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:) Thank you ,, I will see what I can do.
Kathryn I am confused by the rapid changes of your portrait. so the hunk in the gianny outfit is your latest, yes? well he is good to look at but you cut of his hands at the joints, thats a bit unfortunate, maybe give hin one of the daggers to play around, he is looking dangerous enough for that. Other than that I like the effect of the shadows but the light seem a bit too monochome.
Technical question, did you put the fibremesh eybrows on top of the defalut ones ? It looks a little like that, they do look neat, was thinking of testing those as well. but I guess it would be good to get rid of the default ones then
Yes, I put them over the default ones lol ,, later this afternoon I'll play with them to see if I can get something that looks nice.
thats much better yes, they are both looking much more natural, good work. I would try to bent the back of the baby the other way round, children that age don't have an s shaped backbone so the will round up the back.
Perspective is making mommy's hand looking really large. I dont have a good solution for that but maybe you could move mother and child closer together so that the child's head comes to lie where the elbow of the mother attaches to the upper arm. the left hand needs to repositioned then as well and all body parts are closer together. Maybe you can find a towel or somthin like that for them to lie on
I'm calling this Reflections. (Maybe a little heavy-handed.)
My daughter just got married a few months ago, so I thought I'd draw from that. Behind her will be some toys/stuffed animals on the bed so that her past is both literally and figuratively behind her. She is "reflecting" on her past that is behind her contrasted with what's ahead. I want her to be happy, but at the same time a little sad.
Obviously, this is a long way from finished. I've run into a few challenges along the way.
Smile: I want a more subtle, pretty smile. After all, this is the happiest day of her life but with a few tugs on her heart from her past. Turns out there is a fine line between pretty smile and "I want to kill Batman". I'm getting there, but not quite yet.
Lighting 1: I've built a three sided room with a window that has panes in it. I hope the light that hits the bed will come in showing as squares of light as the shadows from the panes cast. Sort of works, needs more help.
Lighting 2: The iray default lights still give me fits. I had hoped to use the Azimuth and Elevation to point the sun around so that the window thing would work out. They have no effect on the lights. I was able to move it around using the dome rotation option. So, I'm missing something obvious - more research to come.
Lighting 3: I didn't want the shadows from the exterior lights to be cast on the interior of the room (other than through the offscreen window). That wouldn't look right if you are expecting a room to be lit from a fixture directly above. I added a plane to the room as a ceiling and applied the emmisive shader to it. I change the temperature and light level and that seems to have worked out well.
Lighting 4: I added a point spotlight as a fill light for the model - mostly head on. That muted the shadows that her smile was causing in the cheek creases and made her a little less scary. I think I need to tone down the lumens a little.
Lighting 5: The table top light is now lit. Too much. Need to dial that back a bit. I thought this might give the illusion that the fill light was coming from it rather than an invisible fill light.
Lighting 6: I have a lot to learn about lighting. :)
Cubes: The cubes behind the model are placeholders for a bed and maybe a stuffed bear, neither of which I have in inventory. Working on that.
Tear: I plan to add a tear to the model - just one. My daughter welled up with happy tears all day of her wedding, so I thought this might work. A happy tear with the little sad component as well. My first attempt didn't really show up very well. Due to the distance from the camera, it might not show up so much, but another attempt soon.
Hair: Holy crap! The hair is driving me nuts. This one (Udane) seems to work the best for the mood of the day based on my inventory. The flirty hair looks good too, but this seems to be a little better. I think I've got it laying right now and the flowers were an hour's exercise. This hair seems to have some reflections in it - I think I have the lights adjusted to minimize this. Maybe the reflections property will be helpful too. So many experiments, so little time....
Doll: I used a G2F with MEC4D's birthday freebe for the outfit, then scaled her down to make a Barbie-Like doll. (No trademarks or copyrights were harmed in the making of this figure.) I think it turned out well. Once I add a plush animal or two to the bed, it should look a little better.
I used my render from the landscapes contest for the portrait over the ersatz bed. Waste not, want not.
I have to say, the portraits presented so far are amazing. Inspires you to do better. Tons of fun.
Best Regards,
Eric
Thanks Linwelly, i'll do my best on it, appreciate suggestions.
Yes - he is my latest. Sorry for the confusion but with my campfire scene going belly up with memory violation errors, I can't render it. I was trying to render the most basic elements one at a time then layer it - but that's not working either, so I'm going to stick with the Gianni character for this.
I had to chuckle about cutting his hands off - see, that's me already thinking ahead about text placement for a book cover - you won't see his hands because of the text. lol! But you are very correct, and this isn't a book cover contest.
So I'll see about your dagger idea - a very good one.
