Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=900763&Hot=Y&Sectionid=2

I submitted this picture here at Renderosity and while I really,really appreciate that it was well recieved, I really need honest constructive criticism. I mean please feel free to rip it apart :-) It's for a specific commission project. For some reason it's just not working, and I have lost all objectivity. Any ideas no matter how outlandish will be greatly appreciated. even if it means totally reworking it. Something about it just looks off. Thanks Michael

Yes, of course, its great work youve done here, no doubt. My impression is that its not dynamic enough meaning that it lacks radiosity interplay. Your lightning is striking all around but no glare and no shadows follow it. Same with the fires, no luminosity and shadows radiating from the fires. Just my opinion.

Quest gave you a few ideas that could make it better. here is one that could also hide the fact you cloned the figures :) clone the figures that are central in the image and move them out to the sides and maybe add a few more behing the central ones giving that more of an army force look in it to fill it in. Think of the movie and that final battle where there were 10,000 of the enemy coming to fight then you might know what i am on about.

maybe some more ambience on the actual lightning itself, and a little more colour in the sky to make more contrast. This guy photographs lightning for a living (amongst other weather phenomena) and although his site is currently being rebuilt there are still some images to be viewed.

try making it darker with more highlights and refelctive glare lighting the scene, and i would go along with the need for some randomisation in the characters. otherwise its much better than some i've seen.

I think Hythshade might have made a big mistake here. The tower is not the one that held the great eye in Mordor, it is Orthanc, the home of Saruman the White. As such there was not a 'final stand' because that took place in Mordor at the Black Gate. That said, the tower seems to be too close to the viewer, it needs to be further away into the distance to be that size, or much bigger and left where it is. (Hopes he's making sense here) While the troops are very interesting, Orc headgear as portrayed in the LOTR tended to be more individual and less stylised. Certainly a lot less complicated as presented by Hythshade. I think the atmosphere of the whole piece is wonderful! As a portrayal of a prelude to battle it does the job magnificently! I love it and I wish I'd seen it sooner. However, if I've misunderstood Hythshade's meaning I apologise. KUTGW!!!!!

For the cloning - the big trick is to make the figures look different to the ones standing next to each other. Picking on the foreground guys, all the spears are parallel which unless they are perfectly discipined won't happen.

Something to try to help the illusion or numbers - select all the clone figures in each block (like all the spearmen in the foreground) then use the randomize rotate(3d rotate - only do it for a couple of degrees of rotation - you won't need much) and 2d disperse thing - that'll slightly rotate the troops and break up the spacing of the unit and make all the spears non-parrallel and will also display different orientations of the figures to the camera, thus making them all "look" a little different. That might be enough to randomize them. If not, make a couple of different figures for each block so you have say 5 figures replicated up to a group of 20-30 and use that for each block. Sometimes, all you need to do is just rotate a shield position a little to make a trooper look quite different to the one next to it.... though the success of these tricks depend on viewing angle - should work for you viewing angle - i.e. low.

Message edited on: 03/09/2005 07:18

The other thing that gets me is that the depth/scale seems a bit out somehow. Are all the hills/mountains/tower/distances between them all to the same scale? Maybe its the strength of the low lying white mist in the background thats disguising the depth a bit... not too sure.

To me, the foothills behind the tower seem to close to the troops and the tower, and the tower height seems at odds with how close it looks to the foreground troops.

I think getting the depth thing sorted is the first thing I'd work on.

*edit- feel free to ignore all my stuff above - thats just the anal crap I look for in my images. There's some pretty handy artists (much better artists than me at any rate) in your comment list who seemed damn impressed. Must say, I do like the dark foreboding look - should be good for nice lighting/darkness contrast in areas.

Message edited on: 03/09/2005 07:24

I think the odd thing for me is that the pic feels like the background is the foreground. By that I mean that the tower and the lightning in particular, which are meant to be in the background of the picture, are the bits that draw the eye while the stuff in the foreground just provides framing for it. Having the visual focus pulled that high makes the pic feel out of balance somehow. As some other have mentioned, if the tower felt further back, which would require it being lower on the horizon, then that might help with the overall balance because the focal point would be lower in the scene. It would also give you a lower angle that would allow room for a more massive crowd of orcs just be layering 2d planes with heads and spears. I do agree with Bryster on the technical LOTR aspects too: Wrong tower for Sauron, and you've got the orcs all wearing what looks like Saurons armor.

@TheBryster: I think you are thinking too literally about Peter Jackson's movies, more specifically Grant Major's Production design. The Production Designer is repsonsible for the look of a movie including sets and costumes. Much of Tolkien's descriptions in the novels are very interpretive. So, I think Hythshade can be given some leeway here. Major took much of his ideas from Ralph Bakshi's (a Canadian animator BTW) animated version of "The Fellowship of the Ring". Bakshi spent hours talking to Christopher Tolkein about his father's vision and personally approved many of Bakshi's art concepts. There is no question that Jackson's movies will become the definitive standard when future generations remake LOTR. But artistic liberties will be taken. Personally, I'm waiting for the operatic version, with Sarah Brightman as Arwen.

