Lights, camera, blender (?)

[Kyriakos]

Made with blender 3d modeler, to allow for the bad pun.

Not sure if in the current setting the water (and even parts of the sky) are visible... Thoughts? Particularly on lighting and colours, and if it shows up in your screen setting as way too dark.

 

[Berzerker]

too dark, but the moon looks kinda cool

 

[Silurian]

The white tower looks good.

The sky is mostly black, I assume the lights are faint lights in buildings not stars!!

The pond looks like the water is 4m below the figure or is that the bottom.

Hope this helps.

 

[Kyriakos]

Well... they are stars, actually (blue stars :/ ). Water is around 4 meters below the promenade wall in reality too

Lighting is hard...

 

[Silurian]

I like the tree on the left is silhouetted but the trees behind the lights are green.

 

[Arakhor]

I didn't even notice the stars until they were mentioned, as they're dark blue on black. Perhaps give them a pale silvery wash instead?

 

[Ryika]

Back in 2005 or so, I used to be a member of a forum where one person would post an image they created, and then everybody else would take that image, do random stuff with it in photoshop in an attempt to make it look better and then we'd all talk about how great we were as artists because we could copy-paste stolen textures into a collage and make it look worse than the original.

Didn't work very well back then, doesn't work very well now, but in memoriam of times long lost, here's my version.

Spoiler :

On a more... helpful note... yeah, it's too dark, and I think the water needs some reflective light, or else it just looks like a sinkhole (although I'm not sure how possible that is to do in Blender). And the moon (or earth in the sky?) needs to be... uhm... I guess "shinier" is the word.

 

[Arakhor]

Well, knowing Kyriakos, this is probably a scene from a horror game, so you would expect it to be gloomy, but yes, the stars look better immediately.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I find the far-left street lamp annoying. It interferes with looking at the castle (tower?).

 

[Kyriakos]

Back in 2005 or so, I used to be a member of a forum where one person would post an image they created, and then everybody else would take that image, do random stuff with it in photoshop in an attempt to make it look better and then we'd all talk about how great we were as artists because we could copy-paste stolen textures into a collage and make it look worse than the original.

Didn't work very well back then, doesn't work very well now, but in memoriam of times long lost, here's my version.

Spoiler :

View attachment 471223

On a more... helpful note... yeah, it's too dark, and I think the water needs some reflective light, or else it just looks like a sinkhole (although I'm not sure how possible that is to do in Blender). And the moon (or earth in the sky?) needs to be... uhm... I guess "shinier" is the word.

Nice! (i may use some of that for the sky, or try to emulate the effect in gimp ^^ )

@Valka: it is a modeling of a local promenade, with the 'White Tower' monument:

I am decent with 3d modelling, but bad with lighting...

 

[Kyriakos]

Hm, better or worse?

 

[bernie14]

better, I like the more blue hue on the background, but the street lights should not be shining that hue

 

[Synobun]

I agree with @bernie14. Right now the street lights look more like bug zappers than actual lights.

 

[Arakhor]

The new LED lampposts outside are white (lemonade?), but they're also not circular, as the point is to angle the light downwards and minimise light population.

 

[Kyriakos]

Hm.... now?

 

[Synobun]

After dwelling on it for a bit, I've realized that it's not necessarily the colour of the lights that's off-putting for me, it's the lack of glare surrounding them. The space around each light is unchanged, giving it the 'zapper' appearance and less of a 'street light' appearance.

I'm not an artist, however, so I don't know of a tasteful way of addressing that (or if it even matters in the long run). It could be a detail that ruins the aesthetic you're going for.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

I am decent with 3d modelling, but bad with lighting...

You should look for some nice tutos on lighting then. Lighting is the 80%, the best models and textures worth nothing without proper lighting. Has blender renderer a raytracing mode?

 

[Kyriakos]

After dwelling on it for a bit, I've realized that it's not necessarily the colour of the lights that's off-putting for me, it's the lack of glare surrounding them. The space around each light is unchanged, giving it the 'zapper' appearance and less of a 'street light' appearance.

I'm not an artist, however, so I don't know of a tasteful way of addressing that (or if it even matters in the long run). It could be a detail that ruins the aesthetic you're going for.

Like this?

You should look for some nice tutos on lighting then. Lighting is the 80%, the best models and textures worth nothing without proper lighting. Has blender renderer a raytracing mode?

I suppose it has, or at least there would be a plugin. I will check some tutorials on lighting

 

[Synobun]

Like this?

Yes! Now they look like, well, lights. Much better.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

Like this?

I suppose it has, or at least there would be a plugin. I will check some tutorials on lighting

I think there is a Maxwell renderer plugin or something like that. If it comes any close to the comercial software it can do all the lighting for you at a photorealistic level, it is pretty easy too to use too.