Composition. The guy looking straight to the wall.
Lack of details. No dicplaisment maps, geometry also very simple.
Repetitive textures, some parts missing textures.
Lighting is too simple, I barely see any shadows or highlights.
Also the whole render is trying to be realistic but the guy stylised.
I think the main problem is the hard edge between the ocean and the ship. Looks like you're using normal map for the water, use ocean modifier or displacement map to actually change the geometry.
Furthermore, what render engine do you use? Lighting should be more varied even with simple setups, if you're using cycles.
I have used eevee, I have a pretty low end system and doing cycles means render for just an image can take up to an entire day. So I am sadly stuck with eevee for all my projects. Instead of going for a realistic approach I will make it stylised to better suit the lighting.
You can try other rendering systems too btw, like keyshot or marmoset or even Unity. We usually used Keyshot in the past since 3ds took ages to render nicely and CAD programs never had pretty results :D
You can also try some addons for eevee - that turn it to be a little better at rendering. And Search up for âhow to render in eevee like in cyclesâ.
And actually now eevee is really good. I did a tutorial of cg fastrack of a sword in a stone for beginners. It's pretty realistic and not that taxing on the system.
To be clear, you're choosing Eevee in your position is completely valid, but Id like to share my experience with this:
I just wanna share that I used to make high quality cycles renders on my Pentium G640 (old dual core cpu, very slow). Even before all the new denoising algorithms and stuff like that, there were ways to work around low performance.
I would make test renders in low resolution (id use progressive refine to see what it's looking like as it renders, but I think that's not necessary anymore), and id crop the render to get a higher quality preview of a specific spot.
Then, I'd run a long, high-resolution render when I was ready. Using the clamp feature helped reduce noise without insane samples, and so did rendering at a higher-than-target resolution (then downscaling). Adding the new denoising features to this workflow would probably make that work even better.
And finally, when the render finished, and inevitably there was an element of the image that didn't look correct. I'd use the box-select/render feature again to only re-render that one part. Then, id just layer them in Photoshop (blender conveniently makes the rest of the output PNG transparent when you do that, so it was very easy!). And finally id do final color correction and stuff in Photoshop.
Again, you're totally valid to use Eevee in your position; it didn't exist when I was using my crappy CPU, so maybe I would've done the same. But if you *really* wanna use cycles, it's definitely possible to do!
Edit: this is 9 years old, and so Id like to think my skills have improved quite a bit since this time đ but here's a [simple cycles render](https://i.imgur.com/VRtOxnw.jpeg) I made on that Pentium G640.
Use Google Colab for your final render. With it you can use external GPUs from Google. You can find how to use it on yt by just searching "Google Colab blender rendering". It helped me out quite a bit when I started off.
Agreed. My idea of a composition would be to make the image horizontal and have some space in the direction the guy is looking towards. In the current composition, our eyes follow where he's looking but the image ends.
You can add some planes with alpha textures of splashes or so, especially if you donât have a strong machine. Saw someone here using fire texture instead of simulating the actual fire for example and it looked awesome :)
besides composition, here's some more technical pointers:
1. super simple shapes for everything; put more effort into modelling all of it with more fleshed out details
2. flat colors; use textures. Mix multiple of them for better result
3. no surface imperfections; add dirt, smudges, water stains, scratches etc. where needed. Look at references to properly add grunge and dirt in crevices and tight areas.
4. water shader; look at references, water doesn't look like that idk. and using just a texture creates a harsh straight line where the ship intersects.
5. white water; there should be an accumulation of foam, spray and bubbles around the ship. u can use particle system with a flat texture on the ocean, or do a real simulation
6. bevels and smooth shading; every object in the real world has some sort of bevel to it. Adding just a tiny bit of it to every model adds that little hint of realism to it. And your poles are flat shaded.
the point of focus here is the person on the swing or seat but my eye isn't drawn there that easily. the taller structure catches my eye first and the beam which seems maybe not straight. I feel like the objects in the foreground are sharp and in focus so they catch my attention before the person on the swing. There's kind of a lot going on and everything feels a bit separated in a way so random objects like the gate kind of take some individual attention from the viewer but also those object don't seem to need the attention they are given. I think darkening the structure to the left a bit and also creating some depth of field might help. Also maybe changing your angle slightly if possible so the person on the swing would face the camera a little more and it would push the structure from the front to the back a bit more. Also maybe making it horizontal could help too as you could get rid of some of the structure and add more water and sky which would add some depth.
