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Intermediate Submission
Title: New Rules (Reupload)
The coven has a new leader, and all the rules are about to change.
(Zero post work, all done in Daz Studio)
nice adaptions @marconft6 yes DAZ studio has a bit of a steep lerning curve at the start (and then you can find more about it while you go, I still learn new stuff about it) Light settings is usually the topic in our February New user challenge, so you will get there soon, in the meantime you migth find soem useful information in last February's challenge: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/547701/february-2022-daz-3d-new-user-challenge-lighting-and-light-effects/p1
In the meantime adding Depth of field might be another thing you want to look into which was topic in September: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/517751/september-2021-daz-3d-new-user-challenge-depth-of-field-and-canvases/p1
Thanks for the information! I didn't even think to look at past challenges for information. This will be a great resource. I really appreciate it.
Thanks for the feedback, @Shimrian and @Linwelly! I've added a subtle smoke effect around the creature
Title: Charging This Laser
Beginner - Materials
He found it in the drawer. It looked just like a toy gun that would go "pew pew" when you pressed the trigger. So he pressed it. But instead of silly sound effects, some parts of the gun started to glow. He heard a humming coming from it. The cyan light near the the gun's barrel was growing brighter and brighter. LIke it was charging up for something big. He was afraid to let go of the trigger.
Iray Render: followed the tutorial for making surfaces a light source. The surfaces of the suit are using a non-standard texture/shader. There's also mild F/Stop, if that's what it's called, being used to draw attention to what's in the foreground.
I'm not much of an artist but I have fun making images using Daz3d. I'd like to start doing these challenges in order to improve my skills.
Title: Let's See What's Inside
Software: Daz 3D
Challenge: Intermediate
I ripped open the planet with geometry editor and added the blood using layered image editor. Feedback welcome!
welcome to the new user challenge, always great to have people join this is already looking great, love the glow effect and the look on his face, only thing that I woudl suggest some changes is the lamps in the background which look like light is coming out but not through the lamp screen.maybe you can work that to a more real looking light as well?
interesting work! maybe you can make the crack line down the front less straigt as well? and there is somethign odd going on with the clothing on the character on the shoulders? Hard to tell with the crass contrating light (which is a good effect)
Update - Beginner Submission
Title: Uknown Beauty
Thank you @Linwelly. I didn't know about LIE but with it and your advice I could change how the shader is applied on the right side of the pedestal.
@Shimrian I picked up your idea and turned the pedestal core into stone, so that the light installation serves as bordering element.
This looks so elegant, very good work @apprentice ! I'm glad my tips were helping
I agree with @limwelly that that canvas postwork was a bit off. As for the postwork, in my modest opinion you went a bit hard on the "contrast enhancement". I admit that I commit the same mistake sometimes, the trick is that sometimes "less is more". Nice composition :)
I really like the effect you created with the "ghost". I think that I preferred the version with no depth of field, though. If you want to put the monster more in focus maybe it would work with shadow over the sleeper?
However, for monsters stuff, I usually prefer to have humans "in the light" and monsters "in the darkness" or vice versa. :)
Well, I wasn't getting inspired all month...until I made this :)
I did quite some kitbashing to create the snowy environment, but I am quite happy with how it came out, and I also applied a Geoshell on the arm of the elf for a frost effect on it.
Rendered in Daz Studio, Iray.
Intermediate Challange: Kitbashing
Winter Magic
Great job @aprilshowers2065, I really like your image! The smoky effect makes her a little bit creepier! I have to +1 to what Daedalus-7 said on dof, but that contridicts what others said so didn't mention it before.
@darkseam - Great job on the dof. I think you have just enough. I think having the right eye closed is great, but you need to have him squint. You can usually do this with dials, but I’m not sure if you need the head morphs or expressions for that.
@katywhite - I love the colors and how you have lighting on her face coming from the globe. One thing I think might help the image is to have the dragon a little bit more immersed in the light so it looks more like he is pushing out of it? I’m not sure how to do this, but maybe add smoke or do it with postwork editing?
@apprentice - Oh, I really love how your image turned out! Great lighting btw! I really works well with this image.
@Daedalus-7 - Thank you for your feedback. For this image I was very much trying to pull away from the image looking like a render and more like a painting. It could be that I totally failed in this, but the “contrast enhancement” on the face was actually painted on with a brush using my tablet. I was looking at renders that I really liked in the gallery and on deviantart and noticed a lot of the images had quite a bit of texture and used a lot of lights and darks, so I wanted to try that out for myself. I’m still learning though, so I probably completely failed! I’ll keep working on it and trying out new stuff and hopefully I’ll get better eventually.
