I was messing around with Poser over the weekend and came up with the image above using Nerd's backdrop prop and a saucer model I found on a free section of the internet. How realistic does this image really look and what can be done to improve it? Not trying to generate a phony UFO sighting wave just curious what the Poser experts on the forum think about crafting realistic images of imaginary things. Desides the usual dragons, warrior princesses and assorted wizards and demons.

Play with the lighting to match the shade and direction of the light source (pay attention to the ground shadows....) Try to place a ground shadow for the saucer in the snow... Move the saucer off center, also play a little with the focal length. the picture and the ufo look like they are using different focal lengths... Possibly add a little motion blur... the edges are too crisply focused... Just what came off the top of my head

I'm no expert but here goes: The lighting on the ufo looks white, while the background is mostly blue, I don't think changing the lights would help tho, they'd only make the background darker blue, how about adding a very light blue tint to the object colour instead? Rob

Also... I don't know if people notice this or not but when changing light color you can use the little eye-dropper to sample colors from any where on the screen (including the background picture...) that way its a perfect color match

It's hard to tell where the object is in relation to the horizon, and thus how big/small it is supposed to be...could be big, beally far back and on the ground, or small, close to the viewer, and floating high above the ground. Also follow the lighting suggestions so far, especially shadow, that'll help fix the orientation problem. I'd tone down those highlights on the front, or move them to the side, to properly show the light angle, the highlight goes on the closest part to the light source.

oh, "beally" = "really", in this case.

a metallic object like this over such a highly reflective environment like snow and ice isn't going to have as dark a shadow on the bottom like you have now. Try to lighten the shadow up, or shoot a lower intensity blue light up from below to simulate some ambient light. Or...use the ray tracing in Poser 5 when it comes out :)

Try adding a bit of film grain (or noise) in postwork.

Whadayamean, "imaginary"?! ;)