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Thank you!
Here's another I've been working on using a few of the techniques I learned doing the previous one.
ok, here is the skibbled in compositional advidce image :D
@Linwelly - Thank you so much for the help. I had the sense it was lacking before, especially with the ground, but couldn't put my finger on it until you came along. I've been working on it, and hopefully, the next version will be even better. I've gone for a dramatic angle with the fire in the foreground, but to the left side of the frame. I worry that this will once again cause imbalance, but I want the fire to highlight the figure, and I'm afraid I will have to change things up a great deal from this new angle to manage to keep that. If this new angle does not work, then I will rotate the lady and the fire again, but all this is hard to explain in words. I'll share what I get when I get there. If it sucks too much, well, we'll cross that bridge when I get there.
So, I came up with my own version of a fix, and I thought it was total garbage in retrospect, except for the camera angle which @Linwelly sort of suggested. When I was doing it, it seemed alright but I missed the month in composition and it shows. Plus I totally lost control of the lighting situation and ended up with a third of my image lost to the depths unless you blow it up really huge. Anyway, so here's the image I produced.
Anyway, there it is. I borrowed from Linwelly's suggestions, but made bad choices to go with them. So I decided to go back to the composition month challenge and read through the materials posted over there (which I'd only kind of skimmed before). Then I discovered that Photoshop has several guides built in besides the rule of thirds. And then I discovered this:
When applying the golden spiral to the original dimensions of my image, I got very close by instinct. Not close enough as you may see, but not totally off the mark either. Gives me very clear ideas about how I might fix this. I know Daz includes the rule of thirds guides, but I wish they'd also include some of these other guides. On the positive side, however, I discovered Canary3d has composition guides available in the store for those so inclined. I might get these. Might. I struggle greatly with composition, and probably will continue to do so. It's not just about lines, arrangements and proportions. It's also about light and color, etc. Just thought I'd share. I was so frustrated with this image I almost gave up entirely. Now, maybe I'll hit it again and see what I can achieve using these guides in Photoshop.
Also on the positive side, it restored faith in my basic abilities and instincts. I just need to temper those with skill and experience.
You can turn on the Rule of Thirds guides from within Studio. Click on the icon at the top right of the viewport and tick Show Thirds Guide. You can then use these to position the shot and the figures.
Thanks, @Fishtales, I appreciate you dropping by to offer assistance. I actually did use the rule of thirds guides; I just may not have used them well. (that's bad, huh)
I went back into Photoshop and applied each of the guides that I felt highlighted some of the things I got right, as well as what went wrong. I now have a plan, but I thought I'd share what I've learned and let my pain guide others. Let's have a look:
First, the rule of thirds guides, which I insist I did use, shows that I have the faces of two characters spot on, and the elbow (almost) and knee of central figure touching the other points. Unfortunately, their distance from the campfire makes the faces drop off our radar when viewing too quickly. I had the rule of thirds guides in Daz Studio on to guide me in this much of the process.
Second, the diamond or diagonal rules essentially reveal interesting points. The central figure is almost nicely framed wholly within that diamond pattern. I could probably get away with this if it weren't for the fire pulling the eye to the lower left. My understanding of this type of framing is that nothing should exist outside of the diamond frame of the central figure to lead the eye away. Clearly, that's broken straight off, but I'm not totally giving up on this because of the golden spiral pattern, which I'll get to. It's kind of nice how the knee and elbow just about mirror each other and one of them is transversed nicely, while the other comes close to a rule. The loincloth runs straight into the bottom central point of the diamond nicely. The left point of the central diamond runs through a lantern, while the girls head and angle are nicely framed along the upper left edge. The firepit does nicely frame the lower left edge, but again, the flames pull our eye away from the figure. I intend, however, to use that to pull in the viewer's interest before I'm done. All of this that looks interestesting is purely by instinct on my part and not planned.
