FirstBastion's Mix and Mashin' ItUp - After the prizes
FirstBastion
Posts: 7,771
FirstBastion's 3rd Annual "Mix and Mash It Up" Render contest.
Rules are simple:
Submit renders to this thread. The renders can be a single image or a series of images (animation).
Multiple render submissions by the same artist are allowed, but an artist can only win the main prizes once.
Please note the FirstBastion product or products used in submission, and the application/tools used for the render.
Postwork is allowed.
Pick any topic or theme, capture a cinematic moment in time, which means basically try to tell a visual story.
Criteria to win:
1. While meeting the criteria above, show your creativity using at least 1 of
FirstBastion environment while producing a cinematic type image.
2. While meeting the criteria above, show your creativity and Mix and Mash it up at least 1 of
your FirstBastion environment props set in ingenious and creative ways to make them look different
than how they come out of the box while also producing a cinematic image.
Optional
3. Post a "How to" explanation of how you put the render together, to help others see your creative
inspiration. Add screen captures of how you setup the environments, and how using the different
pieces created something new.
Contest submissions end April 20, 2013
Prize Distribution:
There will be 5 weekly winners of my favorite "how to explanation" These will be chosen on Monday mornings,
(on March 18, 25, and April 1, 8, 15 ) Weekly Winners will get one choice of product from my store excluding
the bundles. Weekly winners are still eligible for the grand prize.
ONE Grand Prize winner, in the MIX and Mash it up category, announced the fourth week of April 2013, that
wins all the items in my store, including the yet unreleased new product in April.
TWO Second Prize winner, in the announced the fourth week of April 2013, that wins a choice of 5 products
(choices can include the bundles in my store) plus the yet unreleased new product in April.
THREE third prize winners, announced the fourth week of April 2013, that will get one (1) choice from my store plus a copy of my new environment set that will be available in April.
That's six possible winners for the prizes, and another 5 for the how-to tutorials.
3 Judges will choose the Grand Prize, Second Prize, and Third Prize categories.
Good Luck!
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recap of last years winners... from this thread...
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/292/P49/
I just could not resist this contest
Totte entry #1 : Bonds escape!
First Bastion item used: High Cliff Crossing
Description of now this image came together (see the attached description image to follow my steps.
Using DAZ Studio 4.5.
First I set up James Bond in his Ultralight using Genesis, M5, SickleMar Business Suit and M5 Elite hair, and of course the Faveral Ultralight.
I Used UberSurface2 on the Ultralight. Then I used the PC item ATV, Genesis Basic Male plus FM Bodysuit and Motorcycle helmet to create the chasing ATV drivers, I used Hardcore shaders to fix the ATV shaders. I then took the OH-6 helicopter, another Genesis basic male, FM bodysuit and another motorcycle helmet to make the helicopters. I them merged int setup items into the scene with High Cliff Crossing. I used Instance groups for the ATVs, and two helicopters plus instance groups for the helis, I'll soon explain why.
Now I group items into layers, base layer first, and then the second helicopter (slamming into the wall in a separate group, and Bond in the last group. Now In rendered the background scene without the smashing copter and Bond, but with the bridge opacity set to 0% (1), saving it as a transparent png. I now hid the copters and set the opacity of the bridge back to 100%, and rendered again to another png (2). Now I hid everything exceot the smashing copter, and rendered to .png again (3).
I now fetched a skyimage from CGTextures to use as a backdrop, and added all my layers to OmniGraffle (I'm stiff pretty lousy and unproductive in Photoshop), but I used Photoshop to export some of Rons Explosions and smokes to transparent .pngs as well.
Using layers and image transparency levels I now added smoke and explosions where I wanted them, behind the bridge and behind and over the smashing helicopter. I exported the final background image from OmniGraffle to a .jpg (4).
At last I only had Bond visible and rendered once again to a .png (5). I Now opened the exported image in Photoshop, and opened Bind, and used a quick FilterForge filter I tossed together to slightly smooth the transparency mask to avoid too sharp edges when blending Bond on top of the background. I also used some of Rons Smoke brushes and added some additional smoke and dust to the image, and gave it a little blur. I then added the smoothed James Bond in the ultralight on top, and the image was done.
Also, I used motion blur in the renders to add spinning effects to propellers on helicopters and the ultralight.
