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Fair enough. Slow at work right now... Tomorrow, a different story, but won't bore everyone with work.
Good start, I like how godzilla has already wrecked a parking garage before he meets the super-hero guy.
Have you considered moving your light though? It's coming from the right hand side, so details on godzilla’s body and tail get hidden by his own shadow.
Shine it more on godzilla (aim it left oblique) and maybe bring out more of his body and tail. Shadows would then show behind them and maybe add more depth. Maybe get lucky or adjust light to get shadows onto the buildings for added effect.
Has some good scaling with the street light. Since it’s a rough draft don’t know. Put a couple of parked cars or a wrecked bus along the busy street? More scale that way & people expect things like that on a city street.
Up to you of course, and don’t know how it works since we have to follow the photos. Where is Super-heroes' other arm? Might be physically correct that viewer can’t see it, but sometimes what people expect to see... The ol' 'strike a balance' thing.
Anyway, just some random thoughts. Maybe you have something else in mind!
Thanks for reading & until the weekend then.
--Bruce
@Wanderer That's okay. These things happen. That's why there are volunteers and mods to help keep people on track and informed. :)
@sueya I'll go into DS here in a bit and see if I can find that morph for you on G3F. I hope it's one of the base morphs and not one I picked up from another product. I tend to collect morphs as much as I collect shaders.
@RA I like where you are going with this. Each version looks better and better.
@Wanderer When I saw the reference for the kickboxer and then the reference for the bear, Godzilla was NOT where I thought you were heading. Lol. However, I like what you've got so far. Very interesting. One problem I see is the similarity in their sizes. Godzilla should be much taller than his opponent. I think you could keep the same pose and turn it into a flying kick if you want to make more of an impact with Godzilla and your fighter. It's just a thought. While we are trying to emulate the poses as closely as possible, that doesn't mean we have to keep our figures in the same position as their reference image. Your fighter doesn't need to stay on the ground for the pose to be the same. Anyway, it's just a thought for reflection. I do like the whole idea you're exploring here and combining the two reference images is a nice touch!
@Tynkere I don't know much about 3DL and the shaders. One thing you can try is to convert a reflective shader for iray to 3DL if you have one. You'll probably have to tweak surface settings for the reflective part. I've read this is possible but I'm not positive. Hopefully, someone more versed in 3DL will pop in and give you some advice.
@Tynkere - Thank you for taking time to look and give input. I appreciate your helpful comments. "Helping Hand" is coming along nicely. I would've commented on this earlier, but I actually had been up all night working on this. I just wanted to post and go. For the arm, I tried to stick closely to the reference. I get what you're saying. I do. The hard part for me was choosing a camera position and angle that would capture the similarity to the reference photos of both figures. The position I chose was a compromise between the two. It's amazing to me how much difference the camera angle can make when trying to match a reference image. Perhaps the right hand/arm position suffers too much at this angle. I will look at it and try again. As for the lighting, I am struggling with the right amount and direction. I like that the eyes are clearly lit, and I like that the back plates are slightly glowing. I expect those details to wash out when I change the sun position. I may try to simulate light bouncing off clouds and down onto the figures. Perhaps that would work. I may try different times of day as well. Again, thank you.
@Knittingmommy - You ninja'd me. lol... hmm... Okay. I'm torn. I'm actually struggling with the scaling a bit, plus the posing of Ultraman was a huge, huge, huge... pain in my padding. The newer Godzilla is much larger than the original, I get that. There was an episode of Ultraman where he fought not-Godzilla, which was one of the early Godzilla suits with a collar thing attached, which Ultraman tore off and promptly used as a bullfighter's cape (those who are interested may read all about it here: http://ultra.wikia.com/wiki/Jirass). Technically, this doesn't have to be Gojira/Godzilla, BUT I totally get what you're saying. I struggled with this. The other issue, and this is huge, is that there is something wrong with this figure's (Ultraman's) right leg. When I attempt to pose the thigh, the shin/lower leg moves out of alignment with the upper leg, and a thin slice of the costume where the knee is stretches between the two. If you look closely at the figure, you can see a slight bulge where this occurs behind the right knee. I tried my hardest to align the leg portions AND pose it. I'm not sure I could get a jump kick to work with this figure at all. I appreciate you and Daz giving me artistic license to change the pose somewhat. I'm worried that since I do not know how to fix this figure, I might just make things worse. Any suggestions??? Also, just curious, where did you think I was going??? 8) I'm all eyes (and ears).
@Wanderer Yeah, I see the bulge. I'm not sure you can fix that without going into a program like Hexagon or Blender to fix that by creating a morph for the suit. I think it's a problem of the suit and not the pose of the figure causing that. You might try applying more smoothing to the suit and see how that affects the bulge.
