May 2015 New User Contest - Action [WIP Thread]

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Comments

  • XangthXangth Posts: 127
    edited May 2015

    Thank you burst of times and Linwelly for the suggestions. Yes the transparent lines you see were supposed to be motion lines of a sort. Also where the two swords meet was supposed to be sparkes of metal hitting metal. The two figures were figuratively good and evil (demon against angle) battling in the heavens of space. The top planet was nibiru and the bottom sphere is the sun. The sun is in the background and it does make it look like the character is pushing off of it somewhat. The line in the center is actually the horizon line and is hard to hide as Bryce produces a horizon line as part of the environment of a default scene.

    I'm still working on it. here is a newer render. I made it smaller and tried to close in on the characters and still keep their full body and wings in the scene. I used the golden rules of thirds grid on it. It is still a WIP.

    Title: Equinox of Enantios
    No postwork all scene work in Bryce, characters created in Daz

    equanox_of_enantios3.jpg
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    Post edited by Xangth on
  • LinwellyLinwelly Posts: 5,947
    edited December 1969

    Xangth said:
    Thank you burst of times and Linwelly for the suggestions. Yes the transparent lines you see were supposed to be motion lines of a sort. Also where the two swords meet was supposed to be sparkes of metal hitting metal. The two figures were figuratively good and evil (demon against angle) battling in the heavens of space. The top planet was nibiru and the bottom sphere is the sun. The sun is in the background and it does make it look like the character is pushing off of it somewhat. The line in the center is actually the horizon line and is hard to hide as Bryce produces a horizon line as part of the environment of a default scene.

    I'm still working on it. here is a newer render. I made it smaller and tried to close in on the characters and still keep their full body and wings in the scene. I used the golden rules of thirds grid on it. It is still a WIP.

    Title: Equinox of Enantios
    No postwork all scene work in Bryce, characters created in Daz


    I don't know the first thing about Bryce (I believe Chohole does though) but can you try to Move all you created up into the sky away from that horizon and pan your camera accordingly?
    The Sun is much better recocnized as a surn now, I still would make those orbs much larger and transparent, or only lit at the surface, (well at least for your dark planet)
    I tried to find some examples of what I could imagine works:

    http://www.yee7.com/stars-and-moons-desktop-wallpaper/planet-space-stars-moon-earth-star-hd-wallpaper-hq.html
    http://www.3d-hdwallpaper.com/hd-pictures-of-stars-and-moons/
    http://www.wallpaperhi.com/thumbnails/detail/20130404/sun outer space stars planets 1600x1200 wallpaper_www.wallpaperhi.com_6.jpg

    The two combattants need to look more directly at each other and your evil side is still to hard to understand her movements

    keep in mind those are just ideas, what you decide is up to you

  • ChoholeChohole Posts: 33,604
    edited December 1969

    In Bryce there is a setting for a plain black background in the sky library and you could then delete the ground plane and have a completely black background to work with.

    And yes Linwelly I do know a little bit about Bryce as it has been my main program of choice for some 16 or 17 years. :coolsmirk:

  • The Blurst of TimesThe Blurst of Times Posts: 2,410
    edited December 1969

    Well, one idea for the trebuchet is to set it on fire. That explains why it might be unmanned. It also adds drama, plus a light source.

    Of course, having the materials to make fire in your render is another issue.

    Okay, Blurst, now you're scaring me. lol! That's exactly what I was thinking.. GMTA! Now this is just a quick attempt. It's just to tell me what sort of mess I would be in for and how much work I'm looking at.

    I think I can get it to work - regarding the fire - Photoshop CC 2014 now has the ability to render a 3d fire, but I've got lots of stuff to do before that.

    I need to move the trebuchet back and make it a tad smaller - where the flames can add the light source as you mention, Blurst, rather than vie for dominance with the horse and rider. That will also help the depth of field.

    Lights, lights and more lights, I gotta adjust source, color, direction, I'm guessing a spotlight would probably work the best for the flames, if strategically placed at various points.

    I'm thinking to changing his sword to a torch as well.

    I managed to get some ground mist in there that coming back to bite me - gotta get rid of that.

    Watch I'm going to end up changing the horse's color yet again to provide contrast. lol!

    The funny thing is this scene is now one that is straight out of one of my novels. lol! Well, they say go with what you know. Speaking of which if I don't get my butt in gear, and get my current novel off to my editor in the next 8 days, I'm going to be in hot water.

    Thanks again for all the help, Blurst, and everyone!

    Cheers,
    Kathryn

    Ha! Well, pyromaniac minds think alike, as they say. Fire is a great thing for visual drama... I think the fire lends a lot more to the scene than grass and hills.

    If it were a real camera, the light of the fire might burn out the image of the rider in front... so imagine another huge bonfire behind the camera, and try to cast light towards the rider with that in mind. Imagine a light that balances out the powerful light from the fire behind your rider. That may help you envision other lights for your scene.

    I have a fire & smoke effects prop set (smay's Fire & Smoke)...
    http://www.daz3d.com/fire-and-smoke-for-daz-studio
    I use it to set up fire-shaped objects, turn them into light emitters, and then that helps me to cast irregular-shaped light patterns onto a scene.

