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rocknrolla6527 thanks...
Give me a few hours as I am about to start cooking our evening meal. :)
I do have some tips but they maybe not what you expect. Lighting is not an easy thing for some and for others they can pick it up very quickly. Serious photographers seem to pick it up quite quickly which tells you something about what is need to be learnt. After 3 years I still struggle with lighting but I am getting there. This is not to say you will find it hard, you may grasp the fundamentals quickly. Anyways be back soon.
I did start a relpy about tlighting and I stopped at 2000 words. Asked my CV colleagues thier opinion on what I had wrote. Got some feedback and I am going to rework it, add some helpful links etc.
As I said previous it's probably not what what you expect, but what I am writing I wish someone did for me when I started.
LOL! When you get my age, movies that came out in the '80s are "recent" :)
Chuckle....Hey you are doing well I can hardly remember the 80's...mind you who'd want to. :)
My Bald Wozard Club well bald wizard. He has to keep his head warm somehow. :)
Hi Pete
I saw your My Render Thread on the messages where so kindly explained me the basics of Contents and came to see your work. Seriously, I wasnt expecting anything that good! Truly amazing. While other images can be more impressive technically speaking, my favorite is Black Jack, I really like the play with 2D and 3D, its great! Besides a great imagination. your patience working the details is truly amazing.
These messages with details of how you set skin on US2 are invaluable to me, I just got Omnifreaker products and am trying to digest them (: Fun work. Its great to see here in your work where it can go.
For now I'm in love with Reality2, its really great. But I still like DAZ structure with its render. Specially I like seeing the lights while building the set. Even if some itens dont have shadow or reflexes, its fun to play with 3Dlight and Omnifreaker products.
But, what would you recommend for Poser? I saw your images with PhotoBox, would it be a good choice? Reality is launching its Poser version, it can be interesting too. Or maybe Poser own render is good enough?
I have tons of questions for each of your images, dont know where to start, so asked what came to mind first. More, much more questions to come (((:
Btw, check one of my images, the last one. Its still very small, my computer cant do anything bigger with Reality until I upgrade it (:
http://2fatbear.deviantart.com/art/Passing-by-diner-336750864?ga_submit=10:1352416484
{}s
Black Jack yeah you are not alone liking that one....plus I had so much fun making that. I had to make the cards in Blender using a curve modifier which I had to learn for that image. That's the thing with me I have an idea but no idea how to achieve it so I go Googling for the answer.
US2 is not an easy thing to learn and I am still unsure of some of the channels but after 3 years I am getting there. I have thought and mentioned about making a Uber Surface thread explaining each channel. Hopefully over the Christmas period I may have a chance to do just that.
Reality: I am in the same boat, low powered computer so I don't have it yet. Plus with the new DS4.5.1.6 I can't do what I used to do in DS3A as my system can't cope with the advancements made in DS4.5. But hey you can't win them all. It's going to be another year before I can upgrade...then there will be no stopping me. :)
Poser: Too be honest I don't use Poser 8 much, I won it a competition a while back so I thought I best learn it. All I really wanted it for was so I could get products ready for the market which I am still working toward. But Photobox it a nice little light rig which as you can see makes a good job of it. Takes a while to render though....but as you have noticed I have a lot of patience which is key when doing this. Poser Reality would just be a duplicate of what you have already, same render engine etc...I would guess not having it myself. So I am not sure if you would get more or less out it compared to the Daz Studio Reality. I do like Poser's render engine though as it has IDL (Indirect Lighting) function built in to the render options window. Whereas Daz Studio you either have to use Uber Environment or a combination of a Shader Mixer Light and a Shader Mixer camera to get IDL. Reality well Luxrender is all about IDL and global illumination hence the results.
More Questions yeah go for it, I will try to help and share if I can.
Your Reality image is a good start, better than a lot I see from newcomers. But (you knew a but was coming) as I mentioned in the Somethings to Consider when starting to learn CG thread there is more to making good images than good lighting. surfaces, detail and composition play a big part too. Give it a read when you have time.
Detail: For example the woman on the bike her dress is sticking up and not flowing like it would in reality (real world). The surfaces of the bikes need work, the black bike for me looks too matte and needs more specular (glossiness) and slightly blurred reflections etc.
LOL The "buts" are great, we learn much more with a well placed criticism than with appraisals.
Going there right now! I have some knowledge after years building things in Second Life (do you know it? Should try! Look for me there, Fatbear Flamand. Great market to sell creations too), but there things have to be optimized for animation speed, so a 512x512 is considered already a big texture. Here on the contrary we can go for quality only. Actually this is one of the things I like on DAZ/Poser creations.
