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I like reflective surfaces for various reasons, but for one, they make good posing exercises. She has very good contact everywhere (from what Is see) other then the elbow which is slightly lifted. I'm guessing that isn't a mistake as the rest has such good contact. It looks nice :)
Thanks Gedd.
The floor was made by creating a simple plane and adding a tile image to the diffusion layer and upping the reflectivity to it's max and the pose is a preset that came with the Aiko 5 character so not sure the elbow is supposed to be lifted or not but I'm guessing not as well as I did use the CTRL+D command which is "Move Figure To Floor" and I didn't tweak the pose at all.
@bluemoon: I really like the story you have going, and the shadow looks great. It's a bit bright though...I agree.
@carola.ottosson: Very nice work! This has certainly come a long way.
@spmwc: Good start. I like the placement of the point light. The image seems too dark away from the point light, though.
@peter.schelfhout: I like the postworked one better, though something in between the two might be better yet. The fire does look odd in the raw render... a little too plastic-looking. You could try experimenting with various surface settings if you want to try to improve upon it. It does look better in the postworked image.
@sithkitten: Sure, different people have different aesthetic taste. I think you should go with whichever one pleases you. I think the reason the original one seemed "off" to me was that her eyes are illuminated less than the rest of her face. I like how they are more brightly lit in the second version. Aside from the face, I think I prefer the first one though.
@nedkelly: The reflective surface is a nice touch. Three-point lighting is a good place to start, but you may be able to improve on it. You might experiment with adding additional lights at a very low intensity, to provide some ambient fill. Either more spotlights, a distant light, or even an UberEnvironment2 light. Another thing I might try with a scene like that is to put an UberArea light near the key light, and switch the key light to specular only (find this setting on the Lights pane).
.
@Laulu:
First off LuxRender is a completely different beast when it comes to lights compared to 3Delight as it is a unbiased renderer, you cannot create soft shadows by setting parameters, you have to create them using multiple low intensity area lights.
That said, I would add area lights to add some softness to the sharp shadows the sun light created. LuxRender can crate some really breathtaking results, but the material setup can be time consuming before you are satisfied.
If she's in Carrara, then no need to go into Hex. She could even adjust it in the Assembly Room.
lena52, the method I outlined earlier about selecting and hiding polys works by manually selecting polys as well. You don't just have to go by shading domains. To select multiple polys you can drag your mouse over them. You can click an individual poly, then shift-click additional polys for fine control.
If you don't want to hide the polys, there's other methods to manipulate them.
Which are?
Which are?
D'oh! I'll have to go back and refresh my memory on the discussion... Might be a couple hours before I can post back.
Ilena52 I PMed you. I'll post more tomorrow.
So as not to derail the thread, I've posted a thread specific to Carrara's vertex modeler and asked other Carrara users to chime in with tips and tricks and corrections for me. ;-) The thread is here:
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/22297/
I think this will be my final image for the contest :
1. 'Scary Story' post processed
2. 'Scary Story' naked render
Peter.
Thanx Totte and Scott for the advice and encouragement. Here is a second render. I added a distant light to give the area a little more illumination and I added a spotlight directed mainly on the face of the female character. I also added raytraced shadows to give more depth to the scene and adjusted the render settings a little bit.:coolsmile:
It's looking better. I would consider dropping whatever is giving ambient, lighting the two outside columns that is, or doing some post work to darken the two sides. The lighting looks good on the main characters but less light on the two side columns would help put the focus on the main characters in the image. :)
Good luck Peter. :)
Yeah, I've learnt loads, I just hope my mushy brain can remember everything too *laughs* Here's the latest version now, took away the fog to make it slightly warmer but also angled the camera so that the mountains (least I assume they were mountains) were cut out. As I think it was the mountains that gave the impression of snow.
Thanks EP, it looks mor ecozy now that she and the pup is almost surrounded by flowers, plants and grass. A little personal hide out in a backyard or a forest. Or something like that :)
I know you've put a lot into this image, but I'm going to give one more challenge/suggestion. See if you can set DOF (depth of field) on the camera to blur out the green in the background. That is the final thing that is holding back this image :)
Yeah, I've learnt loads, I just hope my mushy brain can remember everything too *laughs* Here's the latest version now, took away the fog to make it slightly warmer but also angled the camera so that the mountains (least I assume they were mountains) were cut out. As I think it was the mountains that gave the impression of snow.