Assault on strongpoint 62
The story:
Along the Atlantic Wall, the Germans had installed some old naval guns at some key points. Those guns were a constant threat to the invasion as they were powerful enough to sink even the largest battleship with a lucky shot. Several of these key points were assaulted on DDay and on the following days to secure the waters in the English channel. Many were those soldiers who sacrificed their lives to save the lives of thousand others, and the irony of it all was that most of these gun batteries were not fully operational, lacked ammunitions or some were only mockups.
First Bastion item used: Storm Sewer Runoff
How I did it
This one don't need any pictures to explain the things done. First I removed all the signs, grates and water plane from the set. I then quickly modeled a twin 38cm naval gun, and shaded it with dzFire metal shaders (gun metal) but changed the diffuse to a more German gun bluish grey. I then added a plane in DS to cover the opening, and created a cammo net texture with one of my FilterForge Filters (Cammo net). Tweaked it a little to get less leaves on it though and applied the diffuse and alpha map to the plane. Then I just built the scene using Ring of Light as main light source plus a sun light. I used a lot of low poly German soldiers, and many other of my WWII items. I rendered in DS and did the postwork in Photoshop using Rons stuff (bursts, smoke & debris), plus some desaturation.
I hope you like it!
Let me first off say, I love being surprised when my environment sets get used in interesting ways, and the use of the storm sewer as a bunker really fits the bill. I never thought of using it that way. Very ingenious and it works. Reminds me of the first two Call of Duty games and CastleWolf.
On to the Monday morning Weekly Winner.
Bonds Escape.
A great example of incremental rendering and layers and the end result is a very dynamic image. Congrats Totte.
Send me a PM of your product choice and I'll get DAZ to add it to your account. Even though not much competition this week, your screen captures and write up met the requirements for what's necessary to win. Well deserved.
Thanks!
Love the stuff and love to use things in unusual ways, so this contest is right up my sleeve ;-)
Be prepared, I'm getting warmed up!
i just found out about this, been looking forward to this contest
And just to be clear, the "how -to" write up is only necessary if you want a chance to win one of five weekly prize categories. If you only want to submit a render for the Main prizes judging you are more than welcome to do just that. Someone sent me an email to asked for clarification. Hope that helps everybody who might be interested. :-)
I can't leave Totte all alone here to win all the prizes! ;-P
Title: Coffee Raid. Done in DS4.5 and postwork in Photoshop.
Used rocks and boulders from three First Bastion sets: Hidden Waters, Rocky Flats and Spiral Descent.
I made this set last year after the last contest and never used it. I will post a tutorial later. The first one is a screen shot - it is very large.
The first week's "how-to" prize has been awarded. Congrats again, Totte. Enjoy the Breaking Waves.
On with Week Two, it should be a fun week with a little more participation. Nice to see some familiar faces too.
I'm looking forward to see what develops.
Looks great! I like the breadth and scope of the scene. Top shelf as always, Luci!
Mutant Primate Research Unit
Dr. Wray observes her subject.
(Production notes to follow)
Mutant Primate Research Unit
Production Notes
1) I wanted to create a kind of ‘theater in the round’ research unit scaffolding affect using FB’s Flight of Stairs. I really liked the somewhat ‘industral’ look of the actual staircase which is what drew me to it.
I isolated the elements I would need. For anyone new, you do this by unparenting and unlocking elements.
2) I exported the railing. You can use any 3d modeling tools such as Carrara or Blender or Hexagon, the latter two free. My tool of choice is 3d Max. All I did was delete the polygons I didn’t need and reimported. This is a great way to get your feet wet modeling by examaning how a model is put together first and deleting elements for your bashing needs.
3) Last off, the platforms had open faces originally covered by walls so I resized the floor and rotated it to create plane covers for them because I liked the texture.
Then it was a matter of creating instances of the railing unit and platform over and over again.
Then:
4) Add genesis gorilla scaled up in Faradya Cage
5) Add V5 + PH Retro with Doctor’s lab coat. Used Max’s MassFX Cloth to make it look (a little) more natural.
6) Used the lights from staircase rotated for building lights
7) Duplicated the whole back wall and rotated.
8) Used 3ds max Mental Ray to render . Added some volume lights but did most in post using Ron’s lights and Shadow. Then some atmosphere fog with Ron’s fog.
Lot’s of fun. Made me late for work !
