I have been playing around with a short animation today...it's not that great because I never bothered to mess with the lighting ect, but left the scene as is.This is my first ever attempt..hehe.
I wanted just to see if I could do it really :)
anyway if you are interested you can find it here:
http://www.rita.lt/crowflyby.avi

another view ....C & C please !

Cool,,, havent checked back in a while ,,, but nice. Looks like some game environment.... hope thats what you are going for.

lightning
 

another test showing the alters power :)
I still would like some feedback please...will have to decide and post my entry soon...

The shadows don't look right to me.

They seem to be coming in from all directions.

If you turned off the shadows on all lights....
AND.... leave the main light that you used casting shadow only. The scene should look better.

Garry I know what you mean I thought that too but there is only one light in the scene..plus the lightning, so I cant really do anything about the shadows apart from have none :(

Put a second light around the same locationas the first,
Shadow turned on one only.......
Then drop intensity on both lights to aprox half or a little less. This will soften the shadows a bit for you.:)

P.S. A negative value will take light away;)

cool..ok I will have a play and see what improvements I can achieve.....thx

I think this might be a little better, I have the shadows sorted out ...comments please .

Well, as a whole, it looks very cartoony. If that's the look you're going for, I'd say right on. The stairs up to the middle platform seem to have a weird rendering issue. Would be good to bevel some of the hard edges if you haven't.

Where things touch the ground, it'd help if the ground had some sort of reaction, whether it be an upheaval or a texture change or something. Where buildings and ground meet is very sharp for the most part.

The water could use some reflection and some transparancy.

Keep it up!

thx Mike ..I will definately try and look at a few of those issues.
The look is as I want it , I am very new to maya and realise I couldn't even hope to go photorealistic at least until I can create better textures anyhow.
the ground is actually quite uneven but from a distance you don't catch it, I can't make it too undulating because it's cobbled and you simply can't cobble unless the ground is fairly even :)
the water I agree needs work, I haven't been able to achieve a reflection for some reason even though reflections are turned on ( any hint would be appreciated).
Thanks though for the constructive crit..at least if I don't have time to fix this scene it will help me with future ones :)

Make sure raytracing is turned on in your Render Globals for reflection/refraction to work.

that is looking awesome. hard to believe your only new at this . must have been getting some good tips from somebody.

break up the repeating texture on the ground and change the colour of the grass on the hills cause it looks far too saturated and green. Apart from that you've done well (in a relative sense ;)) so well done.

Alan

Thanks Pure ...and thankyou everyone for you advice and help. ok I have made a few changes and after hours of fiddling I have come up with this...comments & crits are welcome ..thanks in advance.