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I understand about advice going over the head- I was there, about a month and a half ago. All I can say is, when you read some of the manuals, like the ones for the uber products, go line by line. There are a lot of terms and settiings to learn, and where to find things that do what. I am happy to take things slower and walk you through advice a step at a time. Feel free to post screen shots of your workspace if you are confused and I will happily take them into photoshop and draw in arrows pointing to the settings I am talking about. The best piece of advice I got with regards to learning how things work is to make one change at a time, and then do a test render to see what effect, if any, the change had.
As far as my render goes, I am glad that you like it.. that is exactly the effect that I am hoping for. I saved the settings for this render so I can go back to it if need be, and am working on making it look even moreso like ice. :-) Thank you for the encouragement!
Second go for my two pinup poses. So yes, there is a new bike with a better front but no textures. Let us pretend for the moment that I made it black for artistic reasons just as I turned the colour of their jackets to red.
With most parts of the poses I am quiet happy. I believe that the originals were made with a camera angle slightly from above, as both their upper bodys are larger that the legs compared to my renders, but I find it hard to replicate that. Thats why I didn't post any overlayed images here,
It turned out that pushing the lights around made me find some flaws through the shadows I hadn't seen just so.
I have the impression my lights are still not positioned as in the originals but a lot better than before.
That guy is giving me a hard time with his stupid grimasse. He's got his tongue in his cheek or something, there is no way you can look like that withouth the tonge in the cheek.
I will give them their shoes the last moment, hand fitting those glasses is bothersome enough. Well let me hear your thoughts
Yeah, there's a comedic part of his picture that's not 100% there. I don't think he is being intentional about it, though. He's struggling to make it look natural, where she just nails her look & makes it seem easy.
He's not fat at all (and not to joke about fat/not fat), but she's got the skinny model look about her & he does not. That rump is just kind of hanging out there. She's also got wonderful skin tone, while he's really pasty (like a Ducati engineer versus a model).
I think you have captured the appearance of a lack of effort in the female image (even if she's the pro at this & there's a lot to what she's actually doing). I'm not sure the male figure in your render is 100% looking like he's not about to fall over. In the photo, the guy looks like he's hanging on for dear life on that shoe strap, and he's probably putting a lot of force on the motorcycle to prop himself up. I think the lack of high heels on the man is also making the rendered image seem more like a pro rather than bringing off the comedy.
I don't know how you translate this into the image. This is just my biased impression.
Here's what I have so far of what -may- become a second entry for this month. This was intended to be the pose that I would be more likely to use in the future, but because of the ugly pulling of the skin at the shoulder and the fact that no clothing conforms well to the gen2 kids chest morphs, not to mention all the post work I would have to do to get the dress to look like it lays correctly, it might go permanently in the scrap pile. But since everyone has been so able to lift my spirits and resurrect my work at other times when I have been frustrated, I thought I would put it here and see what you think.
Like others, I am in a situation where the chair in the picture and the chair I have in the render are two very different animals. The biggest issue is that the chair in the background is much less formal, the back and the seat cushion are at a much wider angle than the very formal ninety degree angle of the chair I am using. I havent followed my own advice and looked for a freebie, though in the final work, the chances of her appearing in this chair are slim to none, anyways. I wanted her to be able to be leaning on anything, even like a log or a rock in the woods, or someones leg... I wanted to see how the pose came out before I put too much thought into what will become of it.
Something to consider for those, like myself in this case, who are not using "real" sources such as a movie or photo (although those are not always accurate, either, they may have lens distortion); but in the case of reproducing the poses of artwork, there is no saying that the original artist got the pose 100% correct to life in the first place. Wouldnt it be nice if we could take the old masters art, force them to show us their working viewport, and then make the models as they have drawn or painted them stand up to see if they are proportioned like real human beings? ;-) I think we cant get away with cheating, here in 3-d land, and it is good for us.
Case in point...I see nobody has chose egyptian artwork for their models! Or that strange era just before the Renaissance where they had "forgotten" perspective, entirely, but didnt seem to know they were missing something essential!
In any case, in striving to make a model look like art, consider that the image that we try to match, if it is not a photo, (and even if it is), may be in itself a flawed perception.
The insistence of too many people in this genre is that photorealism > all. It doesn't. The last thing I would EVER want to do is dissect fine old artwork in the manner this genre does over minor "realism issues".
