all of your trees could use some sort of back light and accentuation. Remember that the moon is really bright and big.. so some of that should be bouncing off certain areas. It's also a good way to direct the eye of the viewer around, right now there is a lot of black that just narrows the interest. At least that is what i think. Good progress tho.

samcole · Apr 2011

If your going to leave the moon so low in the sky why not have the sky start to brighten since that would mean the sun would be close to coming up. I guess like most have said more volume lighting would be nice because it seems like you did some nice work with the cliff on the inner side, but we can't see it cause its so dark. The darkness makes your trees feel like 2D cut outs instead of feeling 3 dimensional.

b1skit · Apr 2011

I made a few more tweaks. I don't think its there just yet, but hopefully its a step in the right direction. Working with such a contrasted scene is making me realize that both of my monitors are very, very out of calibration... I'm going to try and pick up one of those spyder monitor calibrators tomorrow...

megalmn2000 · Apr 2011

Better now.

Xendance · Apr 2011

Are you using exponential height fog?
I'd tweak it's settings so that the inscattering termination angle was wider, so that more of the fog would be illuminated by the light. That way the silhouettes of the trees and cliffs would be better visible.

conte · Apr 2011

loving the lighting

Visceral · Apr 2011

Looks better when you removed the green. Perhaps but this is nitpicking. brighten up the foreground somewhat.

b1skit · Apr 2011

@xendance: Yeah, I am. Thanks for the tip, I'll definitely give that a shot!

@Vesceral: I actually agree. I'm happy with the saturation of blue in the foreground lighting, but I might bump up the brightness by another 5 or 10 percent.

I'll post a new image soon.

mrturtlepaste · Apr 2011

very mysterious. the lighting is really nice, lots of mood here. The boat at the entrance of the cave is really hard to make out, but it is an interesting story element. maybe you could consider letting some of that warm cave light hit it? also, is it tied to something?

Will Faucher · Apr 2011

I would still try and lighten things up. With a full moon, you'd be surprised at how much it lights up a forest. At home, a full moon night, lights up the forest as if it were daytime. Not quite as much, but surprisingly, alot.
Great work so far. Keep it up!

whipSwitch · Apr 2011

It's a good starting point, but you need to massage the overall exposure. Mood != Black. Water is highly reflective and bounces tons of light around... especially still water in a cove like this. I did a quick paint over to illustrate the point:

another thing is that the composition is kinda busted. You took the most prominent element (the cave entrance) and stuck it square in the middle of the frame. There is no reason to look anywhere else in the image..

It's a good start, keep it up.

dregoloth · Apr 2011

I think whipSwitch's paintover pretty much shows what I was going to suggest you do. When I first saw the scene, I had some trouble differentiating different parts of it due to its darkness. I like the overall composition though.

sketch81 · Apr 2011

Hey b1skit, you've created a great scene with an interesting mood. I think you can take this scene too the next level if you nail whipSwitch's paint over. Looking forward to seeing new updates. Keep it up!

b1skit · Apr 2011

@mrturtlepaste: Thanks! Yeah, I agree. I think I need to adjust the radius of the lights in the cave.

@Prophecies: Agreed, I discovered my monitors have crept seriously out of calibration. I bought myself a spyder and just recalibrated, and now I see what everyone is talking about. The scene is much darker than I actually intended.

@whipSwitch: Dude... Thank you so much! Your paintover is awesome, I really appreciate it. Totally motivated me to take this image to the next level

Can't wait to implement your suggestions!

@dregoloth & @sketch81: Thanks guys!

I'm planning to really polish the scene today, I'll post a fresh image when I'm done. Loving the input from all of you guys, thank you so much!

b1skit · Apr 2011

Hey guys, I got my monitor calibrated and did some more tweaking:

I'm much, much happier with this. In comparison I see how crazy dark and muted the previous shots were. Thoughts?

NoChance · Apr 2011

I'm confused what your goal is for the scene, is this for your portfolio? If so then you are going to have to post different angles and some close-up shots so we can see textures. Right now it seems like it's a lighting study since that's really the only thing of interest.

As far as the total composition I'm going to have to say it's pretty boring imo, the only interesting parts are the cave, and the moon and they take up such a small amount of real estate in the total shot. You need to add points of interest to the entire scene i.e. a path down the cliff face, a building at the top of the cliff, a ship out at sea, a broken rope bridge hanging down the side of the cliff, footprints in the ground at the bottom of the screen, etc.

