Hello, I am quite new to Vue and have been quite interested in making realistic pictures (though Ive been a bad artist in drawing by hand) :) Anyway this is a render of my very first pic, its quite simple though missing much of the realisum that many of you are experciend in adding to your pics. I would like suggestions and opinions on how I could go about making this picture better.

1. I have always tried to play around with the camera but haven't found a way to make things look real. For instance in this picture the water seems to be quite close I tried moving the camera back but then the entire scene goes out of prespective are there any particular settings or tricks I can use to make things look more real.

Thanks

I highly recommend watching the tutorials over at GeekatPlay.  They have beginners tutorials that will help get you started and then lots of more advanced tutorials to keep you learing for a long time!

http://www.geekatplay.com/vuetutorialsnew.php

Welcome to Vue! :-)

The first thing I recommend is: watch tutorials and follow them. As many as you can. My favourite site for tutorials is www.geekatplay.com. They also have great materials for sale. In Renderosity there are also many. Watch as many as you can. I must have watched all on the Internet... :-)

And, as painful as it may be, I highly recommend you to read the Vue manual. I did.

Watch reference photos. There are millions on the internet.

You should try for yourself to discover the answers to questions you dont see in manuals and tutorials, before asking someone else. The best way to learn is when you discover it.

Regarding your particular image, here are just two pointers:
a) The mountains are not realistic. Practice with the terrain editor.
b) The shadows are too dark. In reality, in a sunny day, the shadows are not this dark. There are three basic ways of improving this: 1) slide the light sliders towards the ambient light, 2) increase the light from the sky, 3) double click on the sun and decrease the shadows (to 80%, for example). Or you can use a combination of all of these.

Have fun! :-)

Take two on a different scene :) This software is really fun ;)

After watching the above listed tutorials, load some of the sample scenes that came with VUE and pick them apart to see how the masters made them.  It is a simple and free hands on way to learn.

Are you rendering in preview mode? Even at its most basic the quality would normally be better than that, I would make sure you are at least rendering in "Final" mode :)

Jon

Vue is very addictive.  Have fun first them worry about realism.

"1. I have always tried to play around with the camera but haven't found a way to make things look real. For instance in this picture the water seems to be quite close I tried moving the camera back but then the entire scene goes out of prespective are there any particular settings or tricks I can use to make things look more real."

Try changing the scale on the water's material instead of moving the camera.
If you change the scale to 0.5 you'll halve the size of the texture, which will make the water look more distant without having to play with the camera.

I use the camera solely for getting a point-of-view and the requisite "focal length" (just like a real camera). I do any other adjustments by tweaking the scale/orientation of the objects themselves and/or the scale of the assigned texture.

(Of course, that's not the only way to go about it, it's just the one that I find easiest.)

Hope that helps..

Cheers,
Diolma