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Thanks for the feedback! I shifted over a bit, but haven't cropped the picture yet. In the second pic I added some water splashing on the beach to see if it works. It's probably too much and too light. A little might be good, but I think it's distracting. I need to tone down the brightness or get rid of it. Almost there!
With water effect:
It was bugging me, so I changed the water color to match the lighting better. Forgot to take it all the way to the right hand side of the pic, but can fix that by adding or or cropping.
I
I'm back!. With my project having an estimated render time of one month I though I'd try to move the girls to an outdoor setting instead, as I've always found that easier to light and faster to render. My poor graphics card would have none of that though, causing DAZ to crash. Then I made the mistake of installing DAZ 4.9, which made me give up on DAZ for a while...
DAZ 4.9 is still not working properly for me but at least the rendering works so I thought I'd take another shot at rendering the outdoor scene. This is a 91% converged render after "only" 10 hours, so great improvement there. It's still only a wip. I have too strong lights (causing the fireflies in the lead's hair) which needs to be adjusted and I'm not sure about the edges of the image, especially the roof getting cut off at the sides.
I doubt I'll be able to submit anything to the competition, but for the sake of learning, I'd really appreciate if anyone has any comments on the composition.
(attaching the previous indoor version too as it's been a while)
Llynara, I think the water splash is a great addition. Makes the scene feel more alive. I also have to say it's a great expression on the guy's face. Overall, it's come a long way from the first version.
Just one bit of nit picking. The left hand does not seem to be touching his arm. With the shadows it gets particulaty clear. It might be enough to just adjust the pinky finger down a bit.
Hey, Isidorn, great to see you back. I rarely give out advice on straight composition elements because, frankly, I suck at it. Not my strong suit at all. That being said, can you try scaling up the church there (looks like the dubious church) and see how it looks with the doorway framing the girls more? It looks a little cut off and I think perhaps framing them more would help? Right now they are overlapping the little bit of framing you have and it feels a little disjointed that way. Actually, I'm not completely sure that advice is part of composition or not. Grrr, I so hate concentrating on composition because I'm clueless, still, about what exactly that means. I just always go with my gut instincts of what looks right or not quite right. Just scale up the church and see what you thing think when you compare them side by side. Sorry, I couldn't be more helpful.
edit: thinking is much better than thinging
So glad to see you back Isidorn, as for the awesome render here I think maybe tone down the lighting just a bit and I also agree with Knitting with scaling up the building and maybe (just a thought) spliting up the trio a bit as in separating them a bit and rotating the scene just a bit so it is not soooo centred. Just my 2 cents worth now it is back to the proper peeps to give you better advice.
Thanks, isidorn! Fixed the hand and extended the waves out on the right side. Not sure if I need to crop this or not. Pretty happy with it at this point. Hoping to post it to the finished thread soon!
Isidorn- love your composition. Looks a little hot lightwise (maybe sunlight is too intense?) But love the outdoor look, shadows and textures. Is that one of the buildings from the "Curious" line. It goes great with your girls!
Holy cow, Isadorn! Render time: 1 month!!!?
What are you rendering it on? Your cell phone!?
Anyway...WB!
: )
I think it looks great. Definitely an improvement from where you started. I thinking backing off just that little bit and moving him off to one side just bit was a good move. Nice.
So, I've been playing with my entry. I finally got the water looking the way I want or close to it, but it washes out my figure a little. It took a little going back and forth and I ended up with the reflectivity set at different rates for each water prop to get the look I want. I added a little bit of blue light to highlight the water more, but as soon as I do that the figure doesn't have the exact look that I wanted for the skin. It took a lot of back and forth and I now have 10 different scene files with each of the different lighting setups. I think I finally have something ready for the entry thread. I think it is as close as I'm going to be able to do without learning how to render in multiple passes I really need to figure out how to do renders in passes and then I could probably render one pass with the lighting for the water and then do a second pass with the lighting for the figure and then figure out how to combine them in Gimp. I don't have to time to figure that out before the contest ends so this is another thing to add to my growing list of techniques to learn how to do.
I thought I would post my render here first to see if there were any suggestions before putting it in the Entry thread. Just to make things easier since the last render is back in the thread, linking my favorites of the older renders for comparison as well as attaching the new render. The lighting is as close as I can get it to the old render that I liked while adding the lighting to the new water shader to really make it pop out. I was really surprised at the difference just changing the reflectivity of a surface could have, not just on the surface, but on the rest of the scene as well. Oh, I, also, made a minor change to his expression.
Thanks for your feedback, Knitting Mommy!
The water looks great, but the guy's hair and pants seem to fade into the dark background more now. Wondering if maybe lightening the background a little might help add depth? Perhaps to a dark gray? It's a great picture!
