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I think it should be okay, shouldn´t it? It´s not like you´ve stolen the picture and now you´re claiming to be the author.
By the way, nice progress everyone! I must continue working on my pose soon. I don´t know whether I will do the Madonna one in the end or not but I will probably try to do some more work on it.
According to the rules:
This month we will be focusing on Posing. For this contest we would like you to search the web for a pose you feel is dynamic and interesting and then use that reference as a guide as you try to replicate it within your app of choice to be used in any way you would like within your final entry. You will also be required to post your reference image (or a link to it) in addition to your entry if you enter this months contest. We will be posting example images as well as some ideas on terms to search and some other tips in the WIP THREAD.
If you are not sure Linwelly you can post a link and indicate which picture it is, ie: 4th from top or 2nd row, 3rd image, etc. if there are more than one.
Postin an image here is one thing, actually incorporating it into your own image is something else.
I wanted to poke my head in and say that everyone's images seem to be coming along really well! I was having a hard time coming up with inspiration for this challenge, and it has been a slow start. Then I thought to do something for my sister since she puts up with me and this new hobby! She loves The Sound of Music. Hopefully there will be enough time to do it justice.
I am nowhere near ready to post a render yet, but I wanted to share my reference. I think to change it up, I am going to make Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer as they look now. (And I treated myself to aging morphs, and havent really played with them, this seems a good excuse to try them.) The whole project, however, hinges on finding a tux and bow tie. I am using Gen 2 for both because of the subtlety of facial expressions they offer, but finding clothes for the new models is hard. It really makes me wish I owned V4 and M4, sometimes! Wilmaps suit for Genesis works okay, until I try to put a shirt under it, and the lack of shaping morphs becomes a serious issue. (I haven't tried HIS shirt though, maybe his jacket works better with his shirt than it did with the shirt from Town and Country for Genesis, we'll see)
I will try to get back in here and offer feedback on people's work within the next couple days.
zomg I think Jaderail, whom I never had the pleasure of meeting, is giving advice from the other side. Not 30 mins after I posted, above,that I wished m4 and v4 clothes fit genesis, was I reading the "stupid" thread because I was bored but too tired to do any productive work. In it, he mentions x-dressser, which fits clothes from any model to any other model. TY, Jaderail. :-)
Hi everyone! I am not sure yet, whether I will really enter the contest in the end, but I started to work on a render based on the pose from this reference picture. This is what I got so far. The original idea was that the girl in the render is at an airport, biding farewell to someone close to her, taking a last look before that person will board the plane. The problem is, I usually can't render very big scenes because of the limitations of my pc (which is especially true since Octane needs a graphic card with internal storage), so I haven't really figured out yet how I am going to do the background (and ideally the foreground, so that the glass could reflect some of its details). But I thought before I continue, I should ask around if the pose and the facial expression already reflect the intended mood up to a certain degree or if the pic just seems like a random pinup render. Hope you can help me out with this :)
Firstoff, welcome!
I think given the limitations of your pc, this is the perfect contest to begin with, since all you need is a figure and a background. ;-) I think your image is well on its way to conveying the feel of the source image, and is well worth pursuing. One way that others have handled the frustration on the limitations of their pc is to hide different parts of the image, do multiple renders for each, and then composite them in a 2-d program. I don't know about Octane, but in Daz hair is particularly render intensive. To handle this many people do one render for the body and another for the hair, particularly in cases where the hair will not interfere with the way the face is lit. They also hide the hair for test images to speed up their work flow. Another trick that makes renders less intensive for working images is to turn lights to ambient only and not to cast shadows... not sure if this will help in Octane.
I don't know if you want help with the comparison yet... but I think Teofla's suggestion of working from the hips, outward, is key. Also, having clothing on the figure that cuts off at the same places will keep the lines from playing tricks on the eye. For example, because the skirt in your image is longer than the one in your resource, it is very hard to tell if the proportion of the hip is too long, or if its just the skirt that is longer. I would also choose a plain color, for now, for the dress, so as to allow you to see the shadow of the undercarriage of her breasts and her cleavage very clearly as these will help direct you to make corrections. Lastly... make absolutely sure the bar is in the same place in relation to her hip to start off- its feeling a little smidgen high, but that will make all the difference later for getting the arm angle correct.