Definitively playing around with lights and color is something that seduced me into DAZ. I'm a painter, my formation was in arts (even if I never worked with illustration, was an art editor for centuries (it seems), drawing and colors are big passions for me. So I guess its natural that my first impulse was to work with them, while the rest of DAZ images creation are very new for me and will require time to learn.
True!!! I have no idea how to work that dress to proper place! I tried D-Forms but couldnt make it to work (fascinating tool, they got the proportional area thing from Blender (a fascinating software I cant learn to like, the little I know about 3D building is on Rhino and Blender is just not natural for me) and put it on a very useful tool) and I dont know why it didnt work. But will find!
Actually since its all new for me I am kind of going where DAZ takes me, not trying to impose my will so I can learn. This of how to work clothes is a big issue. For instance, the woman standing, I wanted her with some nylons, but I couldnt find a way to avoid it showing thru her dress in the hips, no morphs would solve it, Poke-Away didnt solve it, D-Forms didnt work (again!) so I took the stockings away so i could go on. But surely this issue is something I want soon to learn how to deal.
This image was actually a test of making the reflex on the window. I made two versions, one adding the image to the window as a reflex layer; the other (this one you saw) using the same image as a diffuse layer on a glass behind the camera, and putting a light behind it, so it is a gel. This one has much better results since the projection will have effect on all objects and not only the window, and I can tweak the light on it during rendering. Of course I could have made a simple scene just to test this, but why lose the opportunity to learn a bit more about figures and props and play with colors?
Poser or Daz Studio that is the question.... for me it is any easy answer...whatever floats your boat. :) I started with Bryce, then moved on to Daz Studio 2, then 3 then paid for 3 Advanced and 4 Advanced before the Pro version became free. I just know it better than Poser that is all. I like both; they have different strengths and weaknesses. To say one is better than the other is for me a silly thing to imply or state, though many do.
Second Life...sorry been there done that and I hated every minute I was there. The reason I went there as at the time my favourite MMORPG (Ok not so Massive) was Myst Online Uru Live under Gametap got cancelled and a number of fans went to SL I am not a gamer and never will be I just love everything about the Myst Universe so SL was a culture shock which didn't sit well with me. But like everything I don't judge others for like something I don't. We all have different tastes.
Well since you have an art background we should expect great things from you in the future. ;) You would be able to teach me a lot since I have only 3 years of self taught art experience behind me. Some say I have a natural gift for composition as I do everything by eye or what looks right.
Ok down to your image. Yep getting meshes to bend to your will is not an easy thing to learn. The d-from tool is great but for something like that dress you would need multiple deformers. Look at page seven, see how the dress hangs, this is Dynamic Clothing in action, saved as an OBJ after draping and then used the Smoothing and Collision Modifier we have in Daz Studio 4/4.5 set to Collide with a Geometry Shell of the figure. A Geometry Shell is just that a shell, a rigid copy which was offset by .10 (I think from memory) from the figure. This was to give a little more room between the skin and cloth. But I am not sure if these modifiers are transferred in to Reality.
As for the Stocking well in Daz Studio I would have set them to collide with the figure, the dress to collide with the stockings. BUT using the Collision mod requires the meshes to be fine and I have a feeling the stockings might have needed some subdividing using the Sub-D tool in Daz Studio. My last image above uses these Mods, as parts of the clothing set up are from different clothing sets for M4. I used Genesis in that image.
Ok that is enough geekiness for one night.
Here is a quick I made using the new Dystopia Lab Pack
Just a bit of fun.
LOL I hope!
Well, I guess art is always self taught. We can see what others do, learn how they do and sometimes incorporate methods and techniques, but in the end its always we and our artistic medium. You surely turned into a complete artist in such small time.
Few things I can add:
- something I learned reading the intro of Gombrich Story of Art: there is no bad art. All art is good. There is art this or that people cant understand or doesnt like.
- a concept I developed: art, or estetics, is something every people have. Some will develop this to become full artists, other will only use it o n aspects of life society wont regard as art (but they are!) like cooking, decorating your house, deciding where to put that potted plant and other small things we do without thinking about. Art is everywhere, in everything we do. Thats why I always write art and not Art (Keith Richards once said "Art? Art is shortening for Arthur" So I'm not the only one (: ). the capital Art is a kind of deformation created by society artificially adding money to the equation. Not improper, only it tries to get the idea of art all to itself while it isnt that way.
-any work of art is incomplete. It only is finished when someone looks at it. So the more layers of references you can add to the work, more people will can read it, and more they will can imagine over it, making it a richer experience. If you want more about it, read Umberto Eco's The Open Work. (Because of that is that when someone asked Miro if a painting of him means this or that he would always answer yes. For that person it means that, and this is correct for that person.)