    I like the Fire & Smoke set a lot, but you don't necessarily NEED that if you want vaguely fire-shaped objects off camera. You might try a Primitive - Cone, turn the surface of the Cone into a light emitter (Emissive shader in Iray, or I think it's the Ambient surface in the Surfaces tab if you're using 3delight). The Cone can be the approximate shape of a fire, which is why I use it.

    At least, that's what I do for fires that the camera doesn't see. My renderer of choice is Iray, so having something with a shape will theoretically lend my image more heft because there's simulated photons involved. There's probably another amazingly more effective way to do things, but it works for me.

    I didn't realize you were a writer! Just checked out your website... very cool!

  • XangthXangth Posts: 127
    edited May 2015

    Here is the newest render of the image I'm working on. Thanks for the suggestions. I worked out the horizon thing. I moved some of the elements around more and turned the characters more towards each other a bit more. I raised the sun looking spheres so it doesn't look like the character is using it to push on. I'm still working with it to make it better. I also need to fix the texturing in places.

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    Post edited by Xangth on
  • The Blurst of TimesThe Blurst of Times Posts: 2,410
    edited May 2015

    I love this theme, Blurst. I want to say - Run, Redneck, run! (I live in southeast Texas. My husband's screen name - Watchthisholdmybeer - if you get my point). But I have to admit that now I'm confused. I really like the image you posted right before this one because the girl - like you said you could tell she was a robot - was coming through that door and nothing was gonna stop her. That was a lot more menacing to me because, Joe Dirt, here is running but you know he doesn't have a prayer. IMHO, this one loses that with the girl standing at the door. But that's just me and as you know, I'm total noob so take it with a grain of salt.

    I did want to mention that it was the girl's arms that really showed me she was a robot - maybe something sleeveless with the clothing change?

    No matter what - it's a really cool image! I like it!

    Thanks for the feedback!
    (I'm not from Texas, but I enjoyed the "King of the Hill" cartoon very much.)

    The sleeves actually are robot arm pieces from Parris' Bot Armor set for Genesis 2... but, yes, I thought they looked more like long gloves in the recent image, and it's good to know that my feelings were confirmed.

    I changed it so that the hair covered the robotic nudity, and moved the right leg closer to where it was before in order to cover up the lower area as well. I think that makes her robot-ness a lot more obvious than the clothing she had before.

    Anyway, here's a quick-ish render to show the changes.

    There's a lot more clutter. I think I will remove the Apple since it's not adding anything to the story now, but I want to keep the basketball and the random rubber duck.

    I gave the robot the Minos Cuffs accessory to give her some chains (which she has broken), but for "posable" cuffs they are kind of un-posable (the links are somehow connected to the finger positions rather than separately controlled). Moving the left arm of the robot is problematic because the chain isn't simple to mess around with. I want to keep the cuffs with the chains, but I'll have to see what I can do to make them look better in the scene.

    I added another dude-bro at the bottom of the stairs.

    Amped up some of the lighting to illuminate the two main characters in the scene.

    EDIT: I'd note that the clutter is a mix of freebies and PC+ stuff. It's certainly easier to dress a scene when you have amassed a pile of stuff to throw into an image. I wish I had more bro-y kind of stuff to add in, though.

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    Post edited by The Blurst of Times on
  • LinwellyLinwelly Posts: 5,947
    edited December 1969

    I love this theme, Blurst. I want to say - Run, Redneck, run! (I live in southeast Texas. My husband's screen name - Watchthisholdmybeer - if you get my point). But I have to admit that now I'm confused. I really like the image you posted right before this one because the girl - like you said you could tell she was a robot - was coming through that door and nothing was gonna stop her. That was a lot more menacing to me because, Joe Dirt, here is running but you know he doesn't have a prayer. IMHO, this one loses that with the girl standing at the door. But that's just me and as you know, I'm total noob so take it with a grain of salt.

    I did want to mention that it was the girl's arms that really showed me she was a robot - maybe something sleeveless with the clothing change?

    No matter what - it's a really cool image! I like it!

    Thanks for the feedback!
    (I'm not from Texas, but I enjoyed the "King of the Hill" cartoon very much.)

    The sleeves actually are robot arm pieces from Parris' Bot Armor set for Genesis 2... but, yes, I thought they looked more like long gloves in the recent image, and it's good to know that my feelings were confirmed.

    I changed it so that the hair covered the robotic nudity, and moved the right leg closer to where it was before in order to cover up the lower area as well. I think that makes her robot-ness a lot more obvious than the clothing she had before.

    Anyway, here's a quick-ish render to show the changes.

    There's a lot more clutter. I think I will remove the Apple since it's not adding anything to the story now, but I want to keep the basketball and the random rubber duck.

    I gave the robot the Minos Cuffs accessory to give her some chains (which she has broken), but for "posable" cuffs they are kind of un-posable (the links are somehow connected to the finger positions rather than separately controlled). Moving the left arm of the robot is problematic because the chain isn't simple to mess around with. I want to keep the cuffs with the chains, but I'll have to see what I can do to make them look better in the scene.

    I added another dude-bro at the bottom of the stairs.

