Please Critique my Render
Blastedlabs
Posts: 60
in Art Studio
Hello!
I want some honest feedback, so I can improve. I did no postwork.
Thank you!
Critique.jpg
1103 x 1111 - 1M
Comments
Nice posing of the character. I like the sense of action in the chess piece leaning over where it is being knocked by his hand. I find the background distracting, especially the way his head is framed by the arch and roof. Perhaps you could use Depth of Focus (DOF) on your camera to blur the background. I think his skin could use some more glossiness; it looks a little dry and chalky, but the color looks good.
I really like that, nice work. The only thing that really stands out as off to me is the way he's holding the knight so loosely. It seems as if he's just barely holding it and tipped the king over rather than knocking it over in victory.
Didn't try to fix the skin yet, but here's two blurred backgrounds. The one on the left is a composite image of two renders. The foreground-only render, and the background-only render (which was gaussian blurred in PS). The one on the fight was my best attempt at trying DOF. I think it might not be possible with this image? Because the camera angle is so extreme.
Making the focus area larger (higher number on the F/Stop slider) should do the trick. The blurred parts may get a little less blurry that way, but that shouldn't hurt the image.
A liitle too blurred now? You should be able to get DoF set (assuming this is in DS) by (obviously!) setting DoF axtive on the camera, then using a different camera (or perspective view) to look at the sceen from side on, so you can see the front and back bounding lines of the DoF (it can help if you set them to be a contrasting colour) and move them by setting focal length and f-stop.
I have no background in photography, so it's actually all greek to me. :P
Here's my latest effort, with the gate moved and the focal length changed.
I like the latest version of the picture you made the best so far.
I'd put the background how you had it in the 1st picture, loose the weird vest, try to introduce a bit of wrinkle, draping, and sweat to the clothing, make the skin perspire a bit, and the chess pieces I find them a bit 1990s University of Utah teapot render style but it does give them a sort of nice original look but the pieces seem to be made of pure copper and pure silver and that's unrealistic - they should have a bit of tarnish.
Of the three with the original location of the background the 2nd was most effective.
The last one with the gate moved is the best one, in my opinion. Some people may think he's knocked over the King by accident, so I would add just a hint of a small smile, to show he knows what he's doing. It's a good picture, because it tells or hints at a story behind it.
To do DOF, let's say you have Camera DOF with DOF turned on for the camera in Parameters. Select Camera DOF in SCENE tab. Now, out in the viewport, go to Perspective camera. Look from the TOP view (I prefer that over the side view, which can be misleading at times to me) and move the brackets so whatever you want in focus is between them. As you move some of the sliders over in Parameters, you'll see the brackets move. Easy!
And if you want to focus most or specifically on a certain spot, put the F/Stop to 0. Just for your sliding and aiming. I like to move my perspective view arounf to see if it's spot on from all angles. Then increase F/Stop to the desired size. Don't render at zero. It doesn't work ;)