AuthorTopic: Tiny castle landscape  (Read 14198 times)

Offline cels

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Tiny castle landscape

on: March 21, 2015, 10:20:04 pm
Alright, I'm in over my head again. Can someone help me understand how sunlight works?



This is a fairly small piece, so I'm open to go crazy with special effects. But I'm thinking I should probably do the light rays in layers, and I want to get the castle right before I move on to anything closer.

I guess the shadow from the castle doesn't really make sense, right? I'm out of my league here and I can't really find any good reference pics to understand how light works in a scene like this.

Offline CelioHogane

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Re: Tiny castle landscape

Reply #1 on: March 21, 2015, 11:12:02 pm
I don't see any problems with the lights and shadows, maybe add details to the tree? is a little wierd that the forest in the background is detailed and the red tree is not XD

Offline Friend

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Re: Tiny castle landscape

Reply #2 on: March 21, 2015, 11:59:12 pm
wow.. it already seems like your best work so far.  It's just so visually appealing. 

One suggestion- add depth by using a traditional method of foreground (red tree) /background (castle, then mts.) depth.  You could desaturate the background, diminish detail in the castle and mountains layer, or play with values and hues.

Offline Ai

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Re: Tiny castle landscape

Reply #3 on: March 22, 2015, 12:26:58 am
Alright, I'm in over my head again. Can someone help me understand how sunlight works?



This is a fairly small piece, so I'm open to go crazy with special effects. But I'm thinking I should probably do the light rays in layers, and I want to get the castle right before I move on to anything closer.

I guess the shadow from the castle doesn't really make sense, right? I'm out of my league here and I can't really find any good reference pics to understand how light works in a scene like this.
I would say there are two important elements here
* Basic relation to the lightsource, ie. basic value structure. I'd say you captured this fine.
* Reflected light. Large objects reflect more of the sky color, especially on upward-facing surfaces, and indirectly on surfaces that are at ~70-90 degrees to large upward-facing surfaces.

I think you might be going for crepuscular rays there. The current depiction makes sense in an iconic way; if you want to be a little more realistic, be aware that they normally appear to fan out rather than being at a constant angle.
OTOH, it's far enough into the day that I'm not sure that crepuscular rays would show up noticeably.

Anyway, here's an edit. Not super confident of the locations I picked for the edits on the mountains -- should have used a ref -- , but I'm pretty confident in the building edits.



Also I pointed out a few locations that have pixels that don't really make sense to me.

EDIT: Friend's reply reminds me that the castle roof should probably be bluer+more desaturated. The roof of the small tower would probably be less affected, which might be enough to allow you to easily keep that mostly-imaginary line you are drawing between the red tree and the orange roof.

Also I noticed the second shadow of the red tree, which is strange. I think you might need to adjust it -- most of that shadow would fall on the side of the hill which we can't see. (placing a shadow here also draws the mountain and tree together in space (->more similar in value) , which I find odd from a logical perspective)

The large triangular shadow from the castle seems to exhibit the same problem now I look at it, including drawing the large cloud and the castle together in space. My own sense of space says that the shadow would fall on the lower, smaller cloud, but not on the larger one. (and it would perhaps follow the contours of the cloud somewhat, but not doing so can be excused as a stylistic choice as long as the overall volume has enough resemblance)
« Last Edit: March 22, 2015, 12:43:17 am by Ai »
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Offline surt

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Re: Tiny castle landscape

Reply #4 on: March 22, 2015, 02:06:58 am
The rays would only make sense if there were some higher clouds (or some other obstruction) for them to shine through, in which case those those clouds would be casting shadow on the rest of the image.
The shadows casting visibly through the atmosphere wouldn't make sense unless the atmosphere was highly scattering such as fog, rain, smoke, dust.

Offline Mr. Fahrenheit

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Re: Tiny castle landscape

Reply #5 on: March 22, 2015, 03:41:55 am
I'd say the mountains contrast should be lowered a fair bit. Generally when doing atmospheric perspective the closer you are to the viewpoint the more contrast, and usually darker the thing is, because the further away the closer to the sky color things should get.

Offline cels

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Re: Tiny castle landscape

Reply #6 on: March 22, 2015, 10:41:06 am
I have a feeling I'm going to have to experiment a lot and make a lot of changes for this piece.



@Celio: Thanks! I will definitely be adding more detail to the tree in the foreground :)

@Friend: Thanks, I will keep that in mind. :)

@Ai: Thanks, that's some great advice. I did not edit the mountains and castle highlights this time, but I'll get them in the next edit. Good point about reflected light in the shadows. There's a lot of details I need to get back to, like the shadow on the ground and the weird pixel placement you pointed out. I just need to get the main elements right first, I think. I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean about the shadow of the castle falling on the smaller cloud though.

@surt: That's what I was going for, but I guess the colours were unrealistic and didn't give the impression that there were more clouds above. I've tried to fix this.

@Mr. Fahrenheit: You're right, I think I still have a bit too much contrast on the mountains. Will fix that next time.

Offline Ai

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Re: Tiny castle landscape

Reply #7 on: March 22, 2015, 12:23:37 pm

@Friend: Thanks, I will keep that in mind. :)

@Ai: I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean about the shadow of the castle falling on the smaller cloud though.
Reviewing it, I realize that that's not supposed to be a shadow from the castle, it's an extension of the rays. So I'll retract that crit and just comment that it looks like it's supposed to be a shadow.

Quote
@surt: That's what I was going for, but I guess the colours were unrealistic and didn't give the impression that there were more clouds above. I've tried to fix this.
IMO that is much more believable. The red tree is looking very red now though, probably need to blue/grey up the shadows to account for the increased light diffusion (it's supposed to feel foggy, right?)
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Offline cels

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Re: Tiny castle landscape

Reply #8 on: March 22, 2015, 09:07:40 pm
It is supposed to feel foggy, yeah. I mean, I need a fair bit of clouds and moisture in the air to get the crepuscular rays. But I don't want it to feel overwhelmingly gloomy and dark.

I hope this is a step in the right direction. I think I can do something nice here, if I can just make it look realistic and avoid any dumb mistakes.

I still don't know how to get the colours right. Right now, maybe I need more contrast. This looks a bit... bland. And I'm not able to make the crepuscular rays feel three-dimensional. They just look flat, like a cheap video game background.

« Last Edit: March 22, 2015, 09:09:21 pm by cels »

Offline JoeCreates

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Re: Tiny castle landscape

Reply #9 on: March 23, 2015, 11:31:35 am




Beautiful scene. :D

I feel like you can still lower the contrast in the background (and even add a little detail), as well as having a touch more contrast in the foreground. You might also be able to get a little more depth by putting the mountains on two layers. There were a few colors that didn't work for me as they were too close to adjacent colors, such as just below the trees. I think some AA between some of the more contrasting adjacent colors also helps a bit.

The new tree looks fantastic. I tried some slightly different colors on the trunk.