    Hi Times,
    yes the bot is much better now, I was missing the bottishness in the last version as well. And her stance ist so much better like this.
    My first impression is that the second guy is not really adding to the story, with him the attention of the ladybot is not solely on the running dude, and... I'd say that your running dude is not really into a threesome with another dude ... but that's just me:coolcheese:

  • LinwellyLinwelly Posts: 5,947
    edited December 1969

    Well, one idea for the trebuchet is to set it on fire. That explains why it might be unmanned. It also adds drama, plus a light source.

    Of course, having the materials to make fire in your render is another issue.

    Okay, Blurst, now you're scaring me. lol! That's exactly what I was thinking.. GMTA! Now this is just a quick attempt. It's just to tell me what sort of mess I would be in for and how much work I'm looking at.

    I think I can get it to work - regarding the fire - Photoshop CC 2014 now has the ability to render a 3d fire, but I've got lots of stuff to do before that.

    I need to move the trebuchet back and make it a tad smaller - where the flames can add the light source as you mention, Blurst, rather than vie for dominance with the horse and rider. That will also help the depth of field.

    Lights, lights and more lights, I gotta adjust source, color, direction, I'm guessing a spotlight would probably work the best for the flames, if strategically placed at various points.

    I'm thinking to changing his sword to a torch as well.


    I managed to get some ground mist in there that coming back to bite me - gotta get rid of that.

    Watch I'm going to end up changing the horse's color yet again to provide contrast. lol!

    The funny thing is this scene is now one that is straight out of one of my novels. lol! Well, they say go with what you know. Speaking of which if I don't get my butt in gear, and get my current novel off to my editor in the next 8 days, I'm going to be in hot water.

    Thanks again for all the help, Blurst, and everyone!

    Cheers,
    Kathryn

    This has become a really nice render, and I like the burning of the trebuchet as well. The horse has gotten a very nice skin, I have to say.
    some nitpickin from me:
    the rider and horse make the impression of being photoshopped onto the background with the burning trebuchet. I guess it's the faint line of lighter pixels on th border between rider, sword, horse on the on siede and background on the other.
    Then I am missing some part of your story. the camera angle and the gaze of your rider let me think this be the perspective of one lying on the ground and being attacked, but ther is no one. and the reach of the sword would even be to short for someone already lying on the ground, that person would need to be more afraid of being tramled on by the hors but that going by.
    So my suggestion is to give the rider an long pike on somesuch directed at the camera / get someone lying on the ground there

  • LinwellyLinwelly Posts: 5,947
    edited December 1969

    3ch0_419 said:
    Took me forever to think of something to try and do for this month, but here we go.


    ew-why is there a redspiked beast in the locker room? ... :)
    No seriously this is a good start, there is a good fight going on. I would suggest getting closer with the camera to the action would be good.
    Maybe you can move the bench of let ist tumble over as a consequence of the fight and move the two of them a bit more into the room,
    the right hand of the man and the left of the beast seem a bit inactive to me, I guess you tried to capture that in mid motion but as they are they look rahter static, Id like to see a clearer punch there.
    There is some weird line in the texture of the man maybe its becous you chos e rather low ender solution for the draft.
  • cherpenbeckcherpenbeck Posts: 1,412
    edited December 1969

    So many beautiful renders already ...
    I kind of last minute remembered this contest.
    I'm planing a fight trainig. This is the first figure.

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  • LinwellyLinwelly Posts: 5,947
    edited December 1969

    Newest version. I tried to get a "laser" light for the kitten to chase.

    Hi Kismet, I like the cat chasing the red laser dot. A face spot the black cat would be nice though, and in the moment the tail has rather few hair compared to how fluffy the whole cat is.
    The one on the floor is really excellent with the hair and the pose.

  • wohaverwohaver Posts: 36
    edited December 1969

    I think I'm getting closer (4th edit)... any help would be appreciated.

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  • The Blurst of TimesThe Blurst of Times Posts: 2,410
    edited May 2015

    wohaver said:
    I think I'm getting closer (4th edit)... any help would be appreciated.

    This one is certainly an improvement over the past two.

    The flames are better.

    The hero on the left is positioned quite well.

    The flying demon on the right... the wings are much better now, but I guess I'm not liking the hands and feet so much. My first question is: is the demon swooping in or flying past?

    If the demon is swooping down to land/attack, then I would suggest looking at images of Hawks or Eagles when they are flying in for a kill. Their feet start to angle out to the front, with the claws stretched out to grab onto prey.

    If the demon is just flying past, then look at images of Hawks/Eagles in flight. The feet are more swept back.

    The car. I like that you've made the glass transparent, but the insides are a bit lacking in detail. I don't know if that's due to the model or what. If you need more detailed free models, there's a number of free resources on ShareCG.

    For instance, there's elele's "Benzo" (i.e. Mercedes-Benz)
    http://www.sharecg.com/pf/full_uploads.php?pf_user_name=elele

    (I know the Benzos work because I have them in my Library!)

    Anyway, check those out. They might give you a bit more to work with for your automobile.

    ...

    Camera... I think you've made some good adjustments, but you could get closer to the action.
    Try keeping a dedicated Camera for rendering your image...

    IMO, the best way to do that is to take your main "Perspective View" camera and frame the scene in your Viewport.

    Next, go to "Create" (on the top line of your Daz window).
    Select "New Camera"
    Click on "Copy Active View: "

    This will create a Camera where your Perspective View is at.