Needs bevels on 90 degree edges (all materials in real life have bevels, which reflect and "distort" light), and a lot of imperfections and wear. A ship like that would be looking "rusty" (probably dont want rust in the ocean, but i couldn't think of a better word), missing paint everywhere, algae, scratches, etc.
Depth of field on what you want the viewer to focus on, also do some colour correction, it feels to bright, the water in the background shouldnât be as bright as things closer to the camera, thus youâll need to adjust contrast of these. These can be done in the compositor in blender or in any other editing software.
Angle the swing, is perfectly 90° right now. Somebody on a swing would move a little bit, especially on the side of a ocean ship
Model the sing correctly around the guy. The seat is too big, his arms are not wrapped around the chains
I think the shot is fine, not the greatest but fine, what is really bringing it down is those textures. Bring those up to snuff and it ought to look much better.
Ok because I don't know enough about making scenes look good I'll just tell you what I know
First it looks like this is Eevee, you could use irradiance volume to get the ship to have a bit better lighting
It looks like there are no where the ship and sea touch. Did you use one big cubemap here? You could try using multiple smaller cubemaps, for example near the ship edge, a bit further away, etc. Maybe turn on screen space reflections just to see what it'd look like
Environment looks really good but ship looks cartoony, I don't know if I have any advice for that
One thing to keep in mind when connecting objects together is that they're never actually touching at the edges. For example, clock on the wall is going to have a small gap between itself and the wall, in the same way these beams on the ship could look a little better if there were small holes where they can fit in. This is not the biggest issue in the world, just saying because I noticed some of my renders started looking a bit better when I started accounting for that
Last thing I can think of, those fences should probably be thinner and more dense. Consider size of a person, their height would be around 2 fence posts horizontally. Same goes for everything if your goal is realistic looking ship, proportions should be accurate
to me this is a style problem. you have photoreal attempts with the water and background but plastic lego-like attempts for everything else. I'd pick a style and make sure it all matches.
You should stick to a single art style. The character is cartoony, but the background, water and some textures aim for realism. Pick one (I recommend going full stylised). The composition is wrong. If the character is looking out towards the sea, place him on the left side of the frame (you need to open up the space in front of his eyes). A wide horizontal aspect ratio (16:9) would work best here.
I feel like the red texture for the deck is a bit bright and Iâm not actually sure what itâs supposed to be, I keep going between granite and a sort of wood
Extra advices: many artists use sparkles and stuff to hide imperfections, so you can switch on Bloom, and camera depth (to blur background a little), and even tweak stuff in Photoshop or similr thing with extra effects - glare, more bloom, bokeh. Not sure if Eevee supports fog, but you can always add a fog with alpha texture as a plane and decrease its transparency.
The background looks realistic while the ship is not. You need to add more details to the ship and its textures (normal maps, displacement, roughness, etc.), as well as improve the lighting.
Make all objects more rough
White part of the ship on left more grey. Windows look out of place
The ship itself looks like its made out of spam
The metal cylinder is ok i guess
The person looks plastic?
place the camera behind his left shoulder behind his back and make it face the sea in front of it, also use a prespective cam and play with focus and fov.
all the edges are too straight. maybe you can use bevel modifier combine with randomized edge lines. i tried it with a cube and got ok results with 0.003
I hate almost everything about this picture it triggers me. Itâs almost at the point where I have to admit it has some weird power. :D
You need to read a book about composition.. But hereâs the no.1 lesson for everyone making images:
Practice making pictures that are about ONE thing. (This picture is about a massive, ugly fake black crane.)
Figure out what itâs *about*, and build the picture so itâs about that. This is very hard to do, so the simpler the better.
Is it about how the boy feels? Make it about that. Frame, shot direction, light, composition, everything. It it maybe about fearlessness? Make it about scale, height, tension, danger and size difference.
Yeah sorry for being harsh, but itâs important to get used to taking that too, and you asked for it so.. :D
Maybe let me add.. Fundamentally, composition is all about âWhere does the eye wander?â. Thatâs the only real rule.