As for your image, Winter Magic… I’m so glad you were finally inspired to make this! I always enjoy your images and this one is wonderful. I really like the two forms of magic balancing each other out, or maybe they are just comparing notes? They don't look like they are mad at each other or want to fight and that's a good thing! I like how you have the frozen tree and the tree with fall leaves to cross balance the two people. If anything, I’d like to see you add more to that so the ice mage has a fall background and the fire mage has the winter background with the two backgrounds blending together in the middle for transition (in other words, the tree with fall colored leaves should not be white, but instead brown). The snow and fallen leaves can be on both sides, but the ground on the right should have a bit more melted snow (or fall background). Haha, no idea how easy that would be to do though! It’s still great as is!
very nice work with the snow layers, that's always a challenge to get right, al lot of very interesting aspects in your image have already been named so my comments will go more into the story aspect of your image, currently the two of them look more like they are in a friendly banter testing their magic, if that' is what you wanted you're golden, if you want to show a fight I miss the aggressiveness, the strain on their bodies that they do something challenging. So the posig and expressions might need some adaption then.
one idea you might test with the ice mage is to add a metallic glitter layer to her skin in the surfaces tab
@Shimrian For a quick postwork I would reccomend using Camera Raw in Photoshop (it's in Filters). It allows you to have a lot of control over contrast, colors, etc all with simple simple sliders. That's much faster than going at it with brushes :)
As for my image thanks for the feedback. I do like your idea of split backgrounds, but that may be for a furure project (going, for example for a more intense fire vs ice theme).
@linwelly Thank you for the input. I was indeed going for a more peaceful encounter, so I left things at a more "teasing" level. I did try to put some glitter on the elf (she even had emissive eyelashes on by default), but I was getting a lot of noise from those. Even this image is quite noisy, but luckily pictures rendered at high resolutions don't show off a lot of noise when viewed at lover resolutions.
I did try to pass the image through an AI denoiser, maybe it's better? I does produce a few artefacts here and there.
Thanks for the feedback @Daedalus-7 and @Shimrian.
I tweaked it a bit as a mix of the two images; keeping the DOF but reduced it slightly so it's more subtle
@Daedalus-7 yes the denoised images looks better, render artifacts are often an consequence of too short render times though, so you might think of increasing that amd thry to use a pixel filter radius of 1 or 0.95, with the standart setting of 1.5 I often heve the impression it's all noisy You can find that setting in the render tab under Filtering
Looking good there @aprilshowers2065
Thanks!
@Linwelly The artifacts I was talking about were from the denoiser, unfortuantely. Not much, just a few pixels here and there.
And yes, I am already using Mitchell with a pixel filter radius of 1, thanks.
@aprilshowers2065 Looks good! The reduced blur on the sleeper seems to be working better now.
Thank you
Hopefully this image qualifies for the intermediate challenge - I was aiming more into the "throwing assets from all over the place" part of kitbashing but reading the description again I see that I probably should have done some LIE or Geometry editing instead. I did apply a few shaders to primatives, tweaked the carboard box texture and created the whitewash effect for the "Spaceship" in Photoshop and applied it using a geoshell if that counts?
A Lockdown Spaceman
Stuck in the middle of lockdown, all little Billy wanted was to fly to the Moon for his birthday. So Mum, Dad & his big sister ransacked the house to bring his wish to life. Kinda.
So, this is a two-in-one render with the main scene and a "behind the scenes" companion image. The scene is intentionally "rough around the edges" to give the intention of the family using what they can find around the house to put things together and the second one is not really supposed to be lit or composed properly. As I am out of time now, I did have to do a bit of Photoshopping to fix a bit of poke through on Billy's "Space Suit" and de-gloss the Dad's top which for some reason aquired a shiny texture from somewhere.
Thanks for the suggestions, unfortuantely I was quite busy this month didn't get a chance to try them. Maybe later on for my gallery though hmmm
Title: Being Deleted From the System
Software: Daz 3D
Challenge: Intermediate
I used geometry editor to give her the 'being deleted' look and image layer editor for the screen display.
Thanks a lot for all the entries, this challenge is now closed, and December challenge is already up
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/607041/december-2022-daz-3d-new-user-challenge-open-render-challenge#latest
The showcase will be up in a few days
Here come the showcase for the New User Challenge
Beginners:
apprentice Uknown Beauty
darkseam Charging This Laser
Intermediate
DarkSoul It's the end of the world as we know it
marconft6 New Rules
SofaCitizen A Lockdown Spaceman (I have to apologise, I never commented on your work, must have slipped past me somehow)
new user welcome
Sprucebeard "If you're not cops. . ."
well done everybody!
Congrats to the winners!
Congratulations apprentice, darkseam, DarkSoul, marconft6, SofaCitizen and Sprucebeard!
Thank You :) - Congratulations to all the other winners and participants too!
@Linwelly, that's OK, I didn't get it finished till just before the contest closed so there wasn't much time between posting and the judging.