I'm a little taken aback by the sentiment in the IRAY threads, the thought that automated "real light" rendering is automatically superior to manipulation of lights and colors by the artist. I guess this hobby is digital photography of a 3d Subject more than "art".
Adam Thwait (mostdigitalcreations) has a freebee called "the black chair" that might work if you feel like wading through the T&A to find it. It is black vinyl/leather so would need a retexture or shader preset.
Hey all, I stopped in back in Jan. for the composition contest and learned some great things from contributers and also found it helps just having a focused goal instead of fiddling around like I usually do. So thought the pose contest would be fun to join. Not necessarily to win but, once again, giving me some focus and also to possibly get some feedback in the way of critiques.
Nothing special as of yet since my poses are only in the initial stage but I would say the girl is about 80% ready and the guy 50% no clothes as of yet or lighting and the backdrop is just to have something to fill the space. I enjoy seeing the renders from others here and watching the progress and I can't wait to see how my own work ends up since, right now, it is definitely about as WIPish as it gets.
Thanks Teofa, I don't mind wading through his site, he has an okay search engine for old freebies.
I don't think photorealism is the be all, end all. However, being able to achieve photorealism is a skill, just like being able to create likeable art is a skill. In art school, they measure part of the students drawing and painting technical skill in their ability to reproduce what is seen. The program that I was in required 3 semesters of figure drawing for both painting and drawing majors and one semester for all art majors, even 3 dimensional artists like sculptors and design students.. so that should they need to, they could draw a correctly scaled and proportioned figure of a sculpture to be made, or a scale figure of a model for a fashion design, etc, from any perspective Once you could do so, then the choice NOT to do so was yours to make. However, for those in the first three years of the program, choosing not to draw photorealistically was not an option because it could to easily be covering up the inability to draw or paint "to life". It does not mean that "to life" makes a better end product... but working on art projects for school is not meant to be an end product but a display of certain skills. "To life" is a skill that is taught and measured so that one can become better at making choices later and not be limited by not having the skill to do photorealism if one wanted to. The option to do things their own way was offered in advanced courses at the 400 level after a student had succeeded with all the 300 level figure classes.
I think in the world of 3-d, being able to mimic reality is something that people believe shows off their skill. There is something truely magical that can happen when something that is sci-fi or fantasy in genre looks like it could exist in the real world. I have an image in my file folders that I will share below... it is obviously not real. But it could be, in an otherworldly way, which is why I love it.This does not mean that 3-d artwork that intentionally does not imitate reality is not good. There are many very good fairy images that do not attempt to be real. Where 3-d art can cosmically fail, is when people try very hard to do realism, and it falls short. The attempt at realism that fails almost always makes for worse art than art that is intentionally not realistic, because with the latter, you can always ask yourself if it was intentional, but in the former the lack of perfection always looks like a mistake.
As for the old master- they were exploring things like foreshortening, lighting, etc. Realism was often something the strove for. Even with things that we believe are not "realistic", the artist was trying to find a way to be more true to what they saw happening and trying to capture it. We dont think of the impressionists as "realism" painters, but what they were striving for was to capture the visible and very real play of light on a surface; something that traditional techniques ignored. They wanted to find a way to put light on the canvas. The same desire to understand and present reality is true even for cubism... the cubists wanted to make art give the viewer more information about the subject, not to intentionally distort the subject. They wanted to show their subject matter from multiple angles inna single space, because it existed as a 3 dimensional object, and they wanted the viewer to experience as much of it as possible.
It wasnt until the abstract artists which followed on the heels of cubism that the isolation of light, form, and other elements for their own sake became an interest. But even then, many artists were still exploring reality- it was just a different aspect of reality than most people had ever considered. How one color can make another look different. How a shape appearing next to another can make it seem heavier, or lighter, and how to achieve balance between "heavy" and "light" shapes. These were not desires to dispense with reality, but ways to explore it in a different way. Even the work of Pollack... one might think, what does that have to do with reality? But he wanted to paint emotion. The physicality of the paint, the act of getting the paint to the canvas.. it is its own interpretation of what is real to the artist
I would argue that even purely fantasy art cannot be detached from reality... the reality that is expressed may not be a visual reality, but an emotional reality, a dream reality, a desire reality, a vision of future reality. There is wonderful quote that expresses this sentiment... "All acts performed in the world begin in the imagination." Barbara Grizzuti Harrison To me there is no such thing as art that is without some aspect of realism. The artist chooses which reality to present to the viewer. Whether attempting to provide an external or an internal realism, art only feels to the viewer like it "falls short" when the artist does not seem to have command of all of the elements of presenting their reality,
Which brings us back to this challenge. We are demonstrating this month that we are able to use pose in a 3d plane to make figure(s) read accurately in a 2d plane. It is an exercise that may or may not lead to an end product that is of artistic merit. Posing more accurately does not necessarily make better art. To be able to achieve BOTH an accurate pose AND good art is an even greater demonstration of skills that are being asked for, IMO, than choosing one or the other.
