April 2024 - Daz 3D New User Challenge - Open Render Challenge

DAZ_ann0314

New User's Challenge - April 2024

Sponsored by DAZ 3D

Are you new to the 3D World? Are you at the beginning stages of learning 3D rendering? Have you been around for a little bit but feel you could benefit from some feedback or instruction? Have you been around awhile and would like to help other members start their creative journey? Well then come and join the fun as we host our newest render challenge.

As with the previous months, we are breaking down each month into 2 different challenges. A Beginner Challenge and then also an Intermediate Challenge.

So which "Challenge" should you choose?

Follow the Beginner Challenge if you are:

• New to the New User Challenges
• New to Daz Studio
• Newer to 3D Rendering in General

Follow the Intermediate Challenge if you have:

• Participated in the New User Challenge for awhile
• Know the basics of Daz Studio and would like to learn more in depth topics
• Been using 3D Rendering Applications for awhile and feel comfortable with learning Intermediate Topics

*Please don't forget to note in your post with your render whether the image is for the beginner or intermediate challenge, and to also mention which of your new skill set(s) you used in creating your image!*
 

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"Open Render Challenge"

The Open Render Challenge is also referred to as a "free" month, where you can concentrate on using and combining the skills you learned in the past few challenges.

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If you would like to review the previous topics and information you can find the topics/threads here:

• Beginner/Intermediate : Composition/Instancing & Duplication 
• Beginner/Intermediate : Lighting/Light Effects
• Beginner/Intermediate : Posing/Posing II

We will be checking in as will the rest of the Community Volunteers to try and help with anything you all may need.

For a list of the current challenge rules, please see this thread: Challenge Rules

 

Closing Date: April 30th, 2024

Shinji Ikari 9th

Here's my start for the month.  Needs more texture work, and I plan to add more characters at the table to give a feel of them having a conversation or something like that.

suffo85

Intermediate

"Long Day"

Daz Studio 4.22.1.110 Beta & Caesium Image Compressor - (Gimp was used to tag only, BW done with tonemapping in Daz)

 

First attempt at a BW in Daz, may try to do more work with it as I tinker and re-submit later.

Shinji Ikari 9th

Got version B here.

I did some changes to the lighting in the hallway (the overhead lights were part of the same service group as the lights in the main room so I edited there geomitry to add them to the group that the hall lights were.), added a new charcater out in the hall who could be on there way to meet with my first character, and did some changes to the rotation and height of the chair to the left of my first character so we can better see what I do with their hands witch were blocked by said chair.

Jumbotron

Hi everyone,

This is my entry for this month's challenge. To be honest, I'm not sure whether to submit it to the Beginners or the Intermediate category.

Name: Rebellious heart

Rendered in Daz Studio Pro v4.22.0.16 to a beauty canvas. The slight post-work on Photoshop consisted first on bringing the exposure down to a reasonable level and then increasing vibrance, saturation, texture and clarity slightly with the camera raw filter. Finally, I exported the resulting image to a maximum quality .JPG.

Rendered with a 35mm focal length camera. For framing the subjects I used the help of Daz Studio's Thirds Guide.

RENDER SETTINGS

I let the tone mapping with the default values, but for the burn highlights that I set to 0 instead.

Environment

I drew the dome and tinted it with light yellow. Then I set the Environment lighting resolution to 4096. Honestly, I don't know if this changed anything for the better.

Environment Lighting Blur was set to OFF.

 

The rest of the lighting in the scene consists of:

A camera manually placed by me acting as the SS Sun Node to bath the set I picked for this scene (Tesla Rural Kitchen). With an iRay Section Plane Node I cut the ceiling of the set out of the scene. I would have simply hidden or removed it if I had been able to, but that wasn't possible with this set. I set 'Clip Lights' to ON, because otherwise the glass on the table would reflect the open sky.

SCENE LIGHTS

I've used an auxiliary 'Sun Rays' spotlight with a fully cranked up beam exponent (100). You can notice its light entering the set from the left window. I had to set this light up because the Sun Sky light by itself was not enough to make any beam of light visible on the scene. As the volume for the SSS effect, I used a cube almost as big as the set itself.

The second scene light is another spotlight used as a fill light with very large geometry (160x160 rectangle) placed over the bottom part of the table (as per the render camera view) to bring some necessary light on the subjects.

All the lighting used for this scene shares the same light yellow tint.

The final touch to the lighting of the scene was the bloom filter.

As for the posing of the characters, I relied mainly on patiently setting all their bone dials to get them in their final poses. I may have used PowerPose occasionally, but the heavy lifting was all done with the dials.

And that's pretty much all there's to it. Please, tell me anything that I could have done better or that I should fix. Thank you.

snowcrow19

Beginner Challenge

"Morning Delivery"

I have been concentrating on the three concepts in this month's challenge, composition, lighting, and posing.

I think this may be my second challenge entry.

suffo85

Intermediate

"Long Day"

Final update for submission.  Had to tinker a bit (a lot), with tone mapping before discovering the right slider.  No postwork outside of tagging bottom sole of boot.

 

Stargazey

Intermediate

"Brothers in Battle" - DAZ Studio with a little postwork in Affinity Photo.

Apart from playing around with lighting and posing, plus a bit of kit-bashing, I decided (for no particular reason, other than to see if I could) that I wanted to use a male centaur and a male version of Topsy, although they are actually both female. I did a lot of experimenting with morphs, shapes and textures, and this was the result!

 

AgitatedRiot

Not For Entry

 

DAZ_ann0314

This Challenge is now closed <3 

DAZ_ann0314

And the spotlights for this Free Render Challenge Are:

Beginner Challenge:

 

snowcrow19

Jumbotron

Intermediate Challenge:

 

suffo85

Shinji Ikari 9th

Stargazey

CONGRATULATIONS TO EVERYONE 

Alias52

Well done, folks. Good efforts by all.