A few years ago I created 33 3D dinosaur illustrations for The Discovery Channel’s Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs, so I wondered what the quality of dinosaur illustrations would be with MidJourney. My prompt was “Child riding flying quetzalcoatlus over jungle waterfall with castle in the distance, some clouds, ultra high detail, realistic render, cinematic, octane render, —ar 16:9”
The last 3 images here were the results. Though the landscapes were wonderful, the dinosaurs left something to be desired. Even when switching to “riding a dragon similar to movie ‘Train Your Dragon’” it didn’t render a believable dragon. Some backgrounds without any “dragon” were produced so I decided to add my own 3D dragon and rider. Also combined one with a 3D flying eagle and another with hang glider stock photo.
The trick is to not only match lighting of the MJ scene, but to add textures that help make the added images blend and belong in the scene since the MJ image isn’t truly “photographic.”
There’s also a couple early landscape images created with the prompts: “Dense forest splits open letting in sunlight near horizon serene landscape, matte painting style & gold lights” that I’ve also added 3D character images to the scenes.
