attached is a scene I am working on, by far the most complicated scene I have ever done.
Just this test render of the unfinished scene had to be rendered in 5 layers LOL

final render will be 2560x1024

I am looking to get ideas from people on things to add to the scene to help increase its "epic-ness"

before commenting, here are the things I have yet to add to the scene :

replace the current lighting with 5-10 spot lights giving the effect of light through clouds

more necrons around the ruined arches, about 2 times the number currently in the scene to be added.

a necron and ultramarine locked in close combat, surrounded by fallen warriors, in the left foreground (the big empty space)

more ultramarines on the foreground side of the lemun russ tank

dead marines under the feet of the necrons

total re-do of the materials used on the necrons (currently using the god-aweful defaults

total redo of the necron monolith materials so its not completely black

This image is to be the second in my Last Stand series, so a LARGE amount of postwork will be done to create smoke, scars, weapon fire, blood, sparks etc

any input is greatly appreciated

Gotta have explosions.

Not sure what's the best way to insert a good explosion into the scene... might have a bright light with a sharp fall off where the explosion is, add in some debris and maybe a bad guy posed like a broken rag doll flying through the air above it, then add some flames and smoke in post work.

Explosions are cool. :biggrin:

Ambitious project, I look forward to seeing more of it down the road.

I never even thought of explotions, blasphemy on my part.

the scene is somewhat crouded, so I might put some missile trails leading to explosions of the buildings, some thunderhawk gunships and drop pods in the far background, some exploding.

great idea, thanks heaps!

I just hope poser continues to be able to handle the scene. at the moment I save after every change (just in case)

Well I think that you'll cause some nerd rage if you show Ultramarines using a lemon russ lol. Maybe find a landraider or predator and ditch the russ unless you show some dead or even live guardsmen because the russ is an imperial guard tank and Ultramarines don't use them.

you are right, I had originally planned to have imperial guard dead on the ground, but theres not a large amount of room.  I might put a dead guard slumped out of the upper hatch and perhaps fill the building on the right with guardsman firing from the windows and roof

thanks for the input!

I'll be honest, you have too much going on. The eye doesn't have a focal point to rest on. You can still create a sense of epic without throwing everything and the kitchen sink at us That's not to say you can't have a lot of elements in the scene, they just all need to have their place and focus.

The master still teaches us today...i74.photobucket.com/albums/i266/StirrFry99/Frazetta.jpg

remember that the final image will be 2560x1024, which is two 1280x1024 computer screens (dual screen background) that render is just VERY small compared to the final. it wont look so cramped at full res.

heres an example of a typical warhammer scene  :

http://88.84.128.30/~isnochys/wordpress/wp-content/warhammer-40k-false-gods.jpg

there always PACKED, which I want to emulate

A massive undertaking, to say the least.  Postwork is going to be extraordinary. 
Suggestion: Throw your background out of focus in post-production.  It is too sharp and detracts from the action going on in the foreground.  You don't want the eye to wander to unimportant areas.

The image is too sterile; it is too clean.  It is a battle scene, there should be debris everywhere.  That includes body parts.  The armor should have gritty dirt and stains as well as plenty of dings and dents. 

Smoke.  Lots of smoke.  A haze of smoke over the scene. 

Spend some time recreating more realistic poses.  The figures look too stiff, not much action.

Tip: watch the first twenty minutes of "Saving Private Ryan", that should give you some ideas.

Some aerial combat in the background? Missiles, rays, something to fill the sky?

Giorgio

Obvious building damage with smoke trailing up from it.  This may be better added in post.

Klebnor

some explosions . possibley  a nuke lol
some kinda sky battle . missiles flying over  head .  lazer fire
maybe giving the pic a bit more dynamic perspective  ,some focal blurring
smoke and haze
just took a look at your gallery . some awesome stuff mate

thanks for all the great feedback, I have taken much of what you have suggested and created a new test render.

the final render will have Depth of Field, which will help keep the focus at the front, I will also enhance the DOF in post.

this quick render is at full resolution. the lighting is still terrible, to harsh and colorless.

I agree totally on the poses, most are default poses, and I do intend to go over each figure and give them more fluid poses, my first step was to build the entire scene, that way I can setup there poses knowing exactly what is around them.

one of the last things I plan to do is add rocks,grass,dead plants, craters, dirt/dust and whatnot on the background and groundplane to detail it up.

I need to change the material on the ruined arches, its too dark and plain. I may need to UV map the model and create some textures for it.

I've added some drop-pods to the background, and did some hasty and quick postwork to patch the sky with laser fire and an explosion. obviously the postwork in this image is quick and NOT the quality of the final LOL

the dreadnaught in the far right neets to be completely re-thought, the intention was to have it firing on the monolight with missiles and lasers, but at the moment you cannot see it enough.

the pose of the nekron and marine at the front left look good in the preview, but in render the arms look flimsy and not full of powerful struggle, so that will need to be redone.

keep the ideas/suggestions coming!

Definitely taking on dimension.

Im glad you approve of the changes!

after looking at the image more, like hborre said, I definately need more dead people and body parts!

