September 2024 - Daz 3D New User Challenge - Depth of Field and Canvases
Linwelly
Posts: 5,944
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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!
New this year, 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
- Or if you have not participated in the September Depth of Field Challenge in a previous year
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
- Or if you have all ready participated in the September Depth of Field Challenge in a previous year
*Please be sure to list in your post which Challenge you are participating in*
Closing date for both is September 30, 2024
____________________________________________________________________________________________
If you would like to review the previous topics and information you can find the topics/threads here:
Beginner/Intermediate January: Composition/Instancing, & Duplication
Beginner/Intermediate February: Lighting/Light Effects
Beginner/Intermediate March: Posing/Posing II
Beginner/Intermediate April: Open Render Challenge
Beginner/Intermediate May: Using Props/Push Modifiers/Deformers
Beginner/Intermediate June: Scenes and Landscapes/Working Modularly
Beginner/Intermediate July: Portrait Rendering/LIE
Beginner/Intermediate August: Open Render Challenge
I 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
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Comments
Beginner Challenge - September 2023
"Focus/Depth of Field"
This month's focus will be on Depth of Field/Focus.
Depth of Field is basically controlling what part of the image is in sharp focus. A couple of explanations, from the world of photography (so not everything is applicable, but the definitions and basics do apply when rendering).
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/depth-of-field.htm
http://digital-photography-school.com/understanding-depth-field-beginners/
Inspiration
Tips and Examples, Studio:
http://flipmode3d.com/depth-of-field-daz-studio/
http://www.versluis.com/2015/04/how-to-render-with-depth-of-field-in-daz-studio/
http://www.sharecg.com/v/52258/browse/3/PDF-Tutorial/DAZ-Studio-Tutorial-Depth-of-Field
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/19195/daz-depth-of-field-settings-a-general-starting-point
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuAIDTH0YoA (Depth Of Field In Daz Studio 4 10)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0jMBdrMo40 (Daz Studio Depth of Field)
Tips and Examples, Poser:
http://www.keindesign.de/stefan/poser/dof_p5.html
http://www.trekkiegrrrl.dk/DOFtut1.htm
Tips and Examples, Bryce:
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/3855/
Tips and Examples, Carrara:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gliniNqq8_k
Other Helpful Links
When following tutorials, be cognizant of the different applications (Bryce, Daz Studio, Poser, Carrara Blender, etc.) and different render engines (3Delight, Iray, Reality, etc). Techniques for one may not apply directly to another. If you have some favorite portrait lighting and composition tips, please share them in this WIP thread.
Composition Golden Ratio helpers:
Bryce
DAZ Studio (Also, DS has a built in Rule of Thirds guide; just select Show Thirds Guide in the Viewport context menu)
Don't forget to look at previous themed contests where information and hints are available. Here is the depth of field challenge from last September.
Intermediate Challenge - September 2023
"Canvases"
This is a general render challenge with the focus on rendering separate layers, or canvases, for compositing in an image editor, such as Photoshop or Gimp. Daz Studio supports Canvases natively via the Iray render engine, found in Render Settings > Advanced > Canvases. Creating separate layers in 3Delight is also possible with the use of premium vendor products.
Iray Canvases are very powerful, allowing a lot of control over your final image. They can also be very confusing until you understand how to create a canvas and how to use the resulting image. Like any tool, the more experience you get with it, the more the necessary details will become second nature.
A quick Overview of Iray Canvases:
Using the tools provided in the Canvases settings, you can "tell" Daz Studio to create multiple layers of image information with a single render. There are options to specify Type, (beauty, diffuse, specular, depth, etc.,) and options to specify Nodes, (aka objects.) An option to use Alpha exists for most types and will create an alpha layer for the EXR file, which can be loaded as transparency or an alpha channel.
Once you've enabled Canvases, a new section will show in the Render Settings for Canvases, where you can select which canvas will be rendered to the render window. Tone Mapping is on by default and will be applied to the image in the Render Window. This give you a good reference image if your Beauty canvas is selected.
When the render completes and you save the image, Daz Studio will save a folder for the Canvases in the same folder as the saved image, with the same name and "_canvases" added. The canvases in that folder are all 32-bit color images in the EXR format. These EXR images will need to be processed to use. They are very much like a "camera raw" image from a Digital SLR camera.
The "magic" of using canvases is in how you process the various 32-bit files into layers and composite them to create a final image.
Information on Using Iray Canvases in Daz Studio:
It's important to remember Iray was introduced to DS over five years ago and some details about Canvases have changed during that time. Most of the information from older tutorials linked here will be accurate and worth the time to view. Occasionally, you may find something that is no longer the case. Feel free to let us know what those are. For that reason, the upload date of videos is included with the link. (Forum Member names are included, where known.)
