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I adjusted the aim of the pistol so that the light mounted to it was pointing at the monster again.
I think the biggest thing with this is that the color of the hall that they are in is very intense, there are a lot of small figures in this large very orange room, and they are getting swallowed up. The story seems very interesting... I almost feel bad for the guy!
You have come to a very goods point with this. The critter is clearly seen and aiming for the man, the man is shooting it, and the secont human with the pistol support is seen als well.
There ist light enough as well.
Now the thing to get rid of is the blotchiness in the wall surfaces.
Are you using Ueberenvironment light? If yes try for once to switch it of and render like that. it will be most probably too dark then but it the blochiness is gone then you know where it comes from.
The possiblilties then are either you try to get your light up without ueberenvironment (bothersome, now that you've come so far) or you need to get a rather low shading rate (long render time)
Yes, thats a great swordfight, maybe I actually do that, havent seen the film in a while!
so please take care not to get a radiation burn ;-)
Very nice glowing crystals, the crystalline character comes out very nicely and the robodog is a nice gimmic.
Only thing bothering me is the flat ground. If its a cave I would expect it to be rough, or at least uneven.
If you wish to change that the bottom part of the alchemy chasm from the starter bundle has a nice cavelike appearence. Though I don't know if you have that for iray.
Here is the newest render for one of my possibilities for the image titled Intruders.
Comments and suggestions are always welcome. Everyones projects are extremely good you all have great imaginations and talent. It always seems to be a extreme challenge for me to compete with all of you. It always helps me learn to get better with the challenge. Thanks for all the feedback. The female pose wa one I was working on from last month using a Boris Vallejo image pose. I change some things for this months contest and the angle is a bit different.
Thank-you Linwelly.
I've been rendering from behind a lead wall...so hopefully I'm ok ;-)
Wow...the ground. That's been bugging me but I didn't know what it was...but as soon as I read that, it was like a 2x4 between the eyes. I'll change that tonight and see how it goes.
You have come to a very goods point with this. The critter is clearly seen and aiming for the man, the man is shooting it, and the secont human with the pistol support is seen als well.
There ist light enough as well.
Now the thing to get rid of is the blotchiness in the wall surfaces.
Are you using Ueberenvironment light? If yes try for once to switch it of and render like that. it will be most probably too dark then but it the blochiness is gone then you know where it comes from.
The possiblilties then are either you try to get your light up without ueberenvironment (bothersome, now that you've come so far) or you need to get a rather low shading rate (long render time)
Thanks for your feedback Linwelly. Most of the lighting is using the UberAreaLight shader. I made some adjustments to the settings and have the results rendering as I type this.
Edit- just checked on the progress, and I'm at 25% after almost 8 hours. Looks like I might be posting it on Friday.
Now with a new floor - lumpier from alchemy chasm, but not as 'gritty' as I'd like yet. Our explorer did, however, find her hammer on the new floor.
Thanks for your feedback Linwelly. Most of the lighting is using the UberAreaLight shader. I made some adjustments to the settings and have the results rendering as I type this.
Edit- just checked on the progress, and I'm at 25% after almost 8 hours. Looks like I might be posting it on Friday.
Ended up being wrong in my estimate of how long things would take on the render. Here's version 12 after 17-18 hours of render time.
I'm a little surprised how "ungritty" that floor looks in your render. So I took the ac_ cavern to a quick and dirty test render. In this render I have thrown the texture map in the bump and dialed that up somewhat but I guess there is room for more bump.
The dragonslayer is there just for size fererence.
So either there is a huge difference in how iray handles that environment to 4.7 (what I used here) or we are not talking about the same cave.
like that hammer! I'd turn it a little so the handle can be seen a bit more.
Yeah, I've used that cavern and it is pretty rough.
Everyone is doing such great work! Here are a few comments on some of the ones I've missed so far...more to come...
Linwelly: While there's some room for improvement in the lighting, I think (in particular, I'd like to see the male figure's face a bit better), it's looking pretty good overall, and I agree with your assessment that the main thing missing is a sense of the story: who are these people and why are they fighting? The female figure's clothing is somewhat similar to the colors of the banner...maybe she's a guard or soldier? Is the other character a thief or spy? If so, maybe you can add a prop that might imply this?
cherpenbeck: This has improved so much! I think you've correctly identified the key issue. Adding some light on the lady (maybe a spotlight?) could possibly help. Check your camera settings as well, if you're using Depth of Field, the settings may need adjustment. Finally, check her skin surface settings to see if some tweaks there might help.
kaotkbliss: I love the energy of your piece. I do wish the lead vehicle stood out a bit more from the background...this might require changing the materials settings of the vehicle (lighter, brighter, or shinier) or the rocks (darker or possibly redder?). Overall lighting level may be a bit on the dim side, though possibly that's just me...
