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@IceDragonArt - Okay, glad to hear it. I will keep your tip in mind for the next time. Please don't ever hesitate to share your knowledge with me. I'm always interested in learning new things (even if sometimes I'm slow to use them ::rollseyes::)
@Knittingmommy - Oh, excellent. I'm so glad you like it. I went back and forth on it so much trying to decide. Thank you so much for being so kind.
Congratuations on your Riversoft Anniversary Challenge entry. Loved your dance scene and your explanation of the way you used the pose randomizer was very informative.
Yes congrats! Great job!
Guys, thank you so much! I can't tell you how good it feels to be honored alongside someone like @giselle3000 and @Mollytabby. Their images are stellar. Thank you for the kind words. You make my heart glad.
@IceDragonArt and @Diomedes - I want you to know that you ought to consider yourselves honored, too, in a way because you guys were key in my growth over the last several months. I feel that you've both contributed a lot to me. So, if I haven't made clear how much I appreciate you, and the others, @daybird, @Knittingmommy, @Linwelly, (to name just a few) and really all the people who've given me good insight on improving my work. I am stunned. You are appreciated and have made my world a little brighter through all your helps and advice.
Aww thank you! But you did the work and I am happy that you won!
I just want to be clear on something about the RSA contest. I know there were better images than mine that didn't win, and for that I feel bad. But I focused on answering the prompt with a competent image and detailed explanation as a strategy intended to win. The judging was based upon image and text, so I did my best to deliver on both in a way that stood me a decent chance of winning with so many skilled, talented, brilliant, and experienced artists in the mix. I'm thankful that I was chosen, but please, don't think for a moment that I don't know how fortunate I am that my strategy worked. I don't have any illusions about my skill and talent. At the end of the day, I'm still a noob--one with a few tricks up his sleeve, more than a few decades under his belt, and determined to be better than he was yesterday, but a noob nonetheless. Just saying. One good look at my stumblings in this thread should make clear why I'm in the new user challenge. I may be learning quickly, but if anything it's precisely because I'm putting myself out there now and trading pain for gain.
Congrats, Wanderer! You had a really great image and it deserved to win. No take backs or worrying that others were better. It was just as good as any of the other entries and you did an amazing amount of work and used the products well. It showed creativity and it was rendered well. I think it was a great image and you should be very proud of your win. :)
Thanks, @Knittingmommy, you're awesome.
Okay, so I went dark for a bit while working on this or that challenge or contest. And then I had to deal with the guilt of winning. But I'm back and I will attempt to document here my attempts at improving my skill and my art for the sake of those who come after--and also because I tend to forget how or why I did this or that after a while. Anyway, enough of all that.
First, I want to share an image I did with a little post-work. I posted it over in the Sci-Fi Celebration thread, but the crickets over there let me know they are the same crickets who hang out at the RRRR contest. ::wink:: That's about as funny as I get. Anyway. I still like it. I've considered sharing the how of this, but since it doesn't seem to be very well liked, it might not be worth doing. Several who see it probably know exactly what I did anyway.
Visitration
I'm going to copy my post from the second place winner of the Riversoft Art contest to elaborate a bit upon my technique because it occurs to me that some might not be familiar with what I did, or why.
The Dance
Riversoft Art Product Used: Pose Randomizer
Accompanying Text (the winning factor):
Okay, one of the parts that readers might not be familiar with is the duplicate node hierarchies command in Daz Studio. If you want to duplicate an object or figure in your scene without having to go and create something new again, you can go up under edit, go to duplicate, then choose node(s). But if you have a figure with hair, clothes, pose already applied, and you don't want to fool with instancing because you need to alter a few details, you can go below the previous menu item to duplicate node hierarchies, and that will make an exact copy of whatever figure and parented items you have selected in scene. I'm sure there are things about it that I don't know, but I learned how to do this last month while working on the new user challenge. I was able to put this technique to good use in this scene for the reasons I stated above.
Red Gold Blue: The Purification of Old Town
My final version of my first image entered in the April new user challenge. I've gone toward a more unrealistic lighting for a specific reason/inspiration. I'm proud of the heat shimmer effect I achieved on this in Photoshop post-work. I'm glad that @IceDragonArt has encouraged me to do more to familiarize myself with those tools. There are so many really good images this month. It's really humbling to be compared to such great artists as those .
Winter Gives Way to Spring
My final version of the second image I did for the new user challenge. I was very much inspired by the works of @IceDragonArt to create this.