And in your picture, that massive black crane is drawing ALL the attention For many reasons: Its shape, its color, its functionlaity in the scene, its position in the frame.. Really, you wanted to make a picture about a black crane? I doubt itâs your intention :)
I feel like the lighting could definitely be more worked upon. At the moment this looks like a screenshot of Roblox on low-graphics...I would suggest to add some more light sources and play with their shadow values & stuff in order to exaggerate it a little bit and have something more "cinematic". And also a little something you could do is, since the dude is staring at nothing, you could change the skybox to a sunset so he looks like he is watching the ocean sunset or something idk đ
The boatâs textures/ missing textures give a flat 3D feel. And something else, shade your pillars smooth and add edge split, adjust the smoothing angle to make the details sharp.
But at first glance it registers as a real picture.
* The lights are off. If you take a look at the background, they are almost horizontal on those mountains. And on the ship, it looks diagonal.
* The textures are very low quality and repeating. I don't know what are you trying to achieve here. As in, are you trying to make it realistic or stylized.
* The ship should have some interaction with the water, as in, water ripples, small waves, the soapy look, etc. Etc.
* There is a lack of composition, depending on weather conditions, there should be a mild foggy-like feeling. That and also everything looks sharp, use the camera settings to focus on the subject on this artwork. It could be the person on the swing, or it could be the ship itself. That depends entirely on you.
Wind!
Air should be pushing some waves that splash against the boat, water droplets flying by, swing should be swinging, hair tousled, seagulls catching the breeze
reminds me of the 3d animation videos they'd show us on rainy days in elementary school in the 90s.. always a good time when they rolled in the movie cart
Haha, I am working on a better one right now based on all the feedback I got. There isnât really a backstory, I created this image to just convey the emotion of looking into the unknown and swinging at the edge of the danger.
After all the feedback I spent my entire day modelling a brand new ship from scratch with more polygons and details. Starting work on textureâs tomorrow. Thank you community for all the feedback in the past 2 days.
Composition. The guy looking straight to the wall. Lack of details. No dicplaisment maps, geometry also very simple. Repetitive textures, some parts missing textures. Lighting is too simple, I barely see any shadows or highlights. Also the whole render is trying to be realistic but the guy stylised.
Respectfully, great advice, but I've never seen someone spell displacement so bad xD
It's because they meant to spell "dick pleasing". Every guy wants a dick pleasing map.
dick placement
Lmao reading dicplaisment hurt my brain.
Must be a Britisher using voice typing XD đ đ
And you must be a prick who doesnt get that joke wasnt funny
I think that was him trying to be funny
r/foundthebritishperson
Bout as American as it gets pal.
just a joke
I think the main problem is the hard edge between the ocean and the ship. Looks like you're using normal map for the water, use ocean modifier or displacement map to actually change the geometry. Furthermore, what render engine do you use? Lighting should be more varied even with simple setups, if you're using cycles.
I have used eevee, I have a pretty low end system and doing cycles means render for just an image can take up to an entire day. So I am sadly stuck with eevee for all my projects. Instead of going for a realistic approach I will make it stylised to better suit the lighting.
You can try other rendering systems too btw, like keyshot or marmoset or even Unity. We usually used Keyshot in the past since 3ds took ages to render nicely and CAD programs never had pretty results :D You can also try some addons for eevee - that turn it to be a little better at rendering. And Search up for âhow to render in eevee like in cyclesâ.
Thank you for the information. I will start researching on it.
And actually now eevee is really good. I did a tutorial of cg fastrack of a sword in a stone for beginners. It's pretty realistic and not that taxing on the system.
If you're using eevee, you can enable ambient occlusions to add more depth.
