Check out this scene

[svenip]

how did you made the shadows ? with a map for the shadow color ? or an object or paint effects in front ??

to make it more realistic here are some tips.

every border between objects is darker. so make it more dirty in generall but the edge between the street and gras a little bit more. also the white lines are too perfect like everything else. imperfections can give so much to your scene. the dirt beside the road has something like a greyish in it. you shoudl more saturate the colors, and choose darker ones maybe. also proportions may be a problem in this scene. the sign is to great in relation to the street etc.

so don't flog me, i just wann help :rolleyes:

[immy786]

The shadows are caused by paint effects in front. I clicked on the "CASTS shadows" button.

[svenip]

better do it by texturing the shadow color of the light. then you're able to blur the map to your needs. it's a while ago since i hated paint effects and stopped working with them :)

[graphiouz]

hehe sven:) im not a pFx user either,
Do it like sven said,,,hush away now:wip:
have you cranked up the tesslation on that sign, dont know if it has an FX on it, but you can try?
also if the tree is behind the camera, it doesnt matter if you make an shadow map,.

.

[bigfatMELon]

To fix the shadow on the sign, there are two approaches that I see.

First, the artistic one: make just texture it in since the casting tree source isn't visible. Even if it were, nobody will notice unless the camera, tree and sign were aligned in such a way to make it a scientific study.

Second, the technical one: increase the size of the buffer for the shadow casting light and play with the dmap filter (blur) until it looks better.

I think PFX can be used and work well but I don't think you can just plop them down and render them straight off and have it look good. I do such things as:

render them always in a separate passes with their own lights
render them at double size and use a sub-pixel compositing package to scale them back to size for smoother results.
heavily alter the color of each PFX layer to blend them into the surrounding scene. PFX tend to POP and look too perfect. Notice how wildly saturated they are in your scene.
where PFX intersect with surfaces, add some kind of dirt, noise or depression so that they don't look like they are perfectly intersecting.
mix in some non-PFX items such as hero trees and plants. In this way, PFX can play the role of filler so that your resources and geometry are focused on those things that need the most character.

The rest of what you ask for is a matter observation. Go look at a road in similar settings. Take a picture and note all of the finer details that cause the real road to look different than yours. As has been suggested above, dirt, imperfections and so forth are the hallmarks of reality.

It's really easy to take what you see every day for granted and it takes some doing to learn how to observe things as they really are. Women tend to make better observers, so there's your excuse to take a female along on. ;)

You might also spend some time reading up on methods for lighting outdoor scenes. I'm sure there are a few on the web.

-jl

[boomji]

use lensing(depth of field)
go here instead of using msn and icq...hehehe
http://www.azuswebworks.com/photography/index.html

http://www.rlett.fsnet.co.uk/Links%20page.htm

http://www.88.com/exposure/index.htm

u want to understand color... well nuthin better and fun than...

http://www.sanford-artedventures.com/play/color2/rechrome_c.html

(thats one link bye the way)

more theory
http://www.colormatters.com/colortheory.html

learn baby learn...you wont regrettt !!!
b

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