beyond the portal

Latest update

Had a thought that maybe a more distorted perspective could work to get a more grand scale and narrative to it. Did a mockup to show what I was thinking


Aspect ratio changed to portrait. Narrative: a great path (bottom part) into space (top part). Could maybe change the cubes to something more majestic too, I don’t know, maybe some artistic pieces to show a path in a solar system or among planets, some great figures showing direction with a sword, roadsigns greatest hits.

The last one was a joke.

hey , ye thats a cool idea, more like a movie poster.

ill try that :slight_smile: thx

The second one does have a bigger sense of scale, however I do seem to notice your textures, models, etc. seem quite flat. Some bump/displacement mapping could be in order there. You may also feel like playing with the colour of the portal, and adding a glow effect to it. Also try adding some more background objects (floating rock/debris etc.) to add depth to your scene. I also feel that the stone texture on the stairs and portal is a bit lacklustre. Just some of my opinions, I feel this scene has great potential! I like that you can see the faint outline of what seems to be mountains through the portal, and the overall magical feel of the scene.

hey guys so ive done some changes… oh and also i did a render from a different angle and find it rather cool. BUT i know there is a lot of beuty flaws … :slight_smile: in this one.

so what do u guys think ?

here is a small update, will also upload the update on the other camera angle but need to render it now and well have to sleep :slight_smile:

okay did the render anyways. : )

The scene feels very static, because the composition that JA12 suggested to you is bad. I would avoid centered composition if you can.

Aim for something like this:


Camera angle from below and place it on diagonal.

You should also incorporate some story and action into it, maybe place 1 character close to the camera pointing into the portal and another character further away close to portal to show the scale of it.

The 1st character and portal should be the brightest elements on image, to draw main attention. You should tone down the background so it is not fighting for it.

Oh here we go again. I didn’t suggest switching to centered composition so this is more like “I am very keen to critique other people’s critique with my misconceptions about composition without reading and understanding what the critique is about first, then tell them to stop spamming the forum when they don’t agree instead of typing ‘composition focal point’ in Google search to educate myself, yet continue doing that myself” type of thing.

If you have ideas, share them. If you think of other ways to help, then help. But cut the crap will you.

The composition was centered, I kept it centered. Centered composition is often seen in posters, covers, character showcase and the suggestion was towards those. The idea was sufficiently expressed because

Yes, it’s static. Those tend to be like that


Hey guys thx for the comments ( even thou the last two wasent about my latest renders ! :wink: ) but i do feel i have to agree with JA12 here since in my comment to his comment was " ah like a movie poster" and well there is the center position very common . then ofc if I´m not going for that kind of pic then ye it probly shouldent be that centerd.

But I am a sponge to ideas , and i will try out both the centered and the idea of making it lite "off"centered with a guy in the pic. im thinking perhaps he has a staff and pointing on the portal wich has the text “salus ultra” = salvation lies beond. and the view is from the side…

BUT i have added a lot of new stuff in the pic and would love some comments on thoose things aswell …

But guys i am thankful that u are giving your time to help me and i will try to take them to my heart and make something good. I want to go on the top row soooo bad : ) cheers

@rybergs

If you really want centered single vanishing point composition you will have to make great changes to make it work. The thing is your portal is rectangular and that aligns with the borders of image creating a sort of passepartout. If you’ll go portrait movie-poster format that will be very obvious. That’s why I suggested dynamic composition, but the call is ultimately on you.

@JA12

Don’t be defensive, you gave a bad suggestion which doesn’t help the piece. You also provided a mock-up with fundamental flaws. I don’t want rybergs to follow bad advise, that’s all.

As for the examples you provided:

  • Into darkness is about silhouette, without it it’s nothing.
  • Inception poster is example how not to make posters. Just bad color scheme, boring, and it’s about a agent in flooded city. I like the poster where there are inception letters in a city as a maze much more.
  • Battleship has strong leading lines to the focal point, which happens not to lead to center but to 1/3rds. This makes it work, though it’s still not the best poster ever.

Thing is the portal lacks any of this, so one option is to redo it completely to make it work or to change the composition to dynamic to make it work. I hope you now see it.

I know you don’t read and understand the posts you’re heavily critiquing, but do you even read your own comments?

I have already told you about the concept of using visuals to support the text part of commenting so you are giving unfounded critique, again. I would be very happy to see examples of visuals you have made to support your commenting and to know how long those took to prepare, and receive tips to make them faster. That would be constructive and I would gladly improve on that front.

Apparently not.


If you read what I have actually written and what I’ve shown, there isn’t many changes suggested. But you don’t read them that’s for sure. You just critiqued the part I agreed with you and then provided examples of the things that might make it work. So I guess my suggestion wasn’t that bad after all.

It’s A suggestion. Things need changing in either case. Non-centered composition is more appealing and versatile, and for that I would probably start with grounding the whole thing instead of having it float in space, showing that the place is on a much larger area. Depends on what the image is supposed to tell to the viewer.

hey guys so i have made some changes and thou i still have some stuff to do this is my progress… feel free to sugest improvments…

cheers


From top:
The portal is in the center. Would probably be better to push it more to the side.
The character gets lost in the background. Wherever he is, more separation between him and the background so that he can be seen. The light should interact with his clothing.

Would be nice to have some reason for the character to point at the portal, it’s not apparent why he’s doing that.

Or if you think bigger



Could do something like that. The environment below wouldn’t actually be very detailed since they’re far away. The character would be connected to the portal because the staff he’s holding glows alike, and has same/similar color. He’s opening the portal and the crowd below can begin to go through.

Hey JA12 okay , ill try that , probly not as big of a scene as the last one but will try to make the warlock have more magic to him and some other stuff. will for sure shift the center point … :slight_smile: ill be back … :smiley:

here is a new little render , messed up with the texture of the bottom of the bridge but saw it to late in the render… but otherwise a little update :slight_smile:

Latest update

Reminds me of assasins creed for some reason…

Hey fdfxd , hehe thx : ) well its not bad to be remined of an awsome game i guess :slight_smile: got any critics ? cheers

The gate effect looks great, but those fluted pillars don’t quite look right to me. Most such pillars are built out of stacks of marble, so you wouldn’t get that continuous flow of texture from top to bottom. Also, greek columns were built so they would be slightly smaller near the top, called entasis. Finally, the capitals should flare out a little so they aren’t the same size as the column.