Third, the Golden Ratio shows us some interesting patterns, even if it doesn't properly or wholly frame anything. We find that the lower line runs just along the base of the wagon on the left, grazes past her right hand, travels across the bottom edge of her belt, and then goes on pretty much along the top of her left leg. The fire is framed nicely in the lower left panel. The upper line runs across the middle of the wagon door (the upper half of door is open), over her right shoulder, across her upper chest, then along the underside of her left arm. Again, purely by instinct.
Fourth, our friend the Golden Spiral, which I've already shared above, and I'll reconnect here just for effect, reveals a nice pattern already taking place. In essence, what we see is that if only the effect weren't broken up by missing portions of the composition - faded by distance, color, or lack of light, we might actually have a decent composition already. And finally, purely by instinct.
It reminds me somewhat of an image from the promos for @Canary3d's Daz guides: Fourth Image Down. In fact, I'm pretty certain I'm going to buy her product as a result of this.
Now, I hated what I'd achieved with this when I first saved it because it didn't adhere to the rules of composition properly (because it's not just about lines, proportions, and forms, but also color and light, and more). In fact, if it hadn't taken 10 hours to painfully render in Iray on my CPU, I would've instantly closed it without saving. What a shame that would have been because I'd have gone on focusing on my failure and never knowing the bits I may have got right. Now, when I look back at it, when I realize that I did this without anything more than the rule of thirds guides in Daz, I actually feel a lot better about myself, because at least some of my instincts were not wrong. I just lacked the skill, experience, and understanding to bridge the gap between what I had done and what I needed to do. I was ready to abandon this project, but now that I see how close I was, I have to go on. I'll post back when I have something further to share. I hope my ignorance and fumbling shots in the dark help another and save them some grief.
The beauty of rules is that you can apply them as strict or as loosely as you please. As long as you are satisfied with the end result, who cares if it follows rules exaclty? Personally, I use them as a rough guide line. If that ;)
I do like the second angle a lot more. Perhaps you could take some attention away from the fire by drakening and/or blurring the edges/corners in a 2D editor like photoshop. I like Nik's colour effects for things liek that.
@mori_mann - Thank you for stopping by. I agree. Rules may be broken or discarded, but as a novice, I think I must at least learn the "rules" before breaking them, so that when I do I'll have a good reason - even if it's just because I wanted to. It's one thing for a master to disregard one thing for another, because the master, one must hope, has experience, taste, and instinct to guide them. For someone like myself, disregard of such things is the path to obscurity and mediocrity. Your suggestion might be fine and certainly appreciated, but I still suck at postwork I've got a plan. Whether it works or not, well, we'll have to see.
I use the rule of thirds all the time both in my photography and renders and try to compose renders using it. I would recommend starting with the rule you are going to use before composing the image. Next I would concentrate on the background, lighting and camera position before adding the main figure/s.
It would then be a matter of adjusting the lighting (lighter /darker), figure (move it conformed within whichever rule you have decided to use) and the camera to get the image you are looking for.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_thirds
Breaking the rules on some images can work too of course :)
Thanks, @Fishtales. I appreciate your input. I was going for the rule of thirds originally, but after seeing what I've done, I think I'm going to rework the piece for the golden spiral. I will try to keep that in mind going forward.
Now, I made this image to composite the various rules together. The actual image itself is a bit blurred owing to my free-handing the crops I did of the various guides. When I used apply image to bring them together as one, I had to make sure they were the same dimensions, so there's some play here, obviously. I only share this to show what all the guides I shared above look like imposed over the image. This sort of thing fascinates me.
I would go with your first image and I did a rough cut of how I would do it.
The dancers head is in the top left cross and I would move the camera down so that the top line is parallel with the horizon. I would also move the right hand caravan down and out to the right a bit and also turn it so that the steps are pointing towards the fire.
There are other options but this is the one that stands out to me. Even putting another caravan behind the dancer would fill in the space left by moving the right hand one.
