Ideas about magical ambiance surrounding a light globe, anyone?
static
Posts: 325
You've seen them everywhere. Their in pictures, movies, videos... You know, the little ball of light in the wizard's hand with waves, bands, or puffs of magical energy being gathered up, or released from the sphere.
How do I do that?
Step 1. I know how to make a primitive sphere.
Step 2.....
Post edited by static on
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It depends on the exact effect. If you strongly want "rays" the best way is probably to texture the sphere as opaque but with a bright ambient channel in surfaces, put a point light in the middle of it, and then do the rays in postwork. If you just want a glow, ambient + slight transparency + point light might be enough, or you could also put another sphere around it that is more transparent to create an "aura" effect (a lot of props with glowing spheres in them do this).
Well that's a start, but I was kind of wanting a misty, smoky effect emanating from the orb and seemingly at the will of the wind, but not quite able to escape the orbs clutches, so to speak.
Not unlike the promo image used for "The Mage" here at DAZ Store, but with more volume.
In that case, primitives aren't going to do it for you. You'd need to do it in postwork, buy a product like Smay's Smoke and Flame, or you'd need to be able to build your own smoke shape in a modeler and transmap it (prims aren't going to do it).
I have smay's Fire and Smoke, but I can't seem to get what I need out of it.
It does great for some effects, but I need a bit more info on what each thing does. I have been playing with it, but sometimes a dial seems to do nothing until I do something else first, and by then, I'm not sure what was done correctly earlier and what was useless, or worse, incorrect.
I guess i just have to go on playing around. There are just so many dials that I don't even know the first thing about. For instance, The other day it was suggested to me that I use the inner and outer colors. I haven't the foggiest notion of what they do, but I (quite accidentally, I assure you) managed to dial them the right way, because what I got was exactly what I wanted. The problem is this time, that doesn't seem to be the solution, so I don't know where to turn next.
That's the one I meant, sorry about that.
The Surfaces tab is what I suggest you next examine.
Well, I'll look into that tomorrow, I guess. Something's wrong with my machine today. I haven't gotten a 91 x 91 render in less than 30 minutes, all day long. I may have to go inside and do some surgery in their, or, at least, fire my gremlins. I hate to do that though... Interviewing new ones is such a hassle. ;)
Actually, there are some pwEffect shaders which work well for this type of work. You can create an orb where the center is invisible but the outer shell glows. Lends itself well to kamehameha style magic effects.
Unless it's all gotta be done in the render, see if these videos inspire you to experiment a little with postwork...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSWB0RHZlFU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKsLuST8iwo
Why re-invent the wheel?
http://www.daz3d.com/fire-and-smoke-for-daz-studio
Beat me to it! Also worht mentioning you can mess about with the displacment with a lost (most? all?) of these shaders, including the method of production (the algorithm used) and by how much. I've done a couple of renders with a sphere with a geometry shell, with the shell having pwEffect on and the underlying sphere UberArea light.
@ static:
Perhaps you can show an image of what you have in mind? A still from some movie you watched? Or some hand-drawn piece of artwork by some artist? That oughta go a long way in helping us help you.
Ok, just curious but, what style is it that gets itself named after the King of Hawaii?
I'd prefer it in render. I am not that good at post work. I have a very hard time getting through an entire post work session without destroying the original work. I am just recently learning layers, and I still can't change a texture color without flattening its texture.
Because I wrote and read post #4
Beat me to it! Also worht mentioning you can mess about with the displacment with a lost (most? all?) of these shaders, including the method of production (the algorithm used) and by how much. I've done a couple of renders with a sphere with a geometry shell, with the shell having pwEffect on and the underlying sphere UberArea light.
You're probably right, but I don't understand a lot of what you just said. I need to know how.
Thank you, I'll look around and get something up.
Ok, here are some (widely differing) examples that show parts of what I would like to put together as a whole.
In the end, the effect must produce a feeling of "here it comes..." or "Now you've done it". It will appear to be, just the beginning of something much larger (if not in actual size, then in presentation or impact).
I think that may be better and easier done in post-work - and that's coming from someone who doesn't like having to try and do that! ;)
Nuts!
I am no good with postwork. I keep trying, but I do not have steady hands, and I haven't done enough for the ideas of it become second nature, so I'm not quick with what I can do.
Also, I don't have Photoshop, I use Paint Shop Pro, Gimp, and Dogwaffle and there are a lot less tutorials for those then there are for Photoshop, but they are about 100x cheaper to own.
OK, it's nothing to panic over - make layers your friend and you'll be off to a great start... http://youtu.be/3ThCiEK6r3s
next is to start thinking of how to render your scene to make best use of layers - sometimes better to render foreground and background as separate renders ;)
I just tossed this together with a Primitive Sphere a point light and Smay's fire effects. All a DS4.5 render. No post work.
Opps let me do it as jpg.
There is a product called called shadowcaster spell ribbons that daz sells that has the center globe you might check out
http://www.daz3d.com/shadowcaster-spellribbons
Awesome, thanks Serene!
Now if I can figure out how Jaderail did that, I think I can combine smay's Fire and Smoke, Arki's Shadowcaster-Spellribbons, and Jaderails methodology, and come real close to what I want.
Short TUT on my example.
1. Create a Primitive Sphere (Create Menu>New Primitive>Sphere, only size really matters).
2. With Sphere selected in Surfaces Tab set Ambient to the color you want and lower Opacity.
3. Create New Point light. Use any method you prefer, I use Translate tool, position Point light in center of Sphere.
4. Set the Color, shadow type and intensity for light in the Parameters Tab.
5. Load Smay's Prop of choice Scale and Position and Morph (if it morphs) then Apply a Material.
6. Create a Group of all three items.
7. Use the Translate tool to Position the Grouped effect and Render.
Awesome, thanks! a couple of things, though, if you've got the time...
Step 1 - check
2 - check
3 - check
4 - I need a short explanation of shadow types, please. Basically, what's the difference and effect of the difference?
5 - check
6 - Group? New concept for me.
7 - waiting on 4 and 6
In the Scene pane, select all the items you want to group. From the menu bar, select Create > "New Group...". Give it a name when asked. This creates a new item (the group) in the scene tab, to which all the selected items have been parented. You can now do things with the single group item to affect all the items in the group.
You also don't have to make it a 3D object, if you aren't going to animate it and don't have to worry about shadows and reflections and multiple camera angles; you can just scribble your idea onto a 2D image in photoshop and apply it to a plane with some opacity. There are definite limitations with the 2D plane method though, I'd probably keep looking into the 3D ideas, but keep the 2D idea in mind as a future option.
In the Scene pane, select all the items you want to group. From the menu bar, select Create > "New Group...". Give it a name when asked. This creates a new item (the group) in the scene tab, to which all the selected items have been parented. You can now do things with the single group item to affect all the items in the group.
Awesome!
Like grouping your armies in a video game.
Thanks.
All lights Creatable in DS have Shadow as an option (The Shader types like UBER have a setting in Surfaces). There are two types of Shadows Deep Shadow Maps and Raytraced. For full renders I use Raytrace. Turning on a Shadow will open more options to adjust the shadows.
...there's also these that might help:
phttp://www.daz3d.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=hero+fx&x=0&y=0
HeroFX Extreme is the prerequisite for all the expansions on the page. These are "in scene" effects which have ambient channels instead of postwork brushes .