Luci: Such a great Lucish render as always, you really got some great RenderFu!
bohemian: I knew you would blow us away with some great insightful tutorial s, this is your ball game ;-)
Thanks, Totte and bohemian3!
Totte, I love the James Bond and bohemian3, this render is great! I love your tutorial too, really some useful stuff there. I need to get brave and open Hexagon to take some things apart. I usually mess stuff up doing this and get frustrated. But since you are really pushing the envelope here, I guess I'll have to try it again....:cheese:
Gotta push the envelope, eh? Start small. Clear your scene and work with only one little component. Opening a whole model is totally overwhelming. All you gotta do is delete stuff to start. It's easy to blow away polygons. rEally ;)
The Ring (guess where I found my inspiration)
Used: A Walk Across Water ( http://www.daz3d.com/a-walk-across-water )
"How I did this" will follow in a separate post.
You guys are putting a big smile on my face! Great stuff. Absolutely don't be afraid to experiment, just remember to keep the original files safely in their respective folders, save a copy to your desktop and then tear into it with Hexagon or which ever modeller you choose.
It's also worth noting, that deleting existing polygons will not ruin the uvmaps in the obj file, but if you add even a single vertex or poly, the entire model will lose the UV information and will have to be UVmapped from scratch.
Also a quick note, that Hexagon was offered for free for the last year, but now it's has a very reasonable $19 price tag on it. Still well worth it, it's the modeller I regularly use.
Steps I've done for creating "The Ring" using DAZ Studio 4.5:
1)
- loaded and posed the character on a plane, added clothes, prop/primitive (the ring) I need as "main item" for the scene
- added camera and set it to the point of view I wanted
- grouped all items (character + plane + clothes + prop/primitive + camera)
2)
- added the "background" (A Walk Across Water)
- moved the group generated in step #1 to the position I think it would fit best
3)
- removed the wooden bridge from the scene
- created a new bridge out of the modular ruins
- added the dark sky
- finetuning for the pose and camera
4) (no WIP image attached)
- created the light, for this scene I used UberEnv, a distant light and a spotlight (at the left side of the character, to lighten up a little the left of the char)
- rotated the ring a little bit at frame #1 of the timeline to get motionblur for it
- added depth of field
5) in Photoshop I used a filter for adding a slight grain effect and adjusting contrast...
A Finnish garden party
FirstBastion items used: Breaking Waves, The Neighborhood , Unfinished Basement
Rendered in DS 4.5
How to explanation in -pdf format.
The Finnish Vodka drinking game - a game for two players.
The rules are simple. You throw a knife at the target. If you hit the target, you get to drink a bottle of Vodka, if you miss, your opponent gets to drink a bottle of Vodka. The game ends when there are no more bottles of Vodka.
I just want to say that Totte's picture is 100% accurate.
I know many Finns (you are my neighbors), and my great, great, great, great grandfather was Adolf Ivar Arwidsson.
That probably would work in Canada too, though we'd replace the vodka with beer.
With beer it's difficult to play the game "Who's there?".
Who's There
You drink a bottle of Vodka each, then one of you hide in the closet, and the other should guess who's hiding.
I didn't see anything in the rules that said I could not use animations i have created recently so I thought I'd submit these I just done and I still have one more animation in the series to complete. They take me about 8 to10 weeks to make these films.
So hopefully this will be accepted. as cinematic type render for this contest.
Projects submitted for contest.
Animation series , New Dawn -
Film Descriptions - An post Apocalyptic adventure.
Rendered in Poser Pro2012 & Daz3A
Post work in Maya and Adobe Premiere Pro
FirstBastion kits used.
High Cliff Crossing
Rural Crossroads
Storm Sewer
Commentary of how to : ( This maybe long because of the process involved.)
First I have to say these are some of the best kits i used, I think I own all of FirstBastion’s models by now , They use little memory so rendering is fairly quick per-scene. they set up nice and i never had any trouble with the textures.
.
I use custom IDL lighting in Poser which I do myself because of the some of the scene shots i created required the lights to be in specific locations.
I also add or blended a few other model kits in with FirstBastion’s models such as Forest - By Andrey Pestryakov and WorldBase-Xtreme-Kit By Harvey Mann this allows me to give a larger feel to the back grounds, I may add or remove props as i need them to speed up render time or to add to scenes effects.
