Backgrounds

[blindsaypatten]

I watched a Blender Guru tutorial today that said that if you don't include backgrounds people will ignore your work, so I had a go at using a background image:

Evening in Haemieupseong

I guess if I'm going to render in HD I need to up my skin texture game.

[loki1950]

For backgrounds you might want to look in to HDR images and an other technique is image based lighting in that the lighting for your model comes from the background image most HDR images are 360 degree surrounds blender does a nice job of rendering with them.

Enjoy the Choice

[DredNicolson]

We tend to have fewer pretensions than the folks at BlenderGuru and BlenderArtists.

And we're small enough that pretty much everybody's work gets noticed.

[blindsaypatten]

For backgrounds you might want to look in to HDR images and an other technique is image based lighting in that the lighting for your model comes from the background image most HDR images are 360 degree surrounds blender does a nice job of rendering with them.

I've used a few HDR 360 degree images with mixed results. It really does allow you to get good lighting with no effort or knowledge required, but I found that the scenes that I liked were pixelated when rendered. I only tried with free HDRs, perhaps I should look again and see what is available at reasonable cost.
In Tokyo:

And Brooklyn:

[jujube]

Nice work!!

You can try blurring the background/using depth of field, since in a real photo (esp for a closeup) the background won't be crystal clear anyway, due to real life camera/eye focus.

(I haven't tried using depth of field yet, myself, though. But I want to. I'm basically telling you to try doing the things I want to and be my guinea pig. But a quick and easy way to fake depth of focus should be to render the human on a transparent background, and then paste it onto a blurred background image. )

And if you're looking to pay for high res HDRIs, I know of this site: https://hdrihaven.com/hdris.php They have the low res versions for free, which I've tested, and paid versions which are claimed to be a very high resolution.

Also, the reflections on your shiny metal man look kinda wonky... if you render with a subdivide modifier turned on, it should look smoother and better suited for HDRI.