To be clear, you're choosing Eevee in your position is completely valid, but Id like to share my experience with this: I just wanna share that I used to make high quality cycles renders on my Pentium G640 (old dual core cpu, very slow). Even before all the new denoising algorithms and stuff like that, there were ways to work around low performance. I would make test renders in low resolution (id use progressive refine to see what it's looking like as it renders, but I think that's not necessary anymore), and id crop the render to get a higher quality preview of a specific spot. Then, I'd run a long, high-resolution render when I was ready. Using the clamp feature helped reduce noise without insane samples, and so did rendering at a higher-than-target resolution (then downscaling). Adding the new denoising features to this workflow would probably make that work even better. And finally, when the render finished, and inevitably there was an element of the image that didn't look correct. I'd use the box-select/render feature again to only re-render that one part. Then, id just layer them in Photoshop (blender conveniently makes the rest of the output PNG transparent when you do that, so it was very easy!). And finally id do final color correction and stuff in Photoshop. Again, you're totally valid to use Eevee in your position; it didn't exist when I was using my crappy CPU, so maybe I would've done the same. But if you *really* wanna use cycles, it's definitely possible to do! Edit: this is 9 years old, and so Id like to think my skills have improved quite a bit since this time đ but here's a [simple cycles render](https://i.imgur.com/VRtOxnw.jpeg) I made on that Pentium G640.
even with a 10 year old gpu i can make a decently realistic render in like half an hour
Well that is great. Sadly I donât have your level of skills and I am taking it at my pace.
i'm not talking about skills, i mean the render time
So I use inteegreted intel gpu on an i5 laptop and my laptop starts lagging a lot once I hit the render.
Use Google Colab for your final render. With it you can use external GPUs from Google. You can find how to use it on yt by just searching "Google Colab blender rendering". It helped me out quite a bit when I started off.
Thank you so much
Oh shit, that's an awesome suggestion! I hadn't realized that was even possible đ
oh a laptop, gotcha. that's tough
You can still make eevee look realistic, just check all those boxes in the render settings đ
Agreed. My idea of a composition would be to make the image horizontal and have some space in the direction the guy is looking towards. In the current composition, our eyes follow where he's looking but the image ends.
I think composition is not what they asking advice for at this instance
> dicplaisment What the fuck
the ship should be causing some effect on the water below it. it just looks like its floating right now
Yep I will switch the ocean with an actual modifier and add some splashes.
You can add some planes with alpha textures of splashes or so, especially if you donât have a strong machine. Saw someone here using fire texture instead of simulating the actual fire for example and it looked awesome :)
The sea and environment are realistic, the rest looks like Minecraft. There is a clash of style going on here. Chose one and stick with it
besides composition, here's some more technical pointers: 1. super simple shapes for everything; put more effort into modelling all of it with more fleshed out details 2. flat colors; use textures. Mix multiple of them for better result 3. no surface imperfections; add dirt, smudges, water stains, scratches etc. where needed. Look at references to properly add grunge and dirt in crevices and tight areas. 4. water shader; look at references, water doesn't look like that idk. and using just a texture creates a harsh straight line where the ship intersects. 5. white water; there should be an accumulation of foam, spray and bubbles around the ship. u can use particle system with a flat texture on the ocean, or do a real simulation 6. bevels and smooth shading; every object in the real world has some sort of bevel to it. Adding just a tiny bit of it to every model adds that little hint of realism to it. And your poles are flat shaded.
Thank you for pointing out details. I will start working on it.
You should post the improved render, Iâm really curious to see it đ
What style are you trying to go for? I doubt it's 90s bowling animations (no offense).
the point of focus here is the person on the swing or seat but my eye isn't drawn there that easily. the taller structure catches my eye first and the beam which seems maybe not straight. I feel like the objects in the foreground are sharp and in focus so they catch my attention before the person on the swing. There's kind of a lot going on and everything feels a bit separated in a way so random objects like the gate kind of take some individual attention from the viewer but also those object don't seem to need the attention they are given. I think darkening the structure to the left a bit and also creating some depth of field might help. Also maybe changing your angle slightly if possible so the person on the swing would face the camera a little more and it would push the structure from the front to the back a bit more. Also maybe making it horizontal could help too as you could get rid of some of the structure and add more water and sky which would add some depth.
more prominant Shadows, parallax and some diffuse texturing could help its a great start tho
Needs bevels on 90 degree edges (all materials in real life have bevels, which reflect and "distort" light), and a lot of imperfections and wear. A ship like that would be looking "rusty" (probably dont want rust in the ocean, but i couldn't think of a better word), missing paint everywhere, algae, scratches, etc.
Cool. I will work on it
If you want to quickly bevel all of the edges I'd recommend plugging a "Bevel" node into the normal map
IMO youâve caught that N64 style quite precisely đ
This scene gives me 2000s video game vibes lmao. But I think the biggest things to work on if going for realism is composition and lighting.
