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April New User 3D Art Contest "Open Render" (WIP)

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  • dracorndracorn Posts: 2,345
    edited April 2016

    Here are the mermaids with their arms in position. 

    Now I need to figure out what to add to the picture!

     

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  • SaphirewildSaphirewild Posts: 6,669
    dracorn said:

    Here are the mermaids with their arms in position. 

    Now I need to figure out what to add to the picture!

     

    Beautifully done Dracorn, I would suggest having them under water with some bubbles rising to the surface maybe even a ripple or 2 as well.

  • SaphirewildSaphirewild Posts: 6,669
    dracorn said:
    Saphirewild said:

    Here is the start of my WIP, I do not know in which direction this is going to go but I am just starting with doing a portrait first. I am working on putting a scene around Vlad AKA Dracula that I just got today in the freebie section of the Daz Shop!!!! I am so excited!!!!

     

    Yeah, Vlad's Castle will suit Vlad very nicely. 

    I suggest you work on sinister.  The pose and expression you have is friendly and outgoing, like a politician!  Here's my description of what I see in my head:

    Vlad is facing the viewer with one hand reaching towards us, as though he is using his power to beckon us forward.  Drop the chin, lower the inner brow and raise the outer.  Also raise the upper eyelids so we can see the whites along the top of his eyes.  Use mouth corners up/down to create a frown. 

    Make his stance wide and bend his knees slightly - he should be leaning just a little forward.  Pull the shoulder with the extended hand towards us and drop it a little bit.  This will twist his body so that the opposite shoulder is facing away from us. 

    Create tension in that outstretched arm; bend the elbow sharply, then bend the wrist slightly and the fingers sharply.  If you can picture this in your mind, then stand in front of a mirror and pretend you are Vlad for a minute - get mean.  Just think comic book villain and exaggerate a little. 

    You can find a nice night photo for your background free at Pixabay.  Some rim lighting would be great as well. 

    Thank You for your suggestions Dracon I am going to go work on them right now and see what I come up with smiles, also off to find that one good night pic!!!

  • dracorndracorn Posts: 2,345
    Saphirewild said:
    dracorn said:
    Saphirewild said:

    Here is the start of my WIP, I do not know in which direction this is going to go but I am just starting with doing a portrait first. I am working on putting a scene around Vlad AKA Dracula that I just got today in the freebie section of the Daz Shop!!!! I am so excited!!!!

     

    Yeah, Vlad's Castle will suit Vlad very nicely. 

    I suggest you work on sinister.  The pose and expression you have is friendly and outgoing, like a politician!  Here's my description of what I see in my head:

    Vlad is facing the viewer with one hand reaching towards us, as though he is using his power to beckon us forward.  Drop the chin, lower the inner brow and raise the outer.  Also raise the upper eyelids so we can see the whites along the top of his eyes.  Use mouth corners up/down to create a frown. 

    Make his stance wide and bend his knees slightly - he should be leaning just a little forward.  Pull the shoulder with the extended hand towards us and drop it a little bit.  This will twist his body so that the opposite shoulder is facing away from us. 

    Create tension in that outstretched arm; bend the elbow sharply, then bend the wrist slightly and the fingers sharply.  If you can picture this in your mind, then stand in front of a mirror and pretend you are Vlad for a minute - get mean.  Just think comic book villain and exaggerate a little. 

    You can find a nice night photo for your background free at Pixabay.  Some rim lighting would be great as well. 

    Thank You for your suggestions Dracon I am going to go work on them right now and see what I come up with smiles, also off to find that one good night pic!!!

    I want to see him come back with a satisfying 'MWAA HA HA...'

  • VortigensBaneVortigensBane Posts: 383
    Saphirewild said:
    dracorn said:

    Here are the mermaids with their arms in position. 

    Now I need to figure out what to add to the picture!

     

    I would try to decide whether to make them facing up from the ocean floor, or facing down towards it.  If the first, perhaps an sea-bed scene, coral, kelp, starfish, sea turtles, fish, octopi, sharks, dolphins, lionfish, etc.  If shot is from below looking up, could do some serious caustics, dappled light patterns, schools of fishies, etc.    Or they could be floating on the top of the water, and you could do lots and lots of splashes and waves around them...

  • bunglebungle Posts: 38
    edited April 2016
    mjc1016 said:

    Getting there...

    Tinker... tinker... tinker.

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  • dracorndracorn Posts: 2,345
    Saphirewild said:
    dracorn said:

    Here are the mermaids with their arms in position. 