I would say if you did these things, more of what needs to be done will become apparent. I look forward to seeing your progress and I hope that you continue to choose to particpate!
Heya Kismet, this is coming along really nicely, I appreciate how far it has come so far, and it is only the 9th of the month! One thing I would suggest that will help you read lines of the pose is to look at certain proportions of your figure, vs the source image. If the proportions of the figure are different, the pose will read as different. Making the proportions the same can be difficult depending what morphs you have available. But some things that I see to be different are your figure is thinner, the breasts are larger, the ribcage volume is smaller, the traps are less, the shoulders are slimmer, the upper arms longer, and the neck slimmer compared to the head size. If there isnt a morph availabe in the shaping tab, there is always the option of selecting the bone and changing the scale in the parameters tab.
The other suggestion which I think will help is what I told Eomulch about the bar in his image. Wherever you want the ocean to be in the end, for now, arrange your figure so that very clear line in your reference where water meets sand crosses her knees as it does in your reference. If you position it the same it will become a tool for you and will act as ruler to let you know if your legs are posed and proportioned correctly.
I think the pose itself is coming along really well and if you looked at these thing it would show where you need to head next.
Fiona, Wilmap has some Victorian era riding outfits, one with a Shadbelly coat. Also a "dickie" type shirt to fit under those coats that is basically collar, sleeves and front section. Mine are for Gen, not sure if she did them for G2 as well.
And this is my final, Higher Res. Thanks for the input and good luck to all, I won't be participating in the contest. The image has already been posted to my gallery, in fact.
I think the hill idea is very clever. One thing I am noticing though is that both characters seem to be rotated forward because they are a bit on the downslope of the hill. The hills are not exactly the same shape and it is hard to see until you look at the feet. They are sloped downhill in yours but across the top of the hill in the reference. Also, the standing figure in the reference image seems to be climbing up the back of the hill, more, if that makes sense. His leg would never be that short, and it could not be bent or it would hit her in the back, so it must be downhill from them even though it can't be seen. Judging by the distance from the top of the hill horizon to the hip the standing figures back leg is a lot shorter in the reference than in your image... indicating it is more downhill than you have it. (This would address what Scott suggested about putting a rock under his foot)
This position on the hill affects a lot of things, particularly the lower half of the body. I think there may be less need for compromise if they were further back on the hill... Also, the pelvic angle is much deeper (they are squatting lower) in the reference. I think these two things are making them feel like the are "standing taller" than they are in the reference, which makes the whole thing feel less dramatic, because they have less "spring" or "constrained energy" to the pose.
In image set 1, below, I drew lines that correspond to the bone angles of the lower half of the body. The place I first noticed their placement on the hill was causing issues was with the standing figures right foot. It is clearly pointed downhill in yours but much flatter in the image. Part of this is the ankle rotation, which is not a big deal. But the figure seems below the top of the incline in the reference, and slightly over it towards the viewer in yours. As I looked I realized that the foot angles seemed fairly parallel to the thigh angle in both your image and the reference image, which was a good thing, ... but you cant change one without the other or they would no longer be parallel and optically correct, so that meant the hill angle was affecting the thigh angle too. And then it became apparent that this might be causing some of the frustration with the kneeling figure. Because he is leaning downhill instead of more flat, his pelvis angle (the angle from torso to thigh) is much wider than the reference and you see too much of his right thigh... it isn't foreshortened enough. (You can see if you compare hand size to thigh length as well).
The lack of torso crunch is also a contributing factor, perhaps even moreso than the hill.. and I know you said that some of the lack of crunch is a compromise? See if sliding and rotaing them back five degrees makes you happier with giving them more pelvic crunch.
In the second set of images, I wanted to illustrate that the figures in the reference are a bit closer together than in yours. (Also, your overall image is about 10% wider, and the moon much further away, which might be affecting the perception of width as a whole). The centerlines of the figure through the middle of the hip are in blue. One way that people often check to see if their proportions are correct is to look at the negative space. As you have it, the negative space (in pink and green) looks really good. But, if the position of the two figures was brought closer together as in the reference, the leg negative space in particular would no longer seem optically correct. The new negative space created would obviously be too narrow and look wrong...which brings us back to what was discussed regarding #1. The arm and thigh also look optically correct now because according to the negative space they are correctly parallel to the thigh, but if the thigh was moved, they would no longer be parallel. The arm of the standing figure would have to be raised for the negative space to seem correct once more... which would correct the issue of the arm not being as high as it is in the reference.
