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Beautiful! Can you tell me what rendered with canvasses means? (haha the newbie is showing)
I really like how your planet turned out. I've tried doing my own backgrounds like that for space scenes, but none of them have turned out quite as nice as yours did. I keep meaning to experiment with planets like that one in your image. I'm definitely going to have to give that a try soon. Really nice image!
The canvas thing I accidentally found in DS, but haven't tried yet. I'm not actually sure what you are suppose to do with the different layers once you have them.
Sonja, if you go to your Render Settings Tab while nVidia is selected as your render engine, click on the Advanced Tab at the top of Render Settings and then, in there where it says Hardware>Canvas>Cloud, click on Canvas. From there, I have no idea what to do.
lol well hopefully he will give us a quick run down. I don't even quite know what it is or what it does.
I think it is basically making multiple renders in different types of layers, but, hopefully, TabascoJack can hep us out. If he wanted to, he could put up a little mini tutorial on my laboratory thread. <hint, hint>
I can tell that you've had a real good grasp of photography, as I can see it with your composition! I am starting to focus more on photographers' work and how they composite their pieces, as Daz Studio and the 3D art we love so much relies heavily on light and composition!
Learning composition is such an invaluable tool for 3D!
A Space Art Tutorial
In this tutorial, we're going to cover a range of techniques in both Photoshop and Daz Studio to create an image like this:
Source Material:
These can be any image you have - we're going to use them as the source material for our gas giant and for the rings.
Just go to images.google.com and look for "Cloud Maps". Alternatively, go to http://www.shadedrelief.com/natural3/pages/clouds.html
I found a free to use set with no restrictions at http://glennclovis.deviantart.com/gallery/4479075/Resources
Creating the Planet Texture
We're going to be creating a gas giant, which is basically a lot of clouds. But first we need a base texture, which we will create from a small vertical slice of an image. Here's my image:
We're going to use the marquee tool and select a small vertical slice that contains the colors we want to use.
Copy it, open a new layer, and paste into the new layer.
Delete the original background layer.
Using the free Transform tool, stretch the image to cover half the screen.
Select the entire image with CTRL-A. Copy it and paste into a new layer.
With the top layer selected, flip the image horizontally and slide it over. You may need to use the free transform tool to stretch it a little if there are vertical lines at the borders. This will guarantee a seamless texture.
Merge the layers.
Now we're going to blur it a little. Do a Gaussian blur of between 2-5 pixels (whatever looks best).
Export as a jpg for your base planet texture.
Creating the Planet
Now we have a texture, we need to create the actual object. There are a couple of reasons to do this in Daz as opposed to solely in postwork. The most important to me involve lighting. It's much easier to change the lighting on the fly in Daz than in postwork. Additionally, in postwork it's difficult to accurately get light bouncing off the planet and rings. Daz handles all of that for us.
Here we go:
Open up Daz Studio.
Create a sphere, size 1000 cm.
Under the render settings tab, select Scene Only, and turn off "Draw Ground".
Create a Distant Light, set the luminance to 40,000.
Create a camera, (turn the headlamp off), and position it so that it has a good angle on the sphere.
Select the sphere, go to Edit->Object->Geometry->Convert to SubD
Go to the Surfaces tab, select the sphere, and convert to Iray Uber. In the Base Color, select the exported texture from above.
Set Glossy Roughness to 0.7
Take one of the cloud maps, and put it in the Base Bump slot. Set the bump to 1.0. Using the Image Editor, set the vertical tiling on the Base Bump to 3.0. Experiment to see what looks best to you.
Create a new Sphere, with size 1000.5 cm. Name it Cloud 1. Again, convert it to SubD. Go to the surfaces tab, set the surface to Iray Uber. Put the same base texture in the base color slot. Modify the base color settings if you wish. I went with a medium gray in this layer (HSV 0,0,145).
Put one of the other cloud maps in the opacity slot and the bump slot and set at whatever strength you want. In each of those, use the image editor to modify the tiling. Feel free to experiment with these settings. In the below image, I set Opacity to .4, Bump to .05, and vertical tiling for both the opacity and bump maps to 4.0.
Create 2-3 new spheres, increasing the size by 0.5 cm each time. Convert each to SubD. Use the base texture in the Base Color slot, but modify the actual base color for each sphere to gain a little depth. Pick a different cloud map (or if using the same one, rotate that sphere by some amount > 90 degrees). Slot it into Opacity and Bump and tile those maps. Again, set the opacity and bump levels to something you're happy with.
