Alley Scene

[posterus]

Hello all,

Here is a new scene I'm working on, an old worn alley. I plan on adding much more detail but I wanted some feedback on my progress...textures/lighting. Do the plants look ok? They are supposed to be vines but I may need to work on my method of painting them.
My goal is to have this submitted into the gallery at 3dtotal.com. I've submitted there before and keep getting rejected ....oh well.

comments welcome

regards,

--
Joe P.

[restoeboemi]

nice concept.
my crit:
1. the left wall texture is weird, especially with the bump
2. the bottom side of the balcony is too bright
3. maybe u could add displacement for the pavement texture, its look flat
and too blurry.

that's my 2 cent

[rodigus]

Hi Joe,

You have mainly texturing problems that screw your otherwise good image.
1. The door texture is way too big, maybe it's intentional but i don't feel it's helping the image. The deformation of the frame attracts to much attention to it.
2. Those steps would be very unconfortable to walk through, you can feel it in the image. Make a stone pavement instead and check the area where the textures meet the walls (there should be some rust/dark areas).
3. The plant at the end of the alley really bothers me, it attracts too much attention to my eye.
4. Play with the camera try to find a more interesting perspective (maybe something more vertical?)
5. Get rid of the glow for now, it doesn't add anything to the composition.
6. There's something wrong with the light distribution, I'm not really sure.
7. Overall, the image needs something interesting to see. Now feels claustrophobic.

The image is almost there, just correct the little things!

[flipside]

I think you're trying to create a sunny look, or not? I see you have some shadows, but the contrast between shadow/light area is too low. The sunny parts should be way brighter.

I agree on the other crits.

Especially the stones in the stairs, definately give them displacement.

I also think you could use some better GI settings, there's no detail in the solution right now.

regards,

flipside

[posterus]

thanks for the good suggestions, i'll work on them. i cant use displacement on the ground since i use the free version. i plan on just creating geometry for the walkway, hopefully that will solve it. as far as the lighting, my intention was for one of those cloudy, overcast days where the sky is a uniform white. i now notice that my shadows are too sharp. i'm using a single area light. area lights seem to work wierd with vray...i'll post my progress soon

thanks

--
Joe P.

[Fermi]

Hi Joe,

Much better than previous post, specially the pavements. Not there yet...

Now that heavy texturing yo are using, need more 3Dness, time to start adding Displacement maps :P

Fermí

[DaForce]

Nice image, although.....

The door material that you are using is the standard max wood material, basically it just looks bad, and it stands out like dogs balls. I would suggest going to a free texture site and getting your self a nice wood texture, or better yet, make it a big rusty metal door.

Also the windows are too boring, they need some more life in them, model some more details, and also put a plant on the ledge, maybe some old glasses or something.

The vine at the back appears to be floating off the wall, it needs some shadowing to stick it to the wall, unless of course its not a vince, and then why does it just stop at the top of the wall?

Also to suit the scene to really need to get rid of those brightly saturdated yellow window bars, or atleast change the color.

Also to fix the pavement you could go for a higher up shot looking down, then there would be less chance of blurring in the pavement texture.

Keep up the good work, its a really really great start.

[posterus]

Hers an update. I'm am still searching for a better paving material as well as the door. I reduced the bump on the walls and it helped alot. Also Fermi's suggestion of more "3dness" went dit alot too.
Now I'm basically just adding detail to the scene. I dont like how the paving meets the walls so I'm thinking about some weethered stone base might help seperate them.
Thanks for your suggestions

--
Joe P.