<strong>bandolin</strong><br />
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Thanks everyone, You certainly are all right about the lighting. The composition is what has been bugging me the absolute most. Flak what you have said has helped me a lot, I think the angle of the camera is what's throwing off the distance and creating that bright white haze at the botom of the foothills. The image is portrait size, I think if I do it in landscape and lower the tower it might help with some of the depth. I agree the characters need more randomization. Bryster, I may have gotten it wrong from the movie's interpretation, but what Bandolin says I think should be taken into consideration. I actually read Tolkiens books when I was 8 years old. I am 36 now. That was long before the movie was made. So I did choose a little artistic license here. However I may have to sit down and watch the movies again and get some inspiration just to finish this piece.

Something I notice is the perspective. I think it would be more interresting to view the Main Object (the main tower) from the perspective of one of the soldiers. Closer to the ground and looking upwards, more in the distance. It certainly was well recieved. I wish that many people looked at my works and even left a comment! You could probably make a very good random army with perhaps 6 differently posed character objects. You could then rotate and group them a bit to make a realistic army. I'll be looking for the revisions :)

Bandolin & Hythshade: I agree with both of you completly! My comments were meant to be helpful and not an attack on artistic license. Of course you are free do make what you will of LOTR, I just wasn't sure what you (Hythshade)wanted to achieve. Good luck with the piece. I look forward to your revision.

I can see what you were trying to accomplish here. Very tough scene to pull off with one render, not to mention trying to get lots of action into a portrait layout. In most compositions that require this deep perspective, you can count on three main areas to work in. Fore, mid, & background. My suggestion is to make 3 renders with the same sky/lighting to keep the main shadows consistant. You can add smaller ambient/accent lighting in the different renders. Rochr & hobbit both use these methods. Check out their work. Also check out some of the scenes in the "Grand Space Opera" at CGN, Super reference material. Foreground: Similar to what you have here, yet closer, only from the shoulderblades up. You can even lean their spearpoles forward and blur the distant ends a bit. There is a scene at the beginning of Fellowship with Elrond in the front line. Having terrain in the foreground draws the eye downward, With the shoulder view it automatically throws you out into the scene. Mid-field You can clone and replicate layers in Postwork to clump them together more. Also in post it gives you the option to remove one-two etc, edit a helmet or an arm sticking up with a sword. Make some bigger in the front, etc. A couple of fires to their sides can add some orange lightcast to a few. The midground towers are too defined, it's one of the things flattening this scene. May also try placing these towers to the left of the scene. Another trick I noticed they used in LOTR Helms Deep is the amount of spears. With so many guys clumped together, it made it seem like lots more with the massive amounts of spears. The spears don't have to be ornate. They're battle poles. Try some torches too. Background The white cloud bank cuts the scene in half, plus being bright it looks as if it's seperating the tower from the background mountains. Now your tower is not in the background anymore. If you concentrate the fogbank on the sides and not so strong, it can lead the background into the midfield. The fires are too big & defined, again they cut the scene in half, they can be smaller throwing orange ambient light. Mere suggestions of fire. The lightning from the tower draws the viewer right to it, distracting the from the rest of the scene. Some smaller less intense strikes in the clouds with ambience into the clouds a bit would work without the attention. Check out these two links. I think the golden rectangle would work well here. You don't have a single subject matter, so the focus should roll back to the perspective. Also may want to build the seperate scenes in landscape format and do your final cropping in the portrait format, it may give you more control for perspective, plus you can stack them. http://www.google.com/search?q=golden+rectangle&sourceid=mozilla-search&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official http://www.currys.com/knowledge/landscape.asp Sorry to be so long winded. ;) ICM

No worries Bryster. I understood exactly what you were saying. I actually agree. I wished I had never named this picture that. I'm re-working the entire scene, and I will post the revisions once they are complete. ICM Thanks a million. This advice is really a tremendous help, as was everyones. Thanks again and I will post the changes soon.

I think that, other than what has been said, it's the clone-army that really breaks things down. After watching the program, "Massive", in action with 3DStudio and Maya in the movies, I think it's unnecessary to try to copy such a grandiose technical achievement with a program like Bryce. I don't mean to discourage you, but it just seems silly to me? Flak's suggestions about randomizing the army are dead-on, but one other thing to remember is that it's ART, and realism in this type of scene is, to be blatant, un-achievable. Don't worry too much over the realism, I'd stick to compositional issues like you mentioned, Hythshade, and see where it goes! It's a great pic, though, with loads of "potential masterpiece" all throughout...