Adam Thwaites has a free black chair: http://www.most-digital-creations.com/free_poser_poses_textures_morphs_props_62.htm ( 7th from top )
It is not exactly like the one in your reference image but may be closer than the traditional chair you are using.
After taking a break to play with Iray for a while I have made some adjustments to the pose. Scott mentioned a few areas that were bothering me as well but I needed to take that break to gain a fresh perspective and see what needed adjusting.
I think this is closer to the reference image.
I still want to tweak the lighting if I keep this background or I may still change out the environment. I haven't completely decided yet.
I like her standing on the beach, it's very fitting to her activity. As I am practicing Qigong myself there are some things that jump to my eyes in her posing. They are actually small things, and she is very close to the original, so it's more like nitpicking on my side, but testing the pose will make the differences clear. Most importantly are the knees. Her left knee in your image looks all straight. In the original it is still somewhat bent, making the distribution of the bodyweight more even. Still most of the bodywight is on the right knee. To prevent the right knee from breaking out, her shin needs to be twisted a bit more so that the foot will point slightly more forward.
For her arms,the right forearm needs to be lowered a little. The left arm looks like it is turned backwards at the ellbow in your render, but I can't tell for shure. However it's supposed to be only sideways from the body, maybe you could check on that as well.
So its really no big changes. She'll be very relaxed after that ;-)
I like her standing on the beach, it's very fitting to her activity. As I am practicing Qigong myself there are some things that jump to my eyes in her posing. They are actually small things, and she is very close to the original, so it's more like nitpicking on my side, but testing the pose will make the differences clear. Most importantly are the knees. Her left knee in your image looks all straight. In the original it is still somewhat bent, making the distribution of the bodyweight more even. Still most of the bodywight is on the right knee. To prevent the right knee from breaking out, her shin needs to be twisted a bit more so that the foot will point slightly more forward.
For her arms,the right forearm needs to be lowered a little. The left arm looks like it is turned backwards at the ellbow in your render, but I can't tell for shure. However it's supposed to be only sideways from the body, maybe you could check on that as well.
So its really no big changes. She'll be very relaxed after that ;-)
I have already made notes for myself about adjusting her right arm and leg and I agree 100% about her left knee but it is so helpful to have someone else confirm my suspicions.
I have been taking Taoist Tai Chi lessons and tried to find a pose I am familiar with but because I am a beginner I do not have any experience/familiarity with a large number of poses. Unfortunately, the only one I could find was a silhouette so I had to keep searching.
Welcome back robborfla1, that looks pretty good already, as you mentioned that you will do further work with them I won't comment greatly on their poses, just repeating an Idea from Fionathegood, she found a short film on her dancin couple. Maybe you can find something similar for you dancers, or at least the same dance. For me that would be helpful to seen in which context of movement that specific take is. But well maybe you are adept in dancing yourself (I'm not :coolsmile:).
Okey dokey- here is the latest "snow globe" version of the Sound of Music render. Let me know what you think.
Kismet, I'm loathe to comment outside of the scope of posing only on your image, but honestly, I don't think the curved ocean horizon on the cyclorama is working well for you.
Good point Teofa.
If I replaced this environment I would try to do so with another beach scene. I may be able to combine the Beach Volleyball Set with Ocean. I haven't gotten that far yet. I have been concentrating on getting the pose right.
Very nice. The colours are quite complimentary and I am drawn to the couple.
Very nice. The colours are quite complimentary and I am drawn to the couple.