Toyen: I can't provide much support with Reality, unfortunately, but I love the emotion of your characters' poses!
The Blurst of Times: Yes, more overhead light to tone down the reds...possibly even making the other light slightly greenish would help, though plain white might look better, I'm not sure. Great job so far with posing and composition.
Kismet2012: I like the eagles, but I think it would be better with about half as many. They're a little distracting, as is. I wonder how this would look from the opposite angle, with the creature in the foreground and the cat turned towards the camera? Just something to think about...
h_habash: I agree with Teofa on the barn floor surface (best to keep the green grass outside the barn), but otherwise I think this is looking really good...very much improved from your initial renders. Nice job so far.
Same cave, different render. At least it's lumpier and not as flat...so at least it's got that going for it.
Another big difference is that this one has me mis-dialing the controls. Never underestimate my ability to mess up a perfectly good surface setting :-D
I'm finding iRay great, but also learning things over again. It's ray tracing, so more like reality, but seems to have different ways of dealing with surfaces and more integrated with DAZ. I'll try a test with 3Delight tonight (I'll have to add some lighting - the iRay emissive surfaces don't emit outside iRay), then do more learning on how to get the texture I expect from iRay on this. Always something new to learn (and I'm still learning the basics ;-) )
This looks promising: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/53881/
someone did a tonne of work to create a large collection of textures and presets for iRay. 1.9 GB download...in 30 minutes or so I should be able to try them out and see if something helps with my cave floor.
Assassin
Help me improve...thanks!
Rendered the Sasquatch in 3Delight with LAMH on and then layered it over the full picture rendered in Iray. Need to know what everyone thinks. Better with or without the extra hair?
thenotoriousjed I'll give a vote for the extra hair. It looks great and I love the humor aspect. Great stuff!
Oh, hairy, for sure, I think it needs him to be named "Harry" in the title! I think you could achieve a similar hair effect in 3delight with a displacement noise map, I think I posted that before though, and I know next to nothing about IRAY so I am no help there. It took me some searching to figure out what LAMH stands for. (Look at MY Hair http://www.daz3d.com/look-at-my-hair) It would be interesting to see a screenshot comparing your surface windows for the fur before and after the plugin is applied; I am guessing it is a script that gives you a noise map and dials to control the +/- and strength of said displacement map, but I could be wrong. I was told once that every script, plugin, addon is something you can do by hand, the programs just make the tools easier to find. I am a perpetual cynic though! You should send your pic to LAMH as a promo, I bet they would get a hoot out of it. :-) Looking good..
This is not sought after advice, but in looking at your picture it is clear to me that there are 3 parts, the figures/props, the log they are sitting on, and a background picture. I was thinking about what is making the three parts not look integrated. FWIW, they have come a long way towards looking natural, this is just a matter of tweaking. Its when the picture starts to be very close that the little things become distracting. When you can really tell its a render, they aren't irksome. But when it gets close to looking more photographic, a person has to stop and think.. "I know that's not real and its bugging me why I can tell". SO kudos for getting close to realism, if that is your goal!
1. The trees in the background all have a bark pattern that is a warm brown, and very linear. (I think Hobobo must live someplace along the US Eastern seaboard, south of the Mason Dixon line, given the type of forestry... it is almost on the border of becoming tropical, like you would see in florida, but not quite. I am guessing South Carolina, ;-) ) The barks are probably elm, hickory or some sort of nut tree like walnut, those tend be slender and have more linear bark patterns. The log, however, is definitely a more northern species. It looks like oak. It has a rougher, shorter texture, and cooler in color. Now, I personally prefer the bark texture you used, but that's because it is what feels like home to me. However, you can't put new textures on the trees in the cyclorama plane, and finding pictures to fit cyclorama planes is harder than it seems it would be. ALL of Hobobo's are very southern forests. Therefor I suggest finding a texture for the log to match the background... it is a hard thing to find and I know you have probably already looked. The texture you originally had on the log might work with some photoshop love. I think just the color and contrast on it need to be played with some. And then there is always the google option, though that tends to bring up a bunch of annoying paid sites even when you enter "free". If you have chrome, it allows a search setting for usage rights and size. I use "higher than 1024" so the textures do not look fuzzy. Using elm, beech, hickory in the search parameters will narrow to ones that are warm and more linear. Also- check your runtime folder's texture library for trees, and widen the search expanse in freebie sites to "trees", you might find a good diffuse texture on something else that you could use on the log. I'm sorry I am not more help with this!