Tell a story through the entire scene, and remember the rule of thirds. Right now you have rock, sky, tree, water, orange light, blue light, and a small boat you can barely see, it doesn't sound like that would fill a large scene and it doesn't.

chrisradsby · Apr 2011

Hmm, I still prefer the paint-over over this result here, you're on the right way though. If it's a 3d scene you can always try to change the composition to see if you can find something more interesting because I agree with whipSwitch.

Good work man.

b1skit · Apr 2011

@NoChance: Thanks for the feedback, yes, this is for my portfolio. The scene is built just for the shot. I agree, the composition isn't ideal... I was trying to get as much as the environment in the shot as I can. It's a good lesson to learn, I should have planned the shot better. I was planning on also building a small turntable, and placing every prop on it so they could be seen closer up. I would also have texture sheet links on my site.

@chrisradsby: Fair enough, but why specifically? I really like the paintover as well I feel like I'm getting similar light values.

Changing the composition is possible... But require a bit more work considering the shot was pretty much built for this angle. At this point I would rather "finish" the shot, learn a lesson, post it on my site (I'm dying to replace a few images that this one is definitely superior to) and move onto something new... I'm not feeling like the shot is too bad, but maybe I'm just being lazy

NoChance · Apr 2011

b1skit wrote: »

Changing the composition is possible... But require a bit more work considering the shot was pretty much built for this angle. At this point I would rather "finish" the shot, learn a lesson, post it on my site (I'm dying to replace a few images that this one is definitely superior to) and move onto something new... I'm not feeling like the shot is too bad, but maybe I'm just being lazy

The problem with building a shot for a specific viewpoint is that doesn't really apply to games in anyway. Games you can look around everywhere and get up close to things and you basically made a 3d painting not a 3d environment.

b1skit · Apr 2011

In a perfect world I agree with you completely. I've made plenty of full environments, but when I took screenshots I tend to show the best bits, making all of the other work irrelevant. It's just a time saving technique, I build all of my stuff in the 'correct' way, I just try not to waste time building anything that wont be in a shot. I've learned a lot on this scene, especially to plan my composition from the get-go of my next shot, with the idea that I'll be capturing multiple angles. Thanks again for the feedback.

b1skit · Apr 2011

Another update after a few minor tweaks:

ZacD · Apr 2011

the night sky looks a bit too blue, try less saturation, a bit more purple.

glottis8 · Apr 2011

Looks a lot better! I like how much you can see and the colors of your comp work well. The other thing that bugs me, it's that on the sea, the moon never reflects like that. It's always more like in the paintover. Maybe some light subtle purples on the shadows and your clouds still need work. Good progress tho.

b1skit · Apr 2011

Another pass:

Still not done, but I think this is a step in the right direction?

PHArt · Apr 2011

This is definately a step in the right direction. Your scene is much more readable than it first was.

b1skit · Apr 2011

Thanks!

I'm thinking I might shrink the moon back down by 15% or so, and tweak the rocks around the cave mouth a little bit... At this point I'm really looking forward to calling this scene done and starting something new.

b1skit · Apr 2011

Hey guys... I'm pretty sure this will be my 2nd last shot. I have a couple more minor tweaks to do (increase the emissive of the stars in the sky), does anyone have any more suggestions?

b1skit · Apr 2011

I think I'm going to call this done:

Thanks for your feedback everyone!

EMC3D · Apr 2011

Liking the story and lighting, I would personally pull back the saturation in photoshop by about 25.

b1skit · Apr 2011

Cheers man! I just tried the desat and it doesn't look to bad either, thanks.

Dragan · Apr 2011

looks great man, the lighting deff tells a story, and works with your scene quite well. Something i would work on though is maybe make it a bit more clear for the horizon line between the sky and the ocean. ( kinda like what you had in the previous picture you posted)
other than that, it looks great though.

just something to think about!

Serp · Apr 2011

Personally I liked the first image on this page more. The reflected moon looked really cool.

b1skit · Apr 2011

I agree, I liked it as well... But, unfortunately, the moon doesnt really reflect that way :S Thanks for the feedback

b1skit · Apr 2011

I'm calling this finished:

Cheers!

Cliff Scene

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