Sept 2016 New User Contest "Depth of Field" (WIP Thread)

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  • unLight865unLight865 Posts: 95
    edited October 2016

    As can be seen in the entry thread - added the "3 Raven Court"-house, Aiko 6, Miwa Anime Hair, Essina armor/outfit, Elven Armor, some steam from jepes ZPack #1, geometry shells for the fire & lightning, a few more buildings from the castle creator; plus several node-instances for some of them.

     

    Also concerning the entries:   If you search for them, you can also see some Aikos in the "Night Raid" picture - they're just terribly small compared with the trolls...

     

    I actually would have liked to put more time into this, but RL didn't leave more... frown   (especially the node-cloning I'd have liked to avoid)

     

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    Furthermore, a closeup of the dragon I'd like to put here:

    "Dragon weather"

    DS 4.9, IRay, no postwork (-1pixelline static)

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    Another one from above, but less finished (though I think the emission map on the dragon comes out here quite well) :

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    In-between, I also added glowing fairy-wings, glowing eyes and a katana to the Aikos - but in the end, I thought that took away attention too much from the fire & dragon...

    Aiko fairy-warrior closeup (I likely combined a few too much expression-values there) :

     

    DEFINITELY too much emission on the wings wink (& eyes -  very unfinished render, though) :

    Dragon_weather.jpg
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    dragTest___05aaaaaca___fireT01adc___transpar+light+Emiss2ab_-acab--negFStop___DoF-test-_ab-_noLight_DrEmT01caccd___gmtrySh-T01acfdcc__-___pic06___C034___pre06pct.png
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    dragTest___05aaaaaca___fireT01adc___transpar+light+Emiss2ab_-acab--negFStop___DoF-test-_ab-_noLight_DrEmT01caccd___gmtrySh-T01acfdcc__-___pic04___C061.jpg
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    dragTest___05aaaaaca___fireT01adc___transpar+light+Emiss2ab_-acab--negFStop___DoF-test-_ab-_noLight_DrEmT01caccd___gmtrySh-T01acfdcdc-___pic01___C065___pre08pct.jpg
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    Post edited by unLight865 on
  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001

    And that's all she wrote...

    Thanks to everyone who participated and good luck for those who have submitted entries.

     

  • isidornisidorn Posts: 1,601

    Where did the month go? I completely missed out on the last couple of weeks and now had 101 unread messages in this thread.

    Good job everyone and good luck with your entries!

  • LinwellyLinwelly Posts: 5,802

    Good luck everyone, great works developed here!

  • Kismet2012Kismet2012 Posts: 4,252

    Good luck.  Everyone did a great job.

  • I didn't get mine finished in time to upload it.  I wasn't crazy about all of those cows and just ran out of time.

    Good luck everyone!  There were some really great entries in the entry thread when I looked!

  • unLight865unLight865 Posts: 95
    edited October 2016

    Oops... yesterday I figured out that, over all the other things I was trying to improve, I had quite forgotten to turn down the HDRI-/Environment-Lighting (I might post a pic with reduced one later) - which made the images somewhat too well-lit for the night-setting I had imagined. Why couldn't I stumble over this one or two days earlier? d*mn...sad     (and yes, I did turn off the point light I mentioned earlier, pretty directly after mentioning it - I just afterwards forgot to review the brightness of the scene and it's potential sources...)

    Also, removing "environment lighting blur" seems to have helped improving the noticeability of the shadows.

     

     

    Oh, and a note about the in-city pic:   Yes, the Aikos are quite out-of-focus - but I wanted the dragon to be seen clearly (otherwise it looked kind of funny), and somehow I didn't get that to happen (maybe my FStop was set too harsh) without totally blurring the Aikos or nearly completely deactivating DoF (i.e.changing FStop so that too much would have been in focus)...

     

    At some time I also was thinking about using the "epic wings" plus expansion to give the dragon somewhat more fiery wings, but sadly I didn't have the time to try this...frown

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    Kismet2012 said:

    Camera settings can be tricky.  Once I get a camera angle I like I tend to lock it in position so I do not inadvertently move it.  Something I have done on many occassions.

     

    I can think of 2 options for the flames:  1 would be to scale it to try and get rid of the flames at the back, 2 would be to try using a dformer on the flames

    I have no idea why your image is going black.

    You can change the width of your render in the render settings.  You can also adjust the Focal Length on the camera settings.  And there is also cropping in postwork.  Not sure this has been that helpful.

    Thanks smiley.  (though I didn't read it in time)

    Admittedly the DFormer is a good idea - I just haven't really figured out how to use it yet... earlier results when I tried to do so were quite unsatisfying. frown But I certainly will have to try it again...

     

    And when I had problems setting the size of my viewport, I likely adjusted the DoF-focus by changing the wrong camera-value - found that out also shortly after mentioning it...

     

    The screen going black isn't there anymore, but tbh. I don't know/remember what I changed to solve this.

     

    Oh, and the graininess was greatly reduced after I deactivated some filters ( firefly, architectural and some other - deactivating them also improved the rendering-speed ) I had sometime activated for testing and later forgotten about...     Again, this was cured before my entry - that one is just missing the envirolight-reduction, an eventual FStop-improvement (will have to test this out later today...) and maybe a few more non-cloned figures (*urk*).

    Will propably have to create a library of figure-presets anyway - but that'll take some time... frown

     

    [edit:]

     

    Linwelly said:

    Thanks for the input Kismet. Made a few tweaks.

    I think the only trouble in this render is that you did not decide as to where you put the focus of your DOF, there is the head of the dragon and the falling girl, both can be the focus I belive you stuck yourself somewhere in the middle so none of them is really in focus. The question you need to answer for yourself is who is the main cast, the girl or the dragon. decide that, put the focus and then you can find a solution to make clear to what is happening on the other part.

    Kismet2012 said:

    Here's one i'm working on. Not sure the story translates: She stabbed the dragon in the eye before getting flung off.

     

    Perhaps it is where the DOF is focused but I found the sword hard to spot.  I am not sure I would have seen it if you hadn't mentioned it.  Maybe add some contrast between the colour of the dragon parts of the sword so it stands out a bit more?

    As far as I can see it, the falling girl is clearly out of focus and the dragon's head is in focus (although admittedly a bit too much of his body, too)

    - I too prefer the first version (poor dragon, though...) and think the sword would only have needed more reflection and/or a little additional lighting to be easier to spot.

    On the second version then, the damaged eye should have gotten some different texture applied, so it really would have looked damaged - as it is, the blood could have come from anywhere, maybe even the girl...

     

    Sorry, I know these tips are too late, but maybe they'll help you in future renderings smiley .

     

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    Post edited by unLight865 on
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