Thanks Kismet. :-) Something I wanted to mention but forgot- I had to make the inner mouth, gums, and teeth invisible... they were looking pretty creepy when I was able to see them at 40% opacity like the rest of the figure. Also, real ice sculpture would be a single, solid layer, and would not be multiple layers of clothing and skin as I have it, but I am forced to work with multiple layered geometries instead of a single solid geometry which would be more correct- I thought I could save raytrace bounces by making parts of the body you wouldnt "see" invisible, like shoulders and whatnot.. but the figures ended up looking really odd when I tried that because the seams did not line up in the right places, so it looked like floating hands sticking out from under the jacket, for example. Pretty funny stuff, figuring out the difference between "ghost" shader values and transparent but "living" looking people! And fwiw- the ice crystals and snow flakes are also the same 40% opacity, but look completely different than the skin and clothing, and I have no idea why- something to do with not being the same base colors (because I didnt want to the firgures to blend in against them too much) and how the light is hitting the surface.
Yeah, there's a comedic part of his picture that's not 100% there. I don't think he is being intentional about it, though. He's struggling to make it look natural, where she just nails her look & makes it seem easy.
He's not fat at all (and not to joke about fat/not fat), but she's got the skinny model look about her & he does not. That rump is just kind of hanging out there. She's also got wonderful skin tone, while he's really pasty (like a Ducati engineer versus a model).
I think you have captured the appearance of a lack of effort in the female image (even if she's the pro at this & there's a lot to what she's actually doing). I'm not sure the male figure in your render is 100% looking like he's not about to fall over. In the photo, the guy looks like he's hanging on for dear life on that shoe strap, and he's probably putting a lot of force on the motorcycle to prop himself up. I think the lack of high heels on the man is also making the rendered image seem more like a pro rather than bringing off the comedy.
I don't know how you translate this into the image. This is just my biased impression.
I guess you are 100% right, and yes the translation will be the difficult part. But ok there are some things the can be adapted, I will try to give him a bit of belly and a paler skin colour. But to really show how much wight he puts on the bike i find rather difficult. I will try to give it more angle an maybe finally giving them their shoes will help the impression.
I guess you are 100% right, and yes the translation will be the difficult part. But ok there are some things the can be adapted, I will try to give him a bit of belly and a paler skin colour. But to really show how much wight he puts on the bike i find rather difficult. I will try to give it more angle an maybe finally giving them their shoes will help the impression.
It may seem like a minor thing but for me, their lack of shoes is really making it difficult to properly see their pose in relation to the reference image.
If you need car paint shaders to make the motorcycles red you can try these:
Super Shine Shaders: http://www.sharecg.com/v/31573/gallery/7/Material-and-Shader/Super-Shine-Shader
Super Shine Top Coat: http://www.sharecg.com/v/31574/Material-and-Shader/Super-Shine-TopCoat
And this one has some chrome shaders for the wheels:
Ultimate Shader Pack: http://www.sharecg.com/v/27568/material-and-shader/Ultimate-Shader-Pack-for-DAZ-Studio
They are all free on ShareCG.
I guess you are 100% right, and yes the translation will be the difficult part. But ok there are some things the can be adapted, I will try to give him a bit of belly and a paler skin colour. But to really show how much wight he puts on the bike i find rather difficult. I will try to give it more angle an maybe finally giving them their shoes will help the impression.
It may seem like a minor thing but for me, their lack of shoes is really making it difficult to properly see their pose in relation to the reference image.
If you need car paint shaders to make the motorcycles red you can try these:
Super Shine Shaders: http://www.sharecg.com/v/31573/gallery/7/Material-and-Shader/Super-Shine-Shader
Super Shine Top Coat: http://www.sharecg.com/v/31574/Material-and-Shader/Super-Shine-TopCoat
And this one has some chrome shaders for the wheels:
Ultimate Shader Pack: http://www.sharecg.com/v/27568/material-and-shader/Ultimate-Shader-Pack-for-DAZ-Studio
They are all free on ShareCG.
Kismet the problem with the bike are not the shaders but that it doesn't fall to different parts, If I shade it everything goes that colour. I will look for another one, there is tons of bikes out there ther must be one in for my purpose :lol:
It may seem like a minor thing but for me, their lack of shoes is really making it difficult to properly see their pose in relation to the reference image.