    Now I need to figure out what to add to the picture!

     

     

    Beautifully done Dracorn, I would suggest having them under water with some bubbles rising to the surface maybe even a ripple or 2 as well.

     

    VortigensBane said:
    Saphirewild said:
    dracorn said:

    Here are the mermaids with their arms in position. 

    Now I need to figure out what to add to the picture!

     

    I would try to decide whether to make them facing up from the ocean floor, or facing down towards it.  If the first, perhaps an sea-bed scene, coral, kelp, starfish, sea turtles, fish, octopi, sharks, dolphins, lionfish, etc.  If shot is from below looking up, could do some serious caustics, dappled light patterns, schools of fishies, etc.    Or they could be floating on the top of the water, and you could do lots and lots of splashes and waves around them...

    I did some test renders of my fish - the models are old and plastic-looking and I wasn't happy with them.  The orca and the sea turtle look good. I do have Garden's of Poseidon and am mulling that one over.  

    I am toying with the idea of the black background, as this is a design rather than the ocean.  I want everything in the pattern, sort of a posed kaleidoscope.  However, your idea about splashes intrigues me.  I have Ron's Water brushes and can experiment with them. 

    These are great ideas, and I need to experiment to see what looks good. 

  • h_habashh_habash Posts: 230
    edited April 2016
    dracorn said:
    Saphirewild said:
    dracorn said:

    Here are the mermaids with their arms in position. 

    Now I need to figure out what to add to the picture!

     

     

    Beautifully done Dracorn, I would suggest having them under water with some bubbles rising to the surface maybe even a ripple or 2 as well.

     

    VortigensBane said:
    Saphirewild said:
    dracorn said:

    Here are the mermaids with their arms in position. 

    Now I need to figure out what to add to the picture!

     

    I would try to decide whether to make them facing up from the ocean floor, or facing down towards it.  If the first, perhaps an sea-bed scene, coral, kelp, starfish, sea turtles, fish, octopi, sharks, dolphins, lionfish, etc.  If shot is from below looking up, could do some serious caustics, dappled light patterns, schools of fishies, etc.    Or they could be floating on the top of the water, and you could do lots and lots of splashes and waves around them...

    I did some test renders of my fish - the models are old and plastic-looking and I wasn't happy with them.  The orca and the sea turtle look good. I do have Garden's of Poseidon and am mulling that one over.  

    I am toying with the idea of the black background, as this is a design rather than the ocean.  I want everything in the pattern, sort of a posed kaleidoscope.  However, your idea about splashes intrigues me.  I have Ron's Water brushes and can experiment with them. 

    These are great ideas, and I need to experiment to see what looks good. 

    Why don't you GOOGLE for kaleidoscope images for the background, I did a quick search and looked at many nice images which can be used in your scene, and brought some example for you, try to pick one matches your mermaids (if you liked this idea).

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    Post edited by h_habash on
  • WonderlandWonderland Posts: 6,950
    edited April 2016

    I hope there are some mods who are experts here because I am so lost! I'm a long time Poser user and I'm used to a scene rendering pretty much the way the preview looks. Not so in DS! I've been trying for hours to this scene in a dark environment, just being illuminated by Jepe's FX. At first I had some coloful moody lights on because it looked great on screen, but then when I rendered it it came out bright light grey. I now deleted all lights, turned of all headlamps. The scene is now very dark but when I did a spot render, it came out bright white! I'm posting the scene with partial render, the product Neitherhenge the way it looked in the promo and adding as attached files all render settings. I had set the render settings back to default, but not sure if they did, I posted all the settings in the attachments below. I really hope there is an expert out there who can help! Thanks!

    Here is the dark scene with bright spot render!

    And here is how the stone arch is supposed to look, with the runes lit up:

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  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001

    The two glowing aqua columns of fogginess...they appear to be emissive.   What are their settings?  (right now it appears to be somewhere between Bat Signal and solar flare...they are the source of light that is washing out the scene)

    Also, have you converted the arch to Iray shaders or are you using the 3Delight materials?

     

  • WonderlandWonderland Posts: 6,950

    I guess the arch is whatever it came with as far as materials... I did pick the highest presets for the flames but figured they were usable presets since the PA created them...

  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001

    The arch will need to be converted to Iray...hold down cmd and click on the Iray Uber and select Ignore if it asks about textures.

    The flames will need to be adjusted...from the looks of the 'flare', quite a bit.   Can you post a screenshot of the surface settings for them?

