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Excellent! I didn't know you could do that. Thanks for the technique and help.
Tried a different camera angle as Scott suggested.
A comparison of the different versions.
that angle is not working.
Hi everyone, here is the new version of horses in a new scene, I did some changes to the original scene posted earlier "Barn and Horses" and I'm calling this one Desert Horses, I hope you'll like it more than the previous one.
In this scene, I've used the same boy and two horses pose, added additional figure and put some saddles, changed the surroundings and environment.
I think I need to work more in the lighting and render setting to make it more clearer, now I've decided to give my computer a rest as the render time takes not less than 4 hours to finish. :roll:
This is a nice image h_habash.
Your ground is very shiny. You might want to look at the reflective settings in the surfaces tab.
Since the adult horse is saddled.. and foals aren't, I think you could drop the extraneous saddle on the left and narrow the image for a little better composition.
This is a nice image h_habash.
Your ground is very shiny. You might want to look at the reflective settings in the surfaces tab.
I believe that is the Tiler shader for DAZ studio ground. It has the option to make it look wet, and it seem to load the wet style automatically when you use it, so look into your scene if there are two ground thingies, one of the is the water level, take that away abd the shinyness should be gone.
Well, not at the moment anyway. Kismet2012, if you want to explore the concept further, I'd recommend tightening the composition quite a bit...zoom in to cut out all the empty space in the foreground and on the right side...maybe put the troll right on the edge of the image. The focus of the image, I'd think, would be the leopard. It might also require altering the scenery too.
Assassin
My work in progress. The suggestions have really helped.
This is looking really good Gallows.
Is this more along the lines of what you were thinking Scott?
Editted to add the same shot with a different format.
I've gone back to the flatter floor now that I figured out how to apply the new surface presets.
I'm not sure the dof is right. Part of me wants more of the crystals to be, well, crystal clear focus...but it feels like a low light environment with a fairly open aperture on the camera, which would narrow the dof. Am I over-thinking this? (presumably in a world/time with glowing space crystals and robot dogs, perhaps cameras don't work the same as my old Pentax k1000 used to :-) )
Any other input?
I think he is saying that there is to much wasted space that is not telling your story. I took your picture and I can crop out just about 3 quarters of the image and still tell the story, so I think you might want to move your camera. Remember the sweet spots. I would also add the birds back in. They add great movement and provide a reason for the cat to be looking back.
Assassin
This is from a different perspective.
How do I make a fire in the fireplace and get rid of the grey fingernails? This program is a puzzle. ;)
Hi smurph9, lovely colors on this one. I think your itch about the dof is correct. If you look at your image the specularity between the foreground and the background is balanced such that the background has become the focus of the story. Introducing the dof will bring the eye back to the two characters in your story. I have taken the liberty of messing with your image to see what would happen if dof was introduced. I think the results tell me that dof would improve the interest in the image. I also noticed in the upper right corner there is a super saturated spot with indeterminate configuration. This kind of thing we call a tangent because it is distracting. I think removal of what is causing this would also help in the image. If you want more of the pretty crystals why don't you scatter some smaller ones in front of and beside the robot? That would break up that strong horizontal line of the ground and maybe address the issue of the texture of the ground. If I were working on this image I would also see what I could do to make the robot a little more active in the scene, like sitting down and cocking his head to say "Hey what is this?" or straining his nose towards the big crystal as she is stretching out her hand.
As always these are just suggestions. Looking forward to seeing what you do.
This is a nice composition h_habash, I like the control of color. It helps the eye travel across the image. I agree that your ground is a bit to shinny. I have not started to play with Iray but I know that if I increase the bump or displacement I get a better result. I also know that Iray bump parameters not as strong as 3Delight which is not as strong as Poser. So if your ground is from a Poser format then there is a diffident need to increase the bump level to something greater than 1. I agree with you about your light balance. Not sure what you want but I think that your ambient light could be increased just a bit so that the light coming from the right can be toned down and not wash out your young man's face so much. If you are using a spot light in addition to the light source from the right I would turn off the spot, keep the light to the right the same and bump up your sun light just a bit. Remember that even though it is early evening with the sun going down our eyes gather much more light then the camera can so bring up the ambient with the strong light from the setting sun will still be believable.