    Then you can move around in Perspective View without losing your main camera for rendering! You can use the drop-down menu in the Viewport to switch between your Perspective View and the Camera you just created... but remember to switch to the Camera for your rendering!

    Post edited by The Blurst of Times on
  • kathrynlochkathrynloch Posts: 378
    edited December 1969


    Ha! Well, pyromaniac minds think alike, as they say. Fire is a great thing for visual drama... I think the fire lends a lot more to the scene than grass and hills.

    If it were a real camera, the light of the fire might burn out the image of the rider in front... so imagine another huge bonfire behind the camera, and try to cast light towards the rider with that in mind. Imagine a light that balances out the powerful light from the fire behind your rider. That may help you envision other lights for your scene.

    I have a fire & smoke effects prop set (smay's Fire & Smoke)...
    http://www.daz3d.com/fire-and-smoke-for-daz-studio
    I use it to set up fire-shaped objects, turn them into light emitters, and then that helps me to cast irregular-shaped light patterns onto a scene.

    I like the Fire & Smoke set a lot, but you don't necessarily NEED that if you want vaguely fire-shaped objects off camera. You might try a Primitive - Cone, turn the surface of the Cone into a light emitter (Emissive shader in Iray, or I think it's the Ambient surface in the Surfaces tab if you're using 3delight). The Cone can be the approximate shape of a fire, which is why I use it.

    At least, that's what I do for fires that the camera doesn't see. My renderer of choice is Iray, so having something with a shape will theoretically lend my image more heft because there's simulated photons involved. There's probably another amazingly more effective way to do things, but it works for me.

    I didn't realize you were a writer! Just checked out your website... very cool!

    Well, I guess were a pair of pyromaniacs. lol! Because I'm right there with ya, Blurst! That's what I've been working on today with a few exceptions. First - I don't have the first clue about lray. I saw it mentioned in my "introduce yourself" thread for us noobs and did a quick search on it and the eyes just glazed over because I didn't have a point of reference to start with. Is lray Nvidia something or Daz or Lightray? I've got Daz 4.7 pro and haven't seen anything about lray.

    I started out with a plan for this thing but it didn't want to go that direction. I'll fight and fight but if I push it past a certain point, it will end up a disaster (I had to strip more gaming miniatures when I painted those because I overworked them). So it's been a real PITA in regard to fighting me today. I ended up going with the flow just to see where it led. Sometimes that works out surprisingly well.

    The trebuchet absolutely refused to stay small and out of the way. But I also "broke" it in spots and that helped I think. With the lights, since I was a bit clueless, I would pick one, place and render. Move, render. Move render. Delete light. Grab a different one then start the process all over again. lol!

    I like that flame and smoke pack! I might pick that up.

    But at this point, this is what I call my completed first draft. lol! It's done but I know it's not DONE. Methinks I have revisions to do but I'm not sure where they need to go. So I'll let those who can actually see the trees despite the forest to let me know.

    Oh I did something of what you suggested, Blurst, for the counter light, just not how you suggested it. lol! But I was operating on the same premise, I had a bit of a lens flare going on too but I obscured more because it was kinda distracting.

    But I can always bring it back. lol!

    Thanks for visiting the website! I've been on Amazon since the end of 2012. I only put my novels on Amazon to get gas money to go to job interviews. They took off and now I write full time. So at least I don't have to worry about interviews any more. lol!

    Anyway, thanks so much for the help thus far and any other suggestions are most appreciated!

    Cheers,
    Kath

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  • kathrynlochkathrynloch Posts: 378
    edited May 2015


    Thanks for the feedback!
    (I'm not from Texas, but I enjoyed the "King of the Hill" cartoon very much.)

    The sleeves actually are robot arm pieces from Parris' Bot Armor set for Genesis 2... but, yes, I thought they looked more like long gloves in the recent image, and it's good to know that my feelings were confirmed.

    I changed it so that the hair covered the robotic nudity, and moved the right leg closer to where it was before in order to cover up the lower area as well. I think that makes her robot-ness a lot more obvious than the clothing she had before.

    Anyway, here's a quick-ish render to show the changes.

    There's a lot more clutter. I think I will remove the Apple since it's not adding anything to the story now, but I want to keep the basketball and the random rubber duck.

    I gave the robot the Minos Cuffs accessory to give her some chains (which she has broken), but for "posable" cuffs they are kind of un-posable (the links are somehow connected to the finger positions rather than separately controlled). Moving the left arm of the robot is problematic because the chain isn't simple to mess around with. I want to keep the cuffs with the chains, but I'll have to see what I can do to make them look better in the scene.

    I added another dude-bro at the bottom of the stairs.

    Amped up some of the lighting to illuminate the two main characters in the scene.

    EDIT: I'd note that the clutter is a mix of freebies and PC+ stuff. It's certainly easier to dress a scene when you have amassed a pile of stuff to throw into an image. I wish I had more bro-y kind of stuff to add in, though.


    I'm with Linwilly on this one in the fact the second guy doesn't work for me. I don't see him adding to the scene. We want the focus on Joe Dirt - love the beer bottle! It's a fun scene but when the focus is on only those two there's still an undercurrent of menacing/bad things are going to happen. Like we're going to laugh our butts off at the guy until he gets strangled with his own intestines or something. Ya know? It's all fun and games until somebody gets arrested.

