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Here are a couple of older (Carrara 6) character shader kits. I use them in Carrara 8 with very good results
http://www.sharecg.com/v/26659/View/7/Material-and-Shader/Endless-Eye-Kit-for-V4-for-Carrara-6
http://www.sharecg.com/v/28074/related/7/Material-and-Shader/V4-Skin-Shader-kit-and-Lights-for-Carrara-6
You should definitely read the documentation that comes with these. Some good information there. They are also a good stepping off place for learning about Carrara's shaders and lights.
I haven't messed to much with the skin kit, but the Endless Eyes was a great learning tool. I use them still.
Not sure if this counts as a portrait exactly, but I tried to frame it as close as I could get.
Going back to pages 3-4 when this discussion was actually useful...
We were talking about how to set up rim lights.... Here's a trick I used a while back to get better at both the position of the rim lights and my skin shader highlights -- without skin shader highlights you would have to over-light the scene to see any results.... But with higher settings specifically in the highlight channel, rim lighting has more impact and skin looks "luminous".
The trick is to temporarily turn your skin map brightness down to zero, so essentially the color channel in your skin is completely dark. ALL you will see is the highlight. Your skin still needs to look "real" under these conditions. Once you get what you like you can reset the skin color to full brightness....
(and no emotional impact intended, it's just a pinup)
Another useful trick for portraits (which I think has not been mentioned in this thread) is to light the subjects face with a tight spotlight and use 100% falloff. This helps to softly highlight the face (I actually point the spotlight at the neck or chest, depending on how large the degree and distance of the spot from the subject).
This render is kind of ridiculous, but you can really see the rim lights and the falloff spotlight on the face - basically I'm cheating with a light rig that would never happen in real life, but often happens in Hollywood. Best of both worlds: the drama of rim light, but the subjects face is still the focus:
Subtler example of the falloff spotlight and rimlights:
I think what works here is that even though she's showing a lot of skin and the camera is more or less aimed at her body, the falloff spotlight is making her face slightly BRIGHTER - therefore more important to your eye.
Yes she has boobs and is wearing some sort of fetish bikini, but the lighting is TELLING you her face is more important than the boobs.... Ergo you end up with a "smart" pinup, that is just as sexy, but doesn't feel like a disposable bimbo at a car/boat show.
...at least that's the intent, and I think it works to also pull your eye around the image. You want to look at her body, but the face still pulls focus and seems more important.
Holy crap, Evil !! That is a gorgeous image. Probably one of the nicest I've seen here in a long time. You're learning !!!
And you played the rules very nicely. And the pose of the girl is really perfect. She has weight, and it's very believable. And you used some awesome color and lighting. Well, aside from the ambient (there is ambient, right? Maybe not...)
Good stuff.
Thank you for participating, Holly. Those examples and explanations are exactly what I've been looking for and help tremendously.
The top one is really stunning and the others illustrate the subject perfectly.
I found Poser Ben on my hard drive for some reason.
4 lights, one spot on each eye to demonstrate his strabismus
one narrow spotlight on the right side,
one full frontal with soft shadows (Fast parameter - which is why his eyebrows and the shadows are 'interesting')
the texture is painted in Blacksmith 3d - which is why the nostrils are slightly misaligned - but dont tell anyone......
Thank you. No ambient, and only hard shadows. If I was following the complimentary color rule, I would have had to include teal. ;-)
I used target helpers to assist in the pose. One for each of the hands and the feet.
Nice highlights on the eyes. I think the left eye's spotlight angle could be narrower as it illuminates the area around the eye. I don't see that with the right eye.
What I do sometimes if I'm not getting a highlight in eyes, I'll force it by placing a sphere in the scene with a bright glow shader. I usually place it behind the camera and the size depends on how big I want the highlight. I 'll also use the 3d light sphere as well. I know I used sphere recently, but I can't remember on what image.
A few posts back some mention of lighting in passes was mentioned. Jeremy Brin has these 2 articles on his website that go into that and he spends an entire chapter in hie 2nd edition of his Lighting book talking about it.
http://www.3drender.com/light/compositing/index.html
The above link's page has a link to sample psd file you can download olook at to see how the multi-passes was used in an image on it.
Ant the 2nd article shows the lighting of a CG ant.
http://www.3drender.com/jbirn/ea/Ant.html
He also has a article on 3 point lighting as well.
http://www.3drender.com/light/3point.html
The comments at the end of that article are very true about relying on formula or recipes.
evil wroteth:
thanks evil, yes it is worse in theimagewith hair as the hair in front of that eye is not lit, - good catch.
I like your idea about the glow sphere.
Usually I just use Phil W's Bright Eyes which has glow built into the corneas/comjunctiva - but it doesn't give the same bounce off the conjunctiva as a 'real 'light (well I think it doesn't).