In the image below, I used the same base texture in the color map, set the base color to a lighter gray than the previous sphere (HSV 0,0,180). I used a different cloud map in the Opacity and Bump maps, Set the Opacity to .4, Bump to 0.05 and Vertical tiling for both maps to 3.0.
I did one more sphere, with the base color an even lighter gray (HSV 0,0,225). Opacity to 0.5, Bump at 1.0, and Vertical Tiling at 3.3:
I'm pretty happy with this, so I'll stop adding clouds. But we're not done yet. We want one more sphere for atmospheric haze.
Add one last sphere for the atmosphere. Create a sphere of size 1010 cm.
Convert it it to SubD. Go to the surfaces tab. Convert to Iray.
Set the Mixing to Specular/Glossiness.
Set Glossy Layered Weight to 0.
Set Refraction Index to 1 and Refraction Weight to 1.
Set Thin Walled to Off, Transmitted Color to White.
Set Scattering Measurement Distance to 0.03, SSS Amount to .0002, and SSS Direction to .8.
One final thing - the spheres aren't actually centered on each other. To fix that, we will use the aligment tool. The important thing with the alignment tool is to start with the object that will be the reference point for all the others. In this case, it's the first sphere we created. Select it. Then, using CTRL-click, select all the cloud spheres and the atmosphere.
Then open the Alignment tool. For each axis, select "Align: Centers". Press Apply.
The end result:
Creating the Ring Texture
Now it's time to create the ring texture. The beginning of the process is the same. We want to select a small slice of an image and use the free transform tool to create a seamless map of lines. However, in this case it's also important that the image be square. Pick a small slice from an image and copy it. Then create a new square canvas in Photoshop and paste into it. Use the Transform tool to stretch it into lines. Introduce a little Gaussian blur to remove the sharp edges.
Duplicate the layer and select Filter->Distort->Polar Coordinates.
Perform any color adjustments (saturation, hue, etc.) you want and then save this as a jpg named RingTexture.
Duplicate the layer and desaturate.
Select the sections outside the rings using the Magic Want tool and fill them with black. Then use the circular marquee tool (along with the shift key to create a circular selection. Move the selection to the center of the image.
Create a new layer (keeping the selection active) and fill with black.
Merge the top two layers.
Now we want to create the illusion of the rings being made up of millions of small objects. We do this by adding in some noise.
Create a new layer and fill it with black. Go to Filter->Noise->Add Noise. Select 400%, Gaussian, Monochromatic. Set the blending mode for this layer to "Darker Color". You can play with the layer opacity to get the effect you like. Merge this layer with the one below.
Open up the levels Adjustment (or use an Levels Adjustment layer) to bring up the contrast. We want some dark blacks and brighter whites for our opacity map.
Save this as a jpeg named RingOpacity
Creating the Rings
Going back to Daz Studio, create a plane primitive of size 2000 cm. Convert it to Iray. Use the Align tool and align it with the centers of the Planet base.
Put the RingTexture jpg in the Base Color map and RingOpacity.jpg in the Opacity map.
Scale the plane up as needed.
If you want the rings to be more visible, go into the Parameter Settings for Opacity, remove the limits, and set Opacity to something greater than 1.
In this case, I used 6.0
Another angle, showing the atmospheric haze.
Creating the Starfield
This methodology comes from http://designstacks.net/create-a-realistic-star-field-with-space-dust-in-photoshop. ;
Create a new document in Photoshop at whatever dimensions of your final render. Fill it with black.
Go to Filter->Add Noise. Select 400%, Gaussian, Monochromatic.
Duplicate the Layer and name it "Layer 1".
Hide Layer 1.
Select the Background layer, and use Gaussian Blur with 0.5 pixels.
Open Image->Adjustments->Levels
For the input levels, enter 200, 0.42, 255
Now select Layer 1 and make it visible.
Perform Gaussian Blur with 2 pixels.
Go to Image->Adjustments->Levels and select 170, 1 , 172 as the inputs
Add a little more blur to Layer 1 by doing another Gaussian blur with 1 pixel.
We want to make these large stars pure white, so we're going to isolate them and move them to a new transparent layer.
