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Same image, run through Topaz Impressionist. I really like this effect.
That's a great effect! Looks good!
I really like all three promos. With the exception of the fixable minor hair issue, I think the first one is my fave. Your cop looks good, realistic. I can see why you'd want to either stay with that generation or port him over to gen 3.
I actually like the earlier generation males much better than G3M, with the exception of Darwins Mishaphs males, and Gypsy Angels males (a couple others but for the most part, meh) and its nice to see Hugh finally coming together for you!
I was playing around with the glass floor but I ended up with a hard-line across the horizon. How did you get it to blend invisibly into the background?
I don't remember doing anything special. If you zoom in on my render, you'll see the faint line is there.
I think that's because of two things:
Your render looks very good. A couple of ideas for reducing the line:
@divamakup Thanks! I really need to dig into that plugin. There's a ton you can do with it.
@Worlds_Edge Thanks! I have been trying to get that guy into Iray for a while. Valdez stole the show in my first book and finagled his way into the rest of the series. He's a lot of fun.
@IceDragonArt I can't help it, I love M4. Sometimes it's a pain to find everything in the runtime, and to fit things if you put custom morphs on him, but he still looks so much more realistic than many of the newer guys. I've tried to move M4 morphs to G3M and found the G3 head to be very elongated, which makes the features look strange to me. Darwin and Gypsy do a great job of creating interesting and beautiful G3Ms that I enjoy using. FW has some good ones too. But I still use a lot of M4s and probably always will. He's still got it!
Using Textures as Background Patterns in Photoshop
I was messing around in Photoshop with elements for a book cover, and thought I'd pass on this fun trick:
We have hundreds, if not thousands of textures in our DAZ content library (and Poser, and whatever else you use.) Why not use them as backgrounds for 2D images?
If you do any postwork at all, you'll end up in 2D anyhow. Besides. most of the work is already done- they are already seamless. It's easy to turn them into a pattern to use however you like. DIM comes in handy to locate the right directory of those textures (sometimes they're buried in Textures folder.)
From the Adobe help section:
Here are some examples using a VERY rough mockup for a future book cover, not finished at all. The originals are huge, so click and zoom in for more details.
1. Seamless tile pattern purchased from Fractalartist (Rendo), looks pretty good.
2. Seamless pattern created from the Faveral's MICK Bedroom (which is on the bedspread in the picture). It's overkill, but posting to show what you can do with elements from a 3D render in 2D.
3. For fun, seamless pattern created from one of my favorite sets, Stonemason's Streets of Tuscany. You can scale size and opacity on any pattern to get the look you want:
4. Or how about taking a 3Delight or an Iray shader and using it? Here's one of the embossed textures from Fabiana's The Shader Plan- Silk Textiles. I adjusted the color fill and color overlay to get the look I wanted:
Note: I just posted a walkthrough with step-by-step screenshots on my Patreon for patrons.
Crystal Dragon for DAZ Dragon 3
I couldn't resist, I had to pick up this big guy and do some test renders. The skin is tricky to light well, so I'm trying a bunch of things. Here's my first test render, and it's not great. Skies of Iradiance plus some golden spotlights which I thought would work well on the dark skin but don't in this case. Too many shadows too.
I sent Evan for G3M to round him up and the big guy wasn't very happy. Hard to get a good shot of him when he loads at 400%. So I shrank him down and we stuffed him into the studio. The render is cooking now. LOL
We sedated him with pizza for his glamour shots. Here he is with the black skin preset, taking a nap on the Ultragenesis glass floor under Sveva's Lumiere Pro lights. It's an HDR with photometric spotlights. The crystals look pretty good up close. and you can compare the reflections with that of the glass. There's no postwork here, just a straight render.
I'll render some of his other skin options in other poses, as well as doing some different angles. (click and zoom in for more detail.)
He's awake and ready to play. Look at that crocodile smile! I wouldn't trust it! (That Peter Pan song, "Never Smile at a Crocodile" comes to mind...)
The dragon does look good in your renders! My only beef is that I'm not a fan of the crystals coming out of his shoulder (not only do I feel like they detract from the shape, but it'll be tough to keep them from messing things up. Like in your second render, where the crystals dug into the wing of the Dragon when you posed it. I feel that might happen to me... A LOT hahaha :/) So Is there a way to turn those off? I mean are all the crystals inside the diffuse map or do they have separate surfaces? Or would a opacity/mask map be needed to get rid of them?
@giselle3000 It looks like they load as their own item. You can turn off all the crystals or parts of them:
And there are lots of shader options:
Excellent, @Llynara! That pretty much makes up my mind to get him and take advantage of the extra discount :D
Cross over to the dark side with me, LOL. I couldn't resist the discount either. Plus, it's dragons! These renders above have no postwork. Can't wait to see what can be done with that. Should be fun!
Wow! The dragon renders look SO COOL! I can't wait to see you do fantasy covers with the dragons!
Thanks, Diva! I love fantasy, especally dragons, and not only am I going to do book covers with dragons, but there may be some in a future book...or books
Sounds good! I hope you post them - I'd love to take a look!
Oh, definitely!
Here's a render without the crystals, blue skin. Boy, is he cranky without his horns. I think he's worried I'm going to declaw him next! LOL
I also used @RiversoftArt 's great new pose script to tweak the pose. It's easy to use and fun to play with!
Gave him his horns back and had some fun with the skin in postwork. (You'll see the differences better if you click on them.)
Here's one that's just adjusted for tone and color:
Here's a LoMo look:
Here's a fun one called "Dragon Effect":
I like the look of having the crystals on just the head and tail. That would have been nice as a preset.
One more, then I need to actually do some writing, LOL. I played with some actions and then ran it through Topaz Impressionist, then ran a few more actions. Fun to see what you end up with.
I really liked the crystal dragon, but couldn't get time to do anything for it. Very nice renders, Llynara.
Gonna browse the forums since I actually have time to do so this morning!
Nice! That's exactly what I wanted him to look like. He looks much more menacing!
Those crystals might look pretty cool with a little emissive added to them.
Ah, you read my mind. Going to try that next!
I'd love to see what those crystals would look like with one of these two shaders:
I love the comments that accompany your wonderful dragon renders. Makes me crack up.
Thanks, World's Edge. I can't help it, I write comedy, LOL.
@divamakeup Let me see what I can do
Yay! :D I'm looking forward to it.
One of the things that is keeping me from wanting to get the dragon is that the crystals in the promo images don't really look like crystals to me. The mats appear, to me, to be kind of flat or even 3Delight type mats rather than Iray. I'd love to see the crystals a bit more ...crystally. lol I don't know if those shaders would do that, but I'd love to see if they would. :)