Tale of Two Renders

Swan

I'm always searching for ways to make postwork less time consuming. Hair can be especially fiddly...

Model is G8, hair is dForce Classic Long, and the armor is Eagle Guard for G3.

In the first render, I noticed a lot of flares in the hair. Seems like a small issue, right? And it's true, getting them out is usually not so bad. Here, though, their location was most unfortunate because there were a dearth of areas to use for healing or cloning. I thought about pulling away the camera to see if that would help and considered decreasing the light, but I preferred to get the camera a bit closer for a more intimate feel and wanted to boost the lighting on the hair a bit. I adjusted the glossiness and a couple other usual suspects yet got nowhere. Finally (on a whim) I modified refraction and backscattering. Yeah, wouldn't figure that would do any good, but it did. Fixed the issue for whatever reason.

See all_lights.jpg. Like the old_all_lights.jpg, it has no postwork at all except for one small exception. The gap in the Eagle Guard armor around the collar bone really bothered me (talk about a chink in the armor at a vulnerable spot), so I did a test to see if I could heal it out. Render still needs additional postwork, of course, but not near as much as the first render would have required.

FYI: when that postwork is done, there'll be a floating magic orb that provides the light on her face.