Persian Pillar Environment

salacious_Crumb

I need some help. I've made this scene loosely based on a Persian Temple. I was following tutorials given to me by Escape Studios, but have arrived at my own style (eg. it wont be completely the same as other peoples). You can see the references that I was given below. I'm guessing they were thinking a Prince of persia theme.

The problem is the scene looks quite bland and boring. I need some ideas of what I can do with it to improve it (and wether I should improve it). Here is what I originally did:







I have looked through hundreds of pictures of Persian pillars. Maybe there are too many ideas, and some don't fit the modular pieces I have. I would to use the pieces I have made to create an interesting scene, add a few pieces, but I don't want to spend too long on this, I want to start new projects!
Heres one new idea I had. A Persian Bath scene. Concept art is from Prince of Persia I think.


A quick, dirty, render in maya, just to show the layout i have so far.


Concept art. POP.




Does this Prince of Persia style environment look better/more interesting than the the original environment? I want to add more props to the bath house, hanging lamps, plants, rugs to give some other colours.
Is it worth doing this? Going over old work is usually a bad thing, but as I have these modular pieces, I would still like to show them on my portfolio, I just feel they are not being shown off to their best at the moment. I want to do something with the pieces, but not spend to. long doing, so I can get down to making new things.
Does that make sense?

Clark Coots

Hey I was working on that exact same concept from Prince of Persia. I think whats lacking most is the Lighting. It looks flat, There are no shadows casted by the pillars. The thing that attracted me to the PoP concept was the Lighting. It has a very warm welcoming mood to it. There is a large range of lighting intensity from hot spots on the walls to very dark parts of the ceiling, rather than even lighting in your scene. The brighter lights contrast with the darker pillars and show off the form/silhouette of the pillars I think you need to establish some sort of mood and contrast with your lighting.

Donavonyoung

This is usually the problem I see throughout this forum. @coots7 has it right, the one thing that would really make this pop is the lighting. One thing that I had a really hard time getting over is that with 3D you have to paint with light. You can have awesome textures, awesome geometry, and awesome effects in a scene, but lighting will either bring it to life of destroy it. So take some time to really explore the lighting capabilities. Remember it has to feel emotionally correct before it can feel real. Good work so far, I really want to see you finish.

Sandro

For starters, get rid of that flat ambient, throw in a pointlight or two near windows, drop their indirect lighting scale a bit and bake with lightmass. That should give you result more or less resembling first reference photo.

Then, commit to particular color scheme/mood you like and expand from there. Tweak lighting, add necessary props.

salacious_Crumb

Thanks for the replies.
So you think I should scrap the first scene and go with second scene, the Prince of Persia one?
I had'nt really tried to light it yet. It was just a render from maya to show what I had blocked out so far. I'll get it into UDK as soon as possible now.
I like the POP concept, but find it quite dark. Other pictures of persian style baths show open ceilings to let light it. I was thinking of doing something like this. Only using the POP to create the layout or structure of the room. Do you think that will work? (i guess it would be easier to show you, so I had better get modelling!).

Clark Coots

If a ceiling lit scene is what you want, go for it. Try it out and post it!

VPrime

Hey I just came back from a trip to iran, and have some pictures of a holy shrine in Mashhad Iran.
I only got some pictures from the outside as cameras were not allowed inside. But, you may be able to use them as some reference for patterns colours and stuff..

http://i273.photobucket.com/albums/jj208/murtaza911/Iran%20Photos/IMG_0681.jpg
http://i273.photobucket.com/albums/jj208/murtaza911/Iran%20Photos/IMG_0683.jpg
http://i273.photobucket.com/albums/jj208/murtaza911/Iran%20Photos/IMG_0684.jpg
http://i273.photobucket.com/albums/jj208/murtaza911/Iran%20Photos/IMG_0687.jpg

http://s273.photobucket.com/albums/jj208/murtaza911/Iran%20Photos/ImamReza/
http://s273.photobucket.com/albums/jj208/murtaza911/Iran%20Photos/

They may be of some use to you.