I also have a technique of using spot lights set to deep shadow maps for shadow specific renders, I have also been taught that the use of dramatic color in dramatic scenes , can give a more intense feel to the scene. especially if you want to draw the viewers eye to a certain location in the scene. This works great in spooky scenes.
Each scene in these animations are a average of 300 Key-frames = 10 seconds - rendered at 30kfps and the average file size around 400Mb Each completed film took about 9 weeks to complete from start to finish. I have an investment of about $200 for all the Models Materials and Licenses. ( The good thing is I will be able to use these again some day in another animation.)
when I start my animations. I start buy building a file tree , this helps me keep everything organized so when time comes to put together the finished film I have everything ready in one spot, nothing worst than building animation and having to hunt down your assets. & or rendered work. so I build a file tree as follows
Main Folder< Movie File name>
< Sub Folders of>
Models folder> " Story board scenes files ready for render go in this folder"
Movie Folder >" Rendered Raw AVI scene files go in this folder"
Photoshop folder> Render stills & text graphics needed for animation goes here"
Premiere folder> This is the movie editors file.
Sound folder> This is where you keep all sound files, like sound effects, Sound tracks etc.."
Credits> This folder is where i place all copies of the read me's & Licenses for each model & Sound file i use.. this helps me to remember to whom to give credit too.
My animation graphics resolutions setting are at 1920 x 1080 @ 300 dpi for maximum HD. These settings render very large finished files sizes. so make sure you have plenty of hard disk to save your movies on. But i found these settings gives you,High Def results
Native HD for PC is 1920 x 1200, so leaving your render size at 19020 x1080 will give you the best results for finished HD films.
Next you got to have a story Board . I write all my own stories and in order to tell a story you need to know where going when building a animation story-line this will help you in gathering your assets for the animation.
I build my story board by actually building each scene with a 3d model(s) in Poser Pro, when I have each scene completed & ready to begin rendering including the lights and effects. I save it in the" Model scene folder". I use Daz3a to make custom Ani-blocks or to edit Ani-blocks so I can place them in my poser Animator program.
Then I start rendering each scene, I save each AVI file in a Cinpac codex AVI file, compressed at 100% for best results.
when I save the avi file I name them in the scene order as I need them in the Movie editors timeline.
So to make this easier I name each avi file like this.> "Scene 01 - 5 seconds" - "scene 02 -3 seconds", "scene 03 -10 seconds".
I do it this way because it helps me to know what order to place the rendered avi files in the movie editor and I add the time length to each file name saved so in case i have to go back and remake or re-render a specific scene I will know what time length I have to work with in the remake. This is especially helpful when you have hundreds of rendered scenes
I always try to over run each AVI scene by 10 key-frames or more for film editing reasons.I found its much easier to cut off film you don't need than try to add to it after its been rendered.
After I have completed rendering all the Story Board. I start film editing by placing each AVI file in the Adobe Premiere pro cs5 movie editor. I prefer Adobe Premiere Pro for the reason it integrates with Flash Pro, Photoshop and After-effects,and I have a API bridge form Poser and Maya into Adobe premiere so it saves me a couple of steps when it comes time to put the film together. plus Adobe allows me to have Blu-ray HD quality output. and Upload in HD directly to YouTube or Photoshop.com. Then I place the credits at the end of each film.
Then about a week or 2 before I complete the animation film I will start if i have time generating a interest & promoting the film .
When I am done I save my my finished animations files in MLT blu-ray format. in a cloud base server for archiving.
Well that is about it. I know there is many ways to get to Rome .. but this is the path I use.
I hope you enjoy these films and get a chance to look at the rest of my animations. I like to use Daz and Poser tell stories. they are great tools. for hobbyist and amateurs alike. :)
Good luck to everyone. Peace.
Episode 1 - New Dawn of the Dark Ages.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kH3IGoEzD3s
Episode II
New Dawn -Taking Back.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QFCUYzp5z4
This post was edited for spelling(1) times
Hi! :)
here is my image "Asteroid Project" for the contest,
I used FirstBastion's "Rocky Flats" as a asteroid base. And I must say all of his products are simply high quality!
I renderd his landscape and used Travellers lights to make it dark blue.
The space image was free from Nasa.
The rest I rendered one by one: I used one of free Greeble City blocks, petipet's "Starship Piranha" and "Space Crab".
The image was assambled in PhotoImpact, the frame and my signature was also added in PhotoImpact10.
