3D-Daz Feedback and Advice Sought

[DogzBallz]

This is a scene I am creating for a visual novel.

I am looking for some critical feedback for this render. I would like to increase the realism as it seems to crisp, though I am not sure how to do it, or where to look.

Any feedback or advice in relation to lighting, effects, composition or anything else I have missed would be greatly appreciated. I am currently changing the textures for the tracked robots, the APC and the ship in the background, as they are pretty obvious.

Cheers

 

[MissFortune]

You've already mentioned the ship and such's textures, so I'll leave that alone for the most part. The biggest problem with those are that they don't look like the materials/textures they're supposed to be. Metal looking like metal, sand looking like sand, etc. Your composition otherwise looks fine, maybe moving the sitting guy and the machine over to the right half of the screen so he's not sitting right in the middle (Basically

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).

The lighting here is what's taking away from the overall realism of the scene. It looks like the first thought here was "it's daytime, need to illuminate everything". Try angling the light from the south east side, and see what kind of shadows you can get from those huts/units. Shadows create mystery, dynamic in an image, and what's shown above would be considered something along the lines of 'light damage'. There's so much of it that everything more or less looks the same. Instead of an HDRI for a scene like this, something like a skydome (which is essentially an HDRI, just a little better for stuff like this) from

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and playing with the dome rotation(s) (even if the dome itself is turned off) might give a pretty good look as well.

I've used this for something else, and the context is different, but the general idea is the same:



Sunlight is coming from the top left corner (This is a spotlight, just to be clear, but would still somewhat apply to sun-sky and/or dome rotations with an HDRI/Skydome.). The angle it's at allows the surroundings to pick up shadows as it's not right above or right at the focus of the frame. Those dark and light spots create separation, and thus dynamics/interest. The variance in light strengths will inherently more depth and realism to it. Granted, this isn't an end, be all. I'm no expert at lighting, I'm drunk, and it's three in the morning here. I'm probably missing something, as well.

 

[DogzBallz]

Thank you very much for your feedback, I'll see what I can do with it and post the results tomorrow.

Go get some sleep, drink water first.