06-20-2013, 05:18 AM
Hey man, You are so diligent and hard working with this stuff. It's awesome to see the progress and kick ass work,
I'm noticing a big issue with your rendering, and that's that most of your materials have a chalky appearance to them.
I think this is a two fold issue but they are both heavily combined. You don't seem to consider the size and softness of the light source that you are painting. This is important as this defines how a specular will appear on a surface. Eg, a scattered soft light will have very hazy soft speculars, and a small hard light will have hard shiny speculars. Of course this is also defined by the material, and you should make sure to pay far more attention to how hard speculars should be on various materials.
The other part is how you render them, you have to pay a lot of attention to the hard and soft edges of a specular, this is what defines what type of specular it is, it's super important! The differences between your version on the left and the soft specular i did on the right are subtle but i feel it is super important.
Maybe do some Bouguereau studies (man i should do this too), most of the time he uses a really diffused main light to give his scenes a kinda dreamy feel. Pay close attention to the hair. How sharp the speculars are, where they are, how they are placed. Look at the skin and try and work out how he is placing them.
This is a hard thing to explain, but did i explain it well enough?
![[Image: mO92A.jpg]](http://snag.gy/mO92A.jpg)
I'm noticing a big issue with your rendering, and that's that most of your materials have a chalky appearance to them.
I think this is a two fold issue but they are both heavily combined. You don't seem to consider the size and softness of the light source that you are painting. This is important as this defines how a specular will appear on a surface. Eg, a scattered soft light will have very hazy soft speculars, and a small hard light will have hard shiny speculars. Of course this is also defined by the material, and you should make sure to pay far more attention to how hard speculars should be on various materials.
The other part is how you render them, you have to pay a lot of attention to the hard and soft edges of a specular, this is what defines what type of specular it is, it's super important! The differences between your version on the left and the soft specular i did on the right are subtle but i feel it is super important.
Maybe do some Bouguereau studies (man i should do this too), most of the time he uses a really diffused main light to give his scenes a kinda dreamy feel. Pay close attention to the hair. How sharp the speculars are, where they are, how they are placed. Look at the skin and try and work out how he is placing them.
This is a hard thing to explain, but did i explain it well enough?