On the monochrome lighting, I toned down the orange because I thought it was a bit too orange. I'm going for the torchlight look with that I'll see about bumping up the blue. The theme I'm going for - and this is forward looking to the eventual book cover - is light and dark. I have a theme going with this series and this is another step with that so I'm trying to get the "stepping out of darkness" idea going with him - yet the darkness is still very much there. So I'll see what I can do to improve that - maybe bump up the color of the blue a little more.
Thanks for the feedback, Linwelly! I really appreciate it!
Nice suggestion. Thanks.
First Iray render, I'm not really sure how to use it. Seems similar to Reality/Lux, but different results. I'll keep trying.
after many renders I've decided that this one will be my first entry. :)
Linwelly thanks for the suggestion. Although I liked the dragon it does take the eyes away from the main character so I took it out. I closed in more on the charactor and added a few things. I also did some depth of field on the render. Here is the latest.
Linwelly thanks for the suggestion. Although I liked the dragon it does take the eyes away from the main character. I closed in more on the charactor and added a few things. I also did some depth of field on the render. Here is the latest. It was rendered in Bryce. No Postwork.
Thank you both @Linwelly and @DollyGirl for the input!
As much as I love fairies, and I must admit a little piece of my heart cried when I deleted her from the scene, I agree that it looks much better with just the minotaur. I also changed up the background (and lighting) a bit.
Definitely open to critiques and suggestions, thanks so much!
Nice image, well done.
This is great!, I like the new background very much and the Focus is really on the minotaur, love that velvet effect on the darkerparts of his skin. One little nitpick: could you change the colour of the teeth o a tone similar to the horns? they strike me a little too white, but that's just really nitpicking
Thankyou to both @Linwelly and @kathrynloch for your feedback, it was my first attempt applying simulated DOF with gimp and I may have gone overboard :)
This one only uses the iRay camera DOF, with the iRay environment rendered, so no fake grass background.
I also relaxed the pose a bit, the right arm seemed a bit high and unnatural.
There was a tiny bit of post, the elbow closest to the camera had some fireflies/graininess, I tried upping the quality to 3 and it helped a bit, any better ideas?
As an aside, it is really great to see the variety of entries that are being generated.
As the forum had an attachment hiccup, I have attached my original green grass wip and the new (hopefully) improved version.
Great job, Skinner! I think your second one looks tons better! Very nicely done.
But fake grass aside, I do like how the green contrasted with the red in her outfit. Contrasting colors like that always give an image some extra pop and you achieved that without a whole lot of work with the grass. I don't know if you can swing adding more green with the environment aspect but its something to think about.
I also like that you closed in on your subject but would honestly crop it a little more. In your first image you are closer to the thirds premise we've been talking about in this thread but yes, the extra grass on the right was too much. In your second image you've closed in nicely but there's still too much extra on the sides and she's almost too centered. But your depth of field, the softening of the pose, and closing in on your subject in the second image is very, very nicely done! I really like it.
Thank you
In the entries thread I didn't mention anything about my workflow, and I'm not sure if it's something that is normally done.I used Daz Studio for everything, rendered in iray with no post work.
In the entries you post the title, the program you used to create your scene, and some people add the rendering mashine they used. If you postworked you image you just mention the program you used for the postwork
okie dokie,, I fixed it :)
Not a problem! I like the pose much better now but if this is your first time using Iray, you'll probably have to change all your shaders to iray compatible. You still have a ways to go before the entry deadline so you should have plenty of time if that's what you want to do, but as you'll see it will open another whole new can of worms. If I might suggest getting a render you're very happy with in the format you're most familiar with then save that one along with your scene. From there branch into a new scene where you can work and tweak for iray rendering and lighting. Then you can play with that to your heart's content. If you get something you like better in time for the contest - then you're off to the races. But if not, you still have that render you saved nice and pristine for the contest and have lost nothing.
And here's my latest following Linwelly's suggestion to give him "a dagger to play with." hehe - couldn't help it but the word choice decided this one. This was the best I could come up with and not have him looking like he was about ready to slice off his own thumb.
Oh and I changed his expression just a tad to hopefully work with the premise.
Whatcha think?
I really like how the light works with this guy. Really nice job. Regarding the knife, something about the thumb position looks a little off. Perhaps it's twisted too much? I was trying to match your pose with my own knives (in real life) and it seemed an uncomfortable position with the thumb. What if he were stroking the top of his blade with his finger tips?
Otherwise, the knife is a good addition.
Best Regards,
Eric
Edit: Attached an image I did very quickly as an example.