I get what you are saying about the size of the older monsters. Ultimately, you know your own vision. Don't change things just because I come at it from a different perspective. Change my mind! lol. As for where I thought you were going, I'm simple-minded at times. I thought you were going to pose an actual bear. Bear wrestling used to be a thing back in the day. Very back, far back!!! However, I love monsters and I have a weak spot for old Godzilla movies and the like. This is much better! :)
@Knittingmommy - Here, this is what it does when I try to pose it:
This is what happens when I select the right thigh and attempt to pose it with the various controls. It's strange because the lower leg moves as one would expect it would if it were still attached to the upper leg. When I move it farther, a slight deformity appears in the hip area where the upper leg should be. When I look at the wire frame, the upper leg is where it appears in the picture however. I think maybe I'll post about it under the nuts and bolts area and see if someone over there knows why it does this.
@Tynkere for reflective 3Delight shaders, look through your content library in the shaders or shader presets category. Do you happen to own any of the old Genesis Super Suit products? They have a lot of unusual and interesting shaders included. To render good reflections, you need to be sure your raytrace count is high enough and make sure there is something in your scene to be reflected in that surface. I kind of gave up on 3Delight and moved on to Iray, so my brain is a little foggy on 3Delight details now.
3DL is designed for being "non physical", or Renderman (which 3Dl is a clone of) is. It's designed to be able to do tricky stuff for hollywood productions, so there are many things that you need to consider.
Materials sometimes have "Ambient on", which will work against the shadows. In 3DL shadow distance (forget the actual term) adjusts the distance and offset of shadows (set on light sources), that also can effect how shadows looks.
I have to admit I havenät done mucgh 3DL since Iray came along though.
I don't see the problem? the shadow is there on the arm? its just almost hidden by the rope.
If you want the to be nice smoke behind the guy adn you try to avaid using a real atmosphere try loading the smoke into several planes behind each other and dial down th opacity ( I think I pointed you to the atmospher tut in my thread one of the last month? I would even pose one plane before your people.
For shadows to get more diffuse ( in a smoky setting like this it wouldn't be clear cut) you can alter the shadow softness in the Distant light settings.
@Wanderer Hmm, that is odd but, strangely enough, I have seen that before, somewhere. I downloaded the figure. I'll play with it later tonight when I get back home and see if I can figure out what's happening with the figure. I'll post is if I figure anything out.
Oh, thank you so much. I posted a thread over under nuts n bolts, but nobody has responded to it yet.
K, based upon hints I gathered from a couple people over in nuts n bolts, I decided to look for information about the joint editor tool. Lo and behold, I discovered the following:
Right Thigh
and
Left Thigh
Now I just have to figure out how to fix it. I have no idea what I'm doing.
Since three days I fight with vomit and diarrhea. Today is the first time, that I see more than my bed and the wc.
Nice to see what is going on here, that looks great wanderer!
To take the poses and bring them in a total new context, is cool.
Even if we go for pose this month, I absolutly like the destroid buildings. Which set did you use for that?
@daybird - WOW.. so sorry to hear that. I hope you are feeling better. And thank you for the kind comments. The destroyed buildings are from a series by Stonemason. So is the city proper actually. So the messed up buildings are City Ruins Building series. https://www.daz3d.com/city-ruins-bundle plus the other individual pieces which I don't think are bundled. City Ruins Building 03, 04, etc. The ruined cars are from that series also. The regular buildings are from Urban Sprawl 2: The Big City. All buildings shown are at 5% scale. Finding room for these guys to stand inside a city and capture the action properly has been a challenge, and I'm still working on it.
I couldn't get much help over in nuts n bolts, but I think I fixed the figure. I just don't know how to save it with the fixes in place over the original. If someone could please chime in, I really could use help understanding how to save the corrected figure over the original so it loads with fixes in place by default next time I import him into a scene. Anyone?
I was just coming in to let you know what the problem was. I have no idea how to fix it. I'm not very fluent with the joint editor yet. Hopefully, someone else is and will help out. I've only seen this on other Poser figures. I think the figure I saw this with before is the Macaw that's in the shop. It's a Poser figure, too. It does weird things if you use the built in poses but works better when you pose manually. For some reason, the joints are different on this figure than most DS figures. But, I have no clue how to fix that. I'll see if I can find someone to help with saving a new figure presest from the Geometry Editor.
@Knittingmommy - Thanks so much BUT I think I have it fixed now. And I'm not sure how I did it. For some reason, when I loaded the figure up the last time, I noticed that the legs were not zeroed. The right leg was already out of alignment, so I zeroed all the pose settings on both legs. Then, when I went back into the joint editor to try to figure it out, the dynamic sphere was showing up. From there, it was just a matter of copying (with some modifications) the settings from the left thigh since that worked fine. After I did that, the figure seems to work now. I don't know exactly what I did, but it seems to be working! I then decided to try exporting it as a poser figure, but it lost the material settings I modified so.... huh. now I'm here:
The one on the left is the modified original, the one on the right is my exported version.
