hey i just started this new environment and i wanted a critique from somebody just to see what they think and how i should continue doing this.

looks like a good start. keep it up.

Definitely a good start, but a bit too early for specific critiques to the work you're doing. It would be good if we could learn about your budgets (What range of triangles do you want to limit yourself to? What's the average texture size we'll be seeing? Etc)

Do you have any references? Whats your inspiration for this piece?

What's the art style you're shooting for?

With the scene coming together already, I would advice you start thinking of camera placement and overall scene composition. What's the focus of this scene? What's the story?

Think about the background, where the black space is in this picture. Surely it won't just be trees/cylinders?

wow that really resembles alot what I am working on

will it be a rendering or realtime engine ?,- because if rendering I´d say add more poly´s and details

thanx alot hmm.. i never thought about a budget.. but i do want the average texture size to be 1024x1024

i was thinking about a giant tree frog sitting on top of the fallen tree as the focal point.

im not sure what else i want to do yet, im just kinda putting things together as a go along.

here are some reference pictures that have inspired me:

wow, urs is great hjs. i just wanna keep it a rendering

another question, what should i do about the background?? do i create a dome for the sky?? how would i do that without making it look strange?

if you´ll make a rendering - > mental Ray and a skylight with Global Illumination. It will create a skymap automaticly (should be possible booth in max and maya)

for realtime,- perhaps a cube with flipped normals and a cube map

Really like your ref.
The fell tree seems very synthetic. Also it gets too narrow too fast. I'd put it more in the background as well so your foreground can be focused more on the small plants

I wouldn't worry about a skybox for this one. I'd just keep thickening up the brush and trees towards the background so that you don't have a need for it. As seen in your ref, visibility is not far enough to warrent much of a skybox.

Also, the way your camera is composed, it seems to be sitting high and looking down where as the ref has a camera sitting lower and looking slightly up. This makes the trees appear very tall and the brush super thick (because it's down in it). Something you should probably aim for in composition.

heres a more recent pic of wut i have


I just wanna know wut u guys think of it before i continue any further.
thanx, i really appreciate the advice and critiques

I love it! This had better get a 'magical' treatment to it.. I wanna feel like I'm not in Kansas anymore. Make sense?

I think its lookn good. skylight renders usually disquise most flaws, so its a bit of a cheatn if you want poly crits, ect ect. But for composition, it looks nice. The river seems to be more like a canyon than a river. most all rivers around my state slope into the water.

I really like your little layout you have going. I think the leaves could really use some curvature to them - think of the shape similar to half of a clam shell; that way the viewer won't be able to look straight down the leaf bunches to see that they're really just flat surfaces with alpha.

Its coming along very nicely. Cant wait to see more progress.

thanx u guys for the advice, ill keep working on the model quick question, wut do u guys think i should do with the sky? i was thinking about a skybox because i wanted the background scene to look similar to this:


ill keep posting, letting u kno where im at with the scene. thanx alot

Love the vibe you've got going so far, though I agree that the leafy planes could use some curvature. I'd like to see you push the wormseye view a little more. Put the camera closer to the ground so you can point it further upwards. More brush at ground level would be nice, too, and would help sell the forest environment better. Love those oversized shrooms.

As for the sky, I reckon you could get away with simply using heavy fog to near-white if you wanted to replicate the look of that ref photo.

Have you seen nausicaa of the valley of the wind? Some incredible fungal forests in that.

Nice work, I like the composition.

Nubi question. How did you lit the scene? Gi? 3point?

Originally Posted by {scumworks}

Nice work, I like the composition.
Nubi question. How did you lit the scene? Gi? 3point?

mental ray daylight system

@Tadao215: I´d perhaps change those crossed shapes for the leafes,- if you insist on the low polycount perhaps 3 planes instead of the 2 crossed, that way yet get the typical semetry away.

Originally Posted by renderhjs

mental ray daylight system

@Tadao215: I´d perhaps change those crossed shapes for the leafes,- if you insist on the low polycount perhaps 3 planes instead of the 2 crossed, that way yet get the typical semetry away.

Ah, ic. Thanks m8.

i tried adding fog just to c wut it would look like but it does something funny to my alphas:

have a look @
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=441407
its because of the logarithmic expore control and the daylight - in Max2009 it´s supposed to better handle such issues.
Also check that you use the alpha mask as specular mask so that the planes dont get shaded as a flat rectangular mesh but instead get filtered.

okay so i fixed the branches, added more curvature. now im just experimenting with adding some atmospheric perspective:


i added mist(lume) to the camera effects in the mental ray renderer and a fog effect in the environment.
it looks better but some of the alpha maps still look kinda funny.

renderhjs: i think i understood wut u said, using the alpha map for the spec map so that my planes dont get shaded, but i took out the daylight so i dont know why the alpha map is picking up shades where its not supposed to.. i probably have it all wrong lol.

im such a noob, if anyone knows can u plz explain this to me?? thanx all