Thanks EP, it looks mor ecozy now that she and the pup is almost surrounded by flowers, plants and grass. A little personal hide out in a backyard or a forest. Or something like that :)
I know you've put a lot into this image, but I'm going to give one more challenge/suggestion. See if you can set DOF (depth of field) on the camera to blur out the green in the background. That is the final thing that is holding back this image :)
Is that something I can set in Daz? I will have a look at it, can't promise anything though.. and if it does work (and if I am satisifed with it ofc).. I do hope I can change the picture as I did already put it up in the contest thread *sheepish smile*
Here's a video at DAZ's YouTube channel. Remember to save your current image as a version and start this as another version so you don't lose what you've done so far in case the dof doesn't work out.
There is a more basic one on cameras as well as many other great videos here if you haven't been through them, or even if you have but it's been a while.
[Edit:] Just watched the videos again.. they did show you this information ;p
Good Luck...
:)
Ok it has taken me some time to get my first render ready. I ended up having to make the room prop and try and get some fire lighting. I have not done much with lights so you throw luxrender into the mix and you can see I am working with some "unkowns".
I have two lights illuminating the fire, one area light for the general lighting of the room and one outside light hitting the window. My lighting groups are hard to define in Lux, my two for the fire are grouped together and no matter what I do they stay that way so I had to set their relative strengths in daz. I was thinking aobut adding some candles to the scene or maybe changing the placement of the area light for the room ....
I'm going to be brutally honest... I haven't watched a single DAZ video except some of the free Dreamlight videos. I did watch the one on youtube that you linked first, though either my system was doing some work in background, or osmething is slightly off with that video. Cause it ended up restarting or jumping to the next video after a couple of minutes. However, I did manage to see some things, and I hope I didn't miss anything too important in it, and.. well, here is the result I got after watching that :)
on another note... is it possible to replace a picture in the contest thread if one manage to make another (of the same motif ofc), hopefully better one?
Oh and Gedd, I kidna liek challenges... it tend to make me learn :) Though I sometimes decide to opt out of them if I realise they are a tad bit too much for me to comprehend *laughs*
/C
It looks like you got the fundamentals which is the main point. If you get a chance later you might want to rewatch it as there is some good information all the way up till the end. And, yes, you can replace images you submit with a different one up until the deadline, unless they changed something and I'm not aware of it (which I doubt.)
As much as people yell about no documentation, DAZ made some very good videos which people don't take full advantage of. I go back to them still.
:)
I'll be replacing that other one than, cause this one do look better. And believe me I will try to take some time to look through those videos, I do want to learn after all.. and one day.. far far off into the future, I'm hoping to actually be able to use this as a little bit more than just a pure hobby :)
And thanks for pointing me in this direction *hugs*
Hugs back and good luck. (I'm a caretaker for someone, we like hugs... it helps get through the day :) )
Everyone (well almost everyone) lieks and deserves hugs :) *give more hugs and a tray of homemade cloudberry jam and fresh scones*
Here is my second render. I moved my area light over the scene a bit and changed my light output setting for the fire lights. Also I adjusted some of the luxrender material settings....
nreed, looking good but you got a sharp brightness that is cut a little weird (looks like a shadow in the fire itself), otherwise, looking good.
I've just gotta ask. Nreed, is that your light plane sitting in the fire, or is it so early in the morning I'm hallucinating? Lux renders any lights that are visible...
Yeah I am still trying to get the balance of the fireplace lighting right. I have one up the flu and that is a bit bright still causing the light to reflect off the top of the log, making it look like a light. Also I have a second light on the back of the fireplace but I was thinking about moving it into the flu as well, make both lights smaller and pointing in different directions to help eliminate the shadows and control the effect better.....I was hoping that having the one in the back would give a better effect of the fire giving off light.
Whew, thought I was going nuts! Good luck with getting the lights how you want them. I hadn't even noticed the shadow thing until you mentioned it. Wish I could offer suggestions, but I'm nowhere near good enough with lighting in Lux to do such a thing. Yet. ;)
Sometimes I am really dumb, not thinking what I was doing I managed to delete all my scene files :red::ohh::shut:
I started another one for this month, lights used:
UE2
1 x Distant Light
1 x Spot Light
1 x Point Light
2 x Uber Area Planes
5 x Linear Point Lights
Used 3 distance lights and i point.
I would love to figure out how to use the sigma stations and lights together better. every time I put a light in and want it cast shadows I get the shadows from the station I do not want those I want the shadows from the items in the station.
A distant light is Like a SUN. You need to Build lights inside. Use Spots with Wide Angles.
EDIT: And just as a reminder the Contest is about Lighting as a WOW factor. The Lighting is the big point not the Figures or Props but how the lighting is used to make the Image Awesome. Luck to all. Great stuff so far.
Went back removed all the distant lights and replaced them with spot lights. Thank you Jaderail I for some reason never equated a distant light with the sun.