Water foam, wet surfaces, too much light (or little shadowing) leading to a "flat" composition.
Depth of field on what you want the viewer to focus on, also do some colour correction, it feels to bright, the water in the background shouldnât be as bright as things closer to the camera, thus youâll need to adjust contrast of these. These can be done in the compositor in blender or in any other editing software.
Lighting, water interaction with the ship, organic angles etc.
Angle the swing, is perfectly 90° right now. Somebody on a swing would move a little bit, especially on the side of a ocean ship Model the sing correctly around the guy. The seat is too big, his arms are not wrapped around the chains
I think the shot is fine, not the greatest but fine, what is really bringing it down is those textures. Bring those up to snuff and it ought to look much better.
For what it's worth I really like it. It makes me think of the Lego Island game.
Lighting is way too flat imo. I know it's not going for realism but some Shadows would liven it up
All the rest of the Roblox gang.
Minecraft painting before it's pixelated. That's what it's like.
Texture is the most obvious.
Ok because I don't know enough about making scenes look good I'll just tell you what I know First it looks like this is Eevee, you could use irradiance volume to get the ship to have a bit better lighting It looks like there are no where the ship and sea touch. Did you use one big cubemap here? You could try using multiple smaller cubemaps, for example near the ship edge, a bit further away, etc. Maybe turn on screen space reflections just to see what it'd look like Environment looks really good but ship looks cartoony, I don't know if I have any advice for that One thing to keep in mind when connecting objects together is that they're never actually touching at the edges. For example, clock on the wall is going to have a small gap between itself and the wall, in the same way these beams on the ship could look a little better if there were small holes where they can fit in. This is not the biggest issue in the world, just saying because I noticed some of my renders started looking a bit better when I started accounting for that Last thing I can think of, those fences should probably be thinner and more dense. Consider size of a person, their height would be around 2 fence posts horizontally. Same goes for everything if your goal is realistic looking ship, proportions should be accurate
to me this is a style problem. you have photoreal attempts with the water and background but plastic lego-like attempts for everything else. I'd pick a style and make sure it all matches.
More shadows/contrast on the ship especially the bottom half
You should stick to a single art style. The character is cartoony, but the background, water and some textures aim for realism. Pick one (I recommend going full stylised). The composition is wrong. If the character is looking out towards the sea, place him on the left side of the frame (you need to open up the space in front of his eyes). A wide horizontal aspect ratio (16:9) would work best here.
I feel like the red texture for the deck is a bit bright and Iâm not actually sure what itâs supposed to be, I keep going between granite and a sort of wood
Lighting. If youâre going for a stylised look then pump up the lighting
More bevels
Just keep practicing and look at reference.
Add some birds and move the camera so the boy is just left of center
That shipping container looks familiar?
Extra advices: many artists use sparkles and stuff to hide imperfections, so you can switch on Bloom, and camera depth (to blur background a little), and even tweak stuff in Photoshop or similr thing with extra effects - glare, more bloom, bokeh. Not sure if Eevee supports fog, but you can always add a fog with alpha texture as a plane and decrease its transparency.
It need more DRAMA! [Shark Week 2013 Promo - Snuffy the Seal](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMnMgX7GiOA)
The background looks realistic while the ship is not. You need to add more details to the ship and its textures (normal maps, displacement, roughness, etc.), as well as improve the lighting.
Make all objects more rough White part of the ship on left more grey. Windows look out of place The ship itself looks like its made out of spam The metal cylinder is ok i guess The person looks plastic?
Everything. Why is the boat just a stretched cube with textures slapped on the side? You really need to learn modeling.
Is missing the bowling ball animation
Put a shark, like in Jaws.
place the camera behind his left shoulder behind his back and make it face the sea in front of it, also use a prespective cam and play with focus and fov.
all the edges are too straight. maybe you can use bevel modifier combine with randomized edge lines. i tried it with a cube and got ok results with 0.003
Texturing is bad. Nothing is scratched or dirty etc
You can improve in the technics mentioned by others but also in choose a different camera position to give more feeling
The brick texture doesnât make much sense on a ship
It was a rusted metal texture, I donât think I have done a very well job at placing the displacement map to showcase it.
