Oak Kong Puzzle Rendering

[DaStig]

Hi there folks, made a nice oak puzzle scenery rendering. I think it looks good, but still, can be better. It is still missing that photo-real touch ... how can I improve on this ?

Any suggestions on improvement are welcome ...

My render (still not looking real enough  )


I want it to look more like this one ...

[TGS808]

For starters, add some DoF. A little goes a long way towards making scenes look more real. Having everything in the scene completely in focus is always a dead giveaway that it isn't real.

[cango]

agree on the dof comment.
The darker woods on the 2nd pic are Wenge, and the striped ones Zebrano, if it could help (if you didn't know, of course)

[DaStig]

Thnx folks, yeah ... adding some DOF to it surely helps to make it more real ... but it eats a whole lot more rendering time, rendering with DOF on. But hey, it's the final result that counts ...

[Kico]

Thnx folks, yeah ... adding some DOF to it surely helps to make it more real ... but it eats a whole lot more rendering time, rendering with DOF on. But hey, it's the final result that counts ...

You can render out "depth pass" and use Photoshop to add DOF later in post , work most of the time ...

Cheers

[DaStig]

@kico, can you explain me on how to achieve that?

[Eric Summers]

This is an older webinar, but it's pretty good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9jVsI5NODE

[Kico]

@kico, can you explain me on how to achieve that?

You can reference this video below, along with the one Eric posted
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_iMUp5gVsY

[Josh3D]

A little more attention on the materials and lighting will help. Some varied roughness and warmer light sources. Look at the small variation of materials - even very smooth oak can have a lot of imperfections. Looking forward to the next version ;-)