I noticed that the bridle is only showing the reins and that there is no visible means of holding the bit in the horse's mouth. A horse would spit that bit out in a heart beat the way it is currently rigged. I would see why the bridle disappeared.
So if I were working on this image I would trade out the saddle for a blanket of similar color as the saddle. I would want to keep that nice composition technique in place but I think the saddle is not quite in keeping with the medieval saddle the other horse has on. There is how ever the practice of blanketing a young horse to get it comfortable with having something on its back and to get it used to having stuff flapping about its body and not get spooked. So I would maybe use this DAZ dynamic horse blanket: http://www.optitex-dynamiccloth.com/FreebieDownload05.php or this blanket http://www.optitex-dynamiccloth.com/FreebieDownload06.php to drape across the rock. Here is a tutorial on how to use dynamic cloth in DAZ. http://www.optitex-dynamiccloth.com/Yourfirstdrapeandbeyond.pdf I would texturize the cloth with a red tartan http://www.sharecg.com/v/60285/View/7/Material-and-Shader/J-Tex-Tartan-for-Fabricator
Remember these are suggestions and you can use them if you want to. Looking forward to seeing what you do.
not sure about the poses and thinking of adding a few more birds.
Can you move the dog's tail or curve it slightly to give the impression the dog is wagging his tail? Even sitting down most dogs in that position would be wagging that tail like crazy.
Welcome Gallows. Yes I agree this program is a puzzle. Of all of the renders that you have submitted I like this one the best. We can see what each of the subjects is feeling and doing in this version.
To make fire I would use this freebie http://forum.runtimedna.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=690 You have to be registered to download the zip but registration is free and there are lots of treasures there to explore. You will have to go into the surface tab and set the opacity on all of the surfaces to zero except for the Fire surface. You will want to change the ambient parameter to 100%. In the below image I have a point light nestled in the flames with a color setting of 255 168 29. The point light is to provide the glow light bounce off the walls inside of the fireplace. I use a spot light that points out from the fire towards the subject of interest with the same color setting as the point light. This gives me the look of the light coming off of the fire and bouncing off of the subject. I adjust the Intensity of the spot until I start to see the orange cast on the subjects. You may have to turn down your ambient lighting and put in some spots to get the dim lighting around the edges of the image but still keep the focus of the image in light.
For your grey finger nails I would suggest that you reapply the material settings. Sometimes it can be impossible to figure out just what you did to get the grey, so it is just easier to go back to the beginning and start over again. :down:
I think that I would put a bit of shine and specularity on the blade. This way the eye will be attracted to it and makes you go aha.
Looking forward to seeing what you do.
I like that you have used a sweet spot to help focus the image on Willow. She has a lovely expression on her face. Another suggestion for a pose is to move the pup a little closer to Willow. You know dogs they got no personnel space and puppies just want to be in your space. This will unfortunately cause the dynamics of the image shift and I am not sure you want to change it. I like the idea of more birds too. They could help balance out the right side of the image. Willow's right hand seems to need some tweeking.
I think if I were working on this image I would add some pink to the right side to help the eye go all a way across the image.
Remember just ideas. Looking forward to seeing this one completed.
Thanks Dolly Girl.
Fixed the tangent (sounds like polite for goof-up...'cause I really should have fixed that anyway), and working on the dog and the blank space in front of it. Only so many pose controls (since it's actually a larger scale tactical drone that I scaled down and realized the back of it looked like a dog's face) but I'm thinking of adding a probe from it's nose, like K9 in Dr Who (Tom Baker as the Doctor).
Also, dof helps separate foreground and background as you mentioned, but now I have the dog getting blurry...clearly have to fix that.
So while I fix the dof and the 'dog'...any other suggestions while the next render does it's [relatively slow] magic?
