yossam's contest ideas

[yossam]

It's a start..............

[Dune]

Definitely. I'd make it single track to start with, and/or perhaps blend the way the tracks are displaced down by a fractal (size 2/100/0.5 or so), so it's a bit more randomized. Just add the displacer of those tracks (inside the gravel road node, I believe) as a child to a surface shader and blend that by that fractal. 

[yossam]

And another start................

[yossam]

A low res rendition....................

[yossam]

Still working.........................

[cyphyr]

I like the autumnal look. Try softening the colours and see if you can find (it's on the forums somewhere) a way of varying the colour of the leaveson each tree.
Richard

[TheBadger]

I like what you have got started.
But believe it or not I am feeling partial to the first image you posted. I like the feel of the dead look. But if you can make the fall scene look real, that will be real nice.

[yossam]

I was not happy with the progress of the first try, so here we go again.

Suggestions are most welcome.

[FrankB]

I think this is a pleasant scene. Is has potential for you to explore. Can you render a larger high quality crop, to see how the vegetation looks like?

[Tangled-Universe]

Yes I like these kind of concepts with a dirt road

I have the feeling the space in the image is a bit small, that there isn't much sense of scale and everything seems to be close to the camera.
You can fix this relatively easy by adjusting the scale of your underlying terrain, if that's possible in your current setup so that you won't affect your road too much.

[cyphyr]

Reminds me of walks in Scotland up to the Grouse Moors. Even remember being chased by a bee as a child along a path very much like that
Richard

[yossam]

A crop of veggies..............light still is not right in my opinion.

[Dune]

It's going to look like a loch, the ones I remembered from Shetland/Scotland and where we caught eel to eat. In Shetland there would be a lot of grass and peaty ridges. If you would add that grass to the far top, and put some large rocks at the water's edge, you go a step further again. At least stop the heather at the water's edge. You might want to google 'loch' and get some ideas.....

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_dt-yVhrpSGo/TOpZ6EXzSpI/AAAAAAAAAIM/Pn7m-2FZzM4/s1600/IMG_0067.JPG

[Oshyan]

I like this new start, quite realistic-looking already, to my eye. I agree there are potential scale issues, but the basis is very good, and conceptually I like the dirt road/path curving over the hill, it suggests to the viewer a question, an adventure, "what is over that hill?". The water is I think good to add some interest and suggest a reason to walk this way (around the lake/loch?), but it also flattens things a lot compositionally on that side, and is a bit boring perhaps. Not entirely sure how to fix that.

But again, overall a great start.

- Oshyan

[Tangled-Universe]

The water is also one of the tools to 'set' the scales of your scene. In this case you may consider reducing wave scale a bit.

I think at this stage and in regard to the lighting and how it turns out on the vegetation you may already need to think about where you want to go in terms of exposure.

At this moment both atmosphere and surface are exposed correctly, but practically only one of both would be.
So when you expose for vegetation then the sky will be overlit and could look completely bright as if overcast.
When you would expose for atmosphere then shadows in vegetation and on surfaces would be stronger.

Practically speaking this is not complicated fortunately.
If you would expose for atmosphere then dial down the "strength on surfaces" parameter in the enviro light.
This will darken the GI on surfaces, giving more contrasting shadows.