Videos
Forum Threads
Adobe/Photoshop
3Delight Options
We normally do not include store products as options in these challenges. However, it only seems fair to mention these products as DS does not have a native canvas feature for 3Delight, so those working with 3Delight—who may well already own one or both of these products—can also enter the intermediate challenge.
just being curious. but, can i post youtube video links to my entry as well as the image? i been livestreaming me creating full daz art and would prolly do the same for this challange, and add the youtube links to my entry as well. showing start to finish of me making it in real time... if that's ok?
I will have to check back for that. This might take a day.
ok here is some feedback to this, the critical part is that the content of the linked videos needs to abide by the TOS of the DAZ site in order to allow the link posted here, that is for one, they can't be commercial and there can't be nudity in them (for example when you start with a naked textured figure for your lifestream, that would be a problem)
In the end this would need to be checked case by case. I hope that gives you a framework for that?
yes it does. tells me i need to start my stream in wireframed view till i get some clothing on the character. or, i just don't use any characters in my image, and i can just do a scenary. i'm good with that. and i don't mind having my mic on, i just don't talk much. typically just ends up being some back and forth humer between my wife and i. really everyone will just have to listen to what my wife has to deal on a daily basis, living with me. thats all. i don't even mind having my cam on, placing my head in the bottom corner well i live stream validating it's actually me making the art.
i also do have another question. i entered bigginer last month to see what these challenges are all about. this time i was thinking i'd go intermediate. however i have an issues. i don't do post work. i don't even have a drawing tablet. but looking at the process for canvesing it gave me an idea i wanted to try. where i take one of them layers or the parts i wanted it to contain anyhow. loaded them textures back into daz on a primitive plane. and used it as one of the eliments in my scene. would that process still be in the guide lines of canvasing? i'm just really bad at editing. my editing skills consist of blending with one brush i know how to use. and i only use that in texture issues where like tileing is very noticable. otherwise, i destroy my daz art by trying to edit it. minor blending once in a blue moon, and slaping my name on it is all i know how to do in drawing programs. it wasn't till this post that i looked up what "post work" even meant. anytime i saw someone say it on my art. i just thought it was becasue i thought it was good enough to be "posted" in my gallery.... yeah, i don't get out and socialize much. lol
i happen to think of something i'm not sure of. how do i know if my youtube videos have comercials? doesn't youtube apply them to all videos? i don't know the ins and outs of how youtube works. i just stream for fun. if being monitized is what causes the comercials to appair. then my videos should be all good as far as that goes. i only have like 3 followers anyhow. other then here on daz and a couple FB art groups. i don't advertise my youtube channel, or that i even stream at all. i suppose i can just go watch one of my video's and see if any comercials pop up well watching them. idk otherwise, i just stream.
concerning the first topic there was a little prop and trick Jay versluis used in his videos to avoid the nudity problem, must be about two years ago when he showed that, maybe you take a dive in his videos for that, unfortunately I don't remember the specifics
about the second, what you describe I would more sort under kitbashing which is our November topic (of course you can still do it now as well). The good news is that you don't need a drawing tablet for the canvases, you can use Gimp (which is freeware) on a normal computer and the editing you can do there is adjusting light settings, adding dust or a stronger backlight, all this doesn't require drawing skills. I suggest you watch some of the linked videos to see what other people make out of it. In the end we are here to learn something new and not to show how good we are already.
having the skills to draw isn't the problem. i use to be a professional tattoo artist, and loved doing custom work. so drawing isn't the problem. my thing is, is i don't really know if i'm using daz properly, if there are easier ways then the ones i developed because i'm almost completely self taught using daz. all i do is daz on my free time. my wife and i set here almost every evening and weekends, making daz art together. i been using daz for a long long time on and off. but my wife got into it about 4-5 years ago. but fact is, i now want to get good with daz, properly learn how to do things becasue i can't learn from watching to i don't watch tutorials. so i am here to learn. after participating in last months challange. i realized these are meant more for learning. at first i didn't completely understand why she was saying to change certine things. at the end of the challange. i realized this is perfect for someone like me, because of how i learn. i learned a couple few, very useful things last month. like there is a button that lets me hide a light sorce so i don't have to hide the light from the camera's view. then that led to someone informing me about how ghost lights work. baught some of those, great purchase. but after looking them over i think i can easily make my own ghost lights now. i been a daz member since 2007-8 or something like that. idk, getting close to a couple decades anyhow. but, as of last month. i just started coming into the forums trying to socialize with people hoping i can pick up a thing or 2 to make my work better.
ok, i just realized i got way too much daz talk bottled up inside of me. and i think you get the idea. i'm stubbern, thick headed, and sometime just plane ignorant. also i'm too hyper focused on trying to learn as much as i can with daz. and i won't learn much with other programs well i'm in this mode. it was only about 2 months ago that i learned to use depth of field. so i'm sure there are prolly some tricks or tips i can use. anyhow i appologize for my dazlife story. but i spent all that time typing it. so your stuck with it now. lol.
and ty for getting back to me quickly. i'll do the canvase challenge when i'm ready to learn that part.
Canvases? I have some still stored blank somewhere, from my years as a plastic artisan, with a brush and paintbrush, paint dumped and poured, spatulas and various utensils. Well, after the attempt to joke around, the canvas challenge might help me to fix some difficulties in some areas of the rendering. I thought about making an image using the canvases in a creative way to make parts of the image of unusual or unrealistic rendering, I don't know if I will get a result that I like. On the other hand I am now carrying out tests with canvases and emissive surfaces, a simple example is a campfire, by using the image for example of a campfire for the flames in one or more planes and making the planes with the image of the emissive flames and using it to illuminate. To make realistic lighting, the luminescence value makes the image of the flames disappear under the emissive incandescence. The way to make the color nuances of the image visible, is to render it in canvases separately, mix and compose the rendering of flames without emissive luminescence, and the emissive ?. Any advice perhaps would help me to study various ways in DAZ. Is there a link to this information or some tutorials ?
Best regards!
it's all good, I actually like reading up on peoples DAZ stories, because sometimes that leads to be able to help them in a better way.
As for the not wating to involve other programs for the time being, I can relate to that very much. When I started out, I focused on DAZ only work as well until I was at a place where I was good with the basic elements and only then added the postwork parts, and there are still things about DAZ I really little about.
So I hope you will have fun with these challenges
hehe, those canvases I still have some as well
as to your questions, I understand the triykness to have the right abount of luminescence without loosing the detail information. I never tried what you suggest there but I imagine that could work. What I often do is add one or more linear point lights close to the flames in warm fire tones as well.
I don't know any tutorial adressing this specific aspect but I would like to encourage you to follow the steps through one of the tutorials with your idea in mind and see how the results look. I will also ask among the other volutees if someone tried what you described and if they can pop in and add their experiences.
beginner entery
made with daz studio
livestream videos of being created
part 1
part 2
part 3
In the Jungle (livestreamed links in description) | Daz 3D
I'll take a look at the videos of the canvas challenge. Regarding the flame image and the values of luninisscience and emission, I am trying to look for the possibilities without using a point light or any type of reinforcement, although it still seems to me the only viable option for an image in a single render without composing by layers or canvases and without doing VDB. For the moment I will try to edit and study the areas or hot point of the flames and edit the map of the emissive and opacity image, and see if the amount of lighting it generates is enough.
Planing to work on something for the beginner challenge this month. I don't use DoF that much in my work.
Got started last night. Plan to use my DoF to focus on the two people fighting the monsters.
Does anyone know if you can render a canvas in which only the Bloom Filter is visible?
Rendered version b last night.
Changed the textures on the minigun user's armor and gave him some extra equipment. Tried to heat up the barrals of the minigun and added tracers to help see where he's shooting.
Also tried to start with the DoF.
I would say that this is not possible since the bloom is basically a trick and not a "real" atmosphere.
I try to explain this a bit: so when does bloom happen in realy life, that is whan you have particles in the atmosphere, this can be smoke, sand, dust of humidity, which make the light rays reflect on the tiny surfaces. Adding the bloom filter will not add a real atmosphere, no particles in your scene, it will calculate where the light is broken based on likelyhood (being in the light ray path and the possible amount of patrticles in that area). The result of that calculation shows on a prop in the render but it is bound to the respective prop.
Now if you try to create a "real" atmosphere by adding either a volumetric item (cloud or whatever else) and send light rays through it, you will get a real bloom that exists in the scene which you can then as well render in a separate layer. For performance reasons you might try to fake the atmosphere by adding a plane with a high transparence. But all this is something you will have to experment on.
Here are some image sketch for the challenge. I'm not used to complex scenes, I could say that this is the second image I do with a complex scenario. Subjective and objective opinions are welcome.
I haven't yet completely reviewed the videos and resources that talk about focus/depth of field or whether to center image composition on canvases.
I have built the scene around the female figure after I liked the pose, so I would have to keep the focus on this area, my initial doubts are, the camera focuses on the center of the image and the depth of field makes a linear blur of the entire image frame according to the distance, Can you set a quadrant of the image focused and not the whole frame?, the other doubts, about the type of focus of the camera, which generates in the image without changing poses or expressions of the figures, different sensations. The imagen_1 has a focus, it seems to me that it is less maritime, and the Imagen_2 wider or more panoramic changing the shapes of the scene more. Is there any reference to configure the camera ?, at what distance to put it, the type of focus, to generate that effect while maintaining approximately the proportions of the figures and the scene.
Really good job so far. I like that dynamic pose. However, right now, my eye is almost drawn more to the creature on the right. Have you considered trying to move the camera to the left? That way, you would be looking through the main character and can DOF the background to include the creature.
If I thought about putting the camera in the direction you are talking about, when I started the framing composition of the camera, I started by putting the camera in that area.
There are times when the scene and the position of the figures is a little dismantled and I think about changing the poses. But what you tell me about focusing more on the creature at the moment reinforces my initial composition. One of my doubts about the composition is what the situation in the image is. By editing it without a story only from the pose of the main character, I have to decide where to put the DOF and help me as a narrative element. The scene that I still haven't resolved or the situation I think of in this way. The main character is on the left of the apparently still shot, but I have not put any reference to whether he wants to move and go to the right of the frame or through the central passageway, in any case, the other character the "creature" has great relevance in that action. The other option is if the main character, in that situation wants to move to the left of the frame, which at this point I've looked at the image and the main character I don't know if he would have to have the right shoulder of the frame higher than the left or the orientation of the shoulders with different inclination to show the directionality of the movement. I think a lot about those details, I put that shoulder like that because it seemed to me to be more of a protective position and if the main character had to make a quick movement or a support on the wall it seems to me that with the shoulder in that position you can make more force.
In the first composition I did the main character gives me the feeling of waiting to make some movement and the other character seems to be in a very fixed and immovable position and in the next two I get the feeling of another dynamic, with more movement.
Initial image
I think Alias52 made a good point about the camera angle, I like the positioning of the camera in the initial version better adn would even suggest to move it even a bit further towards that angle.
But you are right that this and the focus of the DOF is a question of the storytelling in the image. I'm looking forward to see which story you will chose to tell
Does anyone know if there is any relationship between the F/Stop value of the camera properties and the F/Stop of the Tone Mapping?
the short answer is, no there isn't
the long answer is, as usual more complicated. The settings given for camera and tonemapping are taken from real photography and there, as you might know they have a relationship, lens width focus etc affecting the amount of light that can enter for the image resulting in longer or shorter exposure times. Since these settings are only a simulation of the things happening in a camera and exposure times are not a critical aspect in DAZ studio you can adjust those settings completely to your liking.
But I would like to encourage you to experiment with this on a simple scene to understand what works together and that doesn't
I thought that maybe there was a relationship when using the DOF, after reading over some of the references, for example when putting an aperture in tone mapping with more light, then in the DOF for example, the areas with light are sharper or the focus areas of the DOF have a higher exposure.
Think of it as two cameras, which basically it is, the Scene camera for setting up the scene and the DOF Camera for setting up the Depth Of Field. Using the Scene Camera sets up how you want the final render to look. Using the DOF Camera sets up where you want the sharp area to be and how much DOF you want in front of and behind this area using Focal Length, Focal Distance and F/stop. If using the Focal Length messes up the scene then move the camera back, or forward, until you frame your scene again.
This comment after a few days seems a bit confusing to me. I had a theory that if you use the DOF, the most out-of-focus areas would have to be less bright than the sharper ones. For example, if you have a light source that is not directly seen on the screen but is seen on a reflective surface such as a mirror or other highly reflective surface and these surfaces are in the out-of-focus area, my question was or is it what happens to the luminosity of the light source, it adds to that of the surface where it is reflected and the nearby surfaces in blur, or the surrounding blurred surfaces detract from the blur of the light source.
I'm still unsure what the question is here, so let us try to disect it a bit
1. the standart f/stop in the tone map settings is 8. if you set it to 16 the amount of light that reaches the camera is reduced, if you set it to 4, more light reaches the camera (directly connected with the shutter speed if you rule out the exposure value)
2. if you want an image with sharp contrasts, you want to set your tone mapping f/stop to a hight value (eg 16) but you need more light in your scene for that to work (in the case of using the sun sky rest the SS multiplier from 0.1 to 0.5 or somethign similar) otherwise your scene becomes a muddy grey
3. none of that has a direct connection to the camera f/stop in DAZ (this is different with a real life camera) a low value in f/stop with give you a very small area in focus in your scene, a high value will make the focus area larger. This range changes as well with the distance of the camera to the focus point the farther away the camera, the larger the area. As well the focal length will affect the area of focus in your image. To make this more visible, try to look at your camera in the scene through the perspective view and see how the focus lines move when you change the settings.
I hope this answers your question? Again the best way to understand is to try several settings in a simple scene that doesn't take too long to render.