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I won't tell a soul.
Quick update to the bourbon drinking scene to try to tie my entries even closer together. Rendered a pic of the Fred Estaire postal guy and Rachel the femme fatale on a vacation photo together. I used one of my prior challenge entries as a background, stuck it on a grid, crumpled it a little, and set it on its side on the table. I also added another light, but now there is too much light for noir (as I interpret noir) now. I am calling it done anyway.
I will be traveling in San Antonio this weekend so I chose an old image that contained a model of the Alamo for the background pic in the photo. Looking forward to some good TexMex food. Good luck everyone. The entry thread is spectacular.
@Bunyip02 - Thank you Bunyip02
@Diomede - Thank you. I finished last night, but chose some expensive rendering options and had some false outcomes, and when finally finished I had a few adult beverages on board so didn't want to post anything.
Meanwhile, I added a few more details and thought I'd give a few explanations about the scene set up in general.
Since my last post I finished the table in the background, added the plant and the picture of flowers. The picture was created in Carrara with some quick and dirty low poly flower models - I knew they would be in the background with some Depth of Field added so detail didn't matter. I then made a picture frame and added the flower render as a texture map. The plant jumble is a tree branch from a Carrara tree converted to a vertex model, then I used a Surface Replicator and added the same low poly crappy flowers. You can't even see them. Lol.
The hair isn't technically modeled. I started by duplicating the head, cutting out the bottom and top polygons, effectively making a dome. I then extruded and made a low poly 'shape' of the hair, subdivided using the convert button, then set the subdivision level to 3 and used Carrara's displacement tools to paint the flow of the hair.
I used an external app to paint the textures for the torsos and the faces, also the wallpaper. The foreground walls have a Mixer of Fractal Noise and Julia set in the Bump channel. Julia Set? I don't know, I was experimenting...
Lots of lights, most of them are dedicated to lighting specific models. The pipe in the foreground has two. There is a main spot light above to light the figure models, a general bounce light, and specific lights to help each of the figure models. Two spots light the background elements with Angular falloff settings.
The foreground pipe has Fractal Noise in the Highlight channel to help roughen it up.
And oh yeah. I use Carrara's native Depth of Field because I wanted to do as much in Carrara as possible. Barely noticeable, but it's there, thus the painful render times, plus I set the Anti Aliasing to Best and .05 for both shadows and and objects.
My main problem was too many specular hits on the shiny figures from so many bounce lights. To solve this I rendered an image of the figures solo (turned the pipe into a black mask becasue Mary X's hair was being slightly cut off) with the main spot light above along with a Specular pass using Carrara's multi pass rendering. I then rendered the whole scene as normal, but turned off Highlight and Shininess for all the textures for the Lego figures. I then added the Specular pass in post with a minor Curves filter adjustment. That is the only post work I did.
Here are some pictures to help with the verbiage.
Awesome Chinatown, HW!
Indeed! Something to aspire to...
Made me smile, DesertDude! Also glad you got it done in time.
Great improvements, Bunyip, very nicely done. Thanks for hanging in there in spite of those issues!
Excellent changes, Diomede. Looks more compelling (and noir-ish) every time you update.
Another fantastic update! Hmm - is that some pokethru on the pants?
Wow HW, you really got into the spirit of this Challenge. Nice to occasionally see a no postwork image like this. Looks great even without the thumb.
Weren't you telling me a short while ago to pay atttention to those hands and faces?
I really like the added touches, Diomede! I agree, the entry thread is pretty amazing. Voting is gonna be brutal.
The cutoff is tomorrow morning when I get up. :) That is Saturday morning US time.
Wonderful entries, Selina! I was hoping that you had a grand scheme going on to enter. :)
BTW - We usually post our final versions here in the WIP before putting them in the entry thread.
This saucy minx loves nothing more than to finish a hard 'job' with a mouth watering round of succulent malted chocolate. It wouldn't be ecstasy if it didn't melt between her hot lips and smooth its way down to a satisfying climax...
You give good text.
