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Looking great so far!
If the Skylight you're referring to is the Render room option, I thought that was a partial GI.
Maybe a light dome would work?
Hey David, it's coming along very well.
You could try a focal point.? A reddish water lily flower in that dark area.
Also have you seen http://www.dualheights.se/caustics/
You could render a caustic pattern, put iit as a map on a light bulb and use it to simulate reflections from the pond on the dark wall
also if you highlight the left side of that back trunk by increasing the contrast there it will attract the viewers eye and they will make their way around the image more easily
suggestions from a painter that's all, not a cg artist!
have you tried the eight/nine light method for lighting your scenes?
very fast renders as no soft shadows
4 distance lights in sky point downwards at 45 degrees from different points of the compass
all with say 35 to 55 percent light blue light, 30-45 percent shadows
then duplicate these lights and make them point upwards
have no shadows for these new lights and say a 12 -20 percent dirty green colour - these are the fill lights
then add a fullon distance light in the sky which is your sun, full shadows whatever colour youlike
vary recipie to suit
idea from a tut on youtube
get back to you on depth maps :)
hi, just a quick note
a rambling note
this is what I know about depth maps
firstly stay away from infinite planes, they wil stuff them up and you just get black and white
I can't use depth maps in adjustment layers in my PS elements without mucking around a lot, so they always failed for
me in doing depth of focus adjustements
but because depth maps are black and white the most obvious use for them in layers is using the multpily and screen paremeter modes
so a depth map is wonderous for separating near and far with simulated haze if you use screen
or if you invert it and use multipy it will put the distance in shadow
you could also play with oberlay and or soft light parameters
try
inverting the depth map as well
and using the enhance>levels sliders to fin etune the atmophsre effects
you can also use depth map as selection areas if you fine tune your tolerence levels in the selection wand parameter
(that idea courtsey of dan ritchie dogwaffler)
for image texture you can use render>noise on a depth map as well then play with that layers modes,
there is UV layer (?) render in Carrara which looks promising in this regard (use coloured noise)
in this regard dogwaffle has a handy graphic pen filter - if you are light handed you get a nice texture you can overlay your original image
hope that helps ;0
sorry about the lousy pics !!
edit added example of: stippled depth layer (stippled in dogwaffle) ("luminosity parameter) with Toonpro line render on top (multiply parameter) and normal render underneath
working on a fountain too
Looking great so far!
If the Skylight you're referring to is the Render room option, I thought that was a partial GI.
Maybe a light dome would work?
Sorry, wrong words. I meant, I didn't want to use IDL. It slows down the render something awful.
Hmmm. That caustic idea sounds interesting. I'll have to give that a go. :)
I am trying something very similar to what you've suggested for lighting. I have one sunlight and now three 'skylights'. The sun is Carrara's sun light. The 'skylights' are three distant lights colored a bluish tint to simulate the light from the sky. That has helped. I wanted more sun, so I upped the sun light to 140. Looks pretty good to me. I'll have to put up another pic soon.
I've used simulated bounce lights before (no shadows, upward pointing lights as you suggest) but not at that scale. Usually just with a spot for character lighting. Will give it a try.
Oh, and I have a planned focal point in mind. So, unless characters are forbidden, I've got a potential fairy to place in that inviting little spot. :)
Oh, wow! I never considered using a depth map with different layer styles. That's a great tip. My mind is already jumping ahead to what I can do with that bit of knowledge.
Must focus!
I'm with you though on using it for focus. For whatever reason, when I try it all goes south pretty quick. I've tried different tutorials and different software (Paint Shop and Photoshop). It never works for me.
I keep hearing the gurgle gurgle of water. :) Nice fountain.
thanks very much, sure I will do one , might take a while but yes it is doable!
more mucking around - the rocks via andy's explantion of build>organic (fill the poly first!)
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/7488/#98052
some textures barks and trunks pack, like David forgot I had them!
plain render included
Thanks for the link on the rocks.. they came out very well.. And I will keep an eye out if the time becomes available for the other :)
love your gifs wendy ;)!
booksbydavid wrote:
thanks for that tip will give it a try ;0!
oh content is fine, it's just plants that need to be made in Carrara.
glad the depth stuff was helpful.
looking forward to the new pic.
cheese from oz !
thanks very much, sure I will do one , might take a while but yes it is doable!
more mucking around - the rocks via andy's explantion of build>organic (fill the poly first!)
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/7488/#98052
some textures barks and trunks pack, like David forgot I had them!
plain render included
Thanks for the link on the rocks.. they came out very well.. And I will keep an eye out if the time becomes available for the other :)
thanks Milo, I was suprised by the rocks too! simple and easy. just like me :)
Started the second image this morning...
Well, in the interests of passing on knowledge and learning from others, heres what I learnt.
Firstly thanks to Varsel and Dart and Books by David for the roots ideas.
The idea of this image was to make one of those scary faces in trees like in babes in toyland etc.
I am influenced by the Illustrator Arthur Rackham (1867 -1939).
So I started off with a Carrara Tree plant, then duplicated it and turned it into a vertex object.
The idea was to keep the duplicate as a plain Carrara tree and use it's leaves but turning one
Carrara tree into a vertex object made the otther a vertex object.
As you know, turning a Carrara plant into a vertex object just leaves you with the trunk and some stubby thick ended branches
Never mind,... so I modelled my face in the trunk anyway.
Then I duplicated this and shrank it down.
After adding some leaves to this duplicate in the vertex room I have a small branch back again.
I replicated this new branch in the branch material of my Carrara Vertex plant.
But that still left me with stubby thick ends of the branches left after turning the Carrara Plant into a vertex object - which looked crappy.
