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Changed the light as I said in previous post. Now there's only one light, at the ceiling above the girl.
Also changed the girl's hair and tweaked the camera angle and I'm starting to feel satisfied with this. Only thing I'm not satisfied with is how bright the light comes off the girl's dress. Might be enough to reduce the strenght of the light? Or is there a way to make the dress reflect less light, or something like that?
Are you using 3Delight or iRay for rendering? I'm loving the angle change you've made with the camera, thats turned the drama dial up a notch at the same time! (Again, I'm a beginner so just my humble opinion!)
I think I'm done with this one for this month's contest. Lighting was a real challenge (when is it not?). I've got a few lights trying to soften the shadows and emphasize the actor's faces more without spoiling the effect of the overhead streetlight - or so I hope.
A couple of things I wanted to share that really helped me out with this render this month.
1. Deformers - This is the first time I really used them. The red cloak is for a G2F and the actor is the generic G3F. There were a couple of issues getting some areas to lay correctly. Once I exhausted all the provided morphs, I tried the deformers. They were very helpful. Here are a couple of links you might find useful.
http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/artzone/pub/software/dform/dform_options
2. Artifacts or Fireflies. I had some of these (I think you can see them in my previous WIP) and I couldn't figure out how to get rid of them. (Iray render) I found the following advice (just can't remember from where). Base Color/Texture should be RGB >= 225. Also, try Zero roughness surfaces. So, on the building where the artifacts were most prominent, I changed the base color from 205/205/205 to 225/225/225 and made the roughness surface zero. The artifacts went away. It didn't seem to change the quality of the render either.
Good Luck in this month's contest!
Oh wow! Looks really good ewcarman. I see you decided to not go with the cigarette in the end. Have to admit, I've not explored deformers yet, I must get round to it though as it seems they are incredibly useful and will help me use what I want the actors wearing rather than messing with all available morphs, then giving up and trying a different outfit!!
Thank you KA1! I changed directions on a few things with this picture. I think it works a little better than my original plan (and my secondary and tertiary plan).
Definitely give the deformers a try. I spent a lot of time in trial-and-error-more error-even more error- mode with these, but sometimes they are exactly what you need to get past an issue. Getting that cloak to set just right without the hair and shoulders poking through and getting the back and hood to lay right just wasn't going to happen - even with all the posing controls.
Like you suggest - they let you get more use out of the stuff you already have if you can fix it to work with new actors or other props.
KA1: I'm using Iray. I thought as I'm new I might as well start learning the most advanced (?) render engine right away. Haven't used 3Delight much. Just enough to notice there's a big difference with how lights works between Iray and 3Delight. And thanks for your opinion! :)
ewcarman: That dform tool looks very useful. I didn't even know it existed.
Have you converted the materials on the dress to iRay materials?
Uhm... Converted materials? Oh... To Iray... Oh yes! Of course I have. Who would be so silly to not do that...? Oh look! A UFO! *runs away*
Truth to be told, you are a genius and I'm a complete noob. The dress is for basic genesis and its material is hardly Iray material. I have no idea how to convert materials to Iray materials, but I have played around with some shaders and found one that I think I will use. Changes the look of the dress but gets rid of the bright reflection off the back. I will attach the render when it's finished.
There is a shader in the content library under shader presets/ Iray/DAZ Uber. the first shader there is !Iray Uber Base.
You need to select all surfaced you want to convert in the scene tab and in the suface editor, make shure you press the ctrl key while clicking and in the opening popup select ignore instead of replace.
That should convert all surfaces to an iray renderabel setting without loosing the basic texture. I hope that helps.
Much thanks Linwelly and KA1! I will have to try that too. In the mean time, here's the version I did with a iray shader I found.
I can provide the link you mention KA1, Its where I got my Information from as well, and its worth while to look further where this comes from. Sickleyield's other tuts tackling different aspects in greater detail
http://sickleyield.deviantart.com/journal/Tutorial-Getting-Started-With-Iray-519725115
Thanks again you two! It will be tutorial reading for me now. :)
The part with holding the ctrl key when applying shaders is what I failed at with those. Didn't know to do that. So much thanks for pointing that out.
Iray-ifying all materials didn't solve the bright reflection on the back so I'll use that blue shader on the dress and then I think I should be done with this render. Attaching the render with all origianl materials made to iray.
You could try turning the white colors down a bit on the dress to see if that helps.In nature, only one element is actually RGB 255 255 255.Try opening the dress surface and click the color bar on the Base Color, and slide the slider down to something around 180-200,see if that helps.If I understand it correctly this also applies to anything with a white color,so reducing those should have an effect aswell.Top Coat color, Glossy Color, and anything else I find with that high value for white I adjust down.When you click open the color bar you can see the Red Green Blue numbers change as you move the slider on the far right.
