IMHO it looks way too dark on my monitor.  Which is a shame because it looks like theres a lot of hard work gone into this.

Good start to the picture!  You are doing the right thing by trying to tell a story, and place it in an appropriate scene.  Big points for undertaking the project.

Feel free to accept, change or discard any of the following ideas. 

First thing I would do is adjust the relative postions of the figures.  As it is, they too closely mimic the upright trees around them.  You probably want to show more of the emotional tension betwen them.

For the male: extend the right leg backwards, as if he just stepped forwards to touch her shoulder.  This will give him more of a curved line. Extend his right arm more to indicate the 'reaching-out' motion.
For the female twist the upper body to face the camera more, as if she is turning more towards him.  Then move her whole position so that his hand and fingers are just barely reaching her.

You will need a little bit of lighting to highlight the figuresa touch more...possibly using a light-gel based on leaf patterns on a spot-light to create a lone beam of light that hits them.

Finally, either add a bit of light and texture to that left-hand front tree to show that it is a tree, or get rid of it....the solid black does nothing for the picture as it stands.

I hope some or all of thses suggestions help you.  Looking forward to where you decide to go next with this picture.

it's already better than I can do...I like it as it is...they look Vulcan to me, though..;)

I find myself looking at the bright spots on the background instead of the figures. And if you have so much ground fog up close why is the background so clear? I'd loose some of the lights in the background and maybe punch it up on the characters a bit.

Thanks for the tips. I'll use a labtop for all my renders, so what looks bright on my screen appears dark for others. anny tips on this?

Bryce is rendering now on a new version of this scene. I'll use volumeric world and an extra spotlicht on v3 and m3 to brighten the scene up and one lightgreen light to lighten the forground (the black tree :P )

And electroglyph, your right, the backgroundlights are down already.

I Already breaked the daz studeo link, but I'll thing of the posing of the figures. The scene as it is now shows IMO a guilty woman, does this show it enough? I'm not good at DAZ.

And vulcan? Never thought of that. (Maybe because I'm a few years to young for it, I'm more from the pokemon generation :P ) IMO it is just an frowning elf, but everybody is fortunatly free to see what they see.

As soon bryce is finished i'll give an update. (crystal sphere sayes one day and nine hours)

if you have an extyernal monitor, plug it in and compare. Also, maybe the gamma correction could be touched up...but that's me.

Not to worry about the Vulcan bit; it's mainly the ears and straight hair...;)

The brightness thing might be down to you using a flat-screen monitor. My wife just got one and we had to lower the brightness right down because all our house-plants were looking at it instead of the sun.......

From the input I've got from him in the past it appears that Bryster has always set his monitor too dark - don't know why ... the color looks good to me. Perhaps simply changing the camera angle will help adjust your lighting to emphisize your subjects. try moving the camera close to where the tree on the left is and get rid of the tree . . .  and maybe add a squirrel or a deer or something else live in the background ???

Live long and prosper, Pakled: The guy looked Asian and the girl simply looked like that Jolene chick who played the Vulcan T'pol on 'Enterprise' and I think that was largely due to her lack of expression;  that is - to me.

what rosemaryr said: "Good start to the picture!  You are doing the right thing by trying to tell a story, and place it in an appropriate scene.  Big points for undertaking the project."

Help! Transparensy and volumeric world don't go good. Is there an simple fix or get rid of the volumeric world? If so, then I'll begin again with the lighting from scrath (Lesson learned, never steal the lighting from an tutorial) (Lesson two Try to get dady's crt)

@ BM....Boekenwuurm has it right. I gotta CRT monitor. The run of the mill LCDs just don't do it for me. They don't seem to reveal the detail enough and appear very grainy. 

Also, my monitor has been carefully calibrated to the proper gamma thingy.
What might also interest some is that my eyes have a weird kinda focus problem - probably from the Matian atmosphere - which mean I have to wear glasses. The upshot of this is that flat-screens look all bowed-in, while my CRT screen looks flat !!