As you said earlier, one thing, particularly at the core, affects all other things. I think shifting the figures back on the hill, sinking them into a deeper squat, and moving them closer together will make you happier with the image overall. And as I have said in two other posts, keeping the position of the background items, and the overall image proportions the same might help with issues of perception as well.
I hope this helps... some of these things are difficult to explain and if there is a need for clarification let me know. I think it is very well done so far. In particular the accuracy of the negative space as rendered is a good thing, it makes the changes you have made, whether intentional or not, that is your choice, seem more realistic.
sorry teofa, I think we must be in the same time zone, or awake at the same times, (its 4am mytime), I wouldn't have posted the last long blurb if I realized you were done! This is the second time we posted at the same time. (or, looking at the time stamp, egawds it must have taken me 2 hours to write that post, jeesh, I lose track of time so badly sometimes when I am concentrating lol!) I think your image came out well. :-) TYfor the Wilmap link. I am trying his stuff out. Part of the reason why I am posting instead of working on my own stuff is because I am not sure I have the patience to deal with working on poses right now. NOT my fav thing LOL. Worth working on? Yes. When I am in a happy fuzzy bunny space... lets hope I get lots of those this month :-)
Thanks Fiona. More points to ponder is good. The post is not wasted, they are for everyone and using my image, done or not, illustrates the points you make. Thanks for the time spent.
I probably should have said that in the initial post, but the perspective in the render was quite different from the one in the reference pic. For comparison, here is a pic from the ~same perspective. As you can see, the skirt has actually roughly the same length as the one in the reference and generally after the 3-4h that it took me to get to the current state I was rather happy with the resesemblence though naturally this doesn't mean the pose is already perect. My question was rather aimed at the mood the pic conveys and if it fits my idea of what I described in the initial post. Of course this doesn't mean you can't tell me how off the pose is compared to the original ;)
Also you are right about the material, I just had to do something more fun after all that posing xD
There ist something that bugged me with the genesis 2 female from the beginning and it might be interesting for others as well as it concerns the stance of a person.
The genesis 2 females have a pronounced hollow back with a rotatet waist that generally fits a woman on high heels. It makes no sense when she's flat footed.
While this might be useful for all kinds of pinup poses, it profoundly bothered me whenever I wanted to out the woman on flat shoes or barefoot. So everytime I use the genesis 2 I begin with rotating her Hip to -1 and her waist to -0.8.
To complete the transfer to a more everyday woman I change the back depth to something between 0.3 and 0.4.
After that I con continue with her withouth fear to break her in the middle :P
Hope this migth be of some help.
The preponderance of high sales products in this medium are also aimed at hollow backs in high heels. No surprise.
I agree that it is annoying... but yes, marketable. I am interested in doing illustrations for kid's stories, so I immediately purchased Growing Up for Genesis 2.. it has a morph called "kids posture" which solves that very issue. I apply it in general to just about everything these days...
So, I am putting myself on the chopping block. Have at it, kids. I wish I owned the ball jointed doll morpher so I could make Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer 50th anniversary of The Sound of Music barbie dolls for my render. But that would probably be a copywrite violation on several fronts. As it is I am not sure what to do with Phillip posing as Georg Von Trapp and Victoria 6 (wearing Jaina skin) as Maria... perhaps just call it an exercise and leave it in the "embarrassing things they will discover about me post mortem" folder.
I had a nice day with DS, I tried to instal DS4.8 beta but it wasn't easy and I decided to wait for next release. Later I tried making angelic looking character and I am hoping to do some more work on it, I need to set up shadow catcher to the ground and do few more things.
I was looking for reference image in DAZ 3D gallery but didn't found anything inspiring with title angel. So for starter I used this pose but would like to have something like this this. I need to work a bit more one it, for now I have watched 2 tutorials for DS and looked at previous similar thread contest entries, and i like them a lot. I will try doing more later.
Fiona, I think that the body poses are good in this render. I would concentrate on their expressions. What I see are the beginnings of two people realizing they are falling in love. Julie's mouth is open and you can see her teeth, the muscles around her eyes are pulling back to start the surprise face. Plumber's eyelids have lowered starting the beginning of the love (longing) face, You can see the slight opening of his mouth and the turning down of the corners of the mouth in preparation of saying "awe". Remember, make little changes. I would also look at the lighting in the photo and adjust accordingly.