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Yeah - voting will be brutal. My gawd, superb work from everyone!
last day? where did the time go
DesertDude, Diomede, Headwax, Bunyip, sorry I haven't posted in a couple days. Lots to catch up on!
Wow! Great stuff by everybody. This will be a very difficult challenge to vote on!
I'm going to be thinking of Maltesers all day now!
Operation: Bogie-Smoke
This one started as a desire from me to render an archetypal Bogart-like character in a trenchcoat lighting a cigarette. The name sounded to me like a military operation, and the rest of it grew from that.
The Carrara light gel (blinds) is used for the reflection on the water from the signal light. Signal lights have louvers which open and close, like blinds. I'm pretty sure that a signal light would have little or no reflection or power, but it looks reasonable in the scene. :)
I looked for a nice trenchcoat (my modeling is not up to the task) and only found one I liked - Eldrich Seeker from Luthbell. I love Luthbell, but his stuff is expensive, and he rarely is part of a sale. Of course, the next day his store was half off, and I grabbed it. Very nice product, although G2 is serious bloatware compared to the earlier generations. Eight gig memory was barely enough. Gotta get more!
Originally, I planned a text caption at the bottom: "You probably want to know what a private dick like me is doing aboard a tin can in Nazi-infested waters..."
Products include Eldrich Seeker, G2M, M3, Daedalus Sky Mercenary for M3 (another awesome Luthbell product), and the Secret Underground Submarine Base.
Carrara functions include Carrara Text, Carrara Clouds, Carrara Terrain, and Carrara Displacement (water plane). Used a couple of GMIC filters to drop color saturation to B&W and increase contrast.
The pic was rendered in the Carrara native renderer, and there was no postwork needed. I did have to reload the original scene and put it on a plane, before adding the fog and the title. Carrara Clouds (the fog) didn't like the GMIC filters I was using.
Hey HW, you gonna enter this?
It's a terrific render, and it will give us an even-30 entries for this Challenge. :)
Anyone else want to chip in at the last minute? Please feel free. The window doesn't close until tomorrow morning...
ha ha yes, there's a certain degree of texture in the backstory
what a great render - lots of charisma and atmopshere!! and even 'atmopshere' - I think my keyboard hates me it always types the wrong giffen keyds
hey thanks UB I didn't put it in because i forget to put a light gel in it - but I just rendered it again with a light gel on a bulb and it looks the same !! so I will put in in thanks for the c and c too
here it is with a gel, not the same but almsot the same :)
oops here it is with the levels tweaked to get blacker blacks
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Hmmm... I can see it in the entry thread. It is similar but a different angle and more refined/complete lighting. If you can't see it though, then there is a good chance others will not either.
It's not showing up for me as well.
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Nope, not a misprint.
Here is a list of the winners in the Challenge so far:
Head Wax
Evilproducer
Stezza
Mistara
Diomede
Selina
DesertDude
Shlomi Laszlo
Bunyip02
Vyusur
Ooseven
UnifiedBrain
An even dozen. Twelve apostles of Carrara, shining its light onto the world. :)
Part one is now complete. We all got to participate in what is arguably the most important and gratifying part of the Challenge, where we succeeded in sharing and learning new techniques in Carrara, and succeeded in finishing an entry (or several) in the required time, on the designated theme. Congrats to each and every one of us!
Next comes part two of the Challenge, the popularity contest. Now we get to find out how we and our fellow artists evaluate what we have done. The task is difficult. Styles vary, and it is nearly impossible to compare apples to oranges. Still, we need to follow traditional rites of celebration and select some "winners." But no matter what happens, please remember that you - a card-carrying member of the triumphant twelve - have already won.
Very helpful! If you have problems seeing the entry, then others will too. Not everyone will want to go through what you have to do to view the image. Which is unfortunate as it could cause loss of votes for a really beautiful entry.
Here is Ooseven's entry #16, entitled "I Wonder." I also posted it in the entry thread, after Misty's comment. It's the best I can do until he fixes it himself.
I very much agree with this comment. The entries are amazing. Congratulations all. You are all winners. .