  • VortigensBaneVortigensBane Posts: 383
    dracorn said:
     

    I did some test renders of my fish - the models are old and plastic-looking and I wasn't happy with them.  The orca and the sea turtle look good. I do have Garden's of Poseidon and am mulling that one over.  

    I am toying with the idea of the black background, as this is a design rather than the ocean.  I want everything in the pattern, sort of a posed kaleidoscope.  However, your idea about splashes intrigues me.  I have Ron's Water brushes and can experiment with them. 

    These are great ideas, and I need to experiment to see what looks good. 

    If you're rendering in Iray (which I seem to recall), try adding a geometry shell to the fishies and setting the texture to one of the default Iray water shaders...

  • SGTGhost777SGTGhost777 Posts: 40
    Wonderland said:
    SGTGhost777 said:

    I call this "The Briefing"

    I am using DAZ Studio with postowork done in Adobe Lightroom

    I love this! Wish I could figure out how to do that kind of lighting...

    Wonderland, thank you very much for the compliment.  There is a lot of lighting in this render; more than I usually use, and more than is recomended for most scenes.  Everything that would produce light in reality is emmiting light in this render; the screens, the scifi console with the digital 3D map, and there are four lights with the building that I used as a prop.   

  • SGTGhost777SGTGhost777 Posts: 40
    Llynara said:

    Dracorn- love, love, love the mermaids! Wow!

    SGTGhost- And very cool military render!

    Llynara - I love a good kissing scene.  Try setting your female's eyelids at about half mast and see if that helps. Half mast on girls always seems to give them a more sultry, desirous look when kissing.  Right now, she looks like she expecting something bad to happen so she's keeping her eyes wide open.  Never good for kissing scenes.  You might also try dipping the male's head a little closer and play with the camera angle.  Overall, I think it is a good start.  You might want to consider changing the background and or lighting because, at the moment, your two characters seem to match and blend in with the background. 

    Thanks for the great suggestions. I'll be working my way through those next. I spent the weekend figuring out how to get rid of the grain, and I did! Even on the little computer that could! (It's actually a great computer, just not built for doing 3D stuff.)

    Here's a PARTIAL render, which took forever, but looks pretty good. The fix in Poser 11 was to boost the samples in Superfly render settings from 3 (default) to 10, which is really changing the value of it, squared- from 3x3 to 10x10. So the render took a LOT longer, but looks a LOT better too. There's some texturing in the clouds, but that was already there in the background. It was the skin and hair that was giving me the most trouble. Plenty more to tweak, but happy with it as a starting point. 

    Thanks for the compliment Llynara; yours is coming along nicely too.  The posing is excellent; you can feel the moment.

  • SGTGhost777SGTGhost777 Posts: 40
    dracorn said:
    SGTGhost777 said:

    I call this "The Briefing"

    I am using DAZ Studio with postowork done in Adobe Lightroom

     

    Very nice lighting. Consider adding a visemes to the briefing officer so we know he's talking rather than just looking at the briefing table. Also I am wondering why the hero is holding a gun during a briefing? Do they expect an iminent attack?

    Thanks for the compliment Dracorn and I was having doubts on the hero holding a weapon at the ready position; I will consider some different poses for him.

  • SGTGhost777SGTGhost777 Posts: 40
    bungle said:
    SGTGhost777 said:

    I call this "The Briefing"

    I am using DAZ Studio with postowork done in Adobe Lightroom

    That is an amazingly really good render. I have a couple of comments:

    1) I don't know if its intended, but the devilish stare on the underling's face looks like he's holding himself back from ripping the general's clothes off. (Maybe this is because I'm always looking for the story in the artwork.)

    2) The way the light plays off the general's arm looks fantastic and highlights all the definition and veins, but I can't tell what the general is doing with his arm. The general's body language doesn't carry a message. I can't tell if they lost or won, if they're preparing an attack, planning to run for office, or conspiring to stick McElliot with latrine duty. Maybe something as simple as pointing to a location on the table or the screen, or sticking a knife into the table would give it that extra bit of story.

    Thanks bungle, I considered having the General point more directly at the table; I should have followed my gut.

  • WonderlandWonderland Posts: 6,950
    edited April 2016
    SGTGhost777 said:
    Wonderland said:
    SGTGhost777 said:

    I call this "The Briefing"

    I am using DAZ Studio with postowork done in Adobe Lightroom

    I love this! Wish I could figure out how to do that kind of lighting...

