WW2 small scene

Misanthropy

Hello all...

sorry about me posting a link to another forum...but that forum is easier I can load up my stuff directly on the site ; O but in return I find the critics to be not so helpful.

There are bunch of pictures, just scroll down.

I am problem with lighting...really! Or rather to start off I am a student of AI-Burnaby and I feel totally shafted...not because the instructors suck or anything but the layout of the courses are poor. For example we don't really have a course on RIGGING, or perhaps lighting or maybe even compositing wow! And I now must seek help from people like yourself who have experience in these areas.

It is really hard to start off from nowhere, someone must show me that small light so I can go beyond! I think my real large problem is the lighting here or perhaps other things? The textures on the soldier is quite weak, I am gonna fix that too. My school is on a spring 'break' currently, and of course that is not a break. I will see what can to do improve the stuff at home if I can.

The characters themselves are around 7.5k triangles with the equipment attached to them...without it the character itself is around 3000. The soldier is on a 512x512 page, the weapons seem a little more detail than they need to be but for this piece I will leave it so theres some good close up shots. And there are around 10 + equipment all of these are sharead on 2 512x512 texture pages

Here is the link:

http://www.3dkingdom.org/index.php?name=...791ac4babb4c377

My graduation date draws near every day! Ahh...so any comments and critics are very helpful!!

hawken

it's rather bad form, I can't be bothered to click on the link

There used to be a thread to free image hosting, not sure where thats gone.

Misanthropy

ya...when I have time I will go load it up in some imagehosting place...and basically delete this thread..if possible..

But right now I have many things in my hands..thanks anyways

Daz

Misanthropy: I think each individually modeled element looks good, but overall the scene lacks mood I think. It's tricky knowing how far to push the realism when you're essentially making a little diorama that looks like an Airfix ( Tamiya, whatever ) plastic model kit scene. But personally I think it could use some better lighting than just what looks like regular directionless FG? There's an awful lot of black shadow, which feels odd for a snow scene. You tend to get a lot of bounced light in a snowy environment. Try adding a hint of blue into the black shadows perhaps. Maybe even a subtle pink/orange directional light with shadows. I know that the day would probably be overcast but even so, that black is like soot dirtying everything. Some subtle specular in places might help improve the dry feeling to it all too.
The soldier on the rights thigh seems kind of inflated looking too.
How the scene is cut off at the edges seems a little strange and inconsitent. Why have the wall on the left extend out further than the ground plane? And why have the pillar extend up higher than the top height of the wall. I'd suggest having a pretty fixed, neat border, or a really random one. Right now you're somewhere in between.

jozvex has some good lighting tuts on his site: http://www.jozvex.com/tutorials/fg.html
You will find exterior lighting much easier If you first identify time of day/weather etc. Maybe even grab a reference pic for lighting mood and try to replicate that.

Misanthropy

daz your feedback are much appreciated as always..the tutorial is really helpful i will have some update hopefully shortly...my home computer doesnt have a video card only an onboard one...cant run maya ; (

yeluis

like its been said already. the scene in itself isnt bad and the individual assets seem pretty good. I believe what makes this look very dull is your lighting scheme. Try and get colors into the lightng to give it a mood. shoot for a specific time in the day this is takingplace and imitate that. also lowering the density on your shadows and giving them a slight blue hue will improve very much. In snowy places you get a lot of the "washed out" shadow. I put some pics here so you can maybe get an idea on what and how to do it. Dont get discouraged your not far from makling this look ten times better.

Misanthropy

thanks a lot yelius your comments and pictures are very nice, i will try that...i have never thought about changing my shadow color! brilliant!