That was quite interesting. I tend to follow the rule of thirds (loosely) and I have seen the spiral before but had not seen the other two. I am going to have explore those a bit further as well. Lots of great advice here, I still struggle with composition all the time, what makes the project go from oh ya, that's really great, beautiful, whatever, to WOW that's fantastic!??
@Fishtales - Thank you. I've got about a day left to finish this up for the challenge, and I've already invested heavily in the spiral option. If I had seen this sooner, I might have gone back the other way. Still, I may borrow from your ideas either way as good advice. IF what I'm attempting does not work well in the end, I may go back and do exactly what you've suggested here - if there's time. I appreciate you sharing insights from your experience. Not everyone would be willing to be so helpful. I'm counting on my mistakes to mean more if I make them genuinely in an effort to grow.
@IceDragonArt - I owe it to you and @Wonderland for really encouraging me to get into Photoshop and explore, so I'm happy to give back.
I want to share a *FREE* trick (okay, not so much a trick as something a lot of people may not know) that I stumbled across that helps with memory in resource intensive Iray renders. I'm guessing a lot of you know about it, but it wasn't readily obvious to me. I'm finding this tutorial and the prop helpful. You can also just make one yourself by looking into the suggestions in this thread here. I hope those who are noobish like myself find it very useful indeed. I'll be back after slogging through some more renders. Happy rendering!!!
Okay, so I'm posting my final (for now) version of Love and Glory. It taught me a lot, and even though I wanted to chuck it in the bin on many occassions, I'm glad I stayed with it. I'm sure it needs work, but I'm out of time for the challenge, and to be entirely frank, I'm sick of it. Sometime in the future, if I get the chance, maybe I'll revisit it. Maybe.
Here are the composition guides overlaid on the image. I'm still learning, so I freehanded these with copy-paste in paint, then resize and apply image in Photoshop. Sorry they aren't easier to see.
Okay, so I said that I wanted to help others through the sharing of my pain. Yes, yes, I'm blind and foolish. Yet, here I am persisting. In case anyone cares to know how I made this image, which was for the new user challenge of March, here are the details. Please keep in mind that there was a deadline, and I ran out of time.
So, if anyone at all finds any of this helpful in their own quest, that's worth whatever amount I irritate everyone by being so spammy. Please forgive my ignorant persistance in making my voice heard.
I'm writing to share something I learned thanks to @Fishtales. There's a nice set of composition aides by Canary3d in the store here, but there's also this set for Bryce here (which I have but never really paid attention to as it came free or very cheap back when with a bunch of Bryce things, which I don't really use), which apparently also work with Daz. Reading the description of it in the store page then led me to discover a freebie by Jaderail here for an older version of Daz Studio which I'm guessing would still work fine (in fact, apparently most of the guides in the Bryce set came from him). I'm going to try these out. I may still get Canary's set because it has some interesting shapes, but not until I've made use of what's already available to me.
Looking at them now I think it is the Jederail one I used in Studio so I must have them both :)
Ahh.. okay, good news. Will install that one myself.
Here are some of my most recent flailings. I am working on the open render new user challenge and can't really decide what direction to go with this. If anyone cares to comment, that'd be awesome.
1. Original Test Shot
2. Godray Shot
What I like most about the above image is the neat little triangle of shadow formed between the up-raised arm of the machine and the upper body of the woman.
3. Attempt at Night Scene with Godrays
What I like most about the above image is the nice glint of light coming from the sword. The sky here is actually a full moon HDR.
4. Brightly lit with godrays
I like that she's the center of attention mostly, but dislike the washed out effect of so much light.
5. Combination of 3 and 4 using apply image in Photoshop
And then I went back and did some postwork on one of the images (mostly heat shimmer), which is shown here:
Great to see your workflow and options. I'm a fan of the composition and the energy. The godrays is an excellent addition. The original render was a little dark for my tastes. The second image (first godrays) was a little bright for my tastes, but I really liked the angle of the godrays. I like the range of your final. Is it possible to have the angle for the godrays of your first godrays but the range of the night scene or final? Or, just ignore that comment because I'm just splitting hairs. Keep up the great work. I'm looking forward to more.
