Slippery when wet...

[zeitmeister]

A ordinary, boring street a while after rain, typical of the place I live in Germany.

I am not satisfied with the colors... maybe I'll have to try other, more spectacular camera response types.
And it might be far too dark, caused of the color-proof-lacky LCD monitors here at work.
What do you think?
Hope you like it anyway so far!

Grass created with FastFur, free tree sample from Evermotion, rest on foreground modeled by me (street, stones, rock, raspberries, sign), background photos from the net.

[Jambert]

Just great...

[WytRaven]

Beautiful! If you just glanced at that and didn't really start looking hard I think most people would just assume the whole thing was a photo

[zeitmeister]

Thank you!
But please critic this... the aim is really to achieve close realism. I didn't find a more realistic tree, but this one here still looks CG. And I don't know why.
What about the white paint on the stones, too regular? Should I add more irregularities to the street?
Tell me what you would change and what you think that annoys you!

[WytRaven]

Road is about as close to perfect as one can get. If you played more I think it would start to suffer from trying too hard to look realistic and end up looking fake

What kills the tree I think is the small branches which are obviously not real at all. If they looked more natural the whole tree would look much more natural.

I don't have a problem with anything in the middle ground at all but if you are worried about the white paint on the little pillars then just throw some mud at one of them

That's my 2 cents worth of crit

EDIT: Ok beat up the sign pole a little too. Looks a bit clean to be realistic.

EDIT2: Perhaps one other thing with the foreground tree is the level of saturation in the bark texture...it seems just a tad too "vibrant"

[PureSpider]

Awesome image!
What I think makes the tree look unreal is that there is no "structure" in the bark... it's all flat.

[Polinalkrimizei]

First: This is one of the best works I have seen, not only in this forum.
Critics are: the tree looks cg cause of the fake branches and the too saturated green. And I am not a 100% satisfied with the color of the raspberry leafs too.
The sign looks a little like... painted knetgummi (modelling clay?). Needs to look more metallic.
The white paint is perhaps a little too white and too perfect, especially on the street. Germany is a clean country, but not that clean
The street itself: I honestly can't tell if it is cg or not
Awesome work zeitmeister!

[tungee]

Great work, Zeitmeister!
I know the quality of your renders from the sunflow forum.
The shadow of the trees on the asphalt is super!
The compositing is also great ( is it Hessen?)
One suggestion in german:
Die weißen Streifen auf den Begrenzungspfählen könnten ein bisschen "Dirt" gebrauchen.


I dont know, if you know this:
Baum 3d plugin for c4d is now free!
Link:
http://www.kbuechner.gmxhome.de/

[pixie]

Street is amazing, and overall looks nice, congratulations!

[CTZn]

Astonishing image zeitmeister.

Okay, I don't know why but I have the persistent feeling that the road is in the shape of a "W" along its width, while a "M" would be closer to reality I believe. Also I feel that the weared surface appears to be right below the middle of the car, instead of were the wheels are expected to be.

Now like WytRaven suggested, that's a negligeable, subjective detail.

The colors are fine I think, perhaps the tree bark is too contrasty tho (try b=0.5; c=0.2 or akin).

Nice job !

[Godzilla]

This must go on the front page.

Be sure to upload it to the gallery when you're finished.

[OnoSendai]

Fantastic image, well done!

[zeitmeister]

Thank you very much for your comments and critics!
And for adding this WIP on the news-blog... it's really WIP-state yet and not worth now in my eyes.


I'm gonna try to summarise the suggestions you've made:

Whitepaint (street and marking stones(?)):
- Dirt, crackles, grunge borders, irregularites
- color irregularites

Foreground tree and raspberries:
- bark texture desaturation, de-contrasting, darkening, harder bump or displacement (maybe normal-map)
- free standing twiggs (there are no fake-branches, everything is modeled) removal
- color-correction leaf-textures, color-correction diffuse transmitter textures

sign pole:
- darker metal color, higher phong or reflection values
- more grunge and irregularities in colors and maybe spec map


I totally agree with these. About the general green saturation of all textures in the scene: I have to bring them all to one saturation and color level... I didn't do that so far, but it's absolutely necessary to achieve a consistent look.


@CTZn:
About the road shape: I modeled this pathway closely according to an existing one around here, same with the width. Changing this will cause major scene changes, so I think I will not change it. But it's an interesting point indeed!


Personally I will change the very side of the road and add some kind of soft shoulder.
Plus, I will think about a little bit of sky replacement.
So let me do this changes and have another look on it.

Thank you very much again!

[tungee]

Have you overseeen this?




I dont know, if you know this:
Baum 3d plugin for c4d is now free!
Link:
http://www.kbuechner.gmxhome.de/

[zeitmeister]

I noticed it very well; I tested this plugin for Klaus a while ago.
For me it is too symmetrical, and it means really huge effort with magnet tool for example to make the branches more organic.
The free evermotion tree was the most realistic free tree I found on the web.
And it's still not optimum.