    You've nailed that element of fun but I also caught the element of threatening too. That's a tough balance but it's there!

    Cheers,
    Kathryn

    Post edited by kathrynloch on
  • kathrynlochkathrynloch Posts: 378
    edited May 2015

    Linwelly said:

    This has become a really nice render, and I like the burning of the trebuchet as well. The horse has gotten a very nice skin, I have to say.
    some nitpickin from me:
    the rider and horse make the impression of being photoshopped onto the background with the burning trebuchet. I guess it's the faint line of lighter pixels on th border between rider, sword, horse on the on siede and background on the other.
    Then I am missing some part of your story. the camera angle and the gaze of your rider let me think this be the perspective of one lying on the ground and being attacked, but ther is no one. and the reach of the sword would even be to short for someone already lying on the ground, that person would need to be more afraid of being tramled on by the hors but that going by.
    So my suggestion is to give the rider an long pike on somesuch directed at the camera / get someone lying on the ground there

    Thanks so much Linwelly!

    The horse and photoshopped - yeah, that was bugging the crap out of me too so I went in and cleaned that up in my latest post.

    Okay, I understand your confusion with perspective of the rider and the camera, but I'm not sure how to fix it, because technically the position of horse and rider and camera is correct but it's hard to explain. I attached another pic - that's me with a friend's horse I was training for her. He wasn't thrilled with joust the quintain or anything that required him to move faster than a trot for that matter. lol! While this one doesn't show the angle I'm speaking of, I've done the horsie thing for years.

    But the problem is translating that correctly on the screen. It can be correct six ways to Sunday, but if I'm the only one who sees it, that's not going to help. lol!

    The rider would have a lance to start. After the initial charge at the enemy's flank, the lances break so the knights discard them and pull their backup weapons. Most often that will be not a sword but a horseman's axe or a hammer. Those are so much more efficient to wield and your goal is to kill by hitting the head but if you miss, then goal is neck, miss that, then the goal is shoulders and upper arm - not to severe anything but to smash armor - especially at the joint. Hopefully you can shatter bone, but if that fails, then you just destroyed the articulation of the armor, and it's really hard to defend yourself when you can't bend the arms and the shoulder can't rotate. Don't get me wrong, swords were used all the time, but the small, balanced hammers and axes were - very generally speaking - better weapons for the knight as he galloped through the enemy troops after the initial charge.

    So where the horse is at in his stride and considering how much he'll move forward as the rider's arm comes down, I think it should pretty much correct with someone standing there. I did change the sword to a torch, just so there's no doubt Braveheart boy had a hand in setting ye olde fire. So when the torch crashes down, it probably won't kill victim but he would have seriously bad burns and it might even blind the person.

    Adding to my quandary, Braveheart boy is riding a stolen horse - a target of opportunity. He's gotta keep moving fast. Slow down at all (and the movies always show this wrong - drives me nuts - except LOTR series got it the closest) and Braveheart boy is going to get pulled off the horse and killed. If you ever get stuck in a wormhole and find yourself aboard a horse in the middle ages, on a battlefield - ride! Do. Not. Stop. lol! And maybe you'll get out of there alive. lol!

    Now I can go back to Blurst's suggestion and put soldiers next to our camera - I'm thinking dead ones, but I'm afraid that will clutter the scene and detract.

    Hrmmmm... I'll have to think about how to fix this.

    Thanks Linwilly - I appreciate the feedback. Please pardon me thinking aloud up there but I'm literally walking through my logic trying to see if a solution pops me upside the head like I want that torch to do. lol! Thank you again!

    Cheers,
    Kath


    PS
    HOLD THE PHONE - I think I've got a solution. I'll try again!

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    Post edited by kathrynloch on
  • D.RobinsonD.Robinson Posts: 283
    edited December 1969

    The rivalry between Danika and Julie had always been heated when it came to the affections of Steven. Today that rivalry might go too far.

    Daniel

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  • kathrynlochkathrynloch Posts: 378
    edited December 1969

    dubby30 said:
    The rivalry between Danika and Julie had always been heated when it came to the affections of Steven. Today that rivalry might go too far.

    Daniel

    Hi Daniel!

    You know this scene caught my eye right up front. I like the changes you've been doing. It's definitely dynamic. And the comment you wrote on the rivalry! lol! Too funny!

    Just curious here, I didn't have a chance to read everything in your previous post,s but do you have a specific fighting style in mind with this? It looks like MMA but I don't know if it's a preset pose or if you created it from scratch or like me and my horse pose that started with a preset then proceeded to tweak until happy. I'll have to go back and see if I can find a mention.

    But I saw where you changed the expressions, and I'm scratching my head. Would the girl on the receiving end of that palm strike to the jaw still have her eyes open? Even wearing protective gear you get popped in the jaw and the teeth snap shut sounding like one of those cartoon skull gag gifts that you wind up and they chatter about.

    Mind you total noob here so it's more of a question than a suggestion lol! But wouldn't her eyes be closed, her neck flexing hard because of the direction her head's going? A palm strike packs a lot of energy and us girls were taught it was probably a better choice for us to use than a fist. The fact that the one getting her butt kicked is gritting her teeth while receiving the blow just set my own teeth on edge. :vampire:

    After she wakes up, her first trip will probably to the orthodontist for the dentures she's going to need. hehe :cheese:

    This might be difficult to do in the program but the fingers on the striking hand need to curl down not be extended. Not so much a fist but bent at the middle knuckle. From what I can tell, you've got it pretty much on the left hand - it's the striking hand that needs to have the fingers in a similar fashion to reduce the chance of injury.

