Rocks

Hey All!

Recently I’ve been working on these rocks:


It’s just a small project, nothing too serious, but I’d still like to get this looking as good as possible. I’m trying to get this as realistic as possible so please judge this harshly.

The main problem I have with this scene is the way it cuts off at the back. It’s supposed to look like a drop off a cliff, but after showing someone, they didn’t realize it was supposed to cut off at the end and said it was unrealistic how it just cuts off in to sky. I was wondering if there was a way to show that it was an edge of a cliff. Or maybe just change it entirely, so it cuts off into an ocean or something (although I tried an ocean and it didn’t look right with the lighting, which I’d like to keep)

Any feedback will be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance!

I would make each stone more uniqe by scalling them a little(maybe make one that’s really big). To show that this is a cliff you can set the camera on more of an angle and curve the cliff so you will be able to see a little piece of the wall of the cliff, you can also make some birds flying around just to show that it’s high. Over all I’m not sure if you would find such a big stones on the top of the cliff(bottom, maybe:)). You said you want it to be judged harshly so here it is;D I like the shader though.

I’ll experiment with all of these ideas, thanks :slight_smile:

I love the atmosphere!

Agreed, the atmosphere part has been well developed. Though my experience with mountains is limited, it seems that these shapes are too blocky and they are too isolated overall. It seems that mountains have a triangular shape in general, sloping downwards until they reach the slopes of adjacent mountains (to where a stream is formed, then a valley in between.) Without this connection between the mountains, I have no idea how large those rocks are supposed to be.
Edit: and some greenery would be an easy application, but would add another dimension to the picture that I think would go great and also help to add scale.

Greenery is a good idea! These rocks are only supposed to be the size of a baby cow, if not slightly smaller. Would adding some leaves along the top of the rocks be good? I might also try removing maybe 25% of the rocks to have some grass show underneath.

Here’s the latest. Not much has changed.


Changes:

  • Rock scales randomized
  • Some rocks moved due to clipping issues
  • Some rocks added in at back to fix horizon
  • Shader variation to make some rocks appear slightly different to other rocks
  • Lighting changed (angle, strength and colour)
  • Sky image rotated
  • Camera angle changed

Still to do:

  • Greenery (not sure on specifics of greenery)

I’ve decided to leave the cliff idea for now, I might come back to it at a later stage though - we shall see.

The render look good but I think it is too dark and too cold but that is just my opinion.

I’ll fix this for the next one, thanks :slight_smile:

Nice to see some more of your work Wireheadking,

My main problem with the scene is that the rocks look too repetitive, and there isn’t really a focal point. Also, how about instead of making the scene end by going off a cliff, you could add some mountains using the ant landscape addon. You could also keep what you already have, and work on adding some clouds or mountains in the distance that are lower than you would usually expect. What your trying to do with the cliff will be really cool if you can pull it off.

I love the idea of mountains! I’ll get to work on it as soon as I can and share the results.

Note to all: This project is going quite slowly due to school work, please bare with me :smiley:

Okay here’s the latest with adjusted brightness and mountains.

I still need to do some greenery, might make it some trees on the mountains.


I know the atmosphere has completely removed the sky, so I’ll have that fixed by the next one. For now focus on what’s there :slight_smile:

That looks good. One thing I would recommend is getting rid of some of the rocks. It looks slightly crouded and I think some vegetation would help (I know that’s on your todo list).

What sort of vegetation? I’ve considered ivy, plants, grass etc. but I don’t know if any of them will work :S

Moss would be a great addition to this scene, not a lot of it. just dense patches of growth here and there. particularly on the peaks of the rocks, as this is where most of the sunlight will be hitting. As for other vegetation, i can’t really think of anything else, Perhaps live worts? This article has good information - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marchantiophyta

Yeah, moss. Maybe some overgrown grass.

I’ll try these things out, might take a while getting the moss right though, and I’ll check out the live worts :slight_smile: Should I also put some trees on the mountains in the background? I thought maybe that could help separate the rocks from the mountains because currently they sort of blend in where the rocks end and the mountains start.

Yeah you should probably do that. Although they do look good now. One thing that might be worth looking at is blackrainbow’s moss finished work. He released the node set ups and stuff.

Okay so here’s the latest. I decided to go for shader moss rather than particle systems, despite numerous tries with particles. It doesn’t look perfect though… I’m really struggling to get this to look good and I don’t have the time with school, but I won’t give up so please bare with me on this one.


Blackrainbow’s moss looked awesome, but the shader didn’t look right at all. I don’t suppose there’s a link to the particle set-up aswell? It might help with the shader working… I’d like particle moss to work, it would look 10x better but whenever I tried it, it didn’t really show up… What helped with Blackrainbow’s was that the rock was small, whereas these are about 1m^3 at least.