@Wanderer I'm told that you should still be able to save as a Character Preset. Did you try that yet? That should save your character without overwriting anything on the original character. Of course, you can still save your character as a scene subset. I highly recommend you do that in case other save methods fail.
@Knittingmommy - THANK YOU!! Heheh... You've helped me so much. Okay, I saved as scene subset, but when I try to save as character preset, it says I must select a Triax Weight Mapped figure in scene to save as that. I have the figure selected, so I'm guessing it isn't Triax thingamajiggered. But I have the scene subset. I was just worried I'd lose my efforts if something like a Windows update occured or whatever.
@Knittingmommy - Okay, I think I may have an idea of what happened. So when I exported the figure as a Poser figure, the most recent version it offered me was 9. I'm guessing that might be due to something about the figure being old. Anyway, I had converted the materials to Uber, then applied Iray shaders to the lights and silvery skin. Now when I look at the figure that resulted from the export, it's all the other type of material, like the old 3DL stuff, so I'm guessing that it couldn't export with Iray materials/shaders intact as a Poser 9 figure. Just guessing. Maybe I'm wrong. Who knows. At least I have the scene subset.
@Knittingmommy - Converted the figure to Triax, saved Figure Support Assets, then saved as Character Preset. All good!!! Woohoo....
NAE (Not an Entry?) - Just to celebrate getting it figured out:
"Victory Dance" (not an entry)
Pose on right and left is mine. Middle pose is not. It came from somewhere else (maybe Daz product).
Figure has a couple of issues, as you can see if you look closely, but I'm happy I made it this far.
@Wanderer Yay!!!! Congrats on getting it all worked out! :)
AND I took Knittingmommy's idea about using a smoothing modifier, which I'd not done before, and tried to fix up the posed character in the image. Not awesome, but much better:
Thanks again for the help @Knittingmommy.
Playing soon off Broadway, Ultraman the Musical... lol
@Wanderer You're welcome. It's what I'm here for. If I don't know the answers, I usually know where to look or who to ask. :)
@Wanderer Good to see, and it looks like your celibratory ultra is having a blast.
@Everyone I'm not sure if I'll get back to my render this month. I've gotten caught up in a post-apocalyptic vehicular combat game that is in open bata. It's free to play, so if anyone is curious, head over to crossout.net to find out more.
As a pose artist, the best suggestions I can give are this:
1. Always start at the hip and work your way out!
2. Use photos when possible as reference.
3. Pose what you see, NOT what you know! You need to learn how the human body moves. That way you can pose with out reference later such as posing the character within a certain environment that you dont have poses for or that none excist for.
4. Never use someone elses 3d renders as reference. Not all are accurate.
5. Learn to pose the hands. Once you do its like riding a bike, you never really forget.
If you can learn to pose figures, then your art will take on a whole new level no matter what your style is.
@Shinji_Ikari_9th That will be a regrettable loss. Have fun. I may check it out.
Wow, folks have been very busy. The renders are impressive. Thank you to all the experienced people checking in, answering questions, and giving pointers. I am going back through the thread and learning a lot. Haven't been around because I am still struggling with lighting despite all the excellent advice I am receiving. Have been getting advice in the Art Studio thread. It will eventually sink in. If you have not done so already, I do recommend that you consider an art studio thread of your own. If nothing else, it can be a great place to copy links to resources scattered through the forums and online. You can also write your own tips and answers down so you can circle back later when you forget. Plus, people help each other.
Everyone's suggestions on my modern guy with an ancient Eyptian lyre have been very helpful. @Wanderer, I agree about the shirt shader and think at this point I am most likely to apply a preset to try to solve but at some point I need better knowledge of the surfaces pane. @Nightwing, the vest idea is a great suggestion. I have one that is the right style but it doesn't open, and I have ones that open, but they are the wrong style. Will consider my options. @Tynkere - saw some your RRRR entries, great stuff. For me, the RRRR is a great way to force me out of my comfort zone., which is a help for learning. Plus, the ideas are hilarious.
Here are some of the reference images for the rest of my band.
@Mattymanx - Thank you for so generously offering your advice. I know I'll benefit from it.
@Diomede - Love your band inspiration. Looking forward to seeing where this goes. RRRR? I assume that's a forum. Will investigate.
@Wanderer - RRRR is fun. The basic idea is that you use random numbers to select 4 items from your product library. You then have to create a render that includes those four items. Yup, if you pull a buffalo, a basement set, a WWI army uniform, and a shark, you have to combine them in a render. There is often a theme, but not always. This time the theme is "Judged by the Cover." There are two prize categories, best render and funniest. Find more here https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/233496/rrrr-judged-by-the-cover-render-contest/p1
Aaargh. Studio crashed and burned on me. Was going to try to use DForce for an Egyptian dress. Fatal error just trying to use the transfer utility first. I'm hoping it is just that I had too much going on because I still had my modeling program open, and I had some high poly hair in the scene when Studio crashed.