    Again, these are just some observations and questions - I'm getting to the point where taking it with a grain of salt isn't enough. How about some Tabasco? lol! Seriously, though, I really like this one. It's a great scene where the more you look at it, the more detail you find.

    Cheers,
    Kathryn

  • The Blurst of TimesThe Blurst of Times Posts: 2,410
    edited December 1969

    Thanks for all the feedback...
    Here's another experimental run.

    I took out the other guy since he wasn't working.
    Somehow, my camera got messed up during that last build, so taking out the guy let me tighten up the scene again. I brought the camera much closer to the doorway.

    As for the robot, I thought about giving her a crowbar... and it's in the vicinity of her hand, but I wanted to see what it might look like before really posing it. So that's one more deletion before my next render :-)

    Also, I think I'm going to return her pupils to non-glowing. I don't think I need it any more.

    The pose of her left hand is awful, but the Minos Cuffs chain requires something like where it's at. I like that the chain is there. Maybe I'll hide the hand behind the door frame to save the chains...

    I don't like some of the clutter, so it needs to get shuffled around before the next build.

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  • Shinji Ikari 9thShinji Ikari 9th Posts: 1,185
    edited December 1969

    Linwelly said:
    3ch0_419 said:
    Took me forever to think of something to try and do for this month, but here we go.


    ew-why is there a redspiked beast in the locker room? ... :)
    No seriously this is a good start, there is a good fight going on. I would suggest getting closer with the camera to the action would be good.
    Maybe you can move the bench of let ist tumble over as a consequence of the fight and move the two of them a bit more into the room,
    the right hand of the man and the left of the beast seem a bit inactive to me, I guess you tried to capture that in mid motion but as they are they look rahter static, Id like to see a clearer punch there.
    There is some weird line in the texture of the man maybe its becous you chos e rather low ender solution for the draft.

    I tried zooming in more on the fighters, and tweaking their poses somewhat. The man's right fist is hitting the demon in the throat/chest, and I tried to have some reaction on it's face. As for the outfit, he's wearing a freebie I found this week and that's what it came with. Maybe I find something else in my runtime.

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  • wohaverwohaver Posts: 36
    edited December 1969

    For instance, there's elele's "Benzo" (i.e. Mercedes-Benz)
    http://www.sharecg.com/pf/full_uploads.php?pf_user_name=elele

    (I know the Benzos work because I have them in my Library!)

    Anyway, check those out. They might give you a bit more to work with for your automobile.

    Camera... I think you've made some good adjustments, but you could get closer to the action.
    Try keeping a dedicated Camera for rendering your image...

    IMO, the best way to do that is to take your main "Perspective View" camera and frame the scene in your Viewport.

    Next, go to "Create" (on the top line of your Daz window).
    Select "New Camera"
    Click on "Copy Active View: "

    This will create a Camera where your Perspective View is at.

    Then you can move around in Perspective View without losing your main camera for rendering! You can use the drop-down menu in the Viewport to switch between your Perspective View and the Camera you just created... but remember to switch to the Camera for your rendering!


    Thank you very much for all the help you've given. When I look compare the initial image to the current image your suggestions and tips are significantly improving the quality. I feel like I'm learning something and I am grateful. Here is the most recent edit...

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  • cherpenbeckcherpenbeck Posts: 1,412
    edited December 1969

    I think the demon would look better if you pose him a bit less symmetrical.

  • Babalar1Babalar1 Posts: 71
    edited December 1969

    Late start on this contest but here's what's been brewing around the last few days for me. The concept came from this being the final week of the english premier league season so went with a soccer action shot of sorts. A couple of tweeks for this and that but biggest thing I'd like to do would be to add numbers or sponsor name on the kit (jersey) of the front male.I tried drawing something on but looks terribly fake I think. Any idea how to change a texture in that way?

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  • LinwellyLinwelly Posts: 5,947
    edited December 1969

    Late start on this contest but here's what's been brewing around the last few days for me. The concept came from this being the final week of the english premier league season so went with a soccer action shot of sorts. A couple of tweeks for this and that but biggest thing I'd like to do would be to add numbers or sponsor name on the kit (jersey) of the front male.I tried drawing something on but looks terribly fake I think. Any idea how to change a texture in that way?

    somewhere in the depths of the most-digital-creations.com freebie archives there is a thing called morphing tissue.
    Its basically a kerchiev with some morphs, what you can do with that is to load an image of the sponsor (or your made up stuff) into the diffuse and then parent the thing to the shirt.
    Otherwise you can look at the diffuse image of the shirt load that into Gimp/photoshop ... place your sponsor add on the shirt and save under new name! then load that into the diffuse of your shirt.

    Very neat soccer scene, I'd like to see some peaces of green flying about or some spray of water ( seems to be wet as the volumtric render suggest)

  • cherpenbeckcherpenbeck Posts: 1,412
    edited December 1969

    I decided to put my fighter in Junk Alley. His pose is still a bit raw, and the second one needs to be added. It's a long weekend, so I might find time to work on this picture.
    I find it interesting that most pictures in this thread seem to show action with fighting (me included).

