This is a model of Celebi that I made for the Pokemon Challenge. I feel like this challenge really helped me grow in my ability to use Blender. The first picture is of Celebi sitting next to a waterfall watching the sunrise with some berry trees behind her. The second picture has the main lighting I used before I changed it.And then I made a few shots with some other lighting changes. Shout out to
spikeyxxx and
euv for all of their help and insight! And so many others who commented on my thread and helped me to keep going and not give up. I really appreciate it! =)
Nicely done Wendy I think this came out great! I prefer the first render, the contrast looks nicer to my eyes 👍👍
@theluthier Thanks ☺️
And I appreciate the feedback. I want to get as detailed notes as I can so I won’t make the same mistakes in the future. I still had fun with the lighting even if I was doing it wrong. 😅 It was fun just to experiment and see how much it changes a scene. I do have one more scene of Celebi in my WIP that I didn’t post here. I just thought it looked really cool even though the lighting isn’t realistic at all.
For naturalistic lighting, I recommend starting with HDRI exterior environment textures only. Shuffle through a variety of them (polyhaven.com has a lot of and they're free), rotate them around and you'll likely find something you like; even something with rim light (like the sun behind the character).
In rare situations I might add very subtle extra lights for artistic refinement but usually an HDRI by itself, oriented properly, is enough; even for stylized renders.
I only offer these notes as a "keep in mind for future projects" kind of way. Don't let them overshadow the good work you've done!
(Side note: It bugs me that you can't edit a comment after you post it cuz I make a lot of typos and usually have to go back and fix them.) EDIT: They just updated the site and now I CAN edit my comments. Cool! =)
@theluthier So the challenge is to get good lighting with things only available to you. That's really hard to do. IRL there isn't 3-point lighting or rim lighting around. So how are you suppose to get amazing lighting while keeping it natural? >.< (makes my head hurt thinking about it.)
Nice work, Wendy! I saw that you asked me about the lighting in your thread. There does seem to be a consistent issue in my opinion: Unknown light sources.
The foreground is more understandable (character + rock) with clear shadows / highlights but the background seems to be lit differently. The first one, for example, has a really bright rim light shining on the foreground but nothing on the background has this rim light. It makes the foreground feel copied and pasted on top of an unrelated background.
One other note I'd like to offer is in regards to the smoothness of Celebi's contours / silhouette. Artwork for the pokemon makes the smooth arching contours appear crucial to the design. However you model has notable "wobbliness" in the silhouette and contours. Keeping them perfectly smooth is definitely a challenge, especially if you rigged Celebi in order to pose. But placing special effort to keeping them extra smooth and intentional would really serve the translation from 2D to 3D well.
Again, overall you've done really nice work! You picked a hard pokemon imo 👍
Whoa you gave us so many looks. They look so magical, especially the purple sky one! You totally captured the awesomeness of Celebi! Well done!
Well done on a beautiful project, Wendy.
You're welcome. I enjoy helping someone in need to learn. :)