I haven't used this site in awhile, but I do remember this place allowing and critiquing NPA. I used to do pixel art, but  after 6 months of working at it I decided it wasn't for me, and upgraded to 3D rendering.

I made a hundred flowers (I think. Honestly, I have no idea at this point), signature size. I still have the source file, so I can change the focual point, lighting, colors, etc. Each render will just take 10-15 minutes of my 4 cores sh*tting themselves. Each flower is about 15k triangles, but the main culprit is the focal blur.

My goal is to make this look like a painting, since I can't do photorealistic yet. (My excuse is that photos are boring.)



So, as they say, "C&C"?







Edited by IQbrew - 18 April 2011 at 10:07pm

Good point.
I use a focal point of 0,0,0, which is the middle of my scene.
I should have done the front.

Anything else? I rerendered at a small size, 2 minutes instead of 15.
Hopefully you can still sort out the details.


Edit:
Since then, I added about 16 weak lights to smooth out the shadows. I removed focual blur for now, and turned off AA.

14 seconds to render. Focal blur is a bitch.


Edited by IQbrew - 19 April 2011 at 3:54am

... Sure, I'll go with planted in rows.
They do have a slight random offset, at least.

Changes
-Changed main white light to tinted blue (Feels like night now)
-Added an orange light
-Added a boatload (1.2 GBs of memory while rendering) of these plant things
-Changed the view to be a bit closer
-Turned AA on, but to 1/3 of what I originally used
-Fog is a bit closer
-No focal blur

I'm reasonably happy with it, now.

It's still incredibly busy. Nothing blends together, creating a sort of trafficy optical illusion. It's this sort of effect, only more in the realm of realism:

Yeah I'm having a hard time focusing on anything; first off I think that the green and purple having such a similar value is causing weirdness, makes leaves and ground seem to be on the same plane, with blue shadows on the top.

Why is the ground purple? I think everything in the image could do with a shift towards yellow, except maybe the flowers themselves. The leaves certainly should be a bit darker, look sort of like mint atm.

I like the altered picture more, although I think that the shade of green is too bright for real flowers. But they look more realistic definitely! The shade of red could be more varied! Sometimes I'm sending flowers to a friend, and every flower has a different color although it's the same flower. You have to keep this in mind :)