Roman Fortification

Hi. I want to participate in the Blenderguru competition; here is what I got so far (starting late, finishing early, eh^^):

http://i.imgur.com/pDIEy3t.jpg

It’s supposed to take place like 1 or 2 years after the roman empire has fallen; my main reference was some fort here in germany called Saalburg, if anyone’s interested. That statue in front was placed there way after the original fortress was abandoned, but I thought it was a nice addition.
So, yeah, comments and critique welcome, I really want to know how to improve the render before the deadline hits in.
Higher resolution render can be found here (imgur always scales down the quality, so the details might not be to accurate).
lG,
special_ops.

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I like the perspective a lot.

I would say that the biggest problem for me is that the textures on the doors look very texture-y, if you know what I mean. They seem a little flat to me and also very clearly repeat. I would recommend just using GIMP or the blender texture paint tools to try to break up the repetition a bit. Also, increasing the bump/normal map strength a bit might be good.

One other thing that’s a bit less important is that the volumetric light looks very computer generated. If you smoothed it out and blended it in a bit more I think it would improve it.

Good work though. The statue is especially nice.

Good luck in the competition.

Thanks (: I tried to soften out the lighting a bit, also added a little bit more sepia to it as well as adding a slight vignette to the lower part of the image:

http://i.imgur.com/UxaPD95.jpg

Bigger version can be found here. For the doors, exaggerating the bumps doesn’t work well due to the one door being opened, giving it a weird look both on that as well as on the other ones. I also think that the doors are not looking very well in that image but I could not figure out why (the texture is barely repeating, that’s the pattern I guess).
I rendered a close-up of the doors (no post-pro there), does anyone have any advice on those?

http://i.imgur.com/luiadl5.png

My opinion on the picture:

  1. The DOF / BLUR on the ground hurts my eyes. A bit too strong for my taste but that’s just me personally.
  2. Wooden fence looks a bit too thick. Huge slabs of wood. A bit thinner might be a nice touch. The fence is also a bit too uniform. Some variance in the "X"s of the fence could be good too.
  3. The “Romane Funt Domw____” is too clean. Since it’s painted on brick there should be weathering of the text or some bump texture on there.
  4. The black grunge thing on the top of the wall is too blatant. Needs to be more subtle. I don’t think the brick should be completely stained black. Also, the stains on the bricks on the top of the wall look too uniform.
  5. The bricks of the wall look better than the bricks of the towers. Some of the bricks of the tower have a weird “bump” to them. Ex: the gaps don’t go as deep between the bricks, etc.
  6. The blocks that surround the doors are composed of bricks. I’d recommend more of a stony texture rather than a brick texture for those blocks. At least for the top of the arc where it seems a bit awkward.
  7. Statue seems to stand out rather than blend with the picture. Not sure how to fix that. I just think there is too much contrast with the copper metal and the lighter brick wall.
  8. Some rays of light should be blocked by the left tower.
  9. If you want the doors to looks really nice I would suggest sculpting/modeling the wood planks individually. In that way, it would be nice to see some light pass through the doors through cracks since wooden doors made out of planks are not so tight.

Other than that and how the picture hurts my eyes with its brightness, I think it’s somewhat solid piece at the moment. The nature aspect and the blinding glow really make the picture shine (stand out).

As for the doors, the bolts holding the planks together look too uniform and big and clunky for the open door. The bolts on the other three doors are flatter, which makes it seem uneven. I’d suggest just adding more detail, ex: Modeling individual planks / bolts on the door so that the bolts are more disorderly than uniform.

In my opinion, a DOF on the ground is a little bit to big, it’s look like ground doesn’t belong to the scene. Maybe the grunge is a bit too dark, but acceptable. I like the statue, it’s looking nice:)
But something weird happened after smoothing volumetric lightening on the top roof…
Anyway, very nice work, good luck! :slight_smile: