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Hi Daniel,
You have positioned her really nice and that's a funny background, but for the moment the background is just that, its somehow apart from her, maybe you can give that seat the same surface image? Also try to use the show thirds guide and reposition the camera so that her head is on one of the line crossings
There no longer is a limit on image size Kitti. I would suggest playing with the camera DOF functions if I understand what you are saying about standing out. Blurriness implies depth and will push the background away from the subjects. The only other trick is to make the foregound and background different values in color. The front light and back dark kind of thing.
The fourm auto scales it down
Kathryn, since you are in DAZ Studio I would suggest that you turn on the rule of thirds option under the arrow with 4 lines in the Viewport (See first couple of posts of this thread for more detailed directions) for your warrior and eagle. I think this will help you focus on what interest points you want. I would try and get the warrior and eagle on two diagonal points. Don't know if that would work but it would be fun to try. Also don't forget about a background that too can play an important part in the composition of the piece. Looking forward to seeing what you do.
Sorry I wasn't clear about which fire I meant. Its the camp fire that has got a curve to the flame that looks a litte wierd. The morphing tissue parchment is pretty good as it is
Thanks for the feedback, yes the hint with the camera to focus on the eyes was a good one. With the tilting of the head, well he's tilted as much as he can do (guess he needs some workout to get back into better shape ;-) but I will try with some quirking. Fun fact, he's not one bit symmetrical and he already has his smile on one side more that the other, but we are so used to people being not symmetrical we rarely notice.
Thanks for the advice i had already rendered this out when i read it so ..... Couple of things i did obviously, first i changed the pattern in her dress to match the BG plane, i also went for a more traditional portrait light set up instead of the HDRI i used in the previous. I just felt it was too ..well too much and not dramatic enough.
Daniel
Check this out and tell me what you think, I've been working on it for several days now, I hope it's better than the previous render.
Yes I like that idea with the design on the suit she wears, thats even better than her seat!
Looking good. My advice on this render is with her left hand. I watched a couple vids about posing for females in portraits and one of the big things was wrist angle. You want (for female pose) that the wrist is bent up or down not at a straight angle because thats more of a male hand pose it looks awkward on a female. If it were me i would twist her upper arm a hair and bend her wrist down and use the pose controls to slightly grasp or even better try to get one of her fingers in the babies hand. Babies do that they like to grip things and it would make the interaction much better in the scene.
Daniel
Thanks Daniel I will do that for sure, appreciate your advise.
Hi Daniel, glad you can work with us. As I mentioned to Kathyrn I would turn on the rule of thirds guide in DAZ Studio. See if that helps you come up with an interesting composition. I have attached an image that demonstrates what I found out about using the guide and I also played around with the color of the background. So if you notice that in all three examples I have kept Victoria 2's right eye in approximately the same sweet spot. Below each of the examples I have rendered the image with and without gamma correction. (Left is corrected and Right is not). The first example is of a lighter background that is almost the color of her hair. Examples 2 and 3 have a darker background and have added more contrast between Victoria and her surroundings. Oh and that is Victoria 2 with a Victoria 3 hair and Victoria 4 jewelry and dress. Oh how I love the new tools that DAZ introduced in Studio 4.x
I guess thats really what it comes down to for me i have no idea what the thirds guide does for me. I am clueless about its function or where a figure should fall on it. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. These are the issues i want to work on. As it was mentioned in alot of my renders in the gallery i have a good sense of lighting and posing but horrible scene layout and prop use.
Daniel
Hi h_habash, it is a good start. I see that you have used the rule of thirds. That is good. Now what I see is a candid photo shot and not a portrait. When my boy was about 9 months old he and I went and got our picture taken and the photographer had me get into the pose that you have in your image. I know from experience that for a portrait setting I could not stay in that position long without having my elbow braced against the ground. So I would position Victoria such that she is resting on the ground and pushing against her elbow. I would arch her back so that it looks like her tummy is on the ground and I would have her face the camera. I would also relax her hands by bending her fingers ever so slightly. To get an idea of how much relaxation I would hold my hand in the same manner as Victoria's position to see just how much bend is needed. Also I know when there is that much joy in a baby's face that those legs will be moving so I think I would add to that sense of joy by making baby's legs kick out. I would go on google and search for baby pictures to get some ideas on how to position baby's legs and feet. Looking forward to seeing what you do.
Thanks Dollygirl, I've looked in some google pictures and got some poses I'll definetly implement it to my baby
, and your advise for Victoria pose is highly appreciated, I'll work on it as well, Thanks again
@Linwelly
@kathrynloch
Thank you for the feedback, I've made a few changes and I'm rendering a new picture.
The hawk image gives a very good example of the Focal Distance settings :)
Hi Daniel, Just really quick while I wait for an image to render. The rule of third is a photographer's premise that if you center your subject exactly, the result can be flat and unflattering. The thirds setting on the screen divides the area and the idea is to use that to balance your subject in different ways.
As Dollygirl suggested for mine to use it to view the diagonal points. The basic gist when starting out with the rule of thirds is to try having your subject take up say two thirds as marked on the screen with your guides. But there's a lot more to it than just that, you can really dig into it and it will help you balance your shot with foreground, subject, and background. There are a number of articles you can google.
At its most basic foundation try it with the guides on and filling two-thirds of the shot then go from there just to play around with it.
And now the immortal words - I'll be back. ;)
Golly, I really liked the big "BreastPlates" because I was hopeful some of the judges would be guys. ;)
But, you're right and I really appreciate the suggestions. Your observations are always insightful. Thanks
BTW, I'm so new to this that I finally figured out how to respond to comments. Newbie dumb.
