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I'm trying to work on expressions more. Here I am attempting a fierce expression. I really like P3d Patricia.
And here is the same render with photoshop work to make it more like an illustration/comic.
Catching up! Visiting here is getting to be like visiting Sonja's thread - too much stuff going into the wishlist! lol That castle is amazing, and Sonja already had me putting ghost lights in my wishlist but you just confirmed it. I think Great job on the tears!
As far as putting backgrounds in on post, I do that with 99% of my images. The big thing I do is turn off ground shadows for my render. This is because it's very hard to get things touching the ground properly in Daz & I don't want them "floating" and the shadows in the wrong place will give that look. I also don't know until I'm in post what the background will be and I may need to warp the shadow over something or change their perspective so if I'm putting the background in during post then I do the ground shadows at that time also.
Have you visited the "non realistic renders" thread. I know they talk about some program or plug in that will turn your renders into that comic book look, maybe something to look into if your going to do a lot of them - you know, just thought I'ld share the love and add something to your wishlist. :D
How, exactly do you put the shadows in post? I would be very interested in knowing how you do this.
I really like that comic book look World's Edge, nicely done!
Not sure how I managed to miss your thread before now. I really like your NPR stuff. I'm sorry I didn't see the thread before when you were having your Iray render issues, but it looks like both @Fishtales and @Novica gave you some great advice.
Another technique that some use is to render larger (twice the size works well) and then scale your images down in a 2D program. I do this sometimes and it does help reduce some of the grain.
Nice conversion on the last render to comic style. For the expression I think you did well but I have the feeling there is something off at her stance, I can't really put a finger on it, I guess it's that her hip is turned forward where her shoulder is pulled back on her left side. But that only comes to my mind because the rest is so well done :)
@deathbycanon That's the peril of visiting threads, isn't it? Novica's costs me a fortune, I tell ya.
Thank you for the comment regarding the tears. Serene Night's tutorial is excellent and easy to follow.
Great idea turning shadows off because I spend a lot of time erasing them then painting in my own! Do I shut them off in render settings?
And yes, I have visited that thread. There is also a comic thread at the commonons forum. All very interesting stuff. I do have some of those plug ins. I'm not very good at Daz yet so I haven't been overly successful with the sketchy plug in - just need practice, I know. Everything takes me a long time in Daz so sometimes its just easier to fix/change things in photoshop for now. As I get faster at the simpler things, I do eventually want to do as much as possible natively. I love doing post work and want to play around with Rons brushes soon. Love your post work by the way.
Thanks @IceDragonArt. I went a little "lighter" on the comic book look than I have in the past and quite like it.
Thank you @knittingmommy. They did give great advice, I haven't had the grainyness issue (at least not badly) since, and I've managed to at least get renders that are neither too dark nor too light. Now I know the dials to play with. I have used your scaling trick as well. Like everyone else here, I have a document wherein I add new "tips" - and trust me, it is getting long! Next I have to conquer getting lighting to enhance my scenes. It's very hit and miss for me, which is why many of my renders are flat/just using render slides and no added lights. I'll get it eventually though.
Thank you @Linwelly. Yes, it took me forever to pose (not good at it yet at all). She is on stairs so I think you are right (and thank you for your advice), her hips should not be that straight, and her legs probably should not be parallel (rather one should be back a bit). I wished I had a preset post on a staircase, that might have helped me. I'll try again though, I really want to get good at more fluid poses.
If you haven't seen it, @Sickleyield has a great 3 point light tutorial on her DeviantArt page. I learned a lot from it. You might have to adjust a few settings because I think things might have changed a little bit and the last time I set up a similar 3 pt light via her instructions, I had to tone down the intensity of the lights in the latest DS. However, it will give you a great foundation for building your own light sets for Iray.
I will check it out knittingmommy, thank you. I've seen other tutorials on 3 point lighting and nothing sank in, but she is very good at explaining things.
Posing is my little obsession, but I agree it takes a lot of time. What I do when I'm not sure about a pose is try it out myself, and even better, do it in front of a mirror. other than that the internet provides a lot of images of people in different situations, that helps often as well for posies that are hard to try by yourself
I'll keep practicing @linwelly. Usually I can tell what is wrong with the pose (by looking at references like you suggest), but I have trouble fixing it, making it do what I want. When I move one part, the rest move, etc. I know it is a matter of practicing and figuring out which tool is best for moving a particular part etc.
Posing is pretty much my favourite part. Practise makes perfect. Or as near perfect as possible. Ctrl+z is your friend. Well, mine, anyway. I often prefer the sliders for the body parts over pulling is around in the viewport. Much more control that way.
I agree to that, I use the slider for most parts, I tried the pulling thing, never worked the way I wanted. Another thing I do is always start at the hip and go outward from there, first a rough approximation and then iterations for the fine tuning, and indeed CtrlZ is often part of my process, and save when I'm sure I want to keep something and work on from there.
I will try using the sliders more and working from the hip out, per your advice. Do you use the pins at all @Linwelly?
This is what happens when you binge watch "The 100" -- you get kids locked up in space ship brigs.