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  • D.RobinsonD.Robinson Posts: 283
    edited December 1969

    dubby30 said:
    The rivalry between Danika and Julie had always been heated when it came to the affections of Steven. Today that rivalry might go too far.

    Daniel

    Hi Daniel!

    You know this scene caught my eye right up front. I like the changes you've been doing. It's definitely dynamic. And the comment you wrote on the rivalry! lol! Too funny!

    Just curious here, I didn't have a chance to read everything in your previous post,s but do you have a specific fighting style in mind with this? It looks like MMA but I don't know if it's a preset pose or if you created it from scratch or like me and my horse pose that started with a preset then proceeded to tweak until happy. I'll have to go back and see if I can find a mention.

    But I saw where you changed the expressions, and I'm scratching my head. Would the girl on the receiving end of that palm strike to the jaw still have her eyes open? Even wearing protective gear you get popped in the jaw and the teeth snap shut sounding like one of those cartoon skull gag gifts that you wind up and they chatter about.

    Mind you total noob here so it's more of a question than a suggestion lol! But wouldn't her eyes be closed, her neck flexing hard because of the direction her head's going? A palm strike packs a lot of energy and us girls were taught it was probably a better choice for us to use than a fist. The fact that the one getting her butt kicked is gritting her teeth while receiving the blow just set my own teeth on edge. :vampire:

    After she wakes up, her first trip will probably to the orthodontist for the dentures she's going to need. hehe :cheese:

    This might be difficult to do in the program but the fingers on the striking hand need to curl down not be extended. Not so much a fist but bent at the middle knuckle. From what I can tell, you've got it pretty much on the left hand - it's the striking hand that needs to have the fingers in a similar fashion to reduce the chance of injury.

    Again, these are just some observations and questions - I'm getting to the point where taking it with a grain of salt isn't enough. How about some Tabasco? lol! Seriously, though, I really like this one. It's a great scene where the more you look at it, the more detail you find.

    Cheers,
    Kathryn

    Thanks Kat,

    Actually it really started out as a scene where two totally different styles were represented. But as iterations went on i had a hard time distinguishing between the two if the scene were in motion in an animation it might be easier. I didnt start with any preset poses i had to key each one from the T pose and keep tweaking unitl i got to this point.

    The girl on the left although it may at first glance be viewed as a strike it isnt. The whole of the pose is wrapped up in the sweeping of the leg she is just using the leverage of the head to drive her backward. In most "water" based martial arts like Aikido and the like use leverage to drive the opponent where they want them to go. If that is a throw or sweep or even a joint lock that manipulates the other persons body. So really she isnt being struck its just a way to drive the body. And in this case the head is the steering wheel. Thats why the girl on the right looks like she is fighting the motion, because she really is. If it had truly been a strike the head would have been driving back to the extreme and i wouldnt have them connected anymore and simulate that portion of it. If you just look at my early iteration renders you can see it was orginally a kungfu vs karate kinda thing but as i tightened in on the action it broke all style conventions so i just removed that part of it and made it more of a rivalry between the two instead of the original i had set out to do. Hope that helps.

  • kathrynlochkathrynloch Posts: 378
    edited May 2015

    dubby30 said:


    Thanks Kat,

    Actually it really started out as a scene where two totally different styles were represented. But as iterations went on i had a hard time distinguishing between the two if the scene were in motion in an animation it might be easier. I didnt start with any preset poses i had to key each one from the T pose and keep tweaking unitl i got to this point.

    The girl on the left although it may at first glance be viewed as a strike it isnt. The whole of the pose is wrapped up in the sweeping of the leg she is just using the leverage of the head to drive her backward. In most "water" based martial arts like Aikido and the like use leverage to drive the opponent where they want them to go. If that is a throw or sweep or even a joint lock that manipulates the other persons body. So really she isnt being struck its just a way to drive the body. And in this case the head is the steering wheel. Thats why the girl on the right looks like she is fighting the motion, because she really is. If it had truly been a strike the head would have been driving back to the extreme and i wouldnt have them connected anymore and simulate that portion of it. If you just look at my early iteration renders you can see it was orginally a kungfu vs karate kinda thing but as i tightened in on the action it broke all style conventions so i just removed that part of it and made it more of a rivalry between the two instead of the original i had set out to do. Hope that helps.

    Oh okay! Akido makes more sense now and using the head as the steering wheel. My brown belt is in tae kwon do, so I was seeing the strike to the jaw and using the leg to help throw the balance. Isn't it funny how different styles cause you to see things like this differently? Both with riding and TKD the biggest thing I learned, wherever your head goes, your body will follow. When riding that meant if you look down at the ground, you'll hit it. Same's pretty much true in just about any martial art I think! lol! Balance, balance, balance!

    That's totally cool that you started posing from a t-pose. Maybe one of these days I'll have enough guts to try that. I basically find something close to what I want then tweak from there. But it's turned into lots and lots of tweeking. lol!

    I do like the idea of the rivalry rather than opposing styles. Rivalry does give it much more emotion and personality. It's looking really nice! Keep up the great work!

