Star Trek - Enterprise firing phasers

[ghall]

The past few months I've been messing around with 3D for the first time in awhile, and I finally came up with something worth sharing.

I like doing post work in PhotoShop, simply because as a graphic designer, I'm very familiar with that tool. So while the ship itself (the Enterprise D mesh by Prologic9) was rendered in Lightwave, the scene was assembled in Photoshop, using photos (the rock, the starfield, the explosion) and the phaser effect (which I created myself).

Anyway, thoughts? Critiques?

[Eden]

Nice image and a pretty cool composition, I like the phaser effect that cool and well done. Do have a couple of suggestions for future reference and improvements. I would probably make the rock out of focus seeing as its the closest to the camera and not the main center of attention, also remove the last of the white lines from around the edges of the rock and increase the glow from the phaser effect and then darken and any existing shadows on the rock.

Sorry if that sounds overly critical it’s not meant to be....

[Rigel]

I agree that this is a nice image.

The lighting on the rock is a bit off compared to the Enterprise. What might be easier (for future reference) would be to get the lighting on the Enterprise to better match the rock.

[ghall]

Not overly critical at all. I know I'm far from perfect, so constructive criticism is really helpful. Now that the lighting thing was mentioned though, it's bugging me a lot. I guess I should find all my elements, before I light the model.

Thanks for the helpful feedback. I'll play around with it some more, see what I can come up with.

Edit: Ok, so I applied the feedback, and I tried to make the lighting on the rock at least look like it makes sense. I also played a little with the lights on the Enterprise herself, thankfully I rendered the lights as a separate layer so that was easy.

For future pieces though, I think I'll find any photographic elements beforehand, and make sure I match the lighting up properly.

[lonewriter]

My only crit is the color of the phaser should be more orange
http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__...ng_phasers.jpg

[Rigel]

Another thought to keep in mind; when you are creating an image, start a w.i.p. thread in the 3D W.I.P. forum to garner feed back right from the start of the process. I've done it myself and you end up with a much better image than you started out with!