I’ve been working on this latest project and was wondering if you have any feedback before I submit it as a final project. I’m pretty satisfied with it, I was just wondering if you were
It looks quite good. I do have some complaints (not complaints, critiques. Silly me. ;p) with it though.
I like the overall color tone of the image. It’s very…green, which is expected because it’s grass.
I noticed You have grasses of different colors. That’s all fine and dandy, and I understand that it adds a bit of variety to the shot, but the more full green grass looks almost unnatural. Also, the trasluscency of the more lemon-green grass is the tiniest bit too high (as it almost looks emissive), so I’d suggest bumping that mix down.
The models look great and I don’t really have any critiques there.
For rendering compositing (especially with the final render), render out with defocus and bokeh already preset into the camera because the node that we currently have in the compositor doesn’t do the best job. Also use higher samples. Finally, to really sell the image (and this is just me because I really like this kind of thing), you could use a film-curve type RGB-curve model. I’m especially thinking something like this:
This advice is excellent, I’ll get to work on it soon (got school in the morning so might take me a while). Only problem is with the Film curve, I’m already using a Raw curve. I’ll try switching to film though and see if there are any improvements.
I haven’t been on KVR forums, only these ones and like two posts on CGsociety. You may know me from my youtube channel? Link in signature. Great to bump into a viewer here if you do know me from there
How’s this? The samples have only been increased to 75, but that’s because I’d rather just bump them up for the final render. This took 7 minutes to render.
I’ve done all the things you’ve asked, including using the film-curve model.
It’s looking really nice. These are the things that jump out immediately.
The daisies are too similar and nearly all of them have the same angled spacing. If you are using a group of them, duplicate the most basic one. Have at least one that has all the petals arranged normally. Have 1 that is only missing 1 or 2 petals. Generally more variation on the petals.
Bascially the same thing on the grass. Make more duplicates and make some much thinner. Throw in an odd brown blade, I can see the low poly angle on one of the blades. even adding a single loop cut on this guy (I know every poly counts this particle system) to smooth it out. You see At first this is a scene where i say, wow, that is incredible, abd then I start to see the problems. Take away the problems and the original wow factor stays with you.
Add another particle system, much lower numbers, very small and thin obejcts, tiny stick, tiny clump of dit, odd shaped weed, barely noticiable. Add some geometric noise to the scene, it’s too perfect.
Are you using the obejct info, random node at all? If not I can show you a setup that allows some random variation on a per obejct basis. You can even do things, for example, for every 200 instances of a blade of grass make one them dry and brown.
I’ve just adjusted it to make a bit more of a difference…
Anyway, here’s the latest. Worked on the flowers and the object info random. I’ve also done a bit of messing about with the colours. Still got to work on the low-poly grass and the geometric noise. I’ll do that tomorrow, it’s getting late and I have school in the morning.
Now it seems for the lighting that you need to find the right balance. For that, I think you may need some more GI power to fill in the dark spots. However (sadly), you can’t just up the power. You first need to know where the scene is. Is it out in the open, or is it in the woods? Are you using an HDRi? If it’s in the open, you can try to mimic an “open” GI environment, but if it’s a wooded/forest environment, you have to be more conservative about your GI power. Just play around with it until you get something you like.
I’ve added in some GI. I’ve also switched back to using the Raw curve-model. Film was making some grass look a bit strange. I’ve also adjusted the materials a little and added a few subdivisions to the stray long pieces of grass.
Other than that there are a few very slight changes made, but nothing worth mentioning. I haven’t yet got round to geometric noise. I’m having doubts about it, as the grass will probably just cover it all up.
The image I’ve got in my head for that makes the scene look messy. I considered dandelions at first, but I thought they are ugly plants. I’ve added sunflowers in my latest version (will be posted here soon once some more changes have been made)
All of the shots posted are nice, but they’re all completely different images to me. Different weather conditions, different times of the day. I liked the first one best; it popped out and caught my eye in a way the others don’t. It looks like the kind of yellow evening light you get on a clear day around 5-6 pm that can make a grassy hill glow just gorgeously.
I think it might be a good idea to state your intentions when asking for advice (maybe tell us the time of day and weather conditions, since we can’t see the sky, and whether stark realism is even part of the goal), because to my eye, the “corrections” have robbed the image of what made it special to begin with.
Yeah, it keeps changing. Originally it was supposed to be sunset, and I agree that it should go back there as that was my favorite as well… I’ll do that now actually