Thanks icecrmn that certainly helped! :) I also discovered what caused the bright reflection. I was thinking I only had the one light up in the ceiling but it turns out the spotlight from my original render was still on... (yes it's allowed to laugh and/or throw rotten tomatoes at me, whichever feels most appropiate). However, removing the spotlight also made the shadow cast into the bedroom to go away, so regarding the logic/natural lighting I have deciced to cheat by keeping the spotlight for the "dramatic shadow".
Thanks for all the help. I think this will be my final render.
you're welcome :)
I'm still tinkering with mine.I'm still not very good at posing :(
This will be my entry, Inspired by the song Twisting by the Pool, by Dire Straits
I got a bit ambitious with this one, (for me) and it has come back to bite me. Seems like I have exceeded the capacity of my computer to render the scene, I can't add any more people to the scene. It was supposed to be a busy party secne, now it looks a little empty.
I still have some posing tweeks to do, especialy on the dancing man. but the general compersition is how I wanted it to be. just with less people in it.
let me know what you think.
Cheers
That looks really good Thunderchief! A shame you can't add more people but there's still enough to keep it from looking empty. Maybe bring the two people in the back closer to the camera to make it look a bit more busy? Having all six characters closer together instead of spread out in pairs may make it look more like a crowd. Or, as the characters in the back are out of focus it might work with adding basic Genesis characters without iray surfaces there?
I haven't really done anything myself yet with water surfaces, but if I'm to make a suggestion it would be to try get the water surface to look disturbed by the person diving in to it. The splash effects in the air look good but to me the water surface doesn't look like it should when someone splashes into it. Being a newbie myself I have no idea how to achieve that though, or how difficult it would be. But perhaps it could be solved by simply adding more water splashing just above the surface?
Thanks, I 'm going to try adding some basic characters to see if that works, so thanks for that. I'm also going to try a longer focal length which may help compress the scene a little.
I agree with the water, not sure what I can do but i'm going to work on that too. I also want to add some sense of wetness around the pool, looks too dry at the mo.
Thanks for the tips.
Cheers
Hello all I know it's late and the month is almost over. Here is something new for this contest. This song topic was done last year and no one was doing it this year so I chose the song "Witchy Women" by the Eagals. This is a Daz Studio and Bryce combo. It is rendered in Bryce. Comments and suggestions are always welcome. This is a WIP as I am still working on it before dealine.
Xangth I like the take of it but I would suggest you think about where your light comes from. Its obviously nicht and the moon is behind her but she is strongly lit from the side. Furthermore I'd try to apply the thirds rule so that the interesting parts will be more in the focus.
Hello all I know it's late and the month is almost over. Here is something new for this contest. This song topic was done last year and no one was doing it this year so I chose the song "Witchy Women" by the Eagals. This is a Daz Studio and Bryce combo. It is rendered in Bryce. Comments and suggestions are always welcome. This is a WIP as I am still working on it before dealine.
Thanks Linwelly for the suggestions. I just went through the contest entries and found someone else also doing this song topic so I guess I'll work on it for my own self and not enter it for the final. I guess it's back to the drawing board quickly for me.
She could also pass as Carlos Santanas Black Magic Woman! ;-)
Hi
Ok I have made a few changes. Thanks to Isidorn, adding the, I guess, simpler Gen2 figures has allowed me to add a bit more life, and if I can I want to add a bit more. I've improved the water splash, but I have not yet found a good way to add wetness to the edge of the pool.
I also increased the depth of field, although I thing I may have go too far so I'm going to reduce it a bit in the next one.
Cheers
Glad I could help! :) The image/scene has really improved. If you find a way to add that wetness it would be spot on. Wish I knew how to do that. Lets hope someone that do stops by and gives some pointers.
The only way I could imagine (if not using one of Ron's brushes in postwork) would be to make a LIE (layered Image editor) map for the concrete border of the pool, but as I don't know the model of the pool, Im not sure what to work with. The principle would be to make an image in Photoshop /gimp etc size fitting the pool border (look in the surfaces tab to find it) with a somewhat darker and wetter impression in semitransparent at the places you want it. Leave the rest transparent and add that image to the border image in the LIE in the surfaces tab. I know its a bit confusing at first.
I think I might have got something workable for the poolside wetness. I'm using a waterplane I have got from somewhere and I have selected a portion of it and made a new surface, then turned the rest of the surface clear and made the new part water, seems to work ok.
Doing a test render now.
Cheers for the sugestions and If you do come up with anything else i'd love to hear it.
Cheers.