Industry Park Exterior (help needed)

[FoXar]

Hello folks!

I'm new here and amazed by all the amazing works you make, so I thought I'd give it a shot to post my project here.

I'm currently working on the exterior of an industry park we had given to draw on school.
Although I really want to improve my renders it's kinda hard for me to spruce this scene up
and make it look more realistic.

The cars and people have to stay, what I still wanted to add was grass, but I doubt that'll make a tremendous difference in my render.

So any tips and crits to improve are very much welcomed!

[zeitmeister]

You'll need a far better asphalt texture; and you should model more realistic curbstones with gutters.
This will improve your parking space a lot.

Grass might help, too ... go visit the google 3D warehouse and search for grass; it works in most cases already.

Further, I would set the camera a lot nearer to the ground; about 120 cm above the street. This will add more drama to the scene an the buildings.

Think of another sun position, too ... maybe a lot more from the left side.

Some car billboards seem to be a little bit clinched; you should fix that also.
You could place on person in the foreground, near to the camera, to add life to the foreground.


If you're done with this suggestions, let us take a look at it again ... after that it might be easier to determine what and where we can improve.
Rock on!

[Zom-B]

Some cloudy sky would help here too, maybe even added in Postpro.
Get some nice free on cgtextures.com and render a own pass with
the map on a big Sphere in your 3D internal renderer to get correct view
and combine in the end.

To enhance the Trees a little, try using a little displacement on the bark.
For the leaves try a 50/50 blend of Diffuse transmitter Material with Phong.
Some grass patches around the tree stomp would help too.

Blue color on the left looks to saturated compared to other colors.

Since asphalt & sky are big parts of your image, you have to take care that they rock

[dcm]

free grass model www.3dmentor.ru/free-models.html

[FoXar]

Hey guys! Tons and tons of thanks for the tips, great support I get here!

I'll make sure to apply the changes tomorrow, the scene is modeled in SketchUp, I already have a grass model, thanks for the advise though. But feel free to convert it to .3ds if anyone could.
The grass component I'm using is one consistent of 2D maps + alpha's.
Here are the textures if anyone would feel the need for them, credits go to "Kwistenbiebel"

Thanks for the material tips, there are no car billboards, they're 3D

Cheers

[cotty]

The first two things I noticed were the asphalt and the sky without clouds like Zom-B and zeitmeister mentioned already. These will make a great difference and I'm looking forward to the next version.
Cotty

[zeitmeister]

Wow, 3D cars?
Hail to Indigo and nice carpaint from that far!

[FoXar]

Thenks cotty!

And yeps, all 3D cars, so it's weird you see them as clinched bilboards, might be my scene setup though..

Btw, tomorrow new update with many things changed and/or added

Cheers

[Pibuz]

I'm an aged user of Sketchup, and I'd really like to see how you solve the asphalt "problem"
I tell you because I have some troubles with it every time I work on "urban" views, where roads have an impact. I always end up in doing a wise pass in photoshop.

Following with interest!

[FoXar]

Hey Pibuz, thanks I appreciate your comments, I have never commented on your work before but you really done nice things. So I'm quite honored you're looking forward to my solution.

My solution is quite simple though, I just used a much darker asphalt so the tiling is not so noticable.
I downloaded it from the *uhum* Maxwell resources site. I could share the material file
if anyone's interested.

Not added a sky yet, gonna do that in postpro when everything is "good". I still think the image
lacks something, so please let the constructive critism role!

Cheers,
Roo Evans

[PureSpider]

I find your materials are way too clean...
Adding some dirt will enhance realism a lot I guess.
In general, it's about the little details I assume.

[FoXar]

@ PureSpider, yeah that's exactly one of the things I also think that should be improved.
But I have no idea how, does Indigo support dirtmaps? That's one of the features I loved in Vray.

Cheers

[PureSpider]

You can use a blend material to achive the same as Vray's dirt maps I believe.
To do that, get a b/w map of where you want your dirt to be and use that map to blend a dirt material together with your "other" material.
I hope that was clear...

[FoXar]

Well not really, dirtmaps in Vray is the same as ambient occlusion.
The only difference is that AO is always just black and with dirtmaps
you can for example use a dirty looking texture which will be shaded in the
corners of the geometry and with parameters you can change per material.

But thanks anyways! It's well appreciated

Cheers,
Roo Evans

[CTZn]

Well not really, dirtmaps in Vray is the same as ambient occlusion.

PureSpider is effectively telling about changing the material reflectance, wether by mixing two slightly different materials by a texture or by just plugging the same texture into the phong's exponent. Try it out, I thought the same about the look of your materials.

AO can not fake the effect of a greasy finger onto a flat surface, that's what we are talking about actually (hint)