- another author you can like, since youre really interested in composition, is Rudolf Arnheim. Many very interesting books by him on the subject.
- personally I like the way Impressionists used color. They tried to represent light, so I guess it has everything to do with our works in DS. Seeing their works can be great inspiration for us. Main technical idea of them is to never use black paint. When they wanted a dark color, they mixed its complementar color to it. Shadows were always based on the complementar color. This way you always will have rich shadows, they will have their color too.
- If you want contrast, you can change the light-dark relation, but also the colors: adding the complementary color behind the color will make it "jump" out of the image. It also will work better with the ligh-dark relation, since the complementary for a light color will be dark and so on. The main way we use it, its really intuitive, is the warm-cold thing. We can not use the complementaries, but stay on the warm-cold, to make the contrast less shocking, like using a green with orange (insted of the complementary red). So if you want a tropical midday light, you make the light yellowish and the shadow purpleish (or blueish), with the shadows lighter because since the sun is so strong light will reflect everywhere, making the shadows lighter. And, since the shadow is light, the blue/purple tone is essential to make it contrast with the light, as there is little dark/light contrast.
But of course you know all of this, even if only intuitively, as I can see on your work. The main thing is to experiment, something you do very well. Since everything is art and we can do art with everything, then its a matter of choosing what and how our idea will came out better. And how we add to it all the random things that will appear in the process ((:
wow!! amazing , i can see, i have a long way to go... evening stroll, lots of imagination in that one, and very much detail in the Picture of the woman,
longing with the ghost, and the mid flight, i like the colures all very nice pictures
Malmaoo Thank you. Don't think of it as a long way to go think of something to aim for, a goal if you will. It is so easy to look too far ahead and get dispondent..I did for a short while until I relaised the only way to get where I want is to work really hard and long hours.
LOL I hope!
Well, I guess art is always self taught. We can see what others do, learn how they do and sometimes incorporate methods and techniques, but in the end its always we and our artistic medium. You surely turned into a complete artist in such small time.
Few things I can add:
- something I learned reading the intro of Gombrich Story of Art: there is no bad art. All art is good. There is art this or that people cant understand or doesnt like.
- a concept I developed: art, or estetics, is something every people have. Some will develop this to become full artists, other will only use it o n aspects of life society wont regard as art (but they are!) like cooking, decorating your house, deciding where to put that potted plant and other small things we do without thinking about. Art is everywhere, in everything we do. Thats why I always write art and not Art (Keith Richards once said "Art? Art is shortening for Arthur" So I'm not the only one (: ). the capital Art is a kind of deformation created by society artificially adding money to the equation. Not improper, only it tries to get the idea of art all to itself while it isnt that way.
-any work of art is incomplete. It only is finished when someone looks at it. So the more layers of references you can add to the work, more people will can read it, and more they will can imagine over it, making it a richer experience. If you want more about it, read Umberto Eco's The Open Work. (Because of that is that when someone asked Miro if a painting of him means this or that he would always answer yes. For that person it means that, and this is correct for that person.)
- another author you can like, since youre really interested in composition, is Rudolf Arnheim. Many very interesting books by him on the subject.
- personally I like the way Impressionists used color. They tried to represent light, so I guess it has everything to do with our works in DS. Seeing their works can be great inspiration for us. Main technical idea of them is to never use black paint. When they wanted a dark color, they mixed its complementar color to it. Shadows were always based on the complementar color. This way you always will have rich shadows, they will have their color too.
- If you want contrast, you can change the light-dark relation, but also the colors: adding the complementary color behind the color will make it "jump" out of the image. It also will work better with the ligh-dark relation, since the complementary for a light color will be dark and so on. The main way we use it, its really intuitive, is the warm-cold thing. We can not use the complementaries, but stay on the warm-cold, to make the contrast less shocking, like using a green with orange (insted of the complementary red). So if you want a tropical midday light, you make the light yellowish and the shadow purpleish (or blueish), with the shadows lighter because since the sun is so strong light will reflect everywhere, making the shadows lighter. And, since the shadow is light, the blue/purple tone is essential to make it contrast with the light, as there is little dark/light contrast.
But of course you know all of this, even if only intuitively, as I can see on your work. The main thing is to experiment, something you do very well. Since everything is art and we can do art with everything, then its a matter of choosing what and how our idea will came out better. And how we add to it all the random things that will appear in the process ((:
Thanks in regards to "You surely turned into a complete artist in such small time." but I don't see it as I do what looks right...but I do relaise as it has been pointed out to me before if I don't think too much about composition and get it right, mostly, then I must have a natural flair for it. This may be true or it may be a case of sticking visually with the rule of third etc.