There is always an element of apples to oranges in each challenge, but I feel this one particularly keenly. This may be perhaps because I have a stronger personal concept of the theme than usual, not just in subject matter but also in appearance. I am not claiming that what I consider the elements of film noir are the "correct" or "essential" elements of film noir. Rather, there is a subset of screenwriters and cinematographers within the broader category of film noir that appeals to me strongly.
My favorite noir characters are not the detectives (often the protagonist) who act on behalf of others. Instead, they are the other characters doing bad things, whether that be personal vice or using/abusing other people to get what they want - and then suffering regret and despair, and maybe even seeking atonement if the movie is long enough. Beautiful and vain Gloria Grahame puts up with crude Lee Marvin because he is her ticket to the finer things in life, but he scars half her face with scalding coffee, so she murders the perjuring witness whom the crime lords are using to protect themselves - so they get busted. Yup, we've got vice, blackmail, despicable henchmen, floozies (is that still a word?), corrupt officials, revenge, spite, and greed - but we've also got regret and some form of atonement. Along the way we see some standard props, including a lot of cigarettes, fur coats, hats, pistols, alcohol bottles, overcoats, etc.
My favorite noir visuals do not just include shadows, those shadows dominate the screen and create stark contrast. There may be smoke or steam, but not enough to brighten the overall frame or eliminate sharp contrast. When my favorite noir scenes are showing, the movie theater is typically too dark to reach for the popcorn. The cinematographer and the director conspire to meld half of the subject into the shadows, because that is where my noir action belongs, in dark recesses. It is not uncommon for the shadows to be cast toward the audience, or more often from one side, even (or especially) if that means that detail on half the face/figure is lost. .That is why I expressed frustration in my update of bourbon drinking Fred when I added the crumpled photo on the table (and the associated light) because it also illuminated too much detail of other elements of the scene. Because I was doing it late in the game, I didn't have time to adjust the rest of the lighting. I thought Varsel had a good starting WIP along these lines. I was disappointed when I didn't see an entry.
Varsel's WIP
All of this is to say that I am having an extraordinarily difficult time narrowing down my choices. All of the entries are exceptional, and it is obvious that people were going for a particular effect and got there. Clearly, some of those were tongue in cheek or farcical, and I especially like those. In some other cases, people went for a specific scene or character in a specific film. Others highlighted iconic props and scene elements. Obviously, in my own case, Hanna and Barbera claymation figures are not inherently noir-ish, so I should be discounted. Unfortunately, I don't know how I am going to choose among rewarding a great image that conveys a cynical story, rewarding a great image that highlights iconic props, and rewarding a great image that uses shadows the way I like. Perhaps I should take them each on their own terms and reward images for which I knew immediately which film or actor was being referenced, or which books or comics were being paid tribute? I may turn off all the lights in the room except the image on my computer screen and try to read a full page of Alison Joseph (with James Patterson) The Exile. The less I can read, the better.
Congratulations to UB for inspiring such an excellent batch of WIPs and entries. Thank you Carrarists (including those who did not submit a final entry) for explaining your WIPs and sharing your insights so that I learned so much more about scene construction and lighting. You are all winners, and some of you will get Daz store credit.
Thanks, Diomede! Glad this theme hit your passion button.
For voting, since there is no "best example of noir," I would just pick the four that you like the most in general. Hopefully, the choices will be more or less black and white. :)
Ooseven relinked his #16 image. Can everyone see it now?
RE MY ENTRY #16 I thought I fixed it- Sorry for the problems but for some reason Daz forum doesn't like my image and wouldnt accept my upload. I had no problem uploading it elswhere
I have now uploaded the image to the DAZ Gallery and changed the link in my Entry #16 post so hope this does fix it - finally
Because you are all winners, as a little extra thank you to the 12 participants who made entries in this Challenge, I'm changing up the awarding of the Carrara PA prize (from Fenric).
This time, we will hold a drawing at the close of voting, and all 12 of you are entered. It will be a very high-tech affair - I'm making slips of paper with each person's name, and placing them in a hat. My wife will select the winner.
Gotta find a fedora!