Haha, pretty much what I had in mind when I made my comment. Works pretty well I think but I like the suggestion of ewcarman. furthermore I would add DOF so that the focus is away from dagger and hand. Either you changed something about the lights as well or the shift in the pose made the mix of light and shadows more pleasing, at least to my eyes, so good one!
ok, I have to admit, that this a lot to chew on. First of I got to say Iray is not my turf, so I won't say anything about that. So for the concept, I would suggest to crop of everything left of the mirror, I like the stuff you used and it gives a setting, but it uses too much of your place you need for the character. How about you use that bord on the backwall so it shows in the mirror and the old toys can be placed to be presented on that one, shurely no adult woman has her toys still in her bed. (btw love tha fact that you used you landscape render, great idea)
Next I would position her closer to the mirror and draw in the camera in as well so you get to see a similar amount of the "real" woman as in your original, I don't know if that possible with mirror images but I would try to set the DOF so that the background blurrs. If you let her rise her arms a bit with the brideflowers you get the intersting parts closer together (got to admit I always feel a bit awkward when I see the bridal flowers held right in front of the Lady bits)
Now for the smile thats a toughy. The problem is with a fake smile, you smile with your mouth but less with your eyes, for a sad smile its a bit the other way round plus you draw the inner parts of your eybrows up a bit. Does that make sense to you? Well how you can realise that is, luckily for me, your can of worms. ( I'm a meany, I know).
Thank you both ewcarman and Linwelly! I appreciate the feedback, but quick question - although ewcarman I doubt you saved that image. Did you perchance try any iray metal shaders on the blade? I don't know what changed but something did. Any time I tried to put a reflective metal on the blade it went black. It didn't matter what sort of lighting I had and I even tried primatives and nulls set up solely for the blade. I was just wondering, since you set up the example, ewcarman, if you might encounter the same result. The position of my blade is somewhat resulting of trying to find an angle to see if it was the lighting creating the black blade. All to no avail. The only way I was able to get it to show up at all was to apply the brushed metal iray shader. Car paint shaders worked too but shiny metals - iron, cobalt, silver, etc - nothing works on the blade. The handle and brass fittings however are shiny shaders and worked just fine. I don't know what it is with just the blade, especially since I set up lighting to work just for it and ended up with the same result - a black blade.
So I thought I'd ask and see if the same happens with yours.
In the meantime, I'll take a shot at the suggestions - thank you!
I hadn't tried any shaders on it, but I did save the image. I had a similar issue in the April contest (the Dragon Chess thing I did) where my blades would render black. Never got around to figuring it out - don't remember if that was iray or not.
I just did a few shaders on the knife and they all seem to be showing up just fine. I don't have any additional lighting other than the default provided by the dome and I don't have a camera set up - this is just a render from the perspective view. Attached is a silver and aluminum satin shader.
Subsequently, I've added a camera and a spotlight, but that didn't change anything. Let me know if there is something else you'd like me to try.
Hey Eric - here's what I got for ya so take it for what its worth - which isn't much.
First in regard to iray and lighting - nix the sun right out of there and save yourself the headache for now. If you want real control of your lighting use primitives. You'll thank me later. ;) Turn off the environment completely and use the iray emissive on primitives. That being said, I'm still struggling to gain the effects of true ambient lighting with primitives. I know it's there, I just haven't found it yet.
If you want squares of light, create an alpha with that effect and use it in the cutout setting in the iray surface setting. It will work wonders!
The problem with combining environment and primitive lighting is that they compete. You can fine tune the emission on both but you need everything else set in the scene before you do that and I think there's a lot easier ways to accomplish what you want in that regard.
From this point I'm going to agree in that we both have a lot to learn about lighting! But I've done experiment after experiment on lighting - in fact my current entry started off as a lighting experiment, It depends on how far you want to go with your methodology. There's still plenty of time to enter the contest - at least it isn't a horse race in that regard.
There's one thing I want to add, since she's standing before the mirror, wouldn't she be looking at her reflection in that regard? The smile I can understand, and I would trust that to carry your meaning, but standing before a mirror and not looking at herself makes little sense. Also, adjust the doll on the bed unless you wish the meaning of what's coming up on the honeymoon to play a part in your image - if ya know what I mean. *wink, wink, nudge, nudge*
Personally I really like the premise and idea you've got going. I don't want to offend anyone, but I think if you nail this with the lighting - you've got the contest won hands down.
Having just posted what I did - I had an evil idea and should call this one "The Son-In-Law"
So sorry, Eric.
OH NOES!
NOT AGAIN! I'm getting ye olde error message "Internal error could not move the file". Which means I can't post an image. Brace yourselves everyone we might be fixin' to lose attachments again.
Very very interesting! Thank you! I'll let you know if I come up with anything. For now this has me stumped especially since it's not all iray shaders throwing the fit only reflective metal.