The sun environment looks nice, very surreal, but perhaps if you want a more realistic environment (and faster render times), you should try a background color with blue-tinted fog (similar to your first reference picture on page 1).
I really like the last composition but I think you should show more of the main subject. I'd love to see a gnome but I'm a bit afraid it would take all viewers attention in the current shot.
Would be nice to see huge trees in the background, like in fairy tales
This would fit a very shadowy, covered skylight, and very bright sun glazing through treetops.
One technical note: looks like youre using pure white materials in youre scene. This will kill your rendertimes, especially in unbiased, so keep it under 220 gray. Should look more natural too.
Godzilla
I'm going more for the fairytale look: dramatic and dark, as if the house was in the deepest darkest part of the Black Forest where all sorts of unknown things roam. By the way, where are your updates? Your interior was looking amazing!
tolas
Materials hadn't been touched except for the water so I went back and changed all the pure whites that were converted from the imported model. Hopefully should help!
I want to work with the idea of the architecture as the background or stage for a scene. Arch viz tends to present the building much like a product shot, like a commodity up for display and I want to subvert that and show the architecture in the context of its site and a greater narrative. Showing a building for its own sake doesn't show much other than just the building itself. Not much more than concrete, wood and steel. I want to express more than just the building itself, to make it the grounds of a narrative that could possibly provoke more curiosity about the building itself: Why is this story happening where it is? What is this building/house that this narrative is centered around? Kind of like the house/home idea, a place would just be a physical location were it not for the emotional and narrative connotations that imbue it with meaning.
I'm definitely putting big shadows of trees behind the house! Wouldn't have it any other way! The shadowy, thick canopy with sunlight breaking through is exactly the feel I'm trying to get, just like a fairytale setting.
Alright. Progress. Bit the bullet and textured the exterior of the house. Nothing really special and no subtleties, just so it looks right from the distant angle that I've chosen. I'm thinking of leaving the bedroom volumes white/light grey just so they really pop in the sunlight. Still playing with the forest ceiling and how it breaks up the light...
Also, I've been tweaking the grass, at least so the yard looks a bit more alive. It's long, overgrown grass, and I'll probably throw in some flowers or taller weeds in the mix, we'll see. I don't want the lawn to take attention away from the other elements in the scene, but it could be cool...
Lighting and fog are on hold for now. It just takes way too long to do test renderings with that. Unless someone wants to lend/give me a better computer, I'll have to keep an eye on my settings and reserve a few days before the deadline for rendering. That or spend money on a render farm.
The bark in the foreground is starting to look more like bark, though it's a bit plain right now, I'll need to put some flowers/weeds/grass sprouting from the roots and maybe some vines curling around them.
Roooough rendering. Much has changed since then, but it's an update on the previous one...
Shitty thumbnail rendering, with noise in all its glory... The fog, pond water, glass, layers and layers of null/phong materials make for pretty slow rendering.
Issues:
- The wall. Yay? Nay? Different material? More crumbly? More rubble around it?
- Background trees, behind house. I need to put bigger, darker trees behind those ones to get some background layering. These ones are way too shiny, the result of a material fuck up.
- Foreground has changed a lot since this rendering. Wood is less shiny and there are way more plants. Fingers crossed for the next rendering...
Don't have much time to change tracks here, so I'm running with this one. Gotta squeeze in an interior rendering too, eh...
Wow. I'm loving how this is progressing, a very original concept, and the execution so far looks very nice.
Instead of leaving the right side of the house white, perhaps you could try a completely concrete house?
The render really does look like a painting, keep up the great work!
Thanks, Godzilla!
I like that idea, maybe just texture it as pale, aged concrete? Just to animate it a bit while keeping the lightness... The roof over the main living space needs a more distinct material. I'm hesitant to use concrete, as that may be a bit too much of the same as the other walls and such... Wood paneling came to mind, but that seems a bit impractical and may look too fragile. Metal paneling? Old rusty metal paneling? Possibly...
Update. With a liberal dose of post-pro, just for tone and coloring to see how I can start to bring some life into it.
Issues:
- Vines on roots. Too thick, makes the whole thing look like a jumbled mess. A bit clumsy. More refinement while keeping the chaotic feel.
- Background trees. Better, adding bigger trees behind those. Layering up the background for that fairy tale giant forest scene.
- Roots meeting the water. Right now they disappear too quickly. Maybe make the water a bit less murky? Since this idea is all about light and shadow and implied form, I want to show the roots under the water as they appear and disappear in the murkiness. Also ties in with...
- Bottom right. Like it, but I'm sticking some busted up branches down there to see if adding that would balance the roots. Right now the roots are the only super detailed part of the image and that isolates it.
- Big tree on right side towards house. Need brambles and bushes behind it, otherwise it's too clear and friendly and CG from there to the house. Maybe some bare bushes? Some broken pine trees? Need to check references.
- Color scheme. Kind of locked into this one because I want to push this painting/surreal feel. Like it, though I want to bring some more variation into it. Also want to bring back the saturation of the pond water from the previous update... That got lost in the murkiness.
- Characters + focus. A man standing on the platform by the swamp, in that sunlit area. A single colorful flower growing on the left, up on the roots among the green growth there. Hum dee hum hum.
- The wall needs some creepers or growth on it, otherwise it's too much apart from the rest of the mess. Nature devours everything eventually.
- Looked at the whole thing black and white. Not bad. Not that great either.
- Pond surface. Tried adding some scum via a plane with an alpha mapped texture. Didn't seem to work... Try again. When everything is in the water, I'm going to bake an AO pass onto the water surface, invert it and use it as a bump map along with a layered wavey texture so that the water surface looks like it's actually being penetrated by the grasses and roots.
- Roots are made with Blender's Tree From Curves script. Damn handy dandy, let's me form it how I want and you end up with a very simple and easy model to use. It ain't perfect, but I'm trying to cover up all the mishaps.
This entry of yours has sure become very interesting!!! I love the painterly look very much.
The last comment about more tone separation of foreground and background is in order for sure. The pond and background sky need their distinct dominant coloring and should not be the same IMHO. The image can transition from dirty green at the bottom into a hazy deep blue at the top perhaps?
I'm also not so sure about how you framed the image - Perhaps a wider image is in order... I feel i miss out on the story without seeing more of the forest behind.
Keep going... and can't wait too see how this place looks from inside the house!!!
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