Fiona, it is a lovely pose, regardless of who it is. If reproducing Christopher and Julie becomes stressful, you can still make an amazing image with your own characters and clothing.
Gulan, you could do a search for Boris Vallejo, he uses the winged motif in a lot of his Fantasy art.
Thank you, that is a great idea. I am not sure, for the contest, how to handle this. SO much of the pose looking right depends on the two characters facial features sizes, shapes and proportions being as close as possible to the picture and the two sets of features being placed correctly relative to each other. What makes people look different is having different facial features and proportions so I would be changing the things that are supposed to be copied? Maybe I will finish it as them and then as you suggest. take it a step further and save the pose, shaping, and expression settings as presets and use them for other characters. Maybe submit three images, the reference, the image as them, and then where it goes as different people. I agree, as an afterthought, that it is a nice pose and worth having in the repertoire, and so has value of itself and is worth doing. That is a good perspective to have as far as keeping my pink fuzzy bunnies pink and fuzzy. Unfuzzy bunnies are just not... fuzzy. The bunnies thank you and give you a carrot.
I ought to have known better than to try to recreate famous people, and that without going out into blender and making specific morphs for their faces, I wouldn't be able to get their features accurate enough to be even remotely believable. And I am not nearly good enough at creating human heads, so even if I tried to do so, I would probably be frustrated still. At the moment, to me it looks like two teenage kids in a comicly bad high school play pretending to be them, wigs and all... except Micky and Vicky look too plastic still to be real. Toulouse hair is getting its own supporting role in the credits, it is so noticablely bad! It will take a lot of work on the skin settings, lighting and hair to make them look like people and not CGI.
I was thinking of maybe going someplace "else" with it if I left them as Andrews and Plummer... one thing my drawing teachers would always say is that something only looks wrong if it does not look intentional. And so they dont look perfect, and never will, accept that as a given.... and give them a reason to look wrong. Like maybe they are aliens. Maybe they are from the future and decked out with cyber implants and goggles. Maybe Christopher Plummer is a zombie and ready to eat Maria's brains... Maybe making them into a cartoon, or dolls, or robots. *shrug* I havent found the story idea yet for what to create with the foundation. There might be a fun story idea out there, I am up for suggestions....
Thanks for the help Teofa. :-)
Gulan- Try searching for a specific archangel, Michael. He is the warrior angel of God who according to Revelation is supposed to defeat the devil in the final battle of good vs evil. There are a million images of him out there, he is a very popular guy. The Roman Catholic feast of the Archangels is Sept. 29th and is my feast day. :-) Needless to say I like the theme. If you are doing a winged angel warrior, people are going to associate it with the Archangel Michael. If this is not something you want or intend, you will have to do some work to make it look intentionally different.
I like the work you have done so far, and agree that looking for a more a more dynamic reference pose will make it stronger. I think your second reference image is heading in the right direction and I am sure you will find something inspiring! Also very dramatic lighting makes a battle pose look better, in my opinion.. it accentuates the planes and surfaces of the pose in ways that help tell the story. This is a lot of what I like about the second reference.
I like that you have your figures at 3/4 angle, this is a much more expressive angle than straight on. When looking for reference images, I would try looking for one with contraposto in the torso, as this gives a sense of constrained energy and dynamic tension which will make a battle image seem more intense.
I am also a big fan of roman armor... I am part of a very big and fairly infamous roman SCA household. I had to move away from all my "family by choice" as we call each other, about three years ago. Your image makes me nostalgic for "home".
Fiona, I think that the body poses are good in this render. I would concentrate on their expressions. What I see are the beginnings of two people realizing they are falling in love. Julie's mouth is open and you can see her teeth, the muscles around her eyes are pulling back to start the surprise face. Plumber's eyelids have lowered starting the beginning of the love (longing) face, You can see the slight opening of his mouth and the turning down of the corners of the mouth in preparation of saying "awe". Remember, make little changes. I would also look at the lighting in the photo and adjust accordingly.
Thanks Dollygirl for the input, it is, as always, very helpful! One of the reasons why I chose this image instead of a full body, is that I like to do portraits, but you have seen how bad I am at creating expressions. It is an area where I really need coaching and practice.
