Crits on background please... (new image)

[Traveler]

Oneway,

Thanks for your ideas, they're quite helpful.

I'll try to play with the light setup that you suggested; right now I have only the Flamingo Sun object in place, but I agree, it's hard to get a nice lighting using that. I experimented for hours and never liked the result. (It's good for sunny, light scenes, though.) I also tried using a lightdome (of 5 point lights) but didn't really work out. Maybe it's good when using a ~100 of them, but then it's more for studio lighting.

You're right about the shooting holes; I'll see if I can modify them. (It takes a bit of work to do it I'm not sure I want to go through it again.  I already modeled the towers ~5 times from scratch...  )  I'll add a moat and a drawbridge, as that seems to be missing for everyone.

I don't think I'll enlarge the wall texture anymore, it's already big and I don't think it's that repetitive. What I WILL try though is adding some more color to it, because I think the all-around gray color makes it look repetitive. (In fact, the texture already has a bunch of procedural components, so if you look closely, it is actually not repetitve at all, because of little details. Some more colors there will help bring out these details.)

I'll also go with a darker environment and some torches. It seems that everyone would only consider this a threatening place if it was dark.

I'll post a new image in a day or so; for now thanks everyone for the ideas. 

[Chicky]

Chicky: When rendering 3d images, the software doesn't use your graphics card. It's all done with the main CPU. Only when playing 3d games where rendering has to be realtime the 3d card gets used.

Learn something new every day 'ey