Ok maybe there's two things to note. The background is full black, maybe you can get some gradient going, just so it's not fully a solid color. What always works great is a radial gradient just behind the character. And perhaps the clothes feel a bit shadeless, as if it's not interacting with the light and lacks a bit of volume that the shadows give it. That's it really. I'd say try and getting those things going and post it to the gallery, I bet you'll get a staff pick.
I agree with Omar. This guy looks just incredible. I still get Stephen King vibes from him.
i also agree with the lighting. It's hard to impossible to make out any contours and details in the shoulder and ear area for example. Maybe a neutral coloured HDRI with a very low strength could give just a little more context. Then make it invisible to the camera with a lightpath node and have something like Omar suggested with the gradient in the background.
It's a character that doesn't deserve the team's choice, too unhealthy.
I just wanted to talk about the character and not the lighting, which was just an area with a small-studio HDRI. I'm having trouble making myself understood. But thanks for your comments and I look forward to my next apartment designed and built by Sacha ; )
RRaoulette Your character is developing super well! As in, this could be student reel material 🤩
Hopefully I can offer some feedback about the technical aspects of the character specifically. Being such a dramatic lighting setup with most of the character in shadow, it's a bit tough to analyze much. Perhaps that's why folks gravitated to lighting feedback.
If you could provide a brighter, more fully-lit render, it would help us focus our notes.
The way it is, the skin doesn't look as translucent as it should be. UNLESS you're going for a painted skin look. For example, there's a difference between skin color (ethnicity) and adding stuff to skin (makeup, paint). Regardless of ethnic skin tone (and I would include fantasy / alien creatures here), natural skin coloration still appears to have the same level of translucence. In your render, it's less translucent and feels more like paint/makeup. If this is intended to be the character's natural skin tone, I would bump up the SSS amount (maybe even double).
The clothing feels noticeably lower fidelity than the face. Which could simply be that it's a less developed area on the overall character, being a WIP after all. Also this is where an HDRI helps a ton, even if you keep it low powered. I know you're not asking about lighting but we can't ignore the effect lighting has on everything. It appears that you only have one light source in the scene which leaves shadows unnaturally black; blacker than we see in reality. This can make a good character appear less believable as a result.
Thank you very much Kent, you are my light, I have retraced the character and the light. What do you think? Can you use simple words for the translation. I await your precious advice. Claire
(I was going to lay it out and add a thought from Bertolt Brecht)C'est Ok, I've understand 👌
You're replacing the images? You can leave the trail of images behind, that way we can see the improvements and compare. You know what I think will help? A back rim light that only lights up the rim of the character. That way you separate him from the background, because the clothes are very black and the background and character almost blend in together.
I wanted to leave the images but it froze, a warning appeared telling me: the site is blocked against piracy. I tried several times but the site only let me see the last image, even though I'd only uploaded JPEGs.
As for the light, I want to leave it as it expresses the brutality of the character. I'll listen to your advice and try to brighten it up a bit more without giving it a certain softness like yours. The subject isn't the same. For the skin, I've doubled the SSS, is that better?
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