As for art in everyday life, I agree, gardening is another passion of mine. Living art, each season year on year the picture changes...love that so much.
So for reading books, big problem there for me. But thanks for the snipets. What I need is to go back to college and do an art course to learn the fundementals and understand and realise I am using them and how well.
I think that is my problem not being exposed to much art in my life well apart from Constable, my dad took me to an exhibition when Constable was on tour and came to NZ. :) Plus I am still learning about colours and how the compliemnt or contrast...I am always looking at my colour wheel. :)
My main problem is bringing all these aspects in to every image I do. Some I think of other aspects and some I forget. When I get them right then I am happy with the results.
Experiment; yes I do all the time with evey image. This is one reason I try not to do same things, not get stuck in an artistic rut so to speak.
Again thank you for taking to time to share I have learnt a lot from this and the other posts you have made.
Its a pleasure to share!
Yes, going to school is always good, you would get in touch with all kinds of different influences and ideas, but there is a tendency of getting only what is new, and forgetting the old ways.
Oh, of course!!! Here, you can also see and hear Gombrich book in a series of lectures: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEgpUgOXq28
Of course if you can go to art museums it would be an invaluable experience, but a good practice is to buy an art book every month or two at Amazon or Barnes. One of that big ones, full of images. We never read the text, but to look at the photos is fenomenal. I also subscribe to some art magazines on Zinio (www.zinio.com). They are really cheap and this way I can see some of what today artists are doing. Also, there are many photography sites around in the web, I like to make searches and just see what people posts.
Another thing I do, if parents or friends are going Europe, I ask them to send me museums catalogs. Tons of great reproductions on these.
Thinking of our medium with DS/Poser, its also great to pay attention to sculptors. Rodin is a favorite of mine, and Degas.
Also many videos about Arnheim: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=rudolph+arnheim&oq=rudolph+arnheim&gs_l=youtube.3...19679.21910.0.22935.8.8.0.0.0.0.313.1541.2j2j3j1.8.0...0.0...1ac.1.z14JaNZ77k4
There are some videos with Umberto Eco also, but they will deal basically with semiotics, another topic I really like, but not what we are talking about here.
I guess the main thing is story of art (I dont know if this is really true or I think that only because I like it (: ), to know the ideas and influences that made techniques to flourish and die, arriving to our time where all ideas and techiniques are valid, a truly special moment in history we dont appreciate enough.
About you being a complete artist: you are, and you not feeling it is even more confirmation: an artist must keep learning and growing all the time, the moment he thinks he is complete, he stops... we should follow Socrates here: the more we know, more we will know what we dont know (yet I hope (: ).
2Fatbear I will take a good look at those links sometime in December when I am not so busy. Thanks for all this, it is much appreciated.
OK my latest work, just having some fun with layers and atmospheric camara effects.
Very nice Szark :)
Thanks Gedd
Woah, I came across your thread and I am very impressed!
Love the Blackjack card especially!
Thank you Estroyer yeah that one seems to get a lot of comments. Mind you I still think it is one of my better ones. :)
Here is what I have been working on for a while now and I have a long way to go until it is finished. I want to render this really big so I can print it off and hang it on the wall.
Rendered in DS3A as 4.5 would crash with all that in one scene. Plus a lot of postwork to add the atmosphere and sun/rays.
I had to make some new signs in blender too, that was fun to do and yes I have been told about the spelling mistake. :)
Awesome Szark, just Awesome. Watching very close to see it as it grows.
Thanks Jaderail
It is going to take a while to finish. I am guessing around 6 months or so.
I collect Poster Size 3D stuff done by the users here. I hope you offer it for Print when done. I have a place on my wall just perfect for it.
That is the plan to sell prints of it.
"I’m six months in on my Primitves project " what is that then I am intrigued?
I'm working on following a small Family group (Think Mammoth hunters) through a full year of life. All renders only, Text to support the story but the renders will speak the words. Finding items has been the hard part.
Cool project I look forward to seeing you start.
Tell me about it I need a number of things for my project all wishlisted for now. Each month I will get something to go in to the scene. This is another reason why it will take so long. :) I am going to model some more signs and a futuristic tram/train too. Plus a newsstand like you have never seen before. I have already sketched the design, now I just need to make it.
Oh and that first sign above I didn't model the Hoverboard just the support. The Hoverboard was a freebie many moons ago but it came with no readme and no mats so I had to make some textures but first I had to save out the uvmapping with Blender and strip out some geometery.
That is extremely impressive!!!
Thank you Mattymanx