Blizzard Enviro Contest - The Book Crypt
greentooth
Hi all! I'm yet another long time lurker, first-time poster. I've been working on my entry for the Blizzard mini-enviro contest. My concept is a combination crypt/library...or something along those lines.
There's still a few days left to work on it, so I'm taking suggestions. Help me out?
There's still a few days left to work on it, so I'm taking suggestions. Help me out?
Replies
However, I don't understand why the rimlights and clouds are blue, when your main light source is red. Imo, your tree branches could use a few more loops for silhouette too, as they are a little too angular right now. Adding small floating land chunks around the main island might be kinda cool.
Can you post some texture flats?
I'll see about adding edge loops to the trees. Props for the floating islands! That's a good idea. I'll also post some flats sometime tomorrow.
Circles and numbered the areas in this pic:
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/834/pcrit01.jpg/
1) Noticeable gradient lighting seam. Should be easy fix in texture.
2) "Whispy", curved shapes, not planar. The tree on the left is an excellant standard of what's reflected all over this scene. However, the right tress is planar as is the base. A quick bend of the tree and FFD in max the base would solidify the composition.
3) the transition of edge and hanging grass is ridiculously obvious all around every edge. Illusion breakers are scene killers. Double up those planes to cover that edge up.
4) Some of these long hanging roots are too flat and polygonal. Scaling down could help as a quick fix.
Also, the base rock silhouette is really polygonal. A few chamfers would go a long way.
I am not so sure about the red and blue.
Blue/green and Yellow are closer to complimentary colors. I feel the yellow gives tons more visual interest.
That and you are seriously lacking some shadows/contrast. You should render an AO for this thing... When you look at the image from afar it lacks a focal point because you are using mostly your midtones. Find your center of interest and pull the eyes there through shadow and light (contrast). Look at the small thumb to see what I mean. I also added a bunch of highlights across the edges of your house.
You can more easily focus on the house which is the main piece.
Here is the larger version. Sorry for the shitty paint over. Just meant to get the mood/color/feel.
Edit: Didn't mean to get rid of the details in the moon. I actually really liked them. You could almost define them more than what you currently have it. Glad you changed the tree rimlight as well. I manually did it in mine. lol
Post some closer shots too. Love to see some details in things. Looks like you have a pretty solid attention to detail though.
I'm with Oranghe on preferring the red moon. It seems a more fitting color for your subject matter, symbolically and mood-wise (it has more of an unusual and evil feeling to it, whereas yellow moons are quite common irl).
I think you can make the red work, but something I really love about jeremiah_bigley's paintover is his sense of contrast and focused lighting. In his paintover, the viewer's focus is totally drawn toward the house, whereas what you have now has the eye looking all over.
I absolutely adore the design, shapes, and color though. It's very beautifully done. Any chance we can see some flats, or a description of how you approached the texture work in general?
As per request, here are my textures. Loads of space is wasted and there are lots of unique details that could've been tiled, but this is all about the beauty shot so I was wasteful wherever it saved time or lead to less distortion/seams.
Also, none of these are at their actual, obscenely-high render resolutions. I figure it doesn't matter much if the textures are at true WoW resolution, but if I downsize them it'll be the very last thing I do.
@cholden and jeremiah: These are both excellent paintovers, thank you! Jeremiah, I'm not sold on the yellow 100% but I'll give it a shot and see how I like it. You nailed the contrast though, and I'm thinking I can improve mine with a few tweaks to my postprocess chain. cholden, I'm with ya all the way. Brilliant stuff, I'm gonna go work on these things and be back later.
I admit the yellow looks more unified, but I just have a hard time committing to it.
changes:
-floating chunks, brought back the "post mortem libri sunt" sign (latin for "after death, there are books", or so my took-latin-in-high-school friend claims.)
-added an extra grave
-drippy candles!
-color grading lookup table (really subtle, adds some warms into the scene)
-reshaped ground
-countless other minor tweaks
There'd be more shots but unfortunately it doesn't hold up from various angles, the rim lighting in back blows everything out.
The improvements look great. I personally prefer the red scheme. :thumbup:
Congrats on winning!
No idea when the winners will be announced.