srredfire wrote:Maybe add a dock, have some faint lights on inside?
Yes. A dock would be a great idea. Give it a small flight of stairs so it reaches from the surface of the water to the top of the rock with the house. I would try and make the docks entirely out of brushes, but the stock HL2 dock models should work pretty well too, but since the stairs would have to be brushes, they might clash with the dock models due to the textures being different. You should also add a bit more land to the area around the house so it's not
right at the edge of the rock. It's kind of a silly to build a house and have barely any surface area around its perimeter.
Some other critiques/ideas:
Unless you can make it look more natural, get rid of the ragdoll in the boat. It's funny, but awkward looking in my opinion. It's got the t-posed look to it. You made it look a bit more natural since your first screen shot, but it's still a bit awkward looking. I say you should build a raft out of models and brushes (maybe use the blue barrel models as floatation devices), then get a prop_dynamic and set it to a citizen model, then set the idle animation to a "lying down" animation. I know there's one of an injured person lying on their side. It should look fine from a distance. Plus, with a raft, you could add some stuff like a bed on it, along with other random clutter.
Maybe add some obscure ledges to the cliffs in random spots? You could toss some cliff trees on them. It'd help keep the cliffs from looking uniform. Like adding "noise" to the cliff in a form other than displacing the surface. You could also try making a custom 2048x2048 res cliff texture so you wouldn't have to upscale the texture as much to keep it from repeating obviously. That way it wouldn't look repetitive while maintaining good detail. As it stands, the cliff texture looks good, though it never hurts to go for even better.
Add some more detail to the house. It kind of looks like a plain old block. Some wooden/stone edging at the base of the walls and at the corners would go a long way, just as long as it looks natural.
Lastly - and this is just an idea that may or may not make the scene appear more vast - you could try opening up one side of the canyon, then raise the height of the other. Have the environment light cast the cliff's shadow over the house to help emphasize the cliff's height more, thus make the seen look and feel more vast. The mini island with the house is a
great way to show the cliff's scale, but I think making it a canyon doesn't work the best. It's just not deep enough I suppose. You could probably just keep the canyon formation, but make one side much taller than the other. You already have a good light_environment setting, and the fog does a great job of emphasizing the length of the canyon.
Holy shit, this post started out as me just agreeing with Srredfire about adding a dock. I guess I really like your scene.