As mentioned in the proposal, composition and by extension post-production in blender provides both advantages and disadvantages but I would mainly like to highlight in this post what I think is one large advantage over conventional photography. This being the ability to make adjustments to the scene live.
Below Is the initial composition of my scene. The scene looks good, the bridges and stairs create guiding lines towards the tree in the centre and overall the scene isn’t too crowded. However, this can be expanded upon.
By adding some more volumetrics to the scene I can create more of a focus on the central islands, much like depth of field would. These volumetrics also add some ambience by changing the saturation of the frame bringing with it a different mood.
These five photos utilise different perspectives of the same scene to show how different the camera placement can be and how that affects every part of the viewing experience. Photos two and three use the left-to-right rule to once again represent the journey towards the tree especially with the latter of the two being shot from above providing the most detail of the scene. Photo four uses foreground interest and depth to its advantage, helping the viewer focus on what is happening in front before being able to see what is behind. The fifth and sixth photo shoots from below create a big emphasis on the tree almost giving it a menacing vibe.
These are just some of the considerations I considered when working with the perspective. but with the next shots, I also made large changes to the scene itself that I think makes them shine above the rest.
In this shot to create a sense of depth I used a frame within a frame, even when making the scene ill always planned to use the torii in this way, but the secret of this scene lies with the positioning of the space inside the torii. With the normal layout this shot isn’t actually possible as the torii cant enclose the whole tree cleanly, therefore unbeknownst to the viewer, I moved the second island further back to a position that would fit in the frame. This highlights my earlier point, in the real world this wouldn’t be possible as you can’t physically move structures to your liking however in a virtual space you can, while still keeping a relatively similar-looking scene.
This is an interesting shot as it in fact is just my scene un-rendered without any materials and yet it still has an aesthetically pleasing look to it and from this point, I had the idea for my next shots.
Despite all the work on the materials for my scene, I do have a soft spot for these shots in particular. To create them I removed the materials from all the assets and created a new one, this material is a mix of cross hatches made with Voronoi textures and a diffuse shader. I think this creates a great look, if my first materials look like they were from a watercolour painting then this material makes these shots look like they’re out of a black-and-white comic book. Using black and white allows the viewer to focus on the shapes of the scene, in some cases, the colour can be seen as a distraction.