This is a frontal view of an unpopulated Haudenosaunee (a.k.a. Iroquoian) village that I created in blender.
I've included six longhouses, two drying racks, and a community fire with stump seats. It's all surrounded by a wooden log palisade that separates the village from the forest.
It took of lot of effort to research and make this and I'd really appreciate feedback and critique on it so that I can improve on this scene in the future.
Thanks, I'll be sure to look into that. :)
I'll look into making a sunlamp for the scene. I didn't think of that. As for the materials, I do use Crazy Bump and have added texture to the scene. This image was actually rendered a little while ago by me, but I've refined the textures a bit since then. I feel like so far this is my best rendering of this scene. I've been practicing using PBR materials and have been having problems getting that to work with my bump mapping. (It's been causing my materials to turn white.) That's partly why all the materials look so flat.
Hmm... Never thought of those. Thanks for the suggestions.
The lightning is kind of flat, try putting a sunlamp in your scene and tilt it so that you get cast shadows. The fence/barricade shows things on the other side, don't know if this is intended, but it would look better if it was denser. You should also download crazybump, and create bump maps for the sand and house textures, this would crate a much more detailed and realistic scene. Some higher resolution sand textures would look a lot better also. Would you mind sending me the blender file so that i can have a look at it?
The first thing that jumps out at me is that it's very difficult to read. I think this is mainly due to the even lighting and similar colors throughout the piece. I suggest working on the lighting to creat more highlights and shadows, allowing the different elements to be distinguished more easily, as well as varying the colors a bit more.
In terms of composition, there doesn't appear to be any focal point. I would say move the camera closer to the fire pit (or vice versa), leaving the longhouses and palisade visible in the background.
My final critique has to do with the ground. It appears to be a flat plain with an image texture applied. My suggestion for this would be to add some variation to the elevation and employ some displacement and normal maps.
Hope this helps!