Left in the Snow

Worked on this over the Easter Break. Looking for some serious feedback and critique :slight_smile:


The concept is very striking :slight_smile: and the snow on the ground is really good. I think the transition between the render and the background is very sudden, you could use a mist pass to ease the transition (found under the world panel). The material on the cliffs could also be redone. An ambient occlusion pass would also help bring out the details in the image.

This scene has big potential, great work. You should keep improving this guy and polish it up. Biggest issues right now:

  1. The motion blur snow. It’s just jumping out, soften it up, blur it, do something.
  2. Hard to put your finger on it but the snow material on the ground need some glistening, and tweaking.
  3. The boot tread should be remodeled its too low poly and is sticking out like a caroton in a photograph.

In terms of lighting and mood you have an opportunity to use it to great effect, experiment. Consider lowering the light in the foreground (toward the bottom) the motivation makes sense, as it is in a crevice betwene two rocks/cliffs thus being occluded. By lowering that light there you increase the contrast of the falling snow, and have a kind of heading toward the light feel, with the “story” understated and more of a surprise. Keep going!

One thing bother me.

The ground is covered in snow but the snow don’t fall inside the passage.
Adding a bit of snow falling inside the passage will be more realistic. It make sens that there is less snow falling in it than outside but not that there isen’t any if the ground is full of it.

the storm in the background does not fit with rest of the scene. it looks like a massive foggy storm, but in between the mountain, it seems like there is no snow, wind, fog, anything…

try to make it more storm’ish everywhere.

It would look better if it faded out into the falling snow, so if you would add something so it doesn’t instantly change into falling snow (if that makes any sense). I think the snow is too glossy/shiny, it looks like its melting. Apart from that amazing render!

Excellent scene. I agree with Photox on the lighting in terms of being too bright in the foreground. I’m not sure what the light/white is just above the character’s head. It draws attention and I’m not sure that you want it to.

Your snow texturing is great, However, the snow on the edges of the cliffs don’t fit well with physics. There is snow on “under-hangs” that wouldn’t normally be present.

Great concept, and scene.

I hope to see an update…

Agree with the others that the transition to the background is a bit abrupt/harsh. The background itself is a bit too uniform to me in the snow’s appearance of streakiness. The storm/wind effect is good, but it doesn’t come off as natural. Great idea and looking forward to seeing it only get better!

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I have spent the past couple of days on it and have changed the following:
-Altered the transition between the render and the background
-Added a Mist layer
-Altered Cliff Material slightly
-Motion Blur on Snow
-Changed boot model
-Lowered lighting
-Added Snow in Passage
-Removed some “under-hang” snow (not sure I got all of it :o).



Let me know if something needs changing or if your suggestion still needs work.
Thanks Again :smiley:

a LOT LOT LOT better! adding the snow in the front really made the image look a lot more complete.

i actually think ur done now, so for tweeking i would say improve the snow on the mountain, witch looks a bit too bumpy and… well it looks like white moss.
other than that, try to do some compositing. currently i feel like looking all over the image, try to guide the viewer to the person. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8i7OKbWmRM

There is one thing that is unrealistic that I’m not sure in the same time make the image better so I wasent sure if I was to point it but well you can make the call on that.

The light dont make a lot of sens realisticaly speaking. It looks like it come from the top left of the background, but there we have only a dark grey sky and montains bloking the suposed light path. With this configuration it don’t make a lot of sens that the snow on the ground look like its lighted by direct sun light. In the same time, if I make abstraction of realism, I like the light efect on the ground, so it’s hard for me to say if it’s an error to be unrealistic or not.

On the left montain wall due to the geometry there is a harsh line of demarcation betwine the faded and neat part of the clef due to the fog, its probably realistic and due to the geometry of the montain wall but it atract the eye in this direction to much imo.

I like how you made the caracher slightly fading and the light outlining his shape, It had to the feel that he is on the verge of entering the snow storm.

i dont think hes going for realism.

Well it’s not as easy to say, and even when you go for realism the things you choose to be unrealistics are at your choice as an artist and may be part of your own style.

If you look at the previouse version the light was far more difuse as it will realisticaly be in such climarical condition so he may be going for realisme or coming from it.

yeah, and the first image was also not as good :stuck_out_tongue: the second one actually looks really cool.

its like saying Skyrim is going for an “realistic” look. witch is not the case. i see 1001 things to point out if the goal is realism, but i see it as a middle age high detailed kinda style.

dont know what to call it… another exsample would be this:


they are going for a realistic/anime style.

Mix of terminology here. Compositing is not the same as composition.

what do you call it when ur “composition’ing” then?

Composing.

If the cliffs would slant away from the subject, it would make for some nice guiding lines, drawing the attention of the viewer in.

Hi, nice start!

I have to disagree with finalbarrage here, I don’t think you’re done.

What can be improved? Everything.
Some of the things that stick out to me the most:

  1. The snow on the rocks looks almost “frothy” like from a drink or something.
  2. The transitions between snow and rock aren’t very realistic. The edges shouldn’t be so sharp and there should be more build up on the right side.
  3. It looks like your light is white? Never do this, you won’t find a single light in real life that is white. The only time that you might be able to get away with it is product visualization, or showing off some models of yours.
  4. Snow material looks off, not sure exactly what it is, but it’s off (SSS?)
  5. Motion blur on the snow is too harsh, it looks like you basically have completely sharp “rods” flying through the air
  6. The shovel and rock on the right hand side are a bit distracting because of the coloring. They are basically the only saturated objects in the scene so they distract from the subject which is the character.

One more thing, not as much a critique as a suggestion, take a look at this article by Gleb Alexandrov, try to apply what you learn from there, and consider using cycles volumetrics depending on your hardware.

Hopefully that was somewhat helpful.