Elder Car in North Dekota

[arobbert]

While the most recent image looks a little less "CG" I like the emotion of the first image especially considering the subject. It feels more up lifting. I think there is a nice play between the fall theme and morning light that gives a sense of well being.

Where would you want to live at that time in your life? The darker moody place or the bright hopeful place?

[glorybound]

The actual site location dictated a lot of the lighting. I needed to get this corner of the building and I didn't want the sun behind the camera or behind the building. The only sun I could get about 45 degrees, over the shoulder on the front of the building, from the camera is morning. I guess I could take artistic license, but that could come back to bite us.

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

Humh

I think if I may... (dont kill me) u need to study photography and art to get it to look interesting... U got the technical skill but its kinda ending there, yea few bits are still missing, like :

Detail in grass
More complexity in road, so its not so perfect
More detail in house paint, some dirt at bottom and so on
a nois on ground, nothing is perfectly straight...
a little bit blurry trees here and there,
photographic noise or abstract
photographic flare or abstract
detail in window, curtains interior so on...

From artistic side maybe check out some photography of famous photographers see how they take pictures fight with light and so on

If I may, dont kill me again, heres how I see it...

[glorybound]

dont kill me

Not at all... I come here for the advise of people more talented and skilled than I am.

I would love to spent days and/or weeks on these, but they really are production renders with little to no budgets on tight deadlines. I don't have the luxury to spend a lot of time in post with destructive changes because things change really fast. I might have 2 days, from start to finish, and a dozen changes during the design process. I am sure your tweak on my image is good, but I don't think it would fly here.

Over the past 2 years I have learned everything I could about MAX, V-Ray, photography, and Photoshop. I think getting really good in post is a key to success.

As far as photography books, can you recommend any must reads? I do have a good sized library that I have assembled over the past several years. I read almost everything I get my hands on and would appreciate some suggestions.

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

Uh sorry mate, I don't read books.... Going self learn , as far as books go, maybe consider just downloading wallpapers packs with different images. They are quite inspiring and educating...

Take a look at Datacraft Sozaijiten library. They helped me a lot in my work...

As for tight deadlines... I learned that having a LOT of assets is great start...

For example 20 roads, 20 scattered leafs etc etc. Then u can quickly complicate your scene without wasting too much time...

Good Luck

[glorybound]

I animated the 2 images together...

[glorybound]

minor tweaks

[glorybound]

and, as suggested, some style!



I got a big "X" across this one from the architect... "destroys the perpose", he says. The architects here want all the colors to be the same on all parts of the image; they are very technical. They don't want shadows, reflection.., nothing. They would prefer South West isometrics of all images, but that is where I draw the line

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

Now I like it a lot more :P

Im pretty sure that when it comes to standard ads, people would prefer the ''oryginal'' version of it. But if u'd be ask to do it for a magazine or so I guess they would go for more stylish one. It all depends who u making the image for

btw is that image distortion or did u put more detail on floor? Like it... Maybe get a curve... slightly darken it, and for alpha use some noise map for grass? It should vary it slightly...

[Teriander]

Hey glorybound, nice job. Can I give some feedback? I think the elements in the foreground needs some improvements. For example the curb that is closes to the camera, you can see the edges where it should be smooth. You might want to increase the interpolation or subdivisions to make it better. Also the sidewalk looks way too clean. Unless they just laid the concrete down yesterday, I would at a better concrete texture or some type of noise to keep it from looking like it only has default gray material on it.

Grass and tress look really nice!

[glorybound]

btw is that image distortion or did u put more detail on floor?

I did a little Photoshop work on the pavement... thanks!

[glorybound]

You might want to increase the interpolation or subdivisions to make it better

Yes. I should have added more segments to the loft. I did do some post on the sidewalk, but it could use more.

[glorybound]

some more updates

[joconnell]

Looking a lot better alright. There's been a bit of a call for some more reflection on the roof - one thing that's bothering me is that you've got a very rich looking sky with plenty of gorgeous colour and this seems to be having no effect on the actual roof. Pretty much everything has some level of reflection to it and any reflective object is going to be tinted by the colours around it so with your roof I'd expect to see bluer tones on the shadow areas since it's getting most of its light from the sky and then warmer tones on the lit areas since it's being hit by the sun. In this case your roof is quite uniform, it doesn't seem to be tied into the sky in any way - it could be a case of the roof not having any reflective value or are you using one method to light the scene and then dropping in a different sky background afterwards? For example the cars and the windows seem to be getting a nice hit of sunlight so I'd "believe" them - they look like they're picking up the yellow tones you can see in the sun areas of your environment map. the roof doesn't to the same extent so I'm finding it a tiny bit jarring. Again I'm not sure if it's just a case of turning up the reflection on the roof or whether your lighting setup is done with something that has different colour values from the background picture you're comping against.

Admittedly it's not the same as doing an entire cg scene but one thing I do a lot in vfx when I'm trying to place a cg object into live action footage is to take a copy of the footage I'm comping the object into and use it in the reflection map slot of vray as a spherical map. While not technically accurate, if my object is shiny it'll reflect some of the footage and in turn pick up some of it's colour values which automatically ties it in to the footage I'm trying to place it in. The same trick should work nicely for you here!

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

Now that looks better and better mate ! Just that grass a bit perfect... try randomply desaturate/curve it with some random alpha mask to give it a bit more randomness... and maybe vary its height on bigger scale..

and maybe... just an idea put vraylight blue sphere on left side ti give some blue tint... or post it...