    Cheers,
    Kath

    Post edited by kathrynloch on
  • Shinji Ikari 9thShinji Ikari 9th Posts: 1,185
    edited December 1969

    Tried to mess with the demon's right arm/hand to try and make it look like the human was blocking it's strike.

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  • Babalar1Babalar1 Posts: 71
    edited May 2015

    Linwelly said:

    somewhere in the depths of the most-digital-creations.com freebie archives there is a thing called morphing tissue.
    Its basically a kerchiev with some morphs, what you can do with that is to load an image of the sponsor (or your made up stuff) into the diffuse and then parent the thing to the shirt.
    Otherwise you can look at the diffuse image of the shirt load that into Gimp/photoshop ... place your sponsor add on the shirt and save under new name! then load that into the diffuse of your shirt.

    Very neat soccer scene, I'd like to see some peaces of green flying about or some spray of water ( seems to be wet as the volumtric render suggest)


    The morphing tissue is in my inventory now but I went for the diffuse image changes instead and after the old trial and error, finally got it to look reasonably half-decent. Thanks much on that :)

    It would be cool to add a water splashing effect but that's not in my limited knowledge base yet and due to lack of time, I'll have to wait on tackling that project. But it is a good idea in fact I tried using a plane with reflection to simulate puddles but the grass is actually on the volleyball sand pit prop and just doesn't have enough bump in it to make the water realistic enough.

    Changes since last render....: adjusted lighting for more saturation, lowered shadow intensity, added a second point light above their heads and of course, the best change was the new jersey!!

    Now if only I could get a good reflective light effect under the ball to make it pop out more in the scene. Point light didn't work since it also lights up the ground underneath. Any suggestions??

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  • kathrynlochkathrynloch Posts: 378
    edited December 1969

    [WARNING - LONG]

    Okay now this thing is starting to tick me off. lol! Every time I'd almost get it the way I wanted, something would happen and in trying to fix one problem would cause something else to break and so on and so forth down the line. I'm like - WTH! I didn't tell you to do that. So I'd spend most of the time trying to find what I must have accidentally changed.

    >:-(

    Okay so the POV shot on Braveheart boy isn't working as well as I hoped. Let's see what I can do to force the perspective literally and figuratively.

    What if he threw his sword at the camera? I quickly realized the idea had potential but the sword's shape wasn't conducive to that time of pose. but it's really hard to convey that in a still because of the sword's shape.

    So I thought of a small axe. I've seen how throwing axes can really get a funky spin going. So that way it won't look like he dropped it or doing some funky telekinesis thing. Image 1 from bottom up. The render looked interesting, but there's more to that image.

    I decided to try to figure out what the heck lray was. I found a tut on Youtube - it's in DAZ 4.8! OH okay! So I go look in downloads were you can get 4.7. And not there. Search, hunt, search hunt. Wait . . . . I think I remember seeing something about . . . beta . . . where was it?

    Trip, stumble, fall flat on face over the thread on the forums that says DAZ 4.8 PUBLIC BETA. Oh geez! Let me finish that off with a good old *head desk head desk*. It was right under my now broken nose that I got from tripping over the damned thing.

    Download and install. Okay - this look pretty cool! I can muddle through the majority of it I think. Let's try the lray. Two renders And 3 hours later on a fast machine, I'm throwing up my hands. It's taking way too long. I have no idea why. The first and second photos are canceled renders. Promising but I'm not waiting that long right now. I've got things to do and books to write on top of this lol! So I decided it might not be a good idea to double down on the noobishness right now. So, back to 4.7 and Delight renders. Next month, I'll be trying 4.8 for those renders tho.

    (I think I know why there's still an issue with the optimizing images and tdlmake or whatever that process is called. Problem is, I can't find the process to stop in Windows 8.1 Pro - there is nothing close to that name. But I'll tackle that some other time. Back on point.)

    But the second photo also shows my idea of changing the sword position. You've seen the movies where the rider's coming straight at the camera and they lower the sword to get a nice clean beheading of someone just standing there waiting to lose their head. lol! The rider stretches out the sword arm to slice at the neck rather can come down on top of the head.

    This was showing a lot of promise but tricky to get right because the rider's hips are positioned funny with that particular type of cut so he can stay on the horse and still slice his target.. I got to thinking if I could add a second character to the scene yet keep my same "POV shot" with the camera, that might help. Maybe we'd only see the hands holding weapon or something. I tried a sword and that just plain looked stupid.

    I've got Jungle Poses for Gianni and I remembered seeing a pose for a bow and arrow. But unlike the others, this doesn't have a prop to go with it. But dogoneit, I remember seeing a bow and arrow prop somewhere.

    That took me forever to find! It doesn't show up on the searches that you think it would. In fact, if anyone asks where it is, I'm going to have a hell of a time finding it again. So I got the bow and arrow into the scene - which was tough because it didn't want to match up to the character and Fit to Character was only making it worse., I had to do it manually But I got it! Third image from bottom is - meh - nothing to write home about but he's not supposed to really be seen anyway. The last is the other POV shot I was able to get after lots of finagling.

    I've got three more images to show y'all. I'll post those up and keep it short and sweet in a different post.

    Now you can see how insane all this got in one freaking day. lol! But these next ones are more the direction I should be going and I do need y'all's help on deciding which one to roll with.

    Cheers,
    Kathryn

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