With Layer 1 selected, open the Channels tab. There is a small dashed circle at the bottom of the window. If you hover the mouse over it, it says "Load Channel as Selection". Click the circle.
Go back to the layers tab and delete layer 1.
Create a new layer named Large Stars. Fill the selection with White. Press CTRL-D to deselect.
Now we're going to add a little glow to the large starts.
In the layers panel, double click on the large stars layer preview to open the Layer Style window. Select "Outer Glow". Set blend mode to Normal, Opacity to 75. In the color box, select white. In the size, put something like 50. Press OK. Merge the visible layers.
One last thing - we're going to use clouds to make this feel less computer generated.
Create a new layer. Make the foreground color white. Go to Filter->Render->Clouds. Set the blend mode to Color Dodge. Set the Opacity for the layer to 20%.
Merge the layers.
Rendering, Canvases, Compositing, and additional Postwork
A challenge with rendering space art is one of distance and scale. The distances in space are so large that we can't replicate them directly in our renders. Instead, we simulate distance by reducing the scale of far away objects.
In this instance, even though the planet is scaled down so much it appears to be further away, physically the ship is almost next to the planet.
This gives us the composition we want, but the lighting is broken. The ship is casting a large shadow on the rings, and the emissive lights on the ship are reflecting against the planet and rings. But on the positive side, we are getting the light bouncing off the planet onto the ship, which is what we want.
The traditional way of dealing with this would be to render the planet and ship separately and then composite them together in postwork. That works fine for the planet, because we don't want any lighting from the ship to show up on the planet.
But it doesn't work well for the ship, because we want the planet's light to show up on the ship.
The solution is a canvas. Canvases allow you to have lighting and shadows from objects that don't actually get rendered. This works well here, because we want the lighting from the planet, but we don't want to render the planet in the same layer as the ship.
First, we'll render the planet the old fashioned way, by simply hiding the ship objects in the scene tab and rendering.
Now we'll use the canvas. First, unhide the ship objects in the scene tab. Then go to the Render Settings panel and select the Advanced Tab, and then the Canvases tab.
Select the Canvases checkbox, and then the plus sign to add a new canvas. Leave the default selections for the name and Type. Click the Alpha box. This will cause the hidden items to be rendered as transparencies. Otherwise they will be rendered as solid black.
Now move down to the Node Lists Box. Click the plus sign.
This will bring up a dialog box. Name the Node List "Things to show"
Click the box with the ellipsis in the right hand corner to select the objects that will be visible.
This opens a dialog box of all the objects in the scene. Right click and expand all. We want to only see the ship and its subcomponents, while hiding the planet.
Click Accept. Now move back to the Canvas Panel, and find the Nodes pull down menu. Click it and select the newly created "Things to Show" Node list.
Render the image
We have the ship, and it has the reflection of the planet off the left side.
Save the image.
Back to Photoshop we go for compositing
Nebulae
Finally, we add in the nebula in postwork. Add a layer immediately above the starfield. Using the nebula brushes listed above, pick one and set your brush Size Jitter and Angle Jitter to something in the high 70s. You also might want to set Color Dynamics->Hue Jitter to something like 10%. Set Opacity to around 10%. Pick a medium-dark color and start stamping around the area. After a while, change color and location and continue stamping. After you have a nice base, Use the Dodge Tool with the same brush, opacity, and jitter settings. Lower the size a bit and stamp around the centers of the nebula. This will brighten up the centers. Next, do the same with the eraser tool. Use a nebula brush, Set Opacity to 10, Size and Angle jitter to the high 70s and stamp around the nebula. This will give it some additional depth. Finally, do a Gaussian blur of about 2 pixels.
Final result:
Woot thank you thank you!
Geez, @TabascoJack! That was an awesome tutorial! I'm definitely going to have to try this out. I think I understood everything you said, but I may have questions as I actually try to follow along through all of the steps. I have a couple of things I need to research and find if there is an equivalent in GIMP first, though. For instance, I know GIMP has a transform tool as I recently had to use it for a project, but I have to find out if it also does that stretching thing or if that is a different tool. I'll figure it out, though! I, actually, have a starship render I put on hold because I couldn't figure out how to do a couple of things you talked about in this tutorial so now I get to drag it out of mothballs and actually render it! Thanks for posting this!