Question... I realize that the hands and arms are not quite right. Both hands meet further to the right over their heads, his is angled more towards the camera so it is more forshortened, and hers is turned upwards, more. Does it bother people? I tried working on it but in the end made it worse not better. In fact I am hoping I have the version that made the render I showed you all saved, I *think* I do!
I agree that the lighting needs work but to be honest, I am having a very hard time figuring it out. I only have distant light and an uber environment so far in the scene. In part I am thinking they are dancing in a Hollywood set from 50 years ago, and probably have overhead spots on them, tilted at slightly different angles to light them from many angles as they move. So there might be a piece of a beam hitting this part, and another hitting that. When I took this on, the lighting seemed like it was going to be straightforward and simple, until I tried doing it. I was only able to get the one light I have in a similar, but not quite right, position, by looking at how the shadow from Andrew's arm over her head landed on her face, while at the same time hitting the top of Plummers head but not the sides. I am fortunate in that he, at least, has strong facial angles. But inaccuracies in the planes of my characters facial features could potentially make things even more complicated as light is perceived only by the surfaces it hits. In other words. Yeah. Suggestions would be helpful as I think I bit off more than I can chew. ;-)
Also... I know when looking for freebies that there are other tiff files available for creating different colored lighting with the uber-environment. (Changing the color button doesn't affect the base color in a way that works) I think I need to search them out again. Both the dawn setting and the other pink one that comes with Daz are too purple-y, and this, which is studio, is too orange. Getting the base light the right color will make the red-green contrast which is at the heart of the color profile more visually pleasing, I believe. Gotta love complementary color schemes. ;-) Does this feel like a direction I should go with the lighting?
Thanks for the help, I am back to work on it!
Fiona, my interpretation is that it is a pose challenge, not a shaping or morphing challenge. I think if you get the facial features done to your interpretation it would be fine, without having to go all the way of reproducing the actual characters. Getting the right hair, skin, everything else to reproduce a celebrity.. augh!!!!
PS. Work with Hampton hair a couple times.. it makes me cry.
I urge everyone to check out this weeks freebies. I got gowns, outfits, a char preset and lots more :).
Yeah, the idea is that the pose should be as close to the reference as possible* but in all other aspects it's totally up to you whether you want to mimic the reference image or go in another direction. Even something completely different, like squirrelvids did (Honorable Mention in 2012 New User posing contest).
*There may be situations when you might want to deviate from the reference pose a little bit in order to produce a better-looking image (Teofa's male character is a good example of this), but generally, the closer you can get the better, as far as the contest goes.
Nice work--this turned out quite well!
Hello to everyone!
I have finally gathered the courage to have a go. I have been using Daz for approx. 8 months and have just been puddling away in it on my own. I read the past threads and all the great advice and figured, nothing ventured, nothing gained!
I have chosen an image by photographer Richard Avedon for the pose to mimic. I am finding that the extreme posture is a challenge to mimic accurately with the limitation of genesis2. Is there a way to override it?
I have also used wardrobe I already had, and for this first go, ignored trying to make her dress look overly realistic.
Lighting is something I have absolutely no idea on. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I started with a preload light setting for the Eclypse character from Daz and basically fiddled with it until I gave up...
And don't even get me started on render settings... urgh! I just use the settings that came with Barefoot Dancer...
I am considering making her into an angel... but I really like the original photo, so I am not sure yet.
Thanks in advance for your feedback :-)
(Apologies if I have broken any rules)
Muse. that looks like an excellent effort to emulate a tough pose. In some ways, the shoulder for example, your figure looks more natural than the photo.
Your knee to waist length looks longer than the photo, which leads me to believe the model in the photo was also falling back (as in a sitting motion) as well as sideways, a slight rotation. I dunno. This is a very hard pose, since it is not intuitive what the model is doing in the original. I do suspect that she was sitting on a prop which was taken out in the darkroom, the image looks like a lot of darkroom magic was done. To get the same shadow effect you may have to use an angled plane of the same color as your foreground.
you can override pose limits. On the posing slider, the Gear symbol will open a window that allows you to reset the parameters or "limits". It is easy to get into the realm of overdone with this, but some pose presets I have used do this.
Here is an example. I increased the limit on tongue "out" from -1 to -8 and this is the result. Gen2 figure. You can see the parameter window. The limits are measured from base 0, so go both - and + .