So I took my Carrara tree into the model room and made a new material on the polys at the stubby branch endings.
I replicated more copies of my small branch and leaves and used this new material to select where they should go, That fixed the problem.
The trees on the left of the largest image have a wave modifier to get that twisted look.
The other thing I learnt today was to render out a shadow layer and blur that a little in post - and that gives you soft shadows without the render time hit.
Last pic is plain render. Hope this is of interest!
Very cool!
Did you know that you can promote a duplicate to a master object? It's under the edit menu.
super work
Those are awesome images, HeadWax.
hey thanks Evil Bigh and Thepencilneck :)
Appreciate that !
I am supposed to be doing my wife's website and instead I am having fun...
Evil, no I didn't know that about the promote to Master!
I think by the time I had a duplicate it was already broken. I was thinking of using copy and paste next time.
I'll try your suggestion first.
cheers from ere :)
Well, half way into the challenge, and I still don't have anything tangible to show for it. =/
And if that wasn't bad enough, Daz put a ton of Lisa's Botanical products on sale for an amazing $0.99 each! I have been eyeing these faunific babies for some time. If you like to build 3D landscape models, here's your chance to do some excellent work for a few bucks!
Somehow I think Daz is snickering over this one.... Excellent products going cheap to build a wonderful garden, and we're unable to use them!
SIGH.....
FD
ah yes, Lisa's work is superb!
I guess the challenge for yourself might be to make something she doesn't have?
something endemic to your neighbourhood perhaps?
or something inhabiting your mind ;)
it's all about investigating what Carrara can do and pushing it a little bit
and learning by watching how others do things maybe?
halfway through? there's still plenty of time to bang up a Garden of Eden....
now there's an idea :)
I own most of her work -- if you need a little devil on your shoulder... {whisper} Buy them! {/whisper}
I'm not in this contest because the plant modeler scares me! Hopefully a future contest might be in line with my meagre skills.
Garstor, ! I was wondering what happened to you .
We Aussie's aren't scared by little things like a plant modeller :)
There's always the metaball thing and the vertex room and or the replicator !
I thought this was plants-only. Guess it would help if I read the rules mate! Not sure I have the time to do anything ... I'm working on a little something with evilproducer's fantasy terrain...
Sorry to be confusing, it is "plants" but any way you like to make them, as long as they get made in Carrara.
Doesn't have to be the plant room.
Just a start off "challenge" to create some i nterest.
Would be good if people place an entry to show some support - doesn't have to be groundbreaking, or earth shattering- just to show some interest .
We "have" to beat the Bryce numbers - they had 17 entries.
I understand the time constraints -
Evil's gift is amazing, aye? :)
What a good bloke - he must have some Australian genes somewhere ;)
I cannot get my fountain to play nice
http://youtu.be/Ji0HUnQJjQM
the particles do not want to spill down nicely even usin 4 nozzles and take forever to render
so looks like I might rethink the water-feature
heh :)
love it of course, I love even more the response
you have quite a devout following :)
Yes indeed!
Still, maybe the next contest -- too busy with work right now. :-(
So now it's back to work on this.
Here's my first ground-cover parts, fresh from the vertex modeler.
If anybody can identify them, that was not intended. Pure fantasy, trying to make something that looks nice.
Colour and texture are all procedural shaders. ( well not all, some of the leaves are texturemaps. I know it's cheating, but I cant get it to work anyother way)
I have also some bushes and trees in work.
One funny thing, since I started to work on this, When I'm at work and driving around, I keep looking into peoples gardens to see how they looks. Comparing layouts and size and shapes of bushes and trees.
On of the plants we have a lot of here is the rhododendron. They are almost like weeds. So I have some of them.
And they come in all shape and sizes. From small bushes to almost trees.
Cool! Makes my meager attempt at modeling flowers look pale in comparison. I know what you mean about looking at gardens. I've actually been looking at meadows and fields I pass with a more critical eye since I started this challenge.
OK, here's the newest wip shot of my little project. Like Varsel, I modeled some flowers for this shot, some nice little white ones at the bottom and some violet ones at the top. Like Varsel's flowers any resemblance to real flowers is purely coincidental. :)
I used surface replicators to scatter the flowers randomly about.
I've also modeled some mushrooms and scattered those along the tree roots.
I duplicated the lilly pads from the back of the pond and placed them at the front. I rotated the group and deleted a couple then I modeled and added the water flowers. These flowers are modeled from reference. I almost got them right. :)
Just as a side note: I purchased Inagoni's Veloute ages ago. I've not really used it much since then. For this project I've gotten to use it several times. The mushrooms, the water flowers, and the violet flowers all use Veloute in their shaders.
As you can see, I've also added more color to the bushes. I'm still not happy with the two bushes at the sides of the image. Still working on those.
And I have to thank Varsel for the tip on water from earlier. I wasn't happy with how the water was looking, so I duplicated the plane (shader included) and dropped it below the first just a fraction. Suddenly my water looked like WATER! I was blown away at the (what was to me) dramatic change.
I also tried headwax's suggestion of adding a caustic gel to a light and have it shine on the back wall. Unfortunately, it didn't work. I think the surrounding light is too bright for it to show up. The caustic pattern did show up when I cranked the spot up to 300, but then the back wall was much too bright. I haven't abandoned the idea though. I think it should work very well when I get my fairy character in there. We'll see.
I had too much free time last night and decided to experiment a bit. This is the above image after going through my usual postwork routine in Paintshop Pro and then over to Postworkshop. This isn't necessarily how my finished image will look postwork wise. I was just having a play, and I really liked how it turned out.