Thank you! :)
PS There is a better quality image here (1.55mg): http://privat.bahnhof.se/wb500231/art/AsteroidProject_tyllo.png
EDIT: Sorry I accidentally posted this before the full entry. Actual entry is next post.
This was a render I'd had in my head for a while, but hadn't got around to doing. The idea was pretty simple...a frozen dead guy next to an old campfire. I used FirstBastion's set, along with the included skydome and Inukshuk rock formations. I chose tattered looking clothes for the figure, and applied an overlay shader from hybrid grunge to make the shirt look more ripped. For the character's skin, I chose a genesis zombie texture as it looked about right for a frostbitten corpse, I thought.
I chose not to use the included lights or cameras that came with the set, and to alter the sky texture a bit. One of the images below shows the screen from Studio with the sky settings open; it's hard to tell but the ambient color was changed to a very pale yellow instead of the default light, and then darkened just a little on the grayscale. I rotated the sky on all three axes to get the sun into the position I wanted, and where the clouds made a nice balance and slightly skewed angle in the sky.
I lit the scene using three lights; a distant light set to pale yellow with raytraced shadows as the primary light source, along with two spotlights for a fill light (white) and a rim light (pale purple). The rim light didn't come out very pronounced, and could have been darker to add a more definitive edge. Likewise, the distant was positioned a bit poorly making the shadows stretch a little unnaturally particularly on the leftmost inukshuk and the tire. I was trying for an unpleasant piece overall, however, and decided I kind of liked the shadows as they left a subtle "this doesn't feel right" look to the image.
One of the images below shows the positions of the lights, and is tagged with some of their settings. Next should be the final render, fresh and crisp out of Studio.
The rest of the image was done in postwork, using Gimp. I start by duplicating the image as a new layer on top of the original, and adjusting the brightness and contrast by upping the contrast and lowering the brightness until I'm happy with how it looks, then I set the layer mode to "Screen." This makes its effects overlay the base image, causing the really bright areas (the sun, the lighter areas on the clouds) really pop out in the final image.
Next I copy the main image as a new layer again, on top of the original, and add a filter effect. I'm not sure if PhotoShop has an equivalent or what it's called, but in GIMP you can find it under the filters tab; edge-detect sub menu, the filter is called Neon. This results in a very dark version of the image, with very bright edges. I then set this layer's mode to Screen like before, but this time I also adjust the opacity down. For most images I use between 50% to 80% opacity on the edge layer, in this case it was about 60%. This defines the edges of all figures in the image, and makes subtle things stand out more.
Next, I make a third copy of the base image as a new layer, positioned right above the base image. I use the colorize option in GIMP to give the new layer a light lavender tint, then set this layer to Screen just like all the ones before. If I don't like the end result I delete this layer and try again, until I like the way it looks. This part takes a bit more trial and error than the others, at least for me. :P
Last but not least, I create an entirely new layer and place it on top of ALL the other layers. This is a blank layer, not a copy of the base image, and left as Normal rather than screen mode. This shouldn't change the image at all since the layer is totally blank. This is the layer where I apply any brushes I want to use. In this case, I used a handful of Ron's brushes for the icicles and the snow overlay.
Afterwards, I save the image which GIMP has to export to compress the layers. The only real downside here is that reopening the image will result in one image, with all the layers merged; so definitely make sure you kept backups of the original image! There might be better ways to save the image that allows it to be reopened and toyed with some more with GIMP, but I'm by no means an expert.
The last image below should show the three steps used to make the screen layers in GIMP, showing both normal mode and screen mode on all of them in the order they were applied.
Thanks for reading, and hopefully this was at least a little helpful to someone. :)
Title: Still Life
FirstBastion product used: Land of the Ice Cold Sun, http://www.daz3d.com/new-releases/land-of-the-ice-cold-sun
Not an entry.
Software used: DAZ Studio UberEnv2 render
Product used: High Cliff Crossing, Renaissance Stealth Action
Almost Made It
Wont do a write up but kudos out to Faveral's most excellent Castle Creator, Luthbel's Wildenlander, and Xurge's Castle Guard. The latter two both for M3 which I still use on occasion cause they still work in DS and look great. I removed some cliffs, moved around some of the lantern posts, originally added some water under the bridge then reconsidered. Ended up using the Stealth poses for M4 and was surprised they only needed real minor tweaks.
Nice one FirstBastion ;-)
Thanks.