"Slime" <fak### [at] emailaddress> wrote in message 
news:42101020$1@news.povray.org...
> The anti-aliasing really helps. A few suggestions:
>
> Think about the lighting. It looks like you have one bright light source
> and you're relying on radiosity to do the rest of the work for you. This 
> is
> causing the image to look flat since there are no interesting shadows or
> highlights, and some areas (particularly the railing) are very washed out.

I do have one area light, but it is true that the 'sun' is most of the 
lighting. That's white *2, should I reduce that some?

I was trying for photons on the buildings but it didn't seem to do much - 
that would make for more interesting light patters and it's pretty prevalent 
in 'concrete canyons'.

> The background could use work. Note that it alone takes up more than 50% 
> of
> your image, especially considering that it makes up most of the 
> reflections
> in the windows.

True, although the platform is a little too 'high' - I could move it down 
some so that there would be buildings behind reflected instead of the dome.

> For such an important part of the image, it's fairly bland,
> and it's hard to make out shapes in it. I understand that it's a barren
> planet,  ...

It's actually Mars, Valles Marinaris, near the center.  The colors are 
'real' in that they are taken from Viking, plus a slope dependant texture. 
I do agree it's washed out some, there was also supposed to be fog to show 
the distant terrain.  The terrain texture looks better up close, was having 
issues with continous zoom, I think I need some kind of larger scale 
differences.  I'll fiddle with it.

> The horizon isn't interesting, and the sky is
> essentially a single, boring solid color; use your imagination to improve
> these areas.

I actually have some 'clouds' taken from real lander pictures but the RGB 
values smeared out I think - I agree it needs work.  Need to look at some of 
the later images and fiddle with a gradient too.

> You could increase the detail in the fence. What sort of material are 
> those
> diagonal bars made of? Should there be small screws or bolts holding 
> things
> together?

Those fences will be on the buildings roof tops too, so was trying to keep 
the detail to textures.  It was supposed to look like wires in glass, but I 
need to scale it some.  I agree about the detail, I'll work on it.

> A lot of the textures are very reflective and it's causing distracting
> patterns of lines all over the place, mostly from the dome's frame
> structure. Maybe you should work on some of the textures (like in the
> elevator) to rely less on reflection for a good appearance. Not all metal
> has perfect reflections.

The animation version of this had no reflective metal, it just takes too 
long.  I also experimented with the copper being reflective and the metal 
not.  I could turn down the reflectivity of the 'vator glass too.

> The windows are very bumpy. You could reduce the distortion a little.

The dome or the building?  Dome is made of triangles, can't do much with 
that.  The buildings I actually flattened some, they are from Chris 
Colefax's city but heavily modified.  Maybe if I had the dome diagonals 
shown it wouldn't look so bumby, as the panes 'shift' in the middle without 
a brace, which looks funny.

> Finally, a little variation in the buildings wouldn't hurt. Maybe some
> different types of roofs (like some without plants) or windows would make
> the city look less like it was all built at once.

Right, that's on my TTD.

> Anyway, these are all my opinions and they may conflict with the vision 
> you
> have for your image, so simply take them however you want to. It's a great
> image already.

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll work on it.

        == John ==

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