Coincidentally enough, my critique person has recently started flagging my eye highlights as too intense...(done with bright eyes)
Hey head wax
I'm no artist and not qualified to offer critique, but, using that old hackneyed phrase - I knows what I likes.
And I like. That picture is compelling - makes me want took again and again - especially the one with the lank hair. A friendly Friar - slightly demented, maybe? One of those pervs who gets into the Church for you-know-what?
A face full of character and the lighting brings it out so well - just what this thread was intended to illustrate.
Thank you for posting it
Cheers;-)
My Pleasure Roygee :)
I've learnt a lot from this thread.
I never knew that about shadow buffer soft shadows making the nostrils glow! (thanks EP)
I always get glowing teeth and inner mouth as well - I've been grunging them up and adding an alpha value to solve it
now I know,
one render to rule them all?
nah, different renders for different bits of a final image :)
thanks evil, yes it is worse in theimagewith hair as the hair in front of that eye is not lit, - good catch.
I like your idea about the glow sphere.
Usually I just use Phil W's Bright Eyes which has glow built into the corneas/comjunctiva - but it doesn't give the same bounce off the conjunctiva as a 'real 'light (well I think it doesn't).
Coincidentally enough, my critique person has recently started flagging my eye highlights as too intense...(done with bright eyes)
You could also set up a light specifically for the eyes. You can set lights to exclude certain things. Just create a light and exclude everything but the eyes, then you can control the highlights a bit better.
Thank you David!
Yes, I tried that with this one and it wouldn't work for some reason (I exclude evrything bar right eye etc but the light lit nothing).
It might be that it is Ben?
I'll check it out with K4.
thanks again :)
Some figures have multiple eye parts—be sure the light's enabled for all the eye parts, and not just something hidden behind something else. (Can't remember the parts—I bring this up because I had that problem, I was lighting the eyeball, but the eyeball was hidden behind the sclera or something, and it took an "ah ha" moment...)
Thanks Carlton, yes I think that was the problem, good call,
I'm always going into the shader room and making things red so I can figure which is what part of the eyeball
ironic really.... :)
I've tried lighting just the eyes and failed as well. I suspected it was because the eyes that you see listed in the figure hierarchy aren't the mesh, but the rig. I will have to experiment some more.
you mean I been trying to light up bones? :) :)
Well, that explains why i also can't get it right. Lol
:)
Girl with measles :)
one light near her right eye (on our left) using a circular gradient in the gel (The other light I had as rim is turned off)
Used EP's glow globe at back - lots of possibilities thanks Evil.
The gradient is good because you can get (eg) warm at the centre, cool at the periphery and also control luminosity as well, so you could (eg) reverse it to make it lighter at the periphery
I think the light around her iris at the limbus is the iris texture - but (warning ocular talk ahead) it looks like sclerotic scatterr in a way (light shone in the temporal region of your cornea bounces internally and lights up the nasal part of your conjunctiva- - but could also be arcus senilus if she was another sixty years older)
tanks for looking :)
edit: I just noticed she has 'poser nose' left nostril (our right) ah well :)
Well, she does have measles after all.
Heh, :) sorry I missed that.! Well it could be a case of Nasal septal perforation ! err I just read what causes it too :(
No details necessary.
regarding restricting lighting to the eyes, (or other parts of the mesh for that matter) I did run some tests, and I could not get it to work for me. As soon as I restricted light to the model, then the model was illuminated. I'm even more convinced that I can't light up just the eyes because the eyes listed in hierarchy are part of the rig. To bad there's no way to include/exclude by other means, such as by shading domains.
dumbass Wendy idea
select the eye bits in vertex room
copy
new vertex model
paste
parent to eyes or select hip, attach skeleton, weightpaint to original eyes which have visibility turned off
I am not on computer so not trying it, just an idea!
or
export obj with morphs etc checked, import and delete all the non-eye bits before doing above
(if you want it posable, animated)
otherwise just use reimported obj's and be done with it!!
thanks for that data evil, could be a goer for the "how I would like carrara to be improved thread"
hey wendy not so dumb arse, just lateral...
sound s like work tho,
:)
Whenever I copy some polys and paste them into a new object when I go back to the assemlby room they are the size of small planets on a hot day (1/1 scale proportiion )- so I must be doing sometghing wrong
I have been trying to do a Poser Pro like portrait render, using a free Carrara light set, built-in V4 shaders and my very limited skills.
Here are the results, feel like I am halfway there, but no idea how to improve.
Free lightset from: http://www.sharecg.com/v/28074/gallery/7/Material-and-Shader/V4-Skin-Shader-kit-and-Lights-for-Carrara-6
Here is another comparison: