Aiming for Photorealism

emomobile

We seem to have developed a family tradition where we make a badass cosplay family portrait. This year is going to be Japanese themed. Ninja, Samurai, Monks, etc. I've been working on the background that will be all 3d, and then I'll comp in the photographs of us. As I'm comping in photographs, I want the background to be as near to photoreal as I can get. This is done in 3ds Max, rendered in Mental Ray and post in Photoshop. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.

emomobile

Just to give you guys an idea, here's the past 2 years. The fantasy one was mostly matte painting, except for the dragon, castle, and spear/banner, which were 3d. For the scifi one I just snuck out of bounds in the Arcorp level in Star Citizen and took some screenshots.

emomobile

Bump

GeorgeCrudo

I'm sure others will have much more experienced feedback but I mainly wanted to comment on how awesome these family portraits are. Too funny

I think the thing that stands out most to me is the background. The sky seems a bit too fuzzy and I feel like it should have some more defined separation from the moon and the mountain. Also I believe the scene as a whole is too bright. Even with the moon and the lights I feel like it should be a bit darker.

gfelton

Maybe add some variance/jitter to the length of the grass? It looks a bit uniform, maybe the variance would give it some life. One thing that stood out to me was just how sharp the edges are on the torii - feels as though I'd be able to cut myself on them. I'd highly suggest turbosmoothing with either smoothing groups or support edges and then rendering out a normal map if you haven't already done so. By itself, the scene is quite good, yet it has a long way to go in terms of photorealism. Also, I love those family portraits, I think that they're hysterical.

Deforges

It's a pretty dark scene so to look realistic would mean comping your family into a poorly lit photograph. If you're going for photorealism you should definitely take a real photo and try to copy it exactly. 

Nothing anyone tells you here will be helpful without a reference. We could all take a stab at what we think looks realistic but nothing will compare to actually referencing against a photo. Even if you have to photoshop the real elements together to look how you want it, it would go a long way in helping.

emomobile

Vray FTW! Before, I was using Mental Ray. I'd never used Vray until yesterday, but already it is looking waaaa more accurate. I changed the stairs and wall as well.

Leinadien

There's something about the perspective that makes it look odd, you see there is a bridge leading somewhere, but since there is nothing beyond it, it makes it seem like the whole scene is tilted and we're not actually standing on a flat surface but looking up at the sky. 

emomobile

Leinadien said:

There's something about the perspective that makes it look odd, you see there is a bridge leading somewhere, but since there is nothing beyond it, it makes it seem like the whole scene is tilted and we're not actually standing on a flat surface but looking up at the sky. 

Yeah, I've been contemplating adding something to the background. Either some mountains or buildings. So thanks for mentioning that. 

emomobile

I added a castle to the background. It really added a lot, I think. Thanks for the nudge, Leinadien.