Rick

This one has got it all - Terragen, Vue d'Sprit, Poser abnd Photoshop



A pair of F-18's check out a Boomer in an Arctic cove.

MsOz

The colors of the jets don't match/fit with the rest of the image. Between reflections and refractions, there's no way they would look that yellow/brown.
Also, the water looks way too fakey. The "ice" floes look like stripes, and the "shoreline" is far too obvious. Such are the limitations of computer generated landscapes...They are okay as a compositional element, but very artificial when used as a main focus by themselves.

Rick

Good comments MsOz, I'll try it again with a different light setup. [oops]

Rick

Here is a new version, I changed the camera angle, and the light source, moved the two F-18's around a little, and tried to blur the shoreline a bit. I think it works a little better. My only thought is in the size of the sub compared to the planes. The Boomer should may be be a little larger [confused]

Oh yea I changed the water texture and rendered the entire image in Vue so that the light would be consistant throughout. In the previous version I did the bg in Vue and the planes in poser so when I put them together in PS the lighting was different.

Rick

Here is another take on the same idea.

Welles

I like #2! The highlights on the jets and sub in the third don't image look right to my eye. If your light source is the moon, that is. Places which would be in shadow are highlighted. (Picky, picky... I know...sorry)

MsOz

The haze around the moon is inconsistent with the surrounding scattered clouds...it's one of those "weather doesn't do that" type of things. And the light sources facing the viewer with the tilt of the planes, and the moon in the background, while the sub's light refraction is so subdued, in spite of the dark shadow under the com tower fin, is also somewhat unbelievable.

Rick

The problem I had here was that if the light source came from the moon (which it obviously does) then the planes would be in shadow and almost invisable. [confused] So I opted for the light setup as is , knowing full well it was a little unrealistic

MsOz your comments are appreciated , but a suggestion for improvement as well might be better.

I like the second version better myself.

Welles

I sort of thought so. That was artistic license for a purpose. Striving for 'realism' only goes so far and then fails the image.

kiwi

Coming along ncely Rick [righton]


Water is pretty much a pain in the butt for everyone bud.Try this dont concentrate so much on the reflection and use a {image 2} darker blue or green for the water,but reduce some of the saturation so that you have a blue grey or green grey.The other thing is try your sky map in the colour channel,and mix it 50% of the blue grey or green grey.Next the bump on the water,if its to high pretty much all it will do is show that water has a procedural bump map on it,and also show the waves dont conform to normal shaping,or natural positioning,you can try spherical mapping here with some alpha in order to add more bump map with a differing angle,but most of all try and reduce any amount of mechanical {for lack of a better word} tiling of your maps etc. The other also is bump maps are really only good for small surface details which a camera wont see when it dollys in,but if you can try and model your geometry,like say landscape or large features unless you have micro poly displacement at your disposal,if you do use that.

The one thing in a cg scene which will nail it from the beginning is a tiled procedural fractal shader,they stick out like a sore thumb.If you still have to use one make sure its at a very large size to cope without tiling bud.


Look at photos of ice floes and mountains and get reference material bud,then try and reproduce what you see.


hth


Cheers

Stu.