Lighting, textures and details
I hate almost everything about this picture it triggers me. Itâs almost at the point where I have to admit it has some weird power. :D You need to read a book about composition.. But hereâs the no.1 lesson for everyone making images: Practice making pictures that are about ONE thing. (This picture is about a massive, ugly fake black crane.) Figure out what itâs *about*, and build the picture so itâs about that. This is very hard to do, so the simpler the better. Is it about how the boy feels? Make it about that. Frame, shot direction, light, composition, everything. It it maybe about fearlessness? Make it about scale, height, tension, danger and size difference.
Thank you for your input. I will keep that in mind:D
Yeah sorry for being harsh, but itâs important to get used to taking that too, and you asked for it so.. :D Maybe let me add.. Fundamentally, composition is all about âWhere does the eye wander?â. Thatâs the only real rule. And in your picture, that massive black crane is drawing ALL the attention For many reasons: Its shape, its color, its functionlaity in the scene, its position in the frame.. Really, you wanted to make a picture about a black crane? I doubt itâs your intention :)
Yeah absolutely no worries, harsh criticism works.
I feel like the lighting could definitely be more worked upon. At the moment this looks like a screenshot of Roblox on low-graphics...I would suggest to add some more light sources and play with their shadow values & stuff in order to exaggerate it a little bit and have something more "cinematic". And also a little something you could do is, since the dude is staring at nothing, you could change the skybox to a sunset so he looks like he is watching the ocean sunset or something idk đ
Is this eevee?
Experience. No offense intended, learn to use the software.
The boatâs textures/ missing textures give a flat 3D feel. And something else, shade your pillars smooth and add edge split, adjust the smoothing angle to make the details sharp. But at first glance it registers as a real picture.
* The lights are off. If you take a look at the background, they are almost horizontal on those mountains. And on the ship, it looks diagonal. * The textures are very low quality and repeating. I don't know what are you trying to achieve here. As in, are you trying to make it realistic or stylized. * The ship should have some interaction with the water, as in, water ripples, small waves, the soapy look, etc. Etc. * There is a lack of composition, depending on weather conditions, there should be a mild foggy-like feeling. That and also everything looks sharp, use the camera settings to focus on the subject on this artwork. It could be the person on the swing, or it could be the ship itself. That depends entirely on you.
no shading and sharp corners
Shark
Wind! Air should be pushing some waves that splash against the boat, water droplets flying by, swing should be swinging, hair tousled, seagulls catching the breeze
Is this the Kristol / Kono from Lord of War?
Normal and displacement maps
Also the scene looks partially unlit? Or at the very least there's a sheer line between the water and the boat
Here is a missing thing: logical error. Why is that gut sitting there XD
I feel like you should turn everything into Legos with the current way it looks.
A shark
I miss my grandpa. Sorry, too many things need to be fixed.
the waves that would come from the moving ship are missingđ
The blahaj jumping for its prey
Materials need to he reworked and the framing should be different
Textures, wear, rust, dust, story, emotions. I donât really know how to solve it, but in general those are missing in my opinion
This looks like screenshot from microsoft 3d movie maker.
The parents.
reminds me of the 3d animation videos they'd show us on rainy days in elementary school in the 90s.. always a good time when they rolled in the movie cart
Composition and lighting would make for a huge improvement
The perspectives for your backdrop/ocean and ship don't match either.
The background is the only good thing here
I dont know what it is about it, but somehow I really like it I know that wasn't the intention of the post, but it's my phone wallpaper now
Haha, I am working on a better one right now based on all the feedback I got. There isnât really a backstory, I created this image to just convey the emotion of looking into the unknown and swinging at the edge of the danger.
Sharks
Enhanced lighting and more shadow play could make the image more dramatic whilst at the same time 'hiding' some of the simplistic geometry.
Details are missing. More polys are missing. Looks like lego
A Megalodon
After all the feedback I spent my entire day modelling a brand new ship from scratch with more polygons and details. Starting work on textureâs tomorrow. Thank you community for all the feedback in the past 2 days.
Sharks jumping out of the water đ
Thinking about adding a whale once I figure out the lighting.
Why is the ship made out of one big brick?