This may be my final version. A lot more work went into this than I anticipated which is a good thing. Learned a lot from all the suggestions and ideas gathered in this forum.
I redid the Sasquatch fur to add in chest hair and make it look better with the lighting. I changed the man's skin a bit to look less pale, game him a smile and changed the texture on the boots. I also changed the texture for the log they are sitting on and the shader for the sunglasses (Quite proud the way the sunglasses came out).
So really happy with it. Still would take suggestions.
One trick that I learned while doing the dance pose is that a point light between the two figures that hits them both with even falloff will put the focus on the central characters, and make it feel like they are sharing an intimate moment. I like this image very much! I am not sure if you are familiar with some of the communities beyond the Daz garden gate, but the folks over at PDFlives enjoy similar themes to this, and are content creators for a lot of textures and freebies for many things, including the various doll/toon characters. There are 2 sites, one where you have to be registered where the community interacts, http://pfdlives.com/pfd/ and one for freebies that anyone can access: http://www.pfddelights.com/index.php?action=forum. The only other suggestion I can come up with for your image is that it looks so happy- but the sky looks sad. I would like a more cheerful sky!
A quick PS...I knew I had seen those mushrooms before and it was killing me so I went looking to no avail, and then when I had given up, I found it! Where did you get the background from, I like it!
http://pfdlives.com/pfd/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=7164.0;attach=37036;image
Edit: pffft I can't get the link to work, but its by Nita B found here: Re: APRIL SHOWOFF THREAD
« Reply #168 on: April 17, 2015, 11:28:31 PM »
I think that you can have the best of both worlds by making a middle ground of crystals that are IN focus, before you fade to the ones that are not. I love the colors in this so much. I envy what some of the "real" rendering engines can do with these kinds of surfaces. I would agree that more focus needs to be on the "dog" somehow... there is a lot going on, and he is getting lost. Perhaps more contrast on him. My new toy for the month is gamma control, I don't know how it works in Iray, but in 3delight you can gamma the whole image to be lighter and less contrasty, such as a light faded distant background,and then set certain parts back to having less gamma, like in the foreground, or to correct certain textures. Its a bit tedious but it gives good control, letting me do things in a single render that I might have had to use layers and compositing for before. In this case I would gamma the crystal and background and gamma correct the woman and especially the robot. Not sure if this is possible or if you will find it useful! Looking really good so far.
I know you said that the only lights in the scene are coming from the crystals.. having the middle crystal emit more light to hit the faces of the three of them would draw the eye in even more... or having her face down closer to it, so it gets illuminated more, along with the robots face, as if they are sharing a secret about the crystal... particularly if you can cheat the color of it more towards white.
Can you move the dog's tail or curve it slightly to give the impression the dog is wagging his tail? Even sitting down most dogs in that position would be wagging that tail like crazy.
Thank you Kismet that's a good idea. I do remember thinking that but I see so many things I want to do and forget half of them. I still have to develop a work flow.
I like that you have used a sweet spot to help focus the image on Willow. She has a lovely expression on her face. Another suggestion for a pose is to move the pup a little closer to Willow. You know dogs they got no personnel space and puppies just want to be in your space. This will unfortunately cause the dynamics of the image shift and I am not sure you want to change it. I like the idea of more birds too. They could help balance out the right side of the image. Willow's right hand seems to need some tweeking.
I think if I were working on this image I would add some pink to the right side to help the eye go all a way across the image.
Remember just ideas. Looking forward to seeing this one completed.
Thank you Dollygirl, I like all your ideas and will try to work them into a new test render.
Thank you for the links, had a look at the site and am waiting for registration approval. Also thanks for the comment on my image.
The background is DM's Enchanted Hill found on Renderosity http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/dms-enchanted-hill/103797/
I am not sure if you know how to work with the surfaces tab... if you don't , there are lots here to help with that. If you do...
Here are the basics from a mini tutorial I wrote on how to create a fire from a simple rectangle primitive. It relies on you knowing how to change the primitive's maps in the surfaces tab, and knowing how to apply a shader. If you haven't done these yet, let me know and I will step back a bit!