    Wonderland, thank you very much for the compliment.  There is a lot of lighting in this render; more than I usually use, and more than is recomended for most scenes.  Everything that would produce light in reality is emmiting light in this render; the screens, the scifi console with the digital 3D map, and there are four lights with the building that I used as a prop.   

    I'm a sci-fi geek and what you did is exactly what I'm trying to do with lighting, just have everything emitting different colored lights, but unfortunately I'm failing miserably.... Is there a tutorial on that, or how did you learn, or are you wiling to share settings?  I REALLY love your render, right up my alley, reminds me of Stargate or Battlestar Galactica or something...  Also, I like the guy with the gun, it feels like there's a story there. He seems like security for a top secret mission and is carefully watching his superior and if anyone tried to enter, he would have the right to shoot them. And the other guy looks a bit confused, like he's trying to figure out some major strategy and is frustrated or is watching a hologram of something bad happening in real time and has to stop it...  OK, I watch too much sci-fi TV, but I love it...

    Post edited by Wonderland on
  • Scott LivingstonScott Livingston Posts: 4,341
    edited April 2016
    bungle said:
    SGTGhost777 said:

    I call this "The Briefing"

    I am using DAZ Studio with postowork done in Adobe Lightroom

    That is an amazingly really good render. I have a couple of comments:

    1) I don't know if its intended, but the devilish stare on the underling's face looks like he's holding himself back from ripping the general's clothes off. (Maybe this is because I'm always looking for the story in the artwork.)

    2) The way the light plays off the general's arm looks fantastic and highlights all the definition and veins, but I can't tell what the general is doing with his arm. The general's body language doesn't carry a message. I can't tell if they lost or won, if they're preparing an attack, planning to run for office, or conspiring to stick McElliot with latrine duty. Maybe something as simple as pointing to a location on the table or the screen, or sticking a knife into the table would give it that extra bit of story.

    SGTGhost777: I'll second (most of) bungle's comment here. The lighting looks great (though with some room for further improvement)...the characters' expressions and body language are the things that are really going to sell this one. Along with any other ways to provide additional hints as to the story.

    Post edited by Scott Livingston on
  • WonderlandWonderland Posts: 6,950
    edited April 2016
    mjc1016 said:

    The arch will need to be converted to Iray...hold down cmd and click on the Iray Uber and select Ignore if it asks about textures.

    The flames will need to be adjusted...from the looks of the 'flare', quite a bit.   Can you post a screenshot of the surface settings for them?

     

    Is this the lRay uber you were talking about? When I hold down command nothing happens, when I hold down control there are some options but none are about ignoring textures... (I'm on a Mac, usually option works for right clicking, but here it seems to be control...)

    I just used the plain lray uber base on the arch and hid Jepe's flare and the arch rendered OK, but still without the runes lit up. I guess the flares are too bright but now I can't find Jepe's presets in the smart pane or in a search in the content pane... I'm REALLY new at this!

    Here are the surface settings for the flare, thanks for your help! :)

     

     

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  • h_habashh_habash Posts: 230
    edited April 2016

    And again here's my "Sunbathing" scene, Thanks MJC1016 for your towel add-on, it's perfectly fit with Iray render, I'v decided to remove the water drops from her face plus the sunglass, and slightly brought the umbrella closer to give some shadow above her head, the head towel looks fine to me, but I guess I need to increase it's tiles more, I'll try it again soon.

     

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  • LlynaraLlynara Posts: 4,770
    edited April 2016

    She looks great, H_Habash! And wow, the details on that towel look so lifelike (as does her wet skin!) The lighting is spot on too. I like the birds in the background as well.

    I really need to get a better rig and start doing Iray! (I just need to ban myself from the DAZ store for a while to afford it!)

    Post edited by Llynara on
  • VortigensBaneVortigensBane Posts: 383
    Wonderland said:
     

     

    Here are the surface settings for the flare, thanks for your help! :)

     

     

    The first image is of the Iray shader base.  On Windows, when you hold Ctrl while clicking on this, you get a pop-up dialog box.  The "Options" tab has two options under "Apply:"  Surfaces, and Images.  Surfaces gives you the option of applying the Iray shader base to all surfaces of the current figure, or only the selected surfaces (surfaces selected in the surfaces tab).  Images gives you the option to "ignore" (which preserves any maps already loaded, or to "replace" (which unloads all texture, displace, specular, normal, bump, etc., maps).

