Yesterday I felt kinda bored, so I decided to put my Blender skills to good use:
Current Render:
I learnt how to do all this stuff thanks to my man Blender Guru
So anyways, something was looking kinda wrong. I changed the skybox and I added the mountain to the bottom right, but this cave still looks a lot like plastic, even though I added a displacement map. Any ideas on how I can improve the photorealism? What would you add or change? Let me know down in the comments!
Maybe edit the lighting. The background does not add anything to the cave. No light is being added from the background. Even using a point light near the entrance matching the average color of the background would help. Hope this helps!
The rocks are a big reason it doesn’t look realistic, when do you see perfectly smooth rocks. Also the map as a whole looks too perfect, maybe add some jagged edges or something. Overall good work so far though!
I moved the pointlight to up here:
Admittedly, it looks much better. Thanks!
By any chance, do you know how to reduce the glow from around the pointlight?
No, I’m sorry! ):
I personally use sun lights since they give me good shadows when I’m rendering maps.
Try to make the rocks more pointy or spikey possible burns if they were asteroids but anyways this is an amazing cave!
From the point of view of someone who hasn’t used blender much, I think that part of it is the rocks are very shiny. They look somewhat like they’re reflecting light, which I think is what makes it look plastic-y. If there was a way to reduce that somehow, make it look more “dusty” and dull, I think that’d help!
I’ve set the roughness to max, so the light you’re receiving isn’t reflecting any objects.
anyhow, I’ll see what I can do. Cheers!
Usually, I find cave walls to be more rugged and rough with pointy edges/angles rather than being entirely smooth.
The very sharp cut from the cave walls to the space background also seem a little off putting to me 
A varying amount of colors rather then all grey can also help with detailing. Another thing would be making the edges more brighter and the closer parts (to the camera) more darker to add more contrast/difference in light.
Coloring/tinting the light to be near the color of the galaxy background will also help it blend it more (imagine a pink background emitting green light on a rock, it would seem odd )
I’ll see what I can do, but I can’t seem to find out how I can add major displacement.
The location of the pointlight sends light directly into the cave, but I’ll reduce the wattage (energy).
And finally I’ll adjust the light to a slightly more…blueish tint?
I’ll update the post when I’ve finished this. Cheers!
No, but I find it doesn’t draw attention from the main part of the scene.
I don’t wan’t to suggest too many things since then it would get cluttered (if all were added). If you can find a clean way to add a crater in the cave, then that’s all I can think of. If you think it looks good then it’s really up to you if you wan’t to work on it anymore. I think it looks great in it’s current state!
Thanks for the suggestion. Cheers!
Nice, it seems to add more constrast to the cave and blends it in more at the same time 
I think all you need to do is have some sharp angles here an there around the wall though thats about it, pretty nice job 