Portrait of a Vampire
Still working on the expression and atmosphere.
Gallows, I would suggest having that hansome vampire looking strait at me the viewer. The girl as they say is toast. So having him be looking at the viewer can enhance the feeling of desire and put chills down your viewer's back. It will also focus the piece and make the viewer see him first. Remember eyes are the windows. We humans look at eyes, make them work for you.
Ok my next draft i tried to use the Thirds guide to tweak the shot....What i did was rotate and pan the camera so the nape of her neck and the curve of her wrist were at opposite diagonal points on the center square. I also didnt like how hard the key light was hitting her from the side so i tweaked its location and lumen levels so it gives a softer look. Also changed the angle of the fill light plane above her to shine a little more on the center of her body. Lastly i changed the BG plane to be emmisive i pluged the image texture into the emmision color channel its very low at this point but its enough to create a contrast between the subject and the background
Daniel
Daniel, I see improvement with your adjustments. Really love the background and you have achieved a nice separation between your subject and the background. You are also on the right track when using the guide. If I were working on this image I would consider changing the ratio on the proportions. Getting the right look to a square portrait is pretty hard to do. To achieve harmony in a square portrait you almost have to introduce some kind of symmetry to balance out the asymmetry of the model. I took the liberty of chopping off 150 pixels on either side of your render and I added the guide to see where the sweet spots landed with the new dimensions. I see from doing this that the model has become more the focus of the render and that the background has now been tamed. This suggestion is merely a suggestion. What you have is just fine but you might want to just play if nothing else to see what other things you can do in your quest. Looking forward to seeing what you decide to do.
Here is my portrait after the changes.I let iray run to just over 6k iterations this time.
edit: added a post worked version.I opened it in GIMP and increased the sharpness to 50.
Lovely image icecrmn. A nice sheen on her so you have controlled the specularity well. Your control of bump is good too, I like the look of her lips, her dress. Composition is balanced and the focus is on her face. If the first image is the uncorrected image then I would forego using the sharpness. To me is makes the shadows become just a bit unbelievable.
What I would do is fiddle with the highlights in her eyes. There needs to be just a bit more water covering them. It might be that you will need to work on the tear duct to get the watery look and that little bitty speck of white. Also for the amount of light in the scene I think the pupils may be a bit too large. It is good to have them big because we as humans construe this to be love and we respond with love to the look but we also with this type of near photo realism know that large pupils either means she is on drugs or that the image is not quite following the laws of mother nature. It is a fine balance and this issue is a very minor one in the overall scheme of your portrait. Good luck with your submittal.
If you think of the rule of thirds as a landscape then the cross lines are where the horizon would look good. The bottom line if the sky is the dominant section or the top if the landscape. There are a few occasions where the horizon right across the middle works, say in a lake giving a mirrored image. The same applies to the verticle lines. Aligning something with these lines and so thirding the image works better than having the prominent feature running through the middle.
For a full body portrait I would align the body with the vertical line leaving just enough space at the side and the top of the subject to let the image breathe.
I have tried to achieve this with Daniel's image to show what I mean.
Now for the cross points. These are the sweet points in an image. In a landscape this is where a feature within the landscape would go, whether a tree, house, rock or bush. With a portrait only showing the head I would align the top line with the eyes and place a sweet spot over one eye.
I have tried to achieve this with icecrmn's Image.
It isn't always possible to get everything exact and sometimes it is worth breaking the rule just to be different :)
Thank you for your feedback :) I had a look at what might be causing that white speckle in her eye.I found that I had a top coat set for the sclera that was set to 255 255 255. I removed the top coat and that seems to have cleared up.I also reduced her pupil dilation from .66 to .33.
Thank you fishtales , I did some adjusting to this and I've got a render baking now.I should have something in about 30 minutes or so,,,if I can stop myself from halting the render to fiddle with stuff.
ooops..almost forgot to go to work lol ,,, I'll be back in about 8 hours.I'll leave my render cooking while I'm out just to see how many iterations it gets to.
Thank you Linwelly and Kismet2012 for the suggestions on my "Making Babies Cry" render. But now looking at it again, I deem it...a disaster! I hate everything about it. Yuck yuck yuck. I'm going to blame it on the 3D model...yeah that's it...it's all the model's fault, not the artist's.
So not wanting to subject myself to look at it for another second, I did a new render for the contest. I'm having a hard time deciding if I should make the colours a little warmer or a little cooler. Both seem to give it a different mood.
So thanks to dollygirl and Kathryn for some more ideas. I can see the advantage of cropping the image to portrait size, but for now I decided that I loose too much of the story if I just take the cropped version, so I went with the landscape format. maybe I will change that later. But I took your hint with the positioning of the sweet spot on the eye, had that on the center between the eyes. I increased the DOF as well and made the background lighter as suggested and I gave him a tad more of that smirk. I believe I'm finished with this render, will look at it for some time but I guess this will be ther version going to the entries.
This is a lovely portrait. And the changes have improved it very much. I would leave the sharpening away as well. I guess the tipp from fishtales is a good one as well.
Love to see the final.
Hi Kitty, welcome to the New user contests.
I have to say your render of the Minotaurus is really good. There is a lot of detail and an intersting angle. The only thing I would suggest is to leave the fairy away. She has a more cartoony style to herself which I find to be in contrast with the ver real looking taurus. She is rather more distracting. Excellent render otherwhize.