     

    The only problem with your second screenshot is that it cuts off right before the useful information...  If you're trying to make something glow in iray, or adjust the amount that it glows, the first parameter to look at is the "Emission color".  If that is black (straight 0's), it will turn emission off, and there will be no light.  Any other color will produce light.

    I see "emission temperature" set to 0.  That could be another problem.  Normally the lowest you would set that is 1900, which would give you a very orange, candle-like glow.  6500 is considered daylight.  Other than that, the other settings are missing...

  • h_habashh_habash Posts: 230
    Llynara said:

    She looks great, H_Habash! And wow, the details on that towel look so lifelike (as does her wet skin!) The lighting is spot on too. I like the birds in the background as well.

    I really need to get a better rig and start doing Iray! (I just need to ban myself from the DAZ store for a while to afford it!)

    Thanks Llynara

  • h_habashh_habash Posts: 230
    VortigensBane said:
    Wonderland said:
     

     

    Here are the surface settings for the flare, thanks for your help! :)

     

     

    The first image is of the Iray shader base.  On Windows, when you hold Ctrl while clicking on this, you get a pop-up dialog box.  The "Options" tab has two options under "Apply:"  Surfaces, and Images.  Surfaces gives you the option of applying the Iray shader base to all surfaces of the current figure, or only the selected surfaces (surfaces selected in the surfaces tab).  Images gives you the option to "ignore" (which preserves any maps already loaded, or to "replace" (which unloads all texture, displace, specular, normal, bump, etc., maps).

     

    The only problem with your second screenshot is that it cuts off right before the useful information...  If you're trying to make something glow in iray, or adjust the amount that it glows, the first parameter to look at is the "Emission color".  If that is black (straight 0's), it will turn emission off, and there will be no light.  Any other color will produce light.

    I see "emission temperature" set to 0.  That could be another problem.  Normally the lowest you would set that is 1900, which would give you a very orange, candle-like glow.  6500 is considered daylight.  Other than that, the other settings are missing...

    That's right, I'd suggest first is to find the texture file and add it in Emission Color, then change the Emission Color to light blue (or any color matches the surface you want to glow), and use 6500 in Emission Temperature, then you can adjust the Luminus figures, try like 10000 and see how much light it will give in render, then you can increase or decrease the number as much as you need.

  • WonderlandWonderland Posts: 6,950
    edited April 2016
    VortigensBane said:
    Wonderland said:
     

     

    Here are the surface settings for the flare, thanks for your help! :)

     

     

    The first image is of the Iray shader base.  On Windows, when you hold Ctrl while clicking on this, you get a pop-up dialog box.  The "Options" tab has two options under "Apply:"  Surfaces, and Images.  Surfaces gives you the option of applying the Iray shader base to all surfaces of the current figure, or only the selected surfaces (surfaces selected in the surfaces tab).  Images gives you the option to "ignore" (which preserves any maps already loaded, or to "replace" (which unloads all texture, displace, specular, normal, bump, etc., maps).

     

    The only problem with your second screenshot is that it cuts off right before the useful information...  If you're trying to make something glow in iray, or adjust the amount that it glows, the first parameter to look at is the "Emission color".  If that is black (straight 0's), it will turn emission off, and there will be no light.  Any other color will produce light.

    I see "emission temperature" set to 0.  That could be another problem.  Normally the lowest you would set that is 1900, which would give you a very orange, candle-like glow.  6500 is considered daylight.  Other than that, the other settings are missing...

    Thanks VortigensBane,

    Here is a screenshot of what happens when I click contol, I don't see "options."

    And here is the bottom half of the settings for the flare. The color looks white which is weird because it is supposed to be blue and looks aqua in the unrendered scene. I used the highest light of Jepe's presets but that washes the whole scene out in bright white...  On the arch, I don't see a way of selecting the runes separately, but I selected the arch with the glow on the runes... Thanks for everyone's help!

     

    Here is what the blue flare is supposed to look like:

     

    Here is what the arch is supposed to look like:

    Here is a spot render with the flare on at Jepe's highest preset:

     

    And here is a spot render without the flare, with no glowing runes and no way to select them individually....

     

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  • SGTGhost777SGTGhost777 Posts: 40
    Wonderland said:
    SGTGhost777 said:
    Wonderland said:
    SGTGhost777 said:

    I call this "The Briefing"

    I am using DAZ Studio with postowork done in Adobe Lightroom

    I love this! Wish I could figure out how to do that kind of lighting...