I think I will get rid of the ground plane, and create a basic flat terrain in terragen with a crater centred in front of the arches, and fill it with necron parts.

question : does anyone know if necrons are suppost to bleed? and if so, what do they ooze out? what color is it?

For me the problem with the composition is the huge structure in the centre of the image, its darker than the other buildings in the scene and being texturally rather featureless it creates a void in the image, I'd be inclined to move it further back in the scene and dirty up its texture especially at lower levels and perhaps obscure it slightly with a smoke cloud.The other void in the picture as I see it is the space just behind the tank, true the Necrons are firing into it, but there's nothing to suggest that there are any Ultramarines firing back from that space, perhaps a helmet just visible above the tracks.

Not sure about Necron "blood" if they ooze at all, I'd always thought it'd be a similar colour to the glow on their ribs

the building you are talking about, do you mean the plain grey/brown one in the centre that looks like arches?  In the new image I made it slightly smaller and gave it a better texture, you can see this in the above image, although I forgot to turn off depth queing which greyed it out a bit.

I will be doing some postwork to it to create bullet holes/blast marks etc.

as you can see there no longer ultramarines (name change required lol), I moved to Blood Angels because there textures look a lot better with the shader i created.

I worked on the poses of pretty much everything on the weekend, unfortunately the nekron layers had depth queue on, which was way to strong.

what do you think of the changes?
this image has very little "quick" postwork

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=322332&member

Quote - Im glad you approve of the changes!

after looking at the image more, like hborre said, I definately need more dead people and body parts!

I think I will get rid of the ground plane, and create a basic flat terrain in terragen with a crater centred in front of the arches, and fill it with necron parts.

question : does anyone know if necrons are suppost to bleed? and if so, what do they ooze out? what color is it?

Necrons don't bleed I'm not even sure they use anything like hydraulic fluid  considering they are at an unknown tech level.

The scene looks better though with the balance of dead and living characters I might call it the last stand of the necrons considering the Ultramarines have at least three drop pods of reinforcements coming in .

I have posted the wip image above in my gallery so you can see it at decent compression quality

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1872676

if you are the least bit interested, this version is leaps and bounds better as the image size is 498K whereas the image attached to my previous post is 187K (for 2560x1024 thats an admirable file size)

Quote -
Necrons don't bleed I'm not even sure they use anything like hydraulic fluid  considering they are at an unknown tech level.

The scene looks better though with the balance of dead and living characters I might call it the last stand of the necrons considering the Ultramarines have at least three drop pods of reinforcements coming in .

haha you are completely correct, I think I will add more monoliths and necrons to make the army of metallic evil MUCH larger in scale.

also the post processing weapon fire will help to make the blood angels look like there losing

while I was recreating the material for the space marines I did many test renders, and many pose tweaks.

in the above image is each of the 9 space marines (that arent dead) that are in the scene, from different close-up angles.  you can see the material at play alot better in these images. I think, considering the lack of detail in the textures, the material is doing wonders

the material is a semi complex combination of diffuse+velvet+phong+blinn+turbulence

what do you think of the tweaks?

Looks like you have put a lot of effort into this particular image...a true labour of love.  The only things that I would maybe look into if I was you are some of the material settings.  The rock looks more like plastic and the grey dudes look more plastic than metal (I don't know if they are metal or not, to be honest) and they also could maybe use some burn/scorch marks or something on a couple of them.

The green glowing light....maybe a little transparency ??

Still, a monument to your patience this piece is. :) 

--Rebekah--

I agree with sixus1, there should be more wear & tear on the armor for both sides.  But it is coming along very well at this point.  Can't wait to see the final version.

I agree with Richardson in that you need to point the readers eye first, then let them take over. Still just a little chaotic in that the eye doesn't know where to land first.
A simple camera adjust could solve that.
jmo

I have been working hard on roughing up the necrons, they are charred, scarred and burnt now (not seen in this image) I have also been adding bullet holes and fire and smoke to the damaged/destroyed necrons that is looking really nice.

also, all the bright green glowing areas of the necrons have been left as a plain old boring green so that I can add swirls of energy, and heat and fumes coming off the glowing gun parts and grav engines, basically it looks like the tubes are full of swirling plasma like stuff, radiating heat upwards distorting things (looks awesome so far). Im sort of using the necrons as a starting point on the postwork as I have not post worked in a very long time and I want to be back in the full swing before I start working on the much easier to see space marine war damage.

the necrons on the far left have been moved around a little so they dont look so cramped up, and the aiming of some of the marines has also changed as I begin to add weapon fire etc to the image.

I completed part of the right section of necrons last night (forgot to bring a copy in with me) which has one necron dead on the ground, and another being blasted apart by heavy bolter fire. looks really nice, and even just this small completed section really makes the image look alot more dynamic

thanks for all the awesome feedback people! It might be a labor of love, but its always easier with support!

Is it possible to stretch a background across dual monitors?  Haven't tried, mind you, and I work with several dual monitor set-ups. 

attached is a small excerpt from the necron layers with some postwork applied

I have created the "Depth Cube" and I am going to  redo the background using this object to create all the smoke etc as it looks way more realistic than anything I can do by hand