Week 11- Finishing touches to my image of October

So far this image has come quite a long way; however at the start of the week I did feel it needed some more changes. Firstly I increased the intensity of the light in the background to draw the viewer’s eye to this section of the image as I want this to be the main focus point. However, I made sure not to make this part of the image too bright as I wanted the lights in the Diwali candles to be the brightest so these objects are not forgotten due to their size. By setting the candle light intensities to 1, the foreground light to 0.2 and the background light to 0.65 I feel I created the effect I was looking for.

Next I changed the material I used for the trunk of the tree as I felt the current one was too dominant in the scene due to the shade of brown. I found an image of bark on the internet which was a more suitable and applied it as a diffuse and bump map to get the uneven texture.

I made sure the maps were the same size and then set the bump output amount to 35. When I applied it to one of the trees and compared it to the original material I felt it was much more suitable and so applied it to all of the trees.

Lastly I made adjustments to the shape of the trees as in several cases the roots did not make contact with the ground while others were submerged. Instead of the roots being perpendicular to the trunk of the trees I changed the angle so each one sloped down into the ground slightly. This allowed all of the roots to be visible without the trees hovering above the ground.

I am pleased with the outcome of this image in general. The background of the scene has turned out well as the structure of the trees is quite realistic and the changes in the colour of the leaves are apparent. Also I am pleased with the lamps in the window as the shapes turned out well and the glow of the lights look effective. However, I do feel the material I used for the grass in the background does not work that well and if I had more time I would work on this.

I tried to base the theme of this image on the colours of red and orange and the feeling of warmth as these are the first thing which come to mind when I think of October. The two subjects I included in the scene which relate to October link to one or both of these themes, the subjects being autumn which link with the colours and Diwali which link to both.

Week 11- Finishing touches to my image of June

I am still not happy with the appearance of my image of June and feel certain areas need to be changed. I feel the main problem is sections in the background, mainly the trees. Due to this the trees were the first things I tried to improve.

I started by working on the lighter trees. I applied a blur to the material map to the value of 2.5 and changed the bump value to 18. It took quite a while to find this combination to be the best, but eventually I found this worked reasonably well. As this had improved the appearance slightly I used the same method on the darker trees.

Lastly as an attempt to improve this part of the image I applied mesh smooth in the modifier list to each tree to try to get rid of the edges which were created as a result of using the soft selection tool to modify the original shape. I feel this did help to some extent but I am still not completely happy with their appearance.

The last step I did to improve this image was to work on the grass on the plane. I increased the bump of the material map slight to 40 as I felt the slight increase would highlight the layers in the grass. I am really pleased with the way the grass turned out as the clarity of the detail is reduced over the distance and so gives the image a more realistic aspect.

Overall I feel several parts of the image went well while others did not. For example, I am really pleased with the material I created on the lake as this, along with the slightly rippled surface give a good suggestion of water. I was also quite pleased with the outcome of the heron, dragonfly and butterflies as I feel they look quite realistic. These parts do not jump out when the picture is viewed initially but are gradually noticed and so add to the scene. However, I am still slightly disappointed with the trees in the background as I am unable to get them to look how I had planned. If I had more time I would probably start these again.

In this image I wanted to create the feel of tranquillity as this is what I associate with the month of June. I feel I have created some tranquillity, especially as the colours which dominate the scene are blues and greens.

Week 11-Finishing Touches to my image for April

Currently I am reasonably happy with the appearance of my image of St George and the Dragon but feel it needs a few changes. From looking at my previous image I found that the lighting was too dark and too much of the subject was in shade. Due to this I moved the target spot light further to the left of the image.

I felt that the background to the scene looked slightly unfinished as the columns stopped randomly in the image. Due to this I increased the height of each of the columns so they reached the top of the image as though they were going up to support the ceiling. However, when I did this the size of the material maps on the columns also increased. I did feel that the blocks were slightly to large even before I did this as they were roughly the height of St George and so I reduced the size of the maps in the material editor.

At this point I was very pleased with the appearance of the columns, however I did feel the columns and flooring no longer worked together as they were no longer in proportion with one another. To solve this problem I then reduced the size of the material map I had used on this surface until I was happy with the size in relation to the rest of the image. At this point I was please with the background and so decided to go onto another part of the image.

When I re-looked at the zoomed out version of the image I was quite disappointed that the chainmail on George’s body was not visible as I worked hard on this. I edited the size of the material map to make the loops of the chainmail slightly larger but was careful not to make it too large in comparison to the rest of the armour.

The last step I felt was needed to complete the dragon was to add light to the flame coming out of the dragons mouth. For this I used an omni light with a rich orange colour of light and set the intensity to 0.5. I chose to use a slightly different colour for this flame than the torches in the background as I wanted to show this was a stronger and more intense flame. I was quite pleased with how this worked, especially how the light reflected on George’s helmet.

I am really pleased with the outcome of this image. I was able to create the atmosphere I wanted quite easily using some of the features of the software, such as the sphere gizmo to create the flame and the lighting affects. I am very happy with the appearance of the dragon, especially the shape and fierce look he has. I did have some problems completing this image, mainly when I tried to add some realistic materials, but feel I have overcome this with time.