Tight deadline here. I've got an outdoor pool I'm doing for a client. It's not the highest quality render yet, but it should be ok for this purpose. I want the image to look wooded, warm, and inviting.  This angle was chosen by the client...I can maybe tweak it ever so slightly.

The tree's in the background are the Eastern White Pine from XFrog but are so similar because the Pine KILLLLLLLLLLS my rendering time.

How can I make this image better? Any issues that you see?

Issues I know of:

1. The guy in red swimming trunks needs a tan and a less vibrant trunk color.  The eye is drawn to my dude's ass.  Not what we want.

2. The background area with all the pines needs a different color...more dirt like...

3.  The grass doesn't follow the edge like i'd like it to.  Photoshop seems to be the only answer.

4.  I'd like to get a better oak tree than is what is in the foreground.  It just doesn't stand up to the close up view...and I dont have any additional budget to buy a plant.

Ryan, The image is coming along nicely! I would take the bright green color of the forest floor and use that on the forgroung grass and use the color of the foreground grass for the forest floor. I find my eye is drawn to the bright green forest floor. I would also check to see if the fog and haze are set to 0. This may help the front trees to look clearer. Try adding a hill in behind the forest to give the image some depth. Right now it looks like the sky is pasted onto the image. If you don't want a hill change the sky to a gradient so it is not a solid color. Otherwise the image is looking good! BTW Where did you get the people from?

I agree with the comment above. My eye is actually drawn by the sky and the lack of background hills make it stand out too much. Maybe play with the atmosphere a little, with haze especially. The right atmosphere can transform your image entierely.

I agree about the sky problem. The 'woods' look like they just stop, not like they go to the horizon.
Also, you want a warm feel, but the colors are mostly cold ones. I would apply a post process color filter (right-click camera and edit) or make the sun and ambient colors warmer.

When I'm taking a landscape photograph and I want to warm it up a bit, I use a 1B filter or similar.  You could try the same effect here, I would suggest by changing the colour of the sun slightly so the light is less "cold".

I would also change the sky to a gradient - although a subtle one!

Hey all,

Thanks for the comments. A few notes:

The land cant be changed.  It's based on real life contours from survey data...so unfortunately, the land behind cant be edited.

Fog/Haxe was set to zero.  I'll play with this to get a better look. I was thinking about warming the image up post in Photoshop CS. There are warming filters in there.  Maybe I'll try for a warmer sun in Vue though.

I'll work on the clouds a a bit still.

Thanks for the comments!

PS: The people are dl'ed from FormFonts.

I think that if you try to warm the colors in Vue, that changing the (blue) ambient color will make a bigger difference than the sun color which is usually yellow-orange by default.

You probably already thought of that, but for newbies reading this, i thought i'd mention it.

Ok, so in GI, what should the "overall skylight color" be? I have it set to a light blue (in an old project this seemed to be what worked), the "light color" is a real light orange and the ambient is a darker version of that orange.

attached is an image of my settings...

...also, i'd try to have less sun's shadow, 5o% to 65% often is enough.

My choice would be to set the 'skylight' color the same as the ambient (in real world outdoor scenes, all the ambient light comes from skylight or skylight reflected from surfaces).

For a warm look, that would be colored like your ambient. For a (rare) neutral scene, it would be white. And there is a sun color on the 'Sun' tab.

I'd also try moving that 'Light balance' slider to maybe 70% to 80% to get more sun influence (sunny day)  and the Ambient light slider to 60% or 70% for the ambient to come mostly fom the sky.  Since GI is heavily dependent on having lots of ambient, you do have to be cautious with the 'Light balance' slider. For the same reason, you could try more or less 'Artificial ambience' as well.

And for the final tweak and render, i'd set the quality slider to +2, rather than -1.

As usual, having lots of creative control means dealing with lots of controls, so a lot of 'tweak/quick render/look/tweak again' is involved. Not good for deadlines. Glad i'm a 'hobbyist'!

I  usually set up a 'User' render to render a small selected area to the screen at pretty high pix dimensions, in under 1 minute, for faster tweaking. 

Sorry i can't give more exact settings advice, but you know how subjective these things are, and i can't see the results from here, lol. 

HTH

Good point, GPFrance, that shadow intensity is a strong 'warm sunny day' visual clue.

However, i'd think that darker shadows would be the direction to go for - to indicate stronger sunlight. Sure enough, it's a warm, cloudless sunny spring day here and i just checked out my window and the shadows at 11 am here are a little darker than Ryan's.

Good point, GPFrance, that shadow intensity is a strong 'warm sunny day' visual clue.

Not sure if you're saying his shadows should be lighter. However, i'd think that darker shadows would be the direction to go for - to indicate stronger sunlight. Sure enough, it's a warm, cloudless sunny spring day here and i just checked out my window and the shadows at 11 am here are a little darker than Ryan's.

Ah.  I'm an idiot and posted the old settings.

Everything is the same except I have 80% light from the sun and 20% ambient.
Shadows are set at 75% right now.

I'm trying to warm up the image as we speak. I'll post a new WIP in a half hour or so...but then I have to make final tweaks. 

I have to also render this out at 3600x2400 in high quality so my final render must start tonight so it can finish by tomorrow night and can be at the print shop at 8am Friday.

Thanks a lot for the help guys!

I swear, my images get so much better when I post WIPs.

This is much better already :) I know you said the point of view is fixed by the client... my problem with it is that it doesn't seem to showcase the pool enough :)

Also what I thought, but it is taken from the 2nd floor balcony of one of the condos...per their request.

It also really isn't about the pool features...more about the fact that they get a pool now.

Maybe you could use an HDR image thta would illuminate your scen and provide a background. There was a link i this forum to free HDR images last week. As for the XFrog tree, why not  use alpha planes for the ones that are farthest ? would save render times.

Here's a seperate top view of the same scene w/o grass.