2. The shadows in the background are very soft... this happens because the leaves break up the light and act like a filter, and because of bounce light. The overhead light is strongly directional, but has soft shadows, almost none are distinct except to cast a general darkness to the floor. This makes it hard to tell where the sun is in the photo, and this also true in real life as hikers often lose track of the time. I am not convinced that the sun is a low in the sky in the background as you have it in on the characters, but that is hard to tell. In a forest there is also usually some weird greenish reflected bounce light from the green light reflected off all those leaves. (We see the light as green because the leaves absorb all the colors but green, therefor the only color that is left to be bouncing around causing bounce light is green.) At this point, the mans face is lacking in contrast, to some dregree, but also looks flat because it seems to only have two tones of grey. He needs color and life in his skin! I would like to see bounce light and rim light maybe, to make him look more 3-d? The light on your figures and props has run the whole gamut from over contrasted to under-contrasted as you have gone through the editing process. I think the IRAY looks the more integrated of the two. I think the IRAY render does good things for lots of textures in the scene, as well as colors, but either IRAY of LAMF is doing odd things for the Sasquatches overall light /color and in particular the color and lighting of the fur. He seems looks oddly glowing, as if all of a sudden the light is different just for him... I think one thing that is happening is you are losing valuable shadows. I don't know if there are dials and settings to play with this. I would consider trying LAMF on the skunk as well, sometimes when more than one object has an effect applied, the effect seems less out of place. (And if you have a skunk link, I need a skunk! )
3. The props diffuse textures have varying degrees of "fuzziness" to them. This is because they are all made with different size maps. Unfortunately it is hard to make textures better, but it is easier to make them worse. You could make them better by finding a high resolution starbucks logo and retexturing your cup... but that is unlikely to happen. Instead I would check the size of the maps in the fuzziest item... and make the maps of the jerky and other items with clearer textures smaller (don't change the WxH proportions, just the relative scale of the diffuse maps compared to those of less nicely made props.) Right now the forest looks a bit fuzzy, so making the textures less stark will integrate foreground and background. I would consider adding a texture to the mans boot- it seems a little plastic as it is reflecting the light so strongly and evenly. Here is one I like: https://www.flickr.com/photos/webtreatsetc/4563281265/
Other than fixing a few things, like the corner-balancing jerky, I think this is close to done! (I know the skunk is supposed to be helping but its not quite reading.)
I apologize that this is really wordy and over-explained- I blame the pain meds. Kudos!
Thank you Scott and every one for your helpful comments and links to help me achieve the right way of scene making, although I'm new to this but I'm really enjoying.
I tried many times and rendered at least 8 times to get my scene as closer to reality.... unfortunately with my limited resources of props and landscaping "although I've had to buy some", but non was helpful to get me as close as I wanted the scene to be.
Finally, I've decided to change the scene background and surroundings, and also added additional figure to it, tweaked and adjusted the pose of the boy hand to pat on the small horse head, I think this way it'll add a story to the scene.
I'm doing the final touches to the new scene, waiting to get the right render to upload it, just wait for the new version of my horses and I hope you all will like it.
Here is the result of my latest work, I let the other render sit a while and the comments from Scott actually gave me a hint for the direction I want to get with my swashbuckler. so thank you there Scott, that and the nice objects that dollygirl found for me will give me some more work to do, which is a good thing.
But here for the new one, I call it " Be my guest".
There is actually a good amount of thought in this one. And some people might find a reference, but its not meant to be a copy but a stand alone and as such I will wait with giving my thoughts about it until after you had a chance to look at it and if you want to give a comment on your ideas and thoughts.
thenotoriousjed, there already is a lot of things said, our dear fiona writing novels :-) , but I still would like to add my twocents.
If I was asked which redner i like better i would say the lower one is my favourite, even though its the one with the less hair.
I really like the furryness in the first one, I'd think that would be the sasquatch in his winter pelt.
The one thing I like better in the lower one is the more consistend light. in the upper one there ist a "studio light" to clearly visible for the rest of the setting. And I have to add at this point, that the light in the forest background is mattering that much, with sitting on that fallen tree, there certainly is an opening in the woods where the sun can shine directly on them.
