I'd do one inbetween the two shades.One is a bit too light,other is a bit too dark. Don't forget the edge preserving smoothness.

I like the bottom one. The colors are richer and more realistic.

Yep, I`m a bottom man myself.

these look great, but I agree with Amethyss, maybe one a bit in between. excellent work!

Yeah, the upper one looks washed out. The second is a bit too dark, but the colours look better than on the first one. Hm. Something's wrong. Ah! I know what's bothering me on the both and makes the mansion look like a toy. The brick texture is too big. Increase the scale, so the individual bricks are not too big. Something like a quarter of the present size. And the crenellations should have a bit more of bump on them.

The bricks are too big??? Do you mean the stones at the base or the red bricks?? Because you can't even see the individual red bricks.

Oh, and I forgot to mention, this is a Victorian house built to look like a castle ... but not an actual castle, so the scale is smaller than a castle would be.

A mix of the two & soften the shadows a bit(which will increase render time). Nice image. Really like the vines.

Thanks, ICM. The vines are terrains.

Great job on both. I vote for something in between. I love your Abbey/convent. Did you model it?

The red bricks. And if I'm not seeing the individual bricks, then I see the white edges of the texture image, so it seems that I see the individual bricks. OTST, yeah, it's too ... what do you call the quadrilateral surface with all the edges identical? It appears it's the edges of the texture image. I have a pretty good tileable brick image, should you need it. Downloaded it off the Net somewhere. So, it's a folly? :-) Yeah, a nice little house.

Yeah, it's all Bryce modeled. The house is all primitives, and the landscape is all terrains and Bryce trees. I got the idea from an old etching of a gothic style house. Can't find that image for the life of me, although I think I saved it after downloading it.

Aye, another thing that might help to bring out texture definition would be turning up the AA level on your final? It often helps when using bitmap-based textures... (this is assumingthe main, red brick IS a bitmap?)

I have the red brick texture cranked up so high that even premium antialiasing doesn't bring them out. That's why Erlik's comment made no sense to me. I suppose I could make the bricks bigger and call more attention to them.

Ricky, this is great modeling! I to am partial to the bottom render because of its richness in color but like Erlik, something bothered me also but it wasn't the bricks. It occured to me that the shadows of the foreground tree on the right of the image and of the tree directly beneath the waving banner on the left are facing two different directions as if lit from two different sources. Also, noting that the sky is overcast to a large extent, IMO, the shadows are too dark for such an overcast sky. BTW, brilliant touch with the vines on the side of the house and excellent work!

I just noticed that ... and you know what is really strange?? There is only one light source in the image, the sun, and both of those trees are just plain old Bryce trees. So, logically, the shadows should all be going the same way, right???

That is strange indeed! Maybe you should consider disabling the sun and its shadows and adding an artificial light source and see what happens.

I think that's what I'm going to have to do ... or fake the shadows in post. This just strikes me as singularly weird. I checked and double checked ... nothing there but the sun.

One more suggestion---It would be cool to see this from a slightly more dramatic POV, maybe slightly looking up or down, but I like this version just as much, and thats just my 2 cents :)

Yes, if you have a good brick texture I could use, I would love it!!

I LOVE the bottom one the best, ricky!

Excellent mansion! I really like your terrain vines too. I have to agree with the rest, a version that is midway between the two as far as contrast and saturation.

That model is fantastic. Like said, the vine work is marvelous. I'd say your odd shadow direction is more of a perspective thang, than another light source. And congrats on your PSP work too!

It must be the perspective, MuddyGrub, it's the only thing I can think of. Wonder if there is any way to fix it other than post (which I won't try tonight since I am now very very snokkered). The vines were fun. I used the same technique I posted a while back when discussing hedges. Except, with the vines, I just worked with front and side distance renders instead of a top view altitude render. That way, I had an image of my building, with windows and such, and then I could draw my vine terrains in on a layer on top of that.

Ricky, the bricks that look too large to me are the white ones at the bottom of the plliar/column. If you put a person there...those bricks would be like 2 ton boulders. The other bricks look fine I definately like the second one but the grass looks flat on either. but great modeling job so far!

This is great. Although I tend to agree that a mix of the two would be good, but with more bias towards the 2nd.

Keep in mind, Innovator, that the door is at most about 12 feet high. So, the stones at the bottom of the tower are probably one and a half to two feet high.