The rocks really bug me on this. I think they look a little too melted or soft. Firm up some of the edges on them. You have basically all medium sized rocks. Get some large and small over in there.
A rope railing or something along the walk way (lights maybe) would help a ton.
The color scheme works now. Get the lighting in place though. What's up with that yellow on the right? It's really distracting right now. What's the focus of this piece? That area or the creepy house?
Jeff makes some good points. I think the biggest thing to think about is your shot composition. Right now, you have most of the weight in the center of your shot densely packed around your rocky mound. I think you should rotate the camera to the left a little, then dolly it to the right. Get that house in the upper right third quadrant. It would probably be a good idea to remove that tree in front of the staircase so our eye can better work around the composition and follow the natural lines in the stairs to your focal point (the house). If you find the left side of your composition has too much negative space, I'd add that cool twisty tree on that side of the frame so that its bend is pointed directly at the house. Establishing a better shot would then allow for you to do some cool things with framing, and hit some of Jeff's other suggestions. There should be a few more rock sizes and you can utilize them close to the camera leading you inward to your focal hillside house. You could even have one gently pushing into the bottom right of the frame and use DOF to pull blur it out and drive focus to the rhythm of the scene elements that'll eventually lead the eye up to your house.
Completely agree about the phantom yellow/orange light. Where is it's source? If you want that kind of separation, you could try to go for a moody night lighting scenario and have the back window gently splash light onto some of the rock faces, but obviously not all the way down the hill. Might be something fun to try with some moonlight, that way, you can have some stronger tree silhouettes against the night sky and you can then add that warmth of light coming from the inside of the house and hitting a few of the assets near the window. Just a suggestion. Other than that, I love the soft look you're getting here, very unique.
This is great, thanks for the feedback. I haven't really spent time on composition yet, other than to use the layout from the concept. Just filling in assets as I get the time to make them. The yellow light is odd there, it's for a lamp asset I haven't built yet. I'm also planning to have light spilling out of some of the windows. I'm thinking the tree needs to be thinner, more see-thru, like my concept. But maybe it needs to move. I like the foreground DOF-framing idea. Again, thanks for the crits!
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Yeah it's Solidify. I made a post about it not long ago, with a pic and a link.
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showpost.php?p=1785248&postcount=5
The camera angle needs to change though Eric.
The grass is nice. But looks noisy now.
The rocks really bug me on this. I think they look a little too melted or soft. Firm up some of the edges on them. You have basically all medium sized rocks. Get some large and small over in there.
A rope railing or something along the walk way (lights maybe) would help a ton.
The color scheme works now. Get the lighting in place though. What's up with that yellow on the right? It's really distracting right now. What's the focus of this piece? That area or the creepy house?
Coming along nicely. Keep polishing man.
Jeff makes some good points. I think the biggest thing to think about is your shot composition. Right now, you have most of the weight in the center of your shot densely packed around your rocky mound. I think you should rotate the camera to the left a little, then dolly it to the right. Get that house in the upper right third quadrant. It would probably be a good idea to remove that tree in front of the staircase so our eye can better work around the composition and follow the natural lines in the stairs to your focal point (the house). If you find the left side of your composition has too much negative space, I'd add that cool twisty tree on that side of the frame so that its bend is pointed directly at the house. Establishing a better shot would then allow for you to do some cool things with framing, and hit some of Jeff's other suggestions. There should be a few more rock sizes and you can utilize them close to the camera leading you inward to your focal hillside house. You could even have one gently pushing into the bottom right of the frame and use DOF to pull blur it out and drive focus to the rhythm of the scene elements that'll eventually lead the eye up to your house.
Completely agree about the phantom yellow/orange light. Where is it's source? If you want that kind of separation, you could try to go for a moody night lighting scenario and have the back window gently splash light onto some of the rock faces, but obviously not all the way down the hill. Might be something fun to try with some moonlight, that way, you can have some stronger tree silhouettes against the night sky and you can then add that warmth of light coming from the inside of the house and hitting a few of the assets near the window. Just a suggestion. Other than that, I love the soft look you're getting here, very unique.
Get a nice up shot looking up.
Go bananas with the silhouette on the house too.