That is one of the problems I'm having with the lighting. Either the figure looks great or the water looks great. In a perfect world, I could theoretically render the perfect lighting for the figure in one render and do a second render with the lighting for the water and then combine them together. I'm not exactly sure how to do that, though. I might play with the lighting a little more in the morning. I'm a little tired of playing with it. Fresh eyes in the morning might help. It has been taking about 1 1/2 hours to render this in 3Delight so, if I could make it work, I still have time to run some more renders before the deadline tomorrow night. I'll think about it tomorrow. Thanks for the comment. I'll wait and see what anyone else thinks tonight before going back to it tomorrow. Someone might actually know how to do what I want and give me step by step instructions. :) You never know, it could happen.
Have you tried using maybe a couple of spotlights to the back of him or maybe even using distance lighting but cut down a bit on the intencity just a couple suggestions for ya Knitting. I know I just got done rendering a pic for the Because I said so challenge and it took me very close to 4 hours to render so I do know your pain with 3Delight :D but I do not think I would have it any other way.
Hello every body ...
Thank you for the feedbacks and sorry to come only now ...
I changed some detail and add some postwork.
Great action scene you got there Siotrad! Being a noob on composition I can't give any advice on that, but I can always share my opinion. The flame on the right side of the picture, while being a great effect, is perhaps a bit too great. I find it being what catches my attention and I'm fairly sure that's not the intention. The character on the left side of the picture seems to get its butt cut off ever so slightly, which is something that can easily be found annoying. If I'm to give a suggestion it would be move the camera slightly to include the whole character on the left and get the flame on the right more like the background flames, ie less bright and a bit out of focus. But time is running out and there might not be time to do changes? It's still a great scene though, just those two things that I found a bit distracting.
Knittingmommy, I wish I had advice to give. I can agree with what is said about some of him blending into the background. Seems to me to be the only thing that would need to be "fixed". I have to say, for some reason the image makes me think of Wolverine from the X-men. Not quite sure why though. :)
As for my own project, I still got a couple of hours of rendering left on what will be the final version as far as this competition goes. If it will be good enough for entering remains to be seen. Thanks for the comments given! They were most useful. The building is indeed the "curious schoolhouse". I thought it would go well with the girls, adding a bit more "fantasy" feeling to the scene as they probably wouldn't get away with their dress code violation in too many "real" settings.
Just straight scaling up the building wasn't as easy as it might seem as it also brought the building closer (too close) to the girls, which led to me having to push the building back, which in turn negated the effects of the larger building... The ground is also part of the building and it didn't look good when getting too enlarged. I ended up just making the building wider (upscaling only x-axis) and shrinking the girls instead. The lights are toned down although from the looks of it in the render currently cooking it's still a bit too bright and there's still fireflies in the lead's hair. :( I'll have to see if I can do something about that in my limited postwork options. Oh, and I also split up the girls a bit but I'm keeping them centered as that is kind of the point with the picture. Lastly, some minor changes to DoF and camera position, avoiding getting the sides of the building's roof cut off.
As for what I'm rendering with. The previous version it was just my Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 (4GB). The school corridor was originally planned to be fleshed out with various people, but just the three girls brought the card to the brink of exploding so I had to suffice with just them. Thanks to DAZ 4.9 solving the iray bug crashing when using cpu I can now use that. It's still not far from blowing up my system though.
I call it "Sidewalk sale at City Bus Stop", this is what I used:
(DAZ Studio 4.9 (64-bit), Dystopia Kruger Mk 15, EmotiGuy, Dark Storm !Outfit, Dagger Dreams, City Bus Stop, BB8, Carbonite, Light Dome PRO – R, Genesis 3 Female Starter Essentials, Breast Cancer Research Russian Egg, Steam Bike Pro, Leyton Hair for Genesis 3 Female(s), Playtime, Garden Escape Planters, Dagger Dreams, Dark Storm Sword, Barefoot dancer set.)
Hello,
I change some details as Isidorn said :)
But i don't know what Camera raw would be the best.
I like the top one best. It's a very subjective thing and I can't tell you exactly why I like it best. The difference are so slight, but, for me, the top one of these latest renders stands out the most to me.
I tried figuring out how to render in layers and then splicing both renders together in Gimp. I have to say it looks like crap! I'm missing some key step to the process. I'll have to see if I can find a tutorial on how to do this because I know I've people mentioning this technique in some forum posts. They just never really give instructions about how to go about actually doing it. Anyway, I ended up going into Gimp and doing some B/C to try and lighten up the area around the front leg. Added just a smidge of light there, too, on a separate layer. It makes a little bit of difference. But here is the latest version, same as the last, but with a touch of post work.
Thanks Knitting,
You can use the render editor inside Daz you can add some effct or filter that could be nice.
Ans i think that you may have some issue beacause of the reflexion level of your black floor.
I think i will put the two pictures in the entry thread ;) ... i like both and i can't decide.