My 2 Freebie Entries for the "April Showers Bring... " Challenge:
Entry 1:
Risk of Romance
Free List:
1. HDRI Rathaus
2. Gwennili Hair for G3F by kayleyss (color altered by me in shader settings)
3. Translucent White Plastic Shader (applied to outside surface of umbrella with settings tweaked by me. Translucency Weight: 1/Glossy Roughness .09/Refraction Weight: 1/Refraction Index: 1.06)
4. Her top from wilmaps.
5. His top from wilmaps.
6. Armani Hair for G3M from Genesis 3 Starter Essentials.
Paid:
1.Umbrella: Yamaki Victory Lane (uber shader conversion and clear plastic shader in free item list)
2. i13 Romance & Rescue Pose Collection couple poses used as a base with several modifications
3. Creative Water 3d Splashes by OoT
4. Ultrascatter Advanced Instancing by HowieFarkes (used to apply 2000 instances of water droplets modeled by me and almost 600 splashes from the Out of Touch resource listed)
5. Iray Rain by KindredArts Rain and puddle system which worked spectacularly with the HDRI's from the resourse listed above, but some HDRI's are better than others for this.
No Count:
G3F (Uber Iray Base conversion with settings tweaked slightly by me)
G3M (Uber Iray Base conversion with settings tweaked slightly by me)
Water Drops modeled by me in Anim8or (shader applied from OoT water asset above)
Uber Iray Shader (applied to both characters and umbrella)
Primitive Cylinder (used to patch the place in the umbrella where the ribs did not come together at central pole)
Primitive Plane (used to create lighting enhancement using Uber Iray Base shader with settings tweaked by me)
And my second entry:
Lovecraftian Horror
Free:
1: Urban Streets of Tomorrow by sfman here.
2. HDRI Zwinger Night from HDRIHaven: (environment intensity turned way down)
3. Lightning Bolt JPG (applied to plane with emissive output)
4. His Shirt (DSC Shirt) - From DS Creative Magazine, v 24, p 23.
5. Wristwatch Prop.
6. Umbrella
Paid:
Cthulhu by Luthbel
Iray Rain by KindredArts
Ultrascatter
Creative Water 3D Watersplashes
Mec4D PBS Shaders V2 for Iray (shaders for watch and umbrella)
No Count:
G3M
Water drop on tip of umbrella spoke modeled by me in Anim8or with shader applied from OOT's resource above
I wanted to talk about my process in some of these, but I actually was so far behind that now I've said all this, I'm not sure anyone would still be reading at this point anyway. Oh well. If anyone has any suggestions about how I might improve any of these, while it's too late for the challenges, I'd still love to hear the opinions of others. If you did read all of that, thank you.
Here's another I did in post:
Wonderful series of images. You are doing great work. The postworked kiss is very emotive. Two thumbs up.
Thanks for the tips on variations on the duplicate node. Another function I need to explore more.
Try not to focus on whether people actually post a reply each time. (crickets?). I know, it is hard. Best to think of it as that old joke in which parents think their child is mute and the punch line is, "up until now, the soup has been just fine." Silence doesn't mean disapproval, and folks who follow your thread may only get a chance to get caught up infrequently. This is your thread. Share and express yourself. (there should be music reaching a crescendo somewhere).
Back to the point at hand. I know I'd love to see more on how you put together your images, especially the scifi image you mentioned, if you want to share more. Congrats. Your work is being recognized in various challenges. Keep it up.
Wow, I am really humbled by the really nice things you had to say about me! Don't even know what to say.. Really, all I did was a bit of encouragement, you did all the work!
And never feel guilty for winning! Usually, around here, you don't win if you don't deserve to!
How to's and how people do things are invaluable, because we all learn things at a different pace and focus on different areas. I had no idea you could copy a whole character. Going to be really useful being able to do that!
Really like the Lovecraftian horror, the rain really helps the mood. And the romance one, great posing, its not easy pose two people together and make it look natural.
Here's one where I converted my Lovecraft tribute above into a crossover tribute to Van Gogh's The Starry Night as well. I'll try again because I think I might do better.
@Diomede - Thanks so much for being encouraging. I'm so pleased you take time to stop by my thread. I will try to take your advice to heart. And I'm sorry for complaining. It's just if I am nervous about posting something and then I get no response, it makes me question whether I had any business sharing it. That's a self-esteem issue, and I'm probably shooting myself in the foot by vocalizing it in the open forums. Anyway, thank you again.
@IceDragonArt - Don't underestimate the impact of your interactions with others here. You are an amazingly talented artist, and I will always have a fondness for you, @Linwelly, and some others for being there and encouraging me at just the right time. Honestly, if you guys hadn't come along when you did, I might have abandoned my attempts to learn Daz Studio again. But because you all were encouraging to me at a time when I was vulnerable, I made a decision to push through. Look at me now--I've got a long way to go before I can do something like your lovely faes, or Linwelly's wonderful Taiduo, or Diomede's ingenious Tinman, but I have the hope to keep trying in part because of you. Don't stop being you.
Okay, here's the thing. I feel torn about sharing this, because once I do, the mystery is gone and some will look at my post-work as a cheat perhaps. Worse than this, some may start to do the same thing and the servers which do the heavy lifting for me will become burdened even more so. Yet, I made a decision several months ago now that I would blaze a trail for those interested enough to read my rambling wanderings.
