The spirit of the tree (WIP)

Touareg

Hi there!

I've been working on this for the past weeks. The lighting feels strange to me still. I keep changing it but Im not liking it. I just can't put my finger on what bothers me so much. I was hoping I'd get someone else's opinion and perspective other than my own.

aajohnny

It looks great man, nice scene... The lighting is a little too bright imo, you should add some firefly effects maybe, but thats just my idea.

vcortis

The reason it looks off is because you're backlighting it causing it to silhouette. Try lighting it from the front so we can actually see the detail in the tree. Use a warm light (golden color) and put it at a 3/4 angle so we get a visible shadow.

Then use a rim light on the backside in a cool color (light blue), to accentuate the form.

Edit: It also looks like your leaf cards have weird smoothing groups. I'd double check those because you're getting a weird shadow on them.

Touareg

Alrighty
I really wanted to get the whole thing back lit, but I went and took Vcortis' advice and I like it much better now! The problem with the leaf cards i think it was in my material for it. I messed around with its blend mode and lighting model, and the weird shadows is gone. O.o Which i hadn't seen before O.o

here's another shot.
Im wondering now, why in UDK i get a sharp shadow when i move the light but when i build lighting, it gets all soft. Im not sure if its supposed to be that way, or what. I sort of wanted a hard shadow of the tree on the ground.
Perhaps my lightmap for the grounds needs to be bigger?

Touareg

Another update as I add more elements for mood and such.
Comments and helpful critics welcomed and much needed. There may be things I dont see that you do.

dogzer

I really really like it!
quick question: can water be more reflective? right now it looks like a subtle mist :-0

Snader

Pretty sure it actually is mist.

What's weird about the lighting is that you seem to have highlights in the shadow.

Two other crits:
- you have loose floating leaves, and the leaves look obviously instanced/scaled (partially due to all of them aligning to the camera view?).
-the contrast between materials feels too high.

this is what you're aming for, yah?

Rojo

Initial impression: It's hard to determine the focal point in your compositions. The elements are competing instead of complementing each other, so it feels busy. I like the last shot. If the lanterns or blossoms are the focal point, then think about lowering the contrast of the terrain. I really like the mountains and the contrast of the tree and blossoms against it.

There is an ideal vantage point for every scene, usually where the player is positioned when introduced to the area, or where the player is most active in the area. Figure out where that is, and then build your lighting around that vantage point, because it can only look the absolute best from a single position. The rest will fall into place.