A third try ...
Welcome to the "newbie" contest! It seems like you perhaps mixed up the two different contest threads though, with a question posted in the entry thread and what seems to be an entry post here in the WIP thread. Make sure you get your entry posted in the entry thread if you want it to be valid for the contest. Otherwise you're of course welcome to post here in the wip thread for all questions and opinions.
Not an easy decision. Good thing you can enter two renders. :) All three have good things going for them. If I was to pick one of them I think I'd go for the first one (the darker one).
After some 13+ hours rendering I got something I feel I can post in the entry thread. I reduced brightness in post and downsizing the image some seemed to help covering up the fireflies in the lead's hair.
Might add that I don't feel finished with this and will probably continue to work on it before it ends up in my gallery. But with time running out for the contest this will have to do for now.
I think that your render setting is ... very strange or you have a realy realy old Pc ;) ... 1 max 1h30 for me ...
Thanks for your advise ... :)
Believe it or not, the floor itself is a very light blue. On top of the floor is a water pool and it is reflecting the lighting and the backdrop so the floor itself doesn't show through. I have reflectivity set at 1.00. I tried other setups, but I lost that nice reflection of his arm and pants and I kind of liked that. I just can't seem to get all of the elements I like about the piece to fall into place. It seems to be either one aspect or the other shines through and I lose other. After the contest, I may see what I can do with this scene in Iray. But, since I promised myself I would do this piece in 3Delight so I could learn more about using that render engine, I haven't dared see what I can do with it in Iray yet. I actually, kind of like the look even though I can't quite get everything looking exactly how I imagined it in my head.
I've done that before. It helps that we can enter 2 entries.
I don't have a monster machine but I bought it just last summer. With skin and hair render times quickly become obnoxious. Add atmospheric elements and you're on for a long wait... Rendering my favourite Mini Bots with a HDRI as background/lights is a matter of 10-15 minutes.
Knittingmommy, I hope you get your problems sorted out for your entry and I'm looking forward to the Iray version. Really wish I could give advice, but I don't know much more about 3DL than I do about composition...
This going to sound just terrible, but, knittingmom, you have done everything "but" work on composition, the basic image composition has never changed. Perhaps you should have experimented.
It is a simple centered portrait with the highlighted arm a verticle line basically splitting the image. I mentioned this earlier. I'm not a stickler for any "rules" but I can't help thinking that experimenting with axis, rotation and a non-centered image may have given you what you think is missing.
You are correct, that sounded terrible. Wow! Excuse me if I'm wrong, but the information at the head of this contest had links to a lot of information on composition, all of which I read. My understanding was that composition was more than just camera angles and how a figure was positioned. Yes, the main composition of my image is simple and falls in line with the rule of thirds. However, I liked that positioning after having played with a lot of different angles and positions before I posted my first post. This position with the simple centered figure had the most dramatic effect for what I had envisioned. I, also, think it draws the eye where I want it to go. Some of the other elements of composition were color and value, both of which I tried to take a closer look at because, frankly, I love playing with colors. The water is a huge part of the composition and is one of the key elements of the piece. While, I admit, composition isn't one of my strong suits, I do know how to read the information provided and how to interpret said information. I thought I was working on composition when I was trying to get those parts of the image the way I wanted them to look. I guess it is a good thing the contest ends tonight and you no longer have to put up with my ignorance and somewhat questionable art.
As for everyone else, I wish you all the best in your efforts for the contest this month. Good luck.
Knittingmommy: have you tried Age of Armour's light set? (Advanced Ambient Lights, Advanced Spotlight and Advanced Distant Light) It's available in a bundle, I think.
I am not proficient with these lights by any means, but I do know they have 1 amazing featurethat may help here.. And that is the ability to set up a light, and then flag objects or materials in the scene so that they don't accept or reflect that light at all. So you can set up a rim light on your model, (which is what I think it needs, expecially on the parts that are blending in with the background) and then flag the water to not even "reflect" that light. Each light you set up in the scene can be set to reflect off specific objects or materials.
This gives amazing control over lighting a scene.
Also, regarding composition, the aspect ratio of your image looks pretty square. You might consider changing it to 16:9 or something more rectangular. This will allow you to offset the figure to one of the "rule of thirds" hot spots. Since he is facing to the right, move him to the left of the scene so that the negative space is in front of him on the right. This will add the impression that there is more action to come.
I have been following your development of this scene, and all your changes. I love what you're done with it...it's getting there. But the water isn't realistic enough for my taste. I'm not sure if it's the fault of the lighting, or the prop itself. I'm half considering buying it to see what I can make of it.
Cheers!
David
Amazing render there rca I just love the god rays and where she is on that ledge (Very pretty Balerina)
Just quickly hopping in to wish good luck to everyone, there are some very impressive renders!
Good luck everyone!