Very nice Jack! This is an awesome tutorial. I like the way you made your gasplanet and the canvases is something I never did before. I guess after that I understand what I need to do and especially what to use it for.
@Knittingmommy from my first impression I believe all those steps should be possible in Gimp as well. I will have a closer look during some free hours on the weekend so maybe we can fill in some hints of where to find what in Gimp.
Thank you @Knittingmommy and @Linwelly and Sonja!
It was a lot of fun making the tutorial, and as with any type of educational activity, I learned so much more while creating it!
I agree with Linwelly that most of these should be doable in GIMP. You won't be able to use Adjustment Layers, but you ought to able to perform the Levels adjustments directly on the images to get the same effect.
I also did some more experimentation with canvases. From what I can tell, canvases seem to be pre-defined settings for what Iray calls Light Path Expressions. There's four or five blog posts on blog.irayrender.com that talk about them.
In a nutshell, Light Path Expressions (or LPEs) let you define the light paths to render as opposed to defining just the object to render. You can also distinguish between types of light sources (environment, scene, emissive), types of surface properties (glossy, diffuse, specular) and specific objects.
For example, you could render just the specular reflections caused by a light source. Or the specular reflections off of a specific object or sets of objects. The intent is to make lighting in postwork a lot easier.
See: http://blog.irayrender.com/post/37260056351/instant-relighting-nonphysical-effects and http://blog.irayrender.com/post/76948894710/compositing-with-light-path-expressions
Hmm, good to know. I'll definitely have to try reading those this weekend. I took a quick look and I can already tell the second one adjust things I've feared playing with up to now like 'crush blacks', 'white point', etc. I did actually step out and use vignetting for one of my wolf renders and that was fun to play with, but I haven't done anything with a lot of the tone mapping settings to change how lighting gets used. I usually stick to changing the ISO, Gamma and Saturation, but that's about it.
I tried a little around to redo this in Gimp, and I can say I managed to get the planet stripes and the rings done in Gimp as well. The means from the small stripe to the the streched stripes is by scaling the layer but only in one direction. Tricky part is the you afterwardy might need to adjust the canvas size to the layer size. I had the left and right rims turn a little to translucend so I cut out another rectangle to get rid of the translucent parts, before duplication and swapping one layer.
Turn the thing into a ring works just the same by polar coordinates. Noise is a bit different, I used a filter that is called "HSV-Rauschen" not sure if this translates to HSV Noise and turned the value all up and the three other dials all down.
Sounds like a great start!
I am looking forward to seeing the final result.
Sounds good, Linwelly. I'm finishing up a couple of renders, but when I'm done I'll be adding this to my ToDo list this evening. I'm taking notes!
Trying out Forest Superior with Iray shaders. Decided to really tax my system and added volumetric cubes for the water and a little bit of mist/fog. Hit 5000 samples and still have fireflies. Going to try again without the mist and up the max samples.
This one finished in just under 2 hours.
Top: Super Dress and Leggings
Pants: Springtime for Genesis 2
Clothing shaders: MEC4D PBS Shaders Vol 2 procedural fabric
That looks really good, TJ! I like the shadows you got falling across her face and shoulders. They weren't as pronounced in the first attempt and they look nicer in the second attempt.
I agree the shadows look great on her face and body.
Very nice render! I like the shadows and the colours! You could make some small changes to the pose to make it "correct" but I guess only poeple who know the pose would recognize
That would rule me out. My relationship to anything approaching realistic yoga is non-existent.
Unfortunately, the pose of "Sitting at computer with cat in lap" wasn't one of the choices in the set, nor does it fit in well with the forest scene.
I laughed out loud. As I sit here at the computer with cat in lap lolol.
haha! The sitting at the computer is one of my favorites as well, though I omit the cat as I'm allergic to cats
I know the position from Qigong though, not Yoga, so it might even be ok for a yoga position, there are some that are very similar but not all the way the same.
Oh my! An ironman13 sale. There goes my May budget.......
On the other hand, it should make my new user contest entry this month a little easier...
Wow! That forest yoga scene is incredible! Awesome work, Jack!
My only word of critque would be perhaps to add a little bit of cloth folds/cloth stretch on her shirt. It's a bit too smooth and really the only thing that quickly "gives it away" or one of the only "tells" that it's not a photo.
That's really the only thing that I can see that would improve the image - be cause it's so incredible! Great work, Jack! Well done!