What to say, very, very, nice job! Love the overall sense of calm, can feel a little breeze on me!
The first thing that I can tell, in my opinion, is that those pine trees in the background are out of contest. They disturb the overall peace of the picture. The lighting on those trees is also wrong. You have a strong orange light that come from the right and the pines are lighted from the left with a sort of very soft blueish light. It cannot be the sky color that is bleeding because the shadows on the cabin are purple, not blue. Maybe try to work on them!
Other than that, the only thing that come to my eyes is that you have light come out from the top window. Oh, another thing. There is something also with the lamp light (maybe the chair shadows are too strong), I would like to see what happen if you turn it off 
Lighting Challenge #24: (WIP) The Cabin
lets see…a cabin close to a mountain range…this model has a lot to work on… this is my first output…hope u all like it…any kind of commends r wellcome.
thank you..
Hi,
this is my first lighting for this challenge.
The colors in the scene are only from the lighting and the lights in the scene. I didn´t use any textures or colors in my shaders, only grayscale values are mapped into the diffuse channel, together with some adjustments for reflections and speculars.
Besides that I´ve added some details in the modelling (gras etc.), to make the lighting better visible I´ve also added some bumpmaps to have more detail on the model.
The scene is rendered with VRay for Maya post effects like glow and some adjustements are all done in Fusion.
Have fun watching.
Paul
Hi,
This is the first time I am participating in the lighting challenge. This is my intial try. A lot of work is left. Please feel free to comment.
This is my initial lighting setup using maya standard lights. In this render I only want to establish the mood.
I am not able to post the full picture on the thread like all the other guys. I am attaching the file and I am only getting the attached thumbnail.
Can anyone please help me?
Hi, nice work everybody! Thats my second attempt, added some grass and more textures, still need to do the background mountains. Any comments and critisc are appreciated
Hello Mire,
So far your lighting looks interesting and a nice angle, but I think the stucco is not the best texture for this building. Its construction isn’t suitable for stucco - of course you COULD use it, but all the other building details call for wood construction. Just a note, your image isn’t “wrong”, but this house doesn’t look like a stucco type cabin at all. From a construction standpoint, you’d rarely if ever see a stucco house with a roof like this and all the other wood-construction type details… Also, the soffit (under the roof overhang) appears to be stucco as well. This wouldn’t happen in real life.
Just some ideas for you to think about!
Hi,
This is the first time I am participating in the lighting challenge. This is my intial try. A lot of work is left. Please feel free to comment.
This is my initial lighting setup using maya standard lights. In this render I only want to establish the mood.
since noone had any issues to report with my pictures, i tried figuring our for myself
I added some environmental fog (for i really like that effect) and changed the lights. There is now one more at the back of the house. I also got rid of the VRay sun for somehow the fog stuff did not work with vray lights! Also the shadows were problematic (the glass of the lamp seemed to not let any light through).
Most obvious change: added proper grass (not only the displacement map, for it looked very unrealistic). Again both perspectives:
any help would be much appreciated!
Hi Holzi, I think that there is a lot to work to do, but that’s why, I think, you come here =)
So, here are some things that, I hope, may help you.
First of all, what is the mood that you would like to achieve? The emotions that you will translate to the ones that look at your image. Let’s say you want to transmit “peace and calm”. Then, google search for something similar (maybe a fresh spring sunrise can transmit this feeling?).
When you had found some image (not only one) try to understand what are the element that transmit to you this feeling. Look also the composition of the image.
At this point try to mimic those things in your image.
Just a question, do you know about linear workflow? If no, search info on it (sorry but I use mental ray and I cannot tell you what to do to work in the right way) after that your life as lighter, will change, believe me =)
Also, have you tried to light your scene completely in white? Try and then work from there adding textures and so on.
As for your images.
Why I told you about the composition? The first image you have posted, IMHO, doesn’t tell so much, maybe trying to zoom out a little. The second one, is way better. Also the effect that you got, in the second, reminds me something like an “alien ship” that landed behind the cabin or something “unnatural”. This could be a good point of start!
Another question, what happend to the lamp? O_° You have a light inside? If so it’ way too strong. You rised the intensity because you didn’t get the shadows from inside?
The last thing, the grass. Is too big and too sparse. Look at real grass, the blades are thin and not so large.
Not everthing it’s wrong. The shading of the cabin wall, in the first image, is good, i really like it! I also like very much, the effect that you achieved with the leaves on the tree in the first image, really nice specular reflections!
Don’t get those crits wrong, it’s only my opinion 
Hope to have not be too rude!
Here’s my final I guess.
Added depth of field for background Layers. added front Tree with DOF. Colo corrected over all
and added vignette and Grain on top.High Rez.
Thanks for the comment InfernalDarkness, I hadn’t really thought about the material of the wall, but what you say makes sense!
Dude, that’s killer. Excellent work!! The only thing I dislike is the heavy handedness of the grain in the shadows. It looks like you took a really nice picture with ISO cranked. I’d like to just barely notice the grain so it looks like you took the photo with something like a 5D Mark II and not my PowerShot S50.
Also, I should maybe be beaten for nit-picking such a great piece of work like this, but I only want to do it because it’s so darn well done. The DOF on that branch in the foreground being hit by the keylight doesn’t look quite right. I can see a dark line around it and it doesn’t match the DOF on the rest of that tree. It’s like you did the DOF in post and it didn’t quite hit that area correctly. It just sticks out to me since it creates a high contrast area in that part of the image. Feel free to ignore this though, it’s great work!
Hi guys. I thought Id share this very helpful link with you. For one it will help you calculate your DOF so you will find it easier to mimic a real world camera.
http://www.tawbaware.com/maxlyons/calc.htm
hey guys… everybody’s doin a grt job here…m a newcomer. . . . . . . .need some cmnds frm u ppl…
Hi all, this is my first try with the challenge.
I am using 3ds max 2010 and mental ray for the rendering.
Also a little retouch in cs4. Tell me what you think. Thanks in advance.
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