Hey everyone. Ive been playing with 3D Studio Max off and on for the last few years, and this quarter, i took a class in it. This is my final project. Theres some things about it that i dont like, but i cant quite put my finger on what it is.

the shadows look kinda funky.

Yep, they are too sharp for the scale of the scene and the lights seem to have no falloff. I'm not sure how to do it in 3DSMax, but see if you can turn on falloff on the lights. Also, you might think of putting a low-intensity bluish directional light, assuming this is a night scene.

Regards,
jflanglois

Thanks for the advice. I thought the shadows looked weird, too, but coudlnt figure out why. The idea of scale makes alot of sense.

Here's what i got now:


I think the lanterns arent bright enough. What color should i use? Right now, I got them as a orangish yellowish color. Should they have a higher intensity? Also, do you think they would look better with some sort of lense filter like a glow?

Im having alot of trouble with lighting. I think thats my major problem in this scene.

One thing you might wanna have if you are going for a night style lighting, is to have a global ambient light that's blue, instead of keeping the pure black that you have there.
You take blue because it complements the orange/yellow of flames and other luminaries in your scene.
You might also wanna make your existing lights a bit more orange than yellow because right now you have a very strong bias towards greens/blues which isn't very nice. Well, IMO, that is.
Anyway, big improvement already, smooth shadows are much much better.
Although the colour balance in the first picture was better, IMO.

First off, the scene looks good.

The tiling of some textures, like the roof and the house , are too obvious. Make the scale larger (i.e. tile them less often over these areas). Also the scale of some other of your textures I think are too large (i.e. tile them more) on things like the grass and all of the "wooden" models.

This discontinuity of apparent scale is what I think the problem is. It gives the scene a "toyish" look if you know what I mean.

Yes, a form of glowing would help for the lanterns. Other than that and the others' suggestions, looks pretty good.

Regards,
jflanglois

Thanks for the tip about the scaling textures. It doe look alot more real now.

Here's what i have so far.



I put it in perspective mode, and played with the lighting some more. I also moved the boat.
Im going to put a villiage or something in that area where the grass is obviously tiled in the background.

I cant find where to add a glow to the lanterns, so if anyone has an idea on those, let me know, please.
Also, if you have any other remarks about what i could do better, let know, too.

Thanks.

It looks great. But the Grass texture is WAY too big. It looks like one blade of grass is as tall or long as half a house. The tent top seems too flat. Also, the texture on the roofs is kinda [sick].

I don't know if this will help, but look at this for a way to add glows in 3dsmax (apparently there are some easier ways in the later versions).

Regards,
jflanglois