@Diomede - Thank you! I struggled with that... one of the things I really like about the night image is the light touching the sword/hand in the image. That was a happy accident, and as much as I tried to repeat it with the other slant of rays, I could not. The light is actually a sun-node camera in that "night" image with the environment intensity turned way, way, WAY down to produce much fainter lighting and shafts. The sun-node just happened to fall in exactly the right spot to make that effect. I rendered that scene with dome and ground off. I then dropped in the background scenery, switched to scene and dome lighting, dropped in the HDR of a full moon with the moon in the exact same position as the sun-node, then removed all of the foreground objects/figures including the godray cube. I then rendered one shot with the draw dome off to create pale moonlight on the background scenery without the added haze of the gray cube to completely block the appearance of the buildings across the street. I then dropped the background scenery and turned draw dome on, and rendered just the clouds lit by the moonlight. I then composited the three layers together in post-work. In this way I was able to get semi-believable pale lightshafts, a glimpse of something through the dust/haze in the distance, and clouds above in the nightsky. Doing the combo of applying the two images in Photoshop was intended to capture some of the slanted rays and still get a glint of light off the sword, but I'm not as excited about how that turned out. The other thing I like about that one particular scene is the way the red of from the borg's eyes highlights details of the right side of her face.
Your final image for March turned out very well!
I really like the second and the last images of the series you posted. No advice at the moment on those, they look pretty darn good.
How's the categorizing coming?
This is some really impressive work you've got going on with these.
@IceDragonArt - Thank you so much! I'm so glad you liked them. Thanks for the insight on this series, too. I struggled with this one a lot. Having an open render challenge made it tough because I just had to come up with something. I decided to build upon all of the areas I've learned since joining the challenge and I wanted to showcase that here. I know they are very colorful, but I wanted to lean more towards comics and heroes in the telling of this story. The one I actually entered into the challenge I posted over there first so it wouldn't be disqualified. I'm glad they somehow overlooked my bad attempts to improve the original image I entered for March. It may have been because I'd posted them here first? I don't know.
Categorizing... I'm a terrible procrastinator. Every time I open my library I want to make images. I've been under the weather (been a bad year), and there's always some excuse I can find to delay. To be totally honest, just thinking about the monumental size of the task has made it that much harder to start. Maybe if I set small goals, and just not think about all that must be done.
On the bright side, I have a new image I'd love to get your feedback on, entered over at the challenge. (It's a fairy so I thought you might like it.)
@Noswen - Thank you so much for the kind comment. I cannot tell you how much the challenges have helped me. When I first joined, I was so clueless about so many things (still am in fact), but I'm learning.
I do like your fairy! A little trick in photoshop when you are done to really bring the glow around her face and head out - add a blank layer and use a pale yellow or a brownish color with a soft brush and just brush her face and all around her - then set it to screen or soft light this will brighten the area around her face with an extra bit of glow. Its a good way to lighten up the face a bit as well. Can't remember how much postwork is allowed in the newbie challenges. But, its a useful tip anyway lol.
I procrastinate too. I just tell myself, I'm going to start on the first category at the top of the list and try and get that one done today. And go on from there lol. I still have almost a thousand left to download and categorize
@IceDragonArt - Did you look at the second version of my fairy or just the first one? I tried to bring more light to her face in the second one, but if you think it needs a touch in post, I'll be glad to look into it.
Ah I did not, the second one works much better. Sorry! Its still a good trick for all kinds of things though, although overlay works better sometimes.Great for lantern and candle glows too.
Hmm. Don't mind me. I'm just playing catch-up with some threads. I really love that last image. The shimmer layer gives it a nice depth of color. I love the way the robot really pops in that image. Your final image for the New User Challenge was fantastic! :)