I tried to work on the pose and expression. Here is the original render followed by photoshop postworked. I do think the postworked version is better and is the one I'll upload to my gallery. Tips for improvement are always appreciated.
And now I am thinking I may have overdone the post work. Nothing like second guessing yourself, huh?
Here is a link to a "tooned up" version - https://www.daz3d.com/forums/uploads/FileUpload/ec/72acc021797c9dafebff3086669b04.jpg
I tried using them but they made things awkward for my workflow, so I left that again.
I like the postworked version very much, though that teddybear looks a bit odd over there ;) poor kid, thats rought.
Thanks @Linwelly. I think he tossed it across the room since it wasn't really giving him any comfort, lol
I never use pins, either.
Looks like you're getting the hang of the posing thing :)
Thanks @ mori_mann You guys all inspire me to try harder. As one thing clicks, I find time to work on other problem areas.
And there is so much more... I still find stuff I never new and never used in DS and then I feel I'm looking at obstacles. the good thing is it offers a lot of possibilities to improve on
This is a render using Lukas. What a wonderful character! I will add a lot of post work to this to give it some magical elements if I can. I think it will be a good opportunity to play with Rons brushes and other photoshop styles and brushes.
Before this render I had a terrible time trying to use worldbase_extreme. When I bought it I was too new to think to check the date products were first sold and this one is an older one and comes in 3d only. My efforts at rendering it in 3d also came to naught. I'm sure it is my fault, not a product defect. I'm just saying it was very difficult for me to use. I played with a lot of settings, and raising the gamma per icedragonarts advice finally gave me renders that I could see, but then I could see there was a big blank where the ground should be. Anyway, I kept trying this morning, fiddled with ground/sky/dome and every other setting I could think of and then finally gave up.
At the end of the day, I'm happy with the below render and am trying the same render with another background scene (also an old set but one that does appear to render in iray, or looks ok to me anyway).
I have used Worldbase on a few renders in Iray so I'm not sure what specific problems you might be having. One thing about your render though is that none of your main elements are grounded. There is no shadow either below or to the side of them so they apear to be floating above the terrain.
Hi @fishtales, I did find your discussion re Worldbase and tried to follow those instructions but still had no luck. Probably in a couple of months, when I have more experience with the program, it will make more sense to me and I'll be better able to follow directions and/or articulate the problem.
It does look like everything is floating in the above render. I brought them down as far as I could without them sinking down into the ground. I think it is because that is a pond/water that the character and elements are sitting on. I hope to ground them all through post work and fake shadows. I might even cover up the ground with magical effects and such, to hide the issue. I'm looking forward to playing with it!
I have to admit I got a bit frustrated with my failed attempts first at using Worldbase, and then Gardens HDRI (which looked easy), so I may have just "settled" with this render.
Do you have ground turned on under Environment? Even over water they should still cast a shadow. The one way I make sure things are grounded is to select them and use Ctrl/d to drop them down. HDRI backgrounds can be tricky to get right. Setting the Ground to Manual can help. The height the camera was at when the images were taken, the Focal Length of the lens and the camera settings can all make a difference to what is achievable with each one.
I have just finished redoing this render after losing the file. It uses an HDRI.
Do you have ground turned on under Environment? Even over water they should still cast a shadow. The one way I make sure things are grounded is to select them and use Ctrl/d to drop them down. HDRI backgrounds can be tricky to get right. Setting the Ground to Manual can help. The height the camera was at when the images were taken, the Focal Length of the lens and the camera settings can all make a difference to what is achievable with each one.
I have just finished redoing this render after losing the file. It uses an HDRI.
I'm on my way out. I'll pull the scene up and check when I get back in a few hours or tomorrow. Thank you for all your help as always.
Its a standart mistake, when coming from Iray everybody forgets to turn on shadows on the lights in 3delight, so you need to go to the lights tab, select each light separately and turn on the shadow, you can choose if you want to soften them a bit (5% is often a good starting point when you don't want the full straight sun). for some you might want to choos to seften them up completely as the come from a different side than your main light.
edit to say that I don't use HDRI neither in iray nor in 3delight, might be you nedd a shadow catcher as well when using that.
I love posing. It does take a little bit of practice and everyone seems to have their own little way of getting there. I use a combination of Puppeteer and manual posing in the Parameters Tab and using the Universal Widget. I do use pins, but I don't use pins with the ActivePose. I pin while in the Universal Widget. Not really a big fan of the ActivePose tool either. You do get better pinning if you pin using the ActivePose Tool inside the Tools Tab, not with the ActivePose Tool itself. I don't know why there is a difference in how well it pins, but I think it might be because you can fiddle with the settings by telling ActivePose how to pin in the Tools Tab. I always tell to pin "At Both". It just seems to work better that way. More solid pinning.
I also do a lot of just grabbing a body part and dragging it into the position I want. Sometimes, brute force is needed. :) Good luck with the posing.
Turning on Draw Ground in Iray is the shadow catcher, there is no need to add one. You can also change the Ground Shadow Intensity with the slider making it darker or lighter.
I was of the impression she used 3delight in that scene? Well whatever, your tip is valid ;)