Bryster:

Ah-hah ! ! now all the pieces fit into place - the house plants reacting to the light from the monitor causes you to turn down your monitor which causes you to suffer the effects of insufficient lighting which causes you to adjust your monitor which causes the houseplants to react to the light . . .  

I still think the lighting's O.K.  - on my 19" Trinitron (DELL) it looks ok anyway. 

Ah a stigmatism ! I've got one too; relatively minor, but it seems to varie just enough that I always have to doublecheck things like straight lines. For example: when roofing, I always have to snap a line to keep the shingles straight. 

And by the sound of it there are a lot eye problems on the forum.  Are you wearing glasses for it? I'll wear glasses the half of my life.

LOL BM ! Not even close! :lol:

Hmm... I'm not sure i like the light version better per se. I think maybe you could use a contrast of light and shadows to put the 2 people in a brighter view and let the background remain more dark and mysterious like in the original image. Brightening up the entire scene completely changed the atmosphere and did nothing to further enhance the focus point of the image.

As for a sudden surge of inspiration thats comming up as im writing this, maybe here's some more ideas;

Maybe experiment with some colder fill light in the scene, and a warmer key light on the 2 people. Dont make the color difference too intense though, just a bit should be enough.

Perhaps, you could even dim the background even more, put almost all sources of fill light outside the visible scene, as if party obscured by surrounding trees etc. Like an overall ambient fill... (made with real lights though, not texture or scene ambience. Using real lights will prevent washing out the sense of depth)

Then if i'm thinking onwards some more, maybe use some fireflies or such to add little patches of light throughout the darkness?

You could use those to hint at some shrubbery detail here and there. Maybe some whispy fog here and there?

Oh! and this little idea just now popped in my mind, you could use some firefly light from a few fireflies above the water to illuminate a fish very subtly under the water surface. Little details like that can really make the environment more tactile and alive without creating too intense a distraction to the main topic.

Hope it helps any :-)

Fireflys! That was the idea I write this afternoon at work. Naturaly, I forget to take the notebook with me (end of sholarship, no new ideas for that notebook, only renders)
Big question, how to make fireflys? I'll go a few iterations back and do the entire lighting of the forest from scratch(Without the elves, il try to repose them tomorow). Flys in the render now. Made it from orange lights, sqared fallof and visible surface. Does this work well? Or is there an better way that you experiensed brycers know?
Thanks for the comments, they help a lot!

edit: Only lights don't work, lights like discripted with orange glass spheres looks good from test render

Square falloff sounds great for the firefly's. You can also try and range the falloff, and use a gradient to control the intensity. That way, you can limit the light's range to something suitable for the scene. Also any light outside the radius will be ignored by the render engine, which means a speed-up at render time compared to non-ranged lights.

You could also try adding a sphere round the light, and give it a fuzzy texture, set to be additive, to make a subtle halo around the visible lights.

Another way to make the fireflies themselves visible would be to make a firefly texture in photoshop or something similar, and put it on 2d planes. If the texture fades to absolute black, you can put the texture to additive, just like with the above suggested halo sphere.

Or you could go for a hybrid approach, and add the halo's in photoshop as postwork.

If you use glass spheres, turn their shadows off to speed up rendertime.

I just noticed that the flys are barly visible (on the right side, in the lake). But it is bedtime, so I'll continu tomorow evening.

C&C welcome as ever.

ps: I'm not a native speaker, and I have dyslectia. So forgive my poor spelling.

Wow!! That's a huge improvement. Looks really good now. Can't wait to see the finished piece.

C&C welcome as ever.

Well, what do you guys think of it now?

Pretty cool, maybe let the light at their faces spread a bit wider and more subtle?
Also, i dont think raydepth of 8 is neccesary, 4 or 5 shouldnt give too much difference visually. Also rpp64 might be sufficient (thus reducing rendertime)
I also dont know what the light spot on the tree byhind the guy is?
Other then that, its getting along very nice!

hmm.. I think i like the position of the lights better in the previous one, and the backlight on the lady's face created by the fireflies was interesting too. but in terms of luminance, the 2nd pic is better.