If you need car paint shaders to make the motorcycles red you can try these:
Super Shine Shaders: http://www.sharecg.com/v/31573/gallery/7/Material-and-Shader/Super-Shine-Shader
Super Shine Top Coat: http://www.sharecg.com/v/31574/Material-and-Shader/Super-Shine-TopCoat
And this one has some chrome shaders for the wheels:
Ultimate Shader Pack: http://www.sharecg.com/v/27568/material-and-shader/Ultimate-Shader-Pack-for-DAZ-Studio
They are all free on ShareCG.
Kismet the problem with the bike are not the shaders but that it doesn't fall to different parts, If I shade it everything goes that colour. I will look for another one, there is tons of bikes out there ther must be one in for my purpose :lol:
Props like that are hard to deal with. I feel your pain on this one Linwelly. :)
Whoops . . . I dropped my earring!
Greetings all :-)
Have been working and following your work and commentary closely. Thanks to Scott-Livingston for the "background" suggestion, it was very helpful. Special thanks to Teofa for pointing out the "gear" that allows you to set your own parameters, without it my selected pose would not be possible to replicate. Also, I echo the observation of fionathegood as I asked myself at the beginning, "How do you elevate this assignment to the level of fine art?" So, here is the effort thus far, whether it rises to the level of fine art will be for others to decide. Once again, hats off to those who offer us this opportunity to refine our craft. :)
This is a really fun render Giovanni and I love the addition of the cats but I have a question. Is the "ball" the cat is playing with supposed to be attached to the female figure? (I think you used a robot prop and applied wood shaders?)
The prop (robot?) looks like it is floating in the air like a balloon.
No and yes, this is a whimsical/fantasy piece inspired by the contest. The "robot" is called the "Collector," I believe. In the beginning, this was in a horizontal format without the robot and cats. It seemed predictable and boring, so I went vertical and added the cats for interest and texture. I'm now playing around with different color backgrounds, as I'm not sold on "dead" black. Thanks! ;-)
Interesting take on the theme giovanni.
I have been marvelling at this pose for some time until I finally figured out how that woman in the original is keeping her balance.
First I thought its impossible for a still position, but then its impossible to move quick in it as well.
Then I noticed, that she is pushing her elbows into her stomach, they are really under her body.
And that's pretty much the only nitpicking I can do on this, the wooden gilrl has her elbows beside her body.
Interesting take on the theme giovanni.
I have been marvelling at this pose for some time until I finally figured out how that woman in the original is keeping her balance.
First I thought its impossible for a still position, but then its impossible to move quick in it as well.
Then I noticed, that she is pushing her elbows into her stomach, they are really under her body.
And that's pretty much the only nitpicking I can do on this, the wooden gilrl has her elbows beside her body.
Thanks Linwelly!
I believe you're correct; I'm going to take a look from the "top view" to see. :)
Muse, you're off to a really good start on what looks like a very challenging pose! Here are the areas I would concentrate on at this point:
1. Look at the angle formed between her torso and hip--it's narrower in the reference photo. I think Teofa may be right that she's bending at the waist a bit, as if she were sitting.
2. Her right leg has some room for improvement...I think you may need to twist the thigh a bit and increase the knee bend.
3. Her left collar might need a little more "shrug?"
Sorry for the delayed response...I have some catching up to do on this thread. Good work so far...I look forward to seeing this one develop!
Been a while since I entered in one of these contests, but I'm back. Here's the start of my scene. Just getting the poses down right now before adding any background or other props.
Still need to adjust fingers a bit more I think and give some facial expressions but I think I got the poses pretty well.
The reference images are
http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2014/259/9/5/sunlit_angel_by_dallas_williams-d7zhagv.jpg
and
http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs32/f/2008/231/a/7/Dinosaur_Ambush_by_BenWootten.jpg
*edit*
I do see that I also need the bottom figure to lean forward at the waste. Oops
This is looking really close...some differences in the head and neck area, and maybe the legs (hard to see, but I think the reference image character's legs are slightly further apart). Great job with this so far!
Ok, round two and me thinks the poses are getting better.
The background is strictly for filling the space while I work on the figures and will probably change when a better idea comes along.
Linwelly; I'm glad you like the direction of the first rendering and as for the dance they are performing, I believe it is a rumba. latin for sure but what I liked about the original picture is the complexity of the poses and their body language in relation to each other and the environment. By the way, great renders with the folks and their bikes. You definitely have a good knowledge of the human figure.
For me, next up is lighting and atmosphere of which I am a real newby with the cgi stuff but it's all for fun!