The maps I used for the demo I did are attached
.
Simply put, Find a free to use image of fire that you like on a black background, and using a 2-d photo editor, create a black and white mask where everything that was color in your image is now white except for a slight fade at the edges. Theb, back in Daz, make an Uber Light Plane, found in the lights section of the Smart Content tab. Or, you can create a primitive rectangle and apply the UberArea Light shader base to it.. no difference, really. Delete the Uber Environment Light that comes with the Uber LightPlane. (Critical step!) Then select the Uber Area Light and go to your "surfaces" tab. Put the color picture in the diffuse and ambient slots and the black and white in the oppacity. In the ambient strength block, use the little "wheel" shape near the slider next to the heart, and in the window that opens uncheck "use limits" . Then dial the ambient up to around 150-200% but not too high or the light will wash out the color. Dial the transparency/oppacity to around 95% so you can see the walls through it. If you make sure your black and white map has a little fade at the edges, it will look natural. If you rotate the primitive to be flat to the camera, it will create the illusion of being 3-d. Game makers do this all the time distant with trees and leaves so they can render quickly in real time. This technique is also used in the rendering community by those who want figures and props in the background but don't want high rendering times, they will stick a cardboard dummy in the scene... I learned recently that these are called "tubes". They look horrid up close but from a distance are fine!
Learning to do it this way will also give you more control over the fires in your scene, so you don't have the same fireplace as everyone else in the community has used a thousand times over. Maybe you want embers, or sparks, or a fire that is fading to red.. Free to use creative commons licensed images of various types of fire on a black background are a dime a dozen. You can use the same techniquie with primitives and opacity to create fog, rain.. many other semi transparent items. I get the feeling that you are very new... If this goes over your head right now, that's okay, you can come back to it in a month when you need a fire again, and it might suddenly click. In any case I hope you or someone else finds this useful.
Now.. to the fingernail issue. It is best NOT to mess with skin maps when you are new- the headaches I made for myself when some setting was different and suddenly I had lines where UV maps met, and I had no idea what was causing them! There are too many "settings" being applied to try to match them up, sometimes. What Dolly said is the best way... reload the whole set of materials for the figure. If you try reloading the materials for the figures and it seems like the program doesn't change anything, it doesn't work, I appreciate the frustration with this, sometimes it can be buggy, almost like it is keeping cookies or something somewhere. Or maybe it has been my inexperience, hard to tell. But in any case, I came up with a work around: What I do then is save all the presets I can about the character, even the "bad" materials that aren't working right. i even name the materials preset "bad materials!" so I know not to use it later. I reboot my computer, reload daz and whole scene. I then hide my "bad materials" character with the little eye button, and load a new genesis female in the scene. I select her and one by one, I add my presets back in. She should end up in exactly the same spot, with the same features, expression, and pose as the one that is hiding. I do everything except the materials.. and then I try loading new materials. If it works on the newly added character, then I delete the old one AND the bad materials preset.
The only other suggestion I have for your image is to try playing with the facial features of the characters to personalize them, as well as the morphs for the hair. Right now they are looking a little "out of the box" . There are also a thousand freebie textures out there for the clothes that come free with genesis. Using items in Daz Studio not found in the Daz store or that come free with the program is a process to learn but there are good tutorials available for that.
Looking very good, hope some of this helps, and looking forward to what you do!
I think what may be lacking is a feeling of danger to the scene. They are balancing on a ledge, yet it does not feel precarious.
I think part of the solution to this might be camera angle... or making the area below the ledge appear to be a long distance down if they fell, like they are on a ledge above a courtyard, for example, and you can see the courtyard from above, and its out of focus slightly and perhaps with perspective effects to show distance. It doesnt have to take up a lot of the image, just a sliver at the bottom, and moving the camera angle so it is looking down on them.
The other option might be to give a point of view of someone who is looking up at them, as if the camera is a frightened watcher. Again, it doesnt have to be a lot.
Both of the camera angles below make the person on the ledge seem more precarious.. from the movie "Man on a Ledge"