The other thing thats irritating me is, that the amount of hair makes the chest look more hairless than in the other picture.
I agree with fiona that at some point in the development the guy hat gotten a rather dim skin colour. There was one light setting you used where this made perfect sense, but now it would be better with more colour intensity.
Welcome to the newbies forum Gallows.
The scene you picked ist quiet a challenge and you have made a good start at it.
There are some questions you might want to ask youself to better tell the story. For one I'm not sure if the guy is suspection already that there is something wrong? He ist still close to her that what makes me think he is still falling for her act of lovydovy. but his stance is one of defence expecting an attac.
If the first I would suggest turning them further towards facing each other, him maybe looking at her face or some space deeper.
If the second you maybe want to make him move away from her a bit.
On another note it might be helpful to change the format to a portrait.
I hope this hepls you
Welcome to the newbies forum Gallows.
The scene you picked ist quiet a challenge and you have made a good start at it.
There are some questions you might want to ask youself to better tell the story. For one I'm not sure if the guy is suspection already that there is something wrong? He ist still close to her that what makes me think he is still falling for her act of lovydovy. but his stance is one of defence expecting an attac.
If the first I would suggest turning them further towards facing each other, him maybe looking at her face or some space deeper.
If the second you maybe want to make him move away from her a bit.
On another note it might be helpful to change the format to a portrait.
I hope this hepls you
Added to that I think maybe you should chnge your background somewhat. The extremely over large window makes them look like models rather than living figures
One thing that always bugged me about the barefoot dancer shirt was that the wrists of the shirt are not attached to anything, so the sleeves should dangle free from the elbow.
I can't remember how I fixed this issue with mine (I may have went into the joint editor and deleted the finger bones from the shirt?)
Grotto to the Great Mystery
Greetings all! This is another illustration I've been working on with some of the same characters, both this one and "The Conquest" will be used as illustrations in a book I'm currently writing. Would like your views/critique of this one. Thanks! :)
Oh, hairy, for sure, I think it needs him to be named "Harry" in the title! I think you could achieve a similar hair effect in 3delight with a displacement noise map, I think I posted that before though, and I know next to nothing about IRAY so I am no help there. It took me some searching to figure out what LAMH stands for. (Look at MY Hair http://www.daz3d.com/look-at-my-hair) It would be interesting to see a screenshot comparing your surface windows for the fur before and after the plugin is applied; I am guessing it is a script that gives you a noise map and dials to control the +/- and strength of said displacement map, but I could be wrong. I was told once that every script, plugin, addon is something you can do by hand, the programs just make the tools easier to find. I am a perpetual cynic though! You should send your pic to LAMH as a promo, I bet they would get a hoot out of it. :-) Looking good..Thank you Fiona and for the suggestions as well. Will look into them and see if I can make any final tweaks before submitting.
thenotoriousjed, there already is a lot of things said, our dear fiona writing novels :-) , but I still would like to add my twocents.
If I was asked which redner i like better i would say the lower one is my favourite, even though its the one with the less hair.
I really like the furryness in the first one, I'd think that would be the sasquatch in his winter pelt.
The one thing I like better in the lower one is the more consistend light. in the upper one there ist a "studio light" to clearly visible for the rest of the setting. And I have to add at this point, that the light in the forest background is mattering that much, with sitting on that fallen tree, there certainly is an opening in the woods where the sun can shine directly on them.
The other thing thats irritating me is, that the amount of hair makes the chest look more hairless than in the other picture.
I agree with fiona that at some point in the development the guy hat gotten a rather dim skin colour. There was one light setting you used where this made perfect sense, but now it would be better with more colour intensity.I actually set the chest hair and around neck on invisible to showcase the chain. I may try it with those turned on and see if I can find a happy medium. Maybe even see if I can shorten the hair all around. I like the non hairy look as well but feel if I do it without the hair may be losing some of the realism I want.
I think the couple is too close to the window.. I would think of using just an open arch. You can find one as part of Alchemy Chasm.. included with DAZ
I think you have done a good job using the included content and coming up with a scene. Good start that just needs tweaks.
the sleeves on the Persian top are annoying. Forgive me if you know this, but if clothing has separate material zones you can just invis parts of it. I do it a lot since I just jumble mismatching outfits together a lot. You can use the opacity slider in surfaces to make a mat zone invisible.
the other pic illustrates making nearly every mat zone on the blouse 0 opacity and stuffing it under the Lumberjack vest.