any idea as to how i can spice up the scene? it looks quite bland to me as of now

[iron sail]

.

[quartz sierra]

give it more color?

[hard fjord]

Maybe try adding a few more ambient light sources?
I'd say one reason it looks bland is because there's little sign of life in the scene apart from the ring in the center and a few scattered people. Some of the buildings could have ambient light emitting, some vehicles could have their headlights or brake lights blaring... you could even have a car with head beams on just outside of the camera's view pouring some color into the foreground of your scene.

[iron sail]

alright ill change it up

[hard fjord]

Epic! Feel free to @ me when you do... I'd love to see how you change it up.

[iron sail]

i havent implemented the things you had suggested but i had changed it up a little last night

[hard fjord]

That definitely looks more lively.
I think it's also made the image noticeably pixelated, but gets the brighter energy idea across 👌

[iron sail]

yeah its from the viewport and thus quite pixely 😓, the final render wont look this bad

thanks!!

[hard fjord]

All goods man!
And nice to "meet" ya 😁

[iron sail]

likewise! 😄

[iron sail]

gonna add particle system as wellnow

@hard fjord

[hard fjord]

Thats already looking a lot better with the additional lights.

So, what's the story behind this scene?

[iron sail]

no..story really 😭 the scene came to my mind and i made it

[steady lagoon]

Some things that I also would point out.
Its too wide, I can see the stretching, Cinematic Shots tend to use a small FOV, so just do tha and move the camera back
Another thing is it's grainy, I don't know if intended but I don't see a reason. Another is that it lacks of particles. A very good Youtube Channel that I can recommend, is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozR433WMYrY
You can see that he adds DOF and also particels on the camera, it's photoshop but is also a cinematic piece.

Also in real life, I doubt that people will just stand there in a 20m radius of a suspicous portal where an unknown figure in armor comes out. Just saying 😄

[iron sail]

@steady lagoon @hard fjord

ill add smoke near the guys legs

[iron sail]

alright ill decrease the fov, thanks for pointing that out, itll improve it alot!! 😄 , so i should i remove all the characters? what i had in mind was that the portal just appeared out of nowhere so they are sort of stunned

any other alternative rather than just deleting the characters? 😓

thanks!!

[steady lagoon]

Nono you can leave people in there but have them in a scared pose

https://celclipmaterialprod.s3-ap-northeast-1.amazonaws.com/28/86/1828628/thumbnail?1616185255
https://previews.123rf.com/images/ufabizphoto/ufabizphoto1712/ufabizphoto171203769/91702026-junge-cool-mann-halben-körper-angst-pose.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/474x/06/3f/c5/063fc56b86fc04399dfd47aa0f423875.jpg

[iron sail]

thanks foe the reference pictures!! any other critique?

[steady lagoon]

I can't see anything so far, I will have to see the next result 😉

[iron sail]

itll be a chnage in fov and posture change, also, the noise you were talking about, thats there because these are screenshots from the viewport and not the rendered version 😅

[steady lagoon]

jsut make a render of the version at HD, so you can progress more quickly, at the end you can do it at like 8K and downscale it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiU-WpXYxoc The reason for it.

[iron sail]

my monitor has 2k res

so id have to get atleast 4k res image to get the result the guy is talking about, and thatll take about 3 hours of rendering

ive got this right no? or did you mean to redner out 2k image and downscale it to hd

to 1920x1080

[steady lagoon]

You can do that, the higher the resolution the more information the editor has to downscale it later on to make it better looking

But don't think about it now, thats only for the end

[iron sail]

i get what you mean though, rendering out semi good pictures to see how things are

(theyll still have some grain)

[steady lagoon]

Well is the grain on purpose. If not then something is wrong with you scene. If it is then I would at least decrease it. Or make particles as replacement. They work better, because they also add depth (don't overdo it)

[iron sail]

is this better

[iron sail]

it will all be gone in the end

[steady lagoon]

OH it's Blender!

oof

But yes, still looks a bit static. But progress

[iron sail]

yeah

[iron sail]

mm isee

[hard fjord]

Just comparing this latest image to the first one you posted... its pretty a solid improvement. 👌

[iron sail]

ill upload ultra pro max hd version of it after 8 hours or so, its gonna look even better

the downscaling trick is also pretty neat

[iron sail]

which other distortion or effect would you like here? or which do you think would work?

[iron sail]

@steady lagoon how do you downsample your renders?

premiere or any other software?

[steady lagoon]

literally just go into any editing software and downscale it

[iron sail]

it got pixely AFTER i did that though

[steady lagoon]

What do you mean by pixely

[iron sail]

i zoomed a bit and i was able to see pixels

anyway which software d you use?

[lavish oracle]

more contrast, darker shadows, reduce or remove the flashlight in the front and add blue rimlight from the moon with specular

front plan now is too bright, make center the brightest part of the image as far as composition goes

[steady lagoon]

don't zoom

Size it down

from 4k down to FullHD

[iron sail]

i cant really change the front lights thing you are talking about but i initially did feel that as well ill change the rest

[iron sail]

mm alright

[spare carbon]

yea add some small grass in the road and use post process with some dust particals in it

[iron sail]

I'm done with the project now 😅

Kinda short on time, i would've changed more stuff if i weren't