Hey, folks - A small publishing house asked me to create a cover for a little, one staple supermarket checkstand book. It's their text, their font choice, all that.... Here's what I came up with on first blush. Comments? Suggestions? - Chip

I suggest some ground fog or depth of field effect. that way you can make the background a little creepier. good pic as it is though. It would certainly get my attention at the supermarket checkout.

Maybe dim the lights, add torches, some mold or lichen on walls, Make the walls look like solid concrete.I live in Chicago where there are tunnels like that.(Remember"The Blues Brothers"?) Alot of hard work went into this. Looks good otherwise though. Span<;)>

Nice look! Squalor is good. If the bones 'age' a little more and gross stuff appears on the wall (the kind that you don't want to touch) the better it will be. On the bricks, try adding a multi layer channel with a moss type of look and blend to the bricks with either the Snow feature or Digital Carvers Guild Altitude feature. That way you can have gunk growing and getting thicker as the shape changes. Just my thoughts though!:) Mark

This is sort of picky, but I would suggest dimming the lights, or moving the text on the left. White text on the bright background makes it sort of hard to read, and there is no way of telling how it's going to look printed. Kudos to you though. Nice looking render. I'm jealous. :) Hoborg

I think the bones are a little too 'new' looking - add some noise in the bump channel, and maybe some Perlin Noise (from freeware pack 1 or the Carrara Power Pack) with two colors, the bone white and something darker. Alternatively, you could use tubulence in shader pack 1 from DCG. Also, I would suggest toning down the light level a little, is the ambient set to zero? Brian Retford Carrara Extensions www.losthorizonsoftware.com

Wow! Thanks for all the comments. I'll work on incorporating as much as I can. One problem, though, is that I'm working with RayDream 3D -- don't have Carrara, so I can't use their shaders.... Definitely good advice about dimming the lights (ambient is at zero) and adding gunk to the walls; I think I can manage those. I do have a little fog on the floor, but it's kinda covered by the text on the back cover. I'll have to try moving the stuff around. As for torches, this image was inspired by one of the tales too terrifying to tell; it takes place in a modern sewer tunnel and electric lights are specifically mentioned.... But thanks for all the ideas and compliments! - Chip

Chip, you can use DCG's!!!! Eric made them originally for RDS, and you can still d'l them! Just goto www.digitalcarversguild.com - they should work fine with RD3D. Brian Retford Carrara Extensions www.losthorizonsoftware.com

COOL! Great to know; I'll get over there and download them as soon as I can.... Thanks for the tip!