    Wonderland, thank you very much for the compliment.  There is a lot of lighting in this render; more than I usually use, and more than is recomended for most scenes.  Everything that would produce light in reality is emitting light in this render; the screens, the scifi console with the digital 3D map, and there are four lights with the building that I used as a prop.   

    I'm a sci-fi geek and what you did is exactly what I'm trying to do with lighting, just have everything emitting different colored lights, but unfortunately I'm failing miserably.... Is there a tutorial on that, or how did you learn, or are you wiling to share settings?  I REALLY love your render, right up my alley, reminds me of Stargate or Battlestar Galactica or something...  Also, I like the guy with the gun, it feels like there's a story there. He seems like security for a top secret mission and is carefully watching his superior and if anyone tried to enter, he would have the right to shoot them. And the other guy looks a bit confused, like he's trying to figure out some major strategy and is frustrated or is watching a hologram of something bad happening in real time and has to stop it...  OK, I watch too much sci-fi TV, but I love it...

    Wonderland, sharing the settings with you wouldn't help, because I converted each surface to an Iray emissive surface; lots of manual tweaking.  I learned most through experimentation and watching tutorials that I purchased on the DAZ Studio website from the vendor Dreamlight. http://www.daz3d.com/daz-studio-iray-pro-lighting.  

    When I want to make a surface, that would be a light source in the real world, an emissive surface I first check the names of any texture maps that the item uses in the surfaces tab; hover over the maps icon and it will reveal the file location of the map.  Once you've made note of the base map and any opacity maps, then turn the surface into an Iray emissive surface by going to the Surfaces, Presets then select shaders, Iray emissives and then the emissive shader.  After you complete this step go back to the editor tab and change the following maps to the base texture map; base color, emission color, luminance and cut out opacity for the opacity map, if there is one.

    This sounds more complicated than it is, but if you purchase the tutorial, that I pasted a link to, it will help your skills with DAZ studio improve.

  • SGTGhost777SGTGhost777 Posts: 40

    An update to "The Briefing"

    The Briefing.png
    1920 x 1080 - 4M
  • dHandledHandle Posts: 617
    edited April 2016
    Knittingmommy said:

    Wow, indeed! dHandle, this is super good!  I love the echo of the figure going back.  Very Nice.

    dracorn said:

    VERY nice, dHandle!  She is reflective, the pose looks great, and I love the tunnel/time travel effect through/from the open door behind her.  This nearly monochromatic image reminds me of Tim Burton - now all you need is a small splash of color somewhere. 

    Thanks all! 

    @Dracorn  I thought about your suggestion of adding a splash of color.  I've looked at it several times, and nothing really occurs to me.  Not sure how to achieve that effect with this image, even though I've used that technique before.  The only real color in the scene is the gold axe head, and it's kinda washed out. (I did add a glint...)  I tried adding different colored rays...red...blue.  Nothing seemed like an improvement.

    So..I setteld for a few feathers.  But of course, they're white, or gray...so no help with color splashes there.

    Any suggestions?  I'm stumped.

    Here's where I'm at.

    visitation3.jpg
    900 x 683 - 280K
    Post edited by dHandle on
  • SaphirewildSaphirewild Posts: 6,669
    dracorn said:
    Saphirewild said:
    dracorn said:

    Here are the mermaids with their arms in position. 

    Now I need to figure out what to add to the picture!

     

     

    Beautifully done Dracorn, I would suggest having them under water with some bubbles rising to the surface maybe even a ripple or 2 as well.

     

    VortigensBane said:
    Saphirewild said:
    dracorn said:

    Here are the mermaids with their arms in position. 

    Now I need to figure out what to add to the picture!

     

    I would try to decide whether to make them facing up from the ocean floor, or facing down towards it.  If the first, perhaps an sea-bed scene, coral, kelp, starfish, sea turtles, fish, octopi, sharks, dolphins, lionfish, etc.  If shot is from below looking up, could do some serious caustics, dappled light patterns, schools of fishies, etc.    Or they could be floating on the top of the water, and you could do lots and lots of splashes and waves around them...

    I did some test renders of my fish - the models are old and plastic-looking and I wasn't happy with them.  The orca and the sea turtle look good. I do have Garden's of Poseidon and am mulling that one over.  

    I am toying with the idea of the black background, as this is a design rather than the ocean.  I want everything in the pattern, sort of a posed kaleidoscope.  However, your idea about splashes intrigues me.  I have Ron's Water brushes and can experiment with them. 

    These are great ideas, and I need to experiment to see what looks good. 

    I for one can not wait to see what your imagination comes up with Dracorn!!!

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