Overlook

[OPEN_RANGE]

This house is at 7,500' in the semi arid SW. Ponderosa and scrub oak forested site. I am doing the back view also which will be a dusk time of day rendering. Comments, feedback, critique all welcome as always.

[glorybound]

Good job! For me, the camera is a little high. Also, your house is in the middle, which also is a bit off, compositionally speaking. I would show more sky, or more foreground, depending on which one is more important in the image. Other than that, technically it is good.

[damaggio]

Hi Mark,
I think you should be careful when placing your background, I can see that the horizon is very low for the camera position, you can use a 3dplane to see the correct horizon point in your scene. also the car glass is wrong and could be adjusted, the black frame around the glass should be black and pavement needs higher texture resolution, avoid using game level plants specially in the foreground , there's a lot of good plant models that you should add to your library and use realistic leaf shaders.
Composition could be better also since your image is split right in the middle.
Keep improving on the next one and best of luck.

[cheerioboy]

Tried a bit of what glorybound mentioned in a quick photoshop mock up. Cropped out a bit of the foreground and extended the sky so the home isn't center of the frame. Made some adjustments to the yellow/greens to be darker/cooler for less of a neon yellow/green vibe.

[OPEN_RANGE]

Thanks for your review Bobby. The camera height is due to the slope of the property/site. It is a hillside and the ground level at the camera position is @ 10'+ above the floor level of the house. I need to show a reasonable representation of the actual terrain and slope of the property.

I was thinking 100% of your previous comments regarding not centering the subject in the view and using the rule of thirds. I raised and lowered the camera target but it just felt like too much foreground or too much sky so...had to break the rule I guess. Long stretched out one story buildings can be tricky for composition, it would have been easier to achieve with a two story house. The image can be cropped and that would help achieve a more 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 arrangement. I prefer the 3:2 of a traditional photograph, but that's just me and I know many others prefer 16:9 (looks more "modern" is often cited). Possibly that would be best for this and I may show the client that option. This same reality may come into play on the back view where the view is from below. Might raise the camera above the ground level like shot with a pole or a drone.

Thanks again for your helpful comments and review!

[damaggio]

But the background still incorrect Mark.

[OPEN_RANGE]

Hi Dimaaggio and Brendan and thank you both for your helpful and constructive comments.

Regarding the horizon. I'm not sure what you are suggesting. The horizontal line you have overlayed is the camera horizon (verified by enabling show horizon in camera settings). Are you saying the sky backplate should be lowered?

I'll look at the issue with the car and try to improve it. It's a purchased model of a Tesla S.

Agree about the foreground shrubs and thanks for pointing that out.. I looked all over (time sink) for a good model of a scrub oak bush and could not find anything. The model is a young oak tree from Xfrog that I had in my library. Maybe I can find a texture to improve the leaves with. If anyone knows of a similar oak type high quality plant model please let me know!

The driveway material is a fairly simple noise that's supposed to mimic stained/colored and stamped concrete. Probably would benefit from tightening up the pattern/ reducing noise size and maybe increase bump a bit.

I like the adjustment to the yellow/greens and will incorporate that in my photoshop post. Even though it conforms to the rule of thirds the image with the added sky just has too much sky for me. IMHO - It becomes all about the sky.

Thanks again for your comments, I cannot overstate how helpful they are for me.

[DanSHP]

.................

[damaggio]

The background should be higher, Bobby also pointed that out , the mountains you have showing should be higher than my yellow line, the horizon is always at the height of the viewer at eye level, even when you are on a plane looking
to the horizon, or laying flat on the floor.
If you lock your camera in that shot, {look thru that camera}..create a flat plane and raise up until the plane becomes a thin line, that's the horizon line for that camera angle...the height of the viewer.
The driveway, is always better to use real textures and avoid as much as possible procedural textures done by computer, they tend to make the image even more CG which is so hard to break.
There are amazing PBR textures for free on the internet extremely photo realistic.
You can find all kinds of plants on Turbosquid and Evermotion that look great for architectural renders and the Xfrogs you have are very good as well, I use them all the time.
The property and render looks really good, just some minor tweaks to take it to a higher level.
Good luck.

https://www.artstation.com/damaggio

[OPEN_RANGE]

Thanks again for your helpful review and feedback. I attached a screen grab showing the vray camera "show horizon" enabled. It appears in the same location as creating a plane and raising it until it displays as a thin line per your suggestion above. Also attached is the image I'm using for the sky. It's a photo I took from up very high, 13,000', in the local mountains one day and it is not from the same location as the site. Probably 15 miles or more away as the bird flies. I do not want to show the mountains because they would not be seen from this locale. I'm not sure raising the background would put the horizon into a more "correct" position.

The client believes that only sky and trees would be seen in the background of this view. I'm not 100% certain of that, thee are some low distant foothill type ridges that might barely appear.However, I am unable/unwilling to drive 2.5 hours one way to verify that. Plus I don't want to take a currently winter time site photo and try to use that. So...

I'm fixing up the car and drive materials a bit. Trying to make the xfrog foreground bushes better and may crop the image. Also going to tone down the yellow/green with a camera filter in pshop. I will post an update soon and then get on to the next view.

Thanks again!

[damaggio]

Great Mark, there you have it, just raise the backplate higher, the mountains just passing a bit above the line.{ it would be better if it was lower though, the picture is from a hike, but that could still work, maybe the property is in a high elevation.}
There are dozens of high res mountains with sky on CGtextures or just advance search on Google over 2K should yield some great images.
If the client wants an artistic image that's fine, he's paying for it but for your website always post the correct image.

It's a good habit to shoot some of your own HDRs, even with an Iphone and some backplates to light the scene correctly, there are some great new apps now.

https://www.artstation.com/damaggio

[OPEN_RANGE]

Here is the other view. I used a PG hdri in a dome light to light this. The hdri came with a set of corresponding back plate .jpg's and I used one in post/photoshop for the sky. It's got a lot of noise because I rendered it at a few passes of progressive and low res because I knew it was going to be revised. I think/hope it provides an OK representation of composition, lighting, materials and etc. for review.

The client has some revision requests to go over with me tomorrow. I will be posting an update of the previous view and also of this view after I get the direction. In the meantime, any comments, critique and etc on this WIP will be much appreciated as always.

[OPEN_RANGE]

The client did not really have any changes except to add a bunch of trees to more accurately express the wooded nature of the surrounding area. The final images are below.

[damaggio]

Wow! These new ones look really nice mark, congrats on your work.

[OPEN_RANGE]

Thanks for your kind review and for your helpful comments previous. I incorporated your suggestions and that contributed to the overall success. Adding the tall background trees helped motivate me to raise the view point up.