A lot of your ref is full of vibrant color and great tonal range, which isn't coming through in your shots at all. I'm thinking that the light is washing everything out, and you could use more contrast in everything from the plants to the groundwork. It's coming off as glaring bright and monotone when it should read as rich and interesting.

Originally Posted by Amadreaus

A lot of your ref is full of vibrant color and great tonal range, which isn't coming through in your shots at all. I'm thinking that the light is washing everything out, and you could use more contrast in everything from the plants to the groundwork. It's coming off as glaring bright and monotone when it should read as rich and interesting.

Yeah I'm going to try painting more variation into the grass texture and set up a material function that will change the hue based on the placement. There should be more range once I get some more foliage in there too.

I like this. Looks a lot like south-east New Mexico/ West Texas. More to the west texas side with the lack of variation in horizon. Still need far more variation on the vegetation, (SAGEBRUSH!) but you're working on that. Light level looks good, could even go brighter if you want. ;)


The grass is a good height though. Stuff gets thick.

That last shot is a better angle. Keep it. Some mountains on the left will look nice.

I've slowly been continuing to work on this over the last 2 months and thought I'd post up some new pictures. I'm planning to finish up the scene over the next few weeks and get started on something new.

sweet.. Move the post process out of the pink and more bright white yellow and you'll be really selling it.

looks really good but yes too much pink, could use some slightly darker dirtier browns on that road to mark out churned soil maybe, perhaps just a little more texture variation?

right now its way too red. it looks like you nudged your monitor cable and one of the color channel pins is lose. here is a quick adjustment of one of your older images to show how to maybe make it feel hot while retaining color and detail. also, look at the colors in breaking bad for awesome desert scenes like you mentioned and try to match those.

try indeed to get it a bit more vibrant, did a quick color correction myself

That is looking wonderful, Zipfinator - although I agree with the others about the scene looking a bit odd with the pink overtone.

I find that the colouring and lighting are the hardest part to get right in a scene, keep up the good work!

Agree with what the others have said, did a quick color correct myself, just to try out something different with it, not saying that it is any better, just a variation

The scene looks great Zipfinator, my only suggestion is the tree infront of the shack. It's too lush and thick for the season.

Might I suggest studying this (and More.) picture for some ideas on post processing and color variations in textures.

More. More.

Thanks for the comments rascals! I'll mess around with the color correction more and see what happens.

@Ged, I've been thinking of doing some more decals for the ground to get a bit more variation but there's so much foliage that I didn't think it'd be that noticeable. I'll work on the blending a bit more so that the grass and sand textures are a bit more interestingly spread out and maybe do a few more large decals for the more open areas.

@Pixel, that color correction reminds me a lot of Breaking Bad and the picture Xeno linked. I'll definitely try something like that.

@Mad, That's a nice color correction. I'll get a bit more contrast in there and mess with the lighting some more to get some deeper shadows.

@Xeno, thanks for them links. I like that first one a lot. That's more what I was planning when I started the scene but just started messing around on my own and landed on the red/pink post process. Also I agree about the tree. I'll remove some of the needles from the texture and that should help a lot.

What you have at the moment reminds me of this wallpaper I have:



I like the colours but like everyone else is saying, it's a tad flushed out.

Wow, this is coming out great! Can't wait to see the finalized version.

Nt nt nt.

Been working on the post processing more and redid the mountains to be more New Mexicoey and appear further away. I'm also nearly done with my matinee setup so I will have a nice video to render out when it's done.

Man I can just picture Walts campervan parked out in the middle of that.

Nice work!

lookin good

Looking very swish.
What you have done with the mountains is subtle but very effective.

Well after my winter break I finally finished this up over the last few days. There were a few other things I planned to do but I'd rather just move onto a new scene after messing around with this one for so long.











I'll post a few asset breakdowns and a video (If I can get UDK to stop being a dick) over the next few days most likely.

great job, love your scene

wow love it! . great colorgrading

you nailed it. Nice work. As the first image was loading I was like "oh he got new reference material" then I saw the cg-ness of it and smiled.

Its a bit hazy for NM, but it helps sell the brightness.

This looks amazing. I do want to see the sky some though, it's very overblown in some shots.