My big secret is the Deep Dream Generator--you see, the wonderful wizards of Google discovered that in making their software capable of recognizing various things like human faces, certain things arose out of the chaos they did not expect, such as the AI seeing things that weren't there. You've experienced this likely as your camera suggesting there was a face in frame where none actually existed. Tinkering with this somehow resulted in the ability of the machine giving rise to an artist - a surreal artist who is relatively unpredictable, but an artist nonetheless. This will be controversial to some who might feel challenged by such developments, but I think the work this software produces--with human eyes and hands guiding it, can be really amazing.
So how does it work? Very easily. You select a source image that you wish to modify such as well, I'll link art that others have shared with the community. Since they shared it, I don't think it should be a problem. So, for instance, here is a source image. Now, here is the style image they chose. Then the artist would choose various settings to influence the output of the software utilizing these two images. This particular artist producted this image as a result of the above two images and their own settings. So, to produce my image of the kissing couple, I input my original artwork, then pulled a photo I took of tree blossoms in our yard, set the settings, and the results are seen in my earlier post above. For the Starry Night tribute, I chose to use their Van Gogh style input instead of my own art.
The best part? This resource is totally free for now. You can see (sometimes very awesome) things that others are doing here. You can also make yourself an account and try your own hand. I reached out to the people running the website to ask them about permissions and licensing. Here is part of their reply (there were other emails in the discussion) that I received in response to my query.
If you share with the community, you unlock greater privileges such as higher resolution images. Now, the Starry Night tribute I made above used their style image combined with my image, so I cannot use it commercially, but all the others I've produced with their help are mine in entirety. The style image as well as the source image were both mine in each example. Very wonderful stuff. So, I hope some of you will make amazing things with this tool. Again, I was torn about sharing it for the reasons I shared above, but I want others to learn from my experiences, so there you go. Enjoy!
Edit: Corrected spelling errors and changed "because" to "before," which is what I meant to say. Also changed "input" to "style" and "stuff" to "things." Too many edits. sheesh.
Here's an image I produced using the Deep Dream Generator combining a Daz render I made of a female form combined with the style input they supply over there as "The Scream" (you know, the painting of the creepy character screaming on a bridge? I think it's a bridge), by Munch:
The sad fact is that when I discovered the Deep Dream Generator, just a month or so ago, you could get on almost any time and rarely had to wait more than a minute or so. Now if you don't want to wait long, you must get on late at night or while most people in the Eastern US are working. I found that the wait this morning wasn't bad between 8 a.m. and 11 a.m., at which time it shot up to over 40 jobs in queue. Then sometime after 3 p.m. it was bad again.
This is fantastic!!! My wife used to spend hours on the deep dream generator. I think she's over it for now though.
Hah! So some people do already know of it. Thank you for the kind words @themidget. I go back and forth with it. Some style images produce much better results than others.
Absolutely! It was my wife who started this thread on the Gimp Chat forum. http://gimpchat.com/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=13002
Here's one I made with Deep Dream, my render of the emoji guy here in the store, and their style for "The Simpsons."
It's also harder to get the hang of using the settings when you have to wait ten minutes for the results every time.
Here's an iteration I made of the Lovecraftian Horror image I posted above combined in Deep Dream with their Scream style:
I still retain the rights to my images, of course, but using their awesome styles means no commercial usage unfortunately.
Well, I have to say that I had plenty of encouragement (and still get it for which i am sincerely grateful) so Its only right to pass it on. And I think we all feel that sinking feeling of crickets when no one responds right away or until the next day or whatever.
I've heard of the deep dream generator but never tried it. And I think anything that helps you to make art that you like to make is a legitimate tool. Its the input that you put into it that creates the art. So, another tool. And a very cool on at that. They are all really cool but I think I like the last one the best.
@themidget - Sorry, totally did not see your reply until I refreshed the page. That's a great thread. It's funny how some turn out rather beautiful and some turn out like nightmare fuel. Thank you very much for sharing that link. I think I'll spend some time looking through.
People must be having dinner or something. Server load isn't too heavy just now. Spoke up too quickly. back over 20 jobs in queue.
@IceDragonArt - Thank you. Some of the results are better than others. (Just now saw your comment after going off to read @themidget's wife's thread on Deep Dream in the Gimp forum. I've learned some things already just checking it out.
@themidget - Thanks a ton for that link again. Your fractals are really cool, but what you did with them in DD is something else entirely. Very interesting thread. Also, your wife has a real knack for it.
Here's a rework of my Ultraman/Gojira fight with Starry Night style in DDG:
That's some very interesting looking images, I may have to check that site out when I get the chance!
@Noswen - Please do! It's very addictive however--fair warning.
Wow! I really love the post work you've been exploring. Really stellar stuff. I especially like the Van Gogh you did earlier in the thread. I would not have known it was the Lovecraftian Horror if you hadn't mentioned it. My favorite image, though, is the Winter Gives Way to Spring. I really love that piece. Nice work! :)