looks alot better man Good job only question i have is this . ......
is the tiki torch lit or is that just the wik? if it is the wik never mind lol but if it is lit i think it should cast a hint of its light onto the bugzapper and just maybe a little on the bug but just play with it nothing to strong just enough to give it some life.keep it up its lookin great

Instead of moving your light back...just make sure you are using the intensity falloff feature with it. Then you can adjust your intensity range/nominal falloff distance to control how far out the light reaches.

If you use linear....it fades off gradually over an even distance...but since you don't want the light to hit the bugs face so much...try using the Inverse distance or Inverse distance ^ 2. Those two tend to be a lot brighter closer to the light with a much faster fall-off. Maybe that will help it hit the back...but fall-off before it hits the face?

Oh -
(if you have never used that feature before...it's helpful to switch to a top viewport too as you adjust the value - it will give you a graphic representation of how far that light is reaching.)

Thanks so much for the advice digitalshow! That really helped. Equinox, I tried to give the fire more light, but it is rather isolated in the scene, and if I make it powerful enough to reach the zapper and the mosquito, the mosquito's hair becomes very orange and it looks strange, so right now I have abandoned that. I would like to have the light but I don't want to compromise the mosquito's hair.
This image shows the new blue lights with inverse distance on them. Please give crit and/or compl. Thanks.

Glad to help.

If you want the torch orange to reach the zapper just boost it to where it looks good on it...and then exclude the bug from the lights effect.

If you want a small bit of orange on the bug too...just create another orange light and move it to where it looks good on the bug... then just exlude it from hitting everything else :)

Thanks for the advice Digitalshow. I couldn't seem to get the orange light to look good on the bug because the light would always change the color of the hair, even if I excluded the bug from the light. I got the orange to show up on the zapper though. Please give crit and/or compl.
Since we are nearing the end of the competition I am thinking this is going to be my final render, I will tweak minor things, but this is pretty much my composition. If anyone thinks something is missing or it could be improved please throw out suggestions.
Also, I need to make my images really small so the byte size is low enough to be allowed on the site. Does anyone know how I could compress the image so I could have a larger image but with low enough bytes so it would be allowed on simply lightwave?
Here is the render with the slight orange light on the zapper.

That looks sweet dude, awesome final. I can't find anything missing or wrong, but I'm no expert... haha:attn:
Now I need to finish mine...:headbang:



------>:bow:

The final image needs to be restricted to 640x480 jpeg anyhow, so I wouldn't worry too much about the byte size. If it's still too large to load up to the site at that size, I'd load it into Photoshop and adjust the compression on resave.

Thanks for the advice Mark. My image is more of a wide angle shot, so I plan to submit an image with the aspect ratio of 640x360 (same as the one below). If this is not acceptable please tell me. This image is basically my final, it is the same as the last one except I added some depth of field and played with the focal length trying to put the mosquito more in focus. It isn't too extreme. Please give crit/compl. Thanks

I was just looking at my scene for awhile and thought that it needed more depth. I modeled a quick stone walkway and put it in, but the grass from the ground grows right through it, and I don't know how to stop that from happening. If anyone has any ideas please shout them out. Also if you don't think the walkway fits well or is necessary please say so. Thanks.

I like the addition of the stepping stones. It does add depth, nice move.

~~CM!

Thanks CrazyMerlin. I worked more on the stones and got the grass to grow around them, but to do so I had to change the grass some. This image shows the reworked grass, dirt and stones. Crit and/or Compl are welcome. Thanks.

the grass growing up the side on the right looks really good!!!

nice adjustment!

~~CM!

Thanks again CrazyMerlin. I realized that the shadow of the tree on the stepping stones is cut off when it hits the grass so I made saslite receive shadows, which drastically increased render times, but I think really helped the image. I also played around more with the blue light on the mosquito's face, it still has a kind of hard edge but it was the best I could get. Crit and/or compl are welcome. Thanks.

I know you have already done the render now, but you could lay a plane across the top of your grass and render the shadow onto that, then composite the shadow into the scene, or add it post-production.

~~CM!

Sorry, but I don't know much about compositing or what to do in post. How would I go about compositing the shadow onto the grass? Or how could I add it in post?