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I did a bit more experimenting to try and get rid of the shadow of the branch on the older girl's face. There is only one spotlight with shadows in this image above the tree. I have moved it forward slightly and lowered the intensity as it drained the colour out of the bow on the larger parcel. The shadow on the front left pillar is now smaller and I have more or less succeded in getting rid of the branch shadow.
The figures are still floating and not standing on the floor
Did this quickly, I was playing with some wolves. only the one on the left is actually on the floor, the others are all floating
Sorry @sueya but everything, tree, boxes and figures, is still floating above the floor.
When I look at the shadows I would say you have activated the headlamp of the camera.
That creates a to bright light in the scene.
You should definitely reduct the light a little.
I keep looking at this and now I am going to ask this question
Is the environement actual geometry ar are you posing your figures, parcel and trees against a backdrop, ie a 2d image?
It's a squadron of AirWolves! :)
Yeah, but it did show how shadows look for flying figures.
I think another problem is that the figures have been moved to fit in the camera frame. By moving everything to the floor and then reframing by moving the camera should solve it. At the moment if the figures were moved the the floor all that would be in the frame would be their heads, or at the most extreme nothing would show. I would make a new camera using the present cameras settings and, using that, pull it back in the scene and then move all the figures down so that the shadows met up with the bases of them. Then switching to the original camera move all the figures back, not up, until I have them in the original framing and then move down or tilt the camera as needed to get the original scene back.
Thanks again for your advice. I have now lowered the intensity of both my distant lights and my spotlight. I also switched off the headlamp on the extra camera that I used to check if everything was on the floor. Although I didn't see @Fishtales final piece of advice before I did this I have moved the main camera and changed the angle
I doubt I will have much time to do more work on this before the end of the year,but please continue to give me helpful feedback
My first attempt at producing anything with Daz. I wanted to see if I could tell a story that didn't need any words, so I came up with this little kitchen sink drama.
The starting point is (obviously) the 'Day at the Beach' ready to render scene, as i don't yet know very much about setting up lighting and cameras, but I did learn a lot about posing.
All comments gratefully received.
Bravo and welcome stevegillon !
When this is your first try with Daz, than you have a bright future before you.
Posing,DoF and camera angle are well done her.
Also the story telling works very fine.
Much better. The girl on the left is now grounded by her shadow, the girl on the right is still floating as are the two presents though. I can't see the bottom of the tree so I don't know if it is floating or not.
Yes it looks like the tree is still floating as well, think I see the stand‘s shadow between the two presents and it’s like 10 cm or so lower than the stand itself.
It's really fun to go back and look at Sueya's original render and then look at the improvements. This has been really helpful in getting me to think about my workflow (and I will be control-d'ing about everything from now on!)
If you're in the mood for another technical tip, if you follow the lines in the floor tiles as a guide, you can see that the smaller girl is also in "front" of the tree relative to the camera, and she's hanging an ornament in mid-air. The green line shows the center-line of the tree trunk, the blue shows the approximate centerline of her body, and the violent, the angle of her shoulders. The red is just there to establish the perspective from the tiles. She needs to be moved back along the Z axis a bit.
A good thing to do when you're setting up a scene, sometimes, is to switch back and forth between the front, right, left, and top views - or keep multiple panes open, if you have the screen real estate. In the olden-days, we used to view the modeling window in a four-panel set-up, with a side view, a top view, and a front view supplementing the perspective view, you can still switch to that layout, even temporarily, to get a sense of where things really are, under "Window > Viewports" you find this layout, and a lot of others.
You can see in the perspective view, it looks like the three shapes are all on the floor, with the red square out in front, but in the other views, we can tell that the cone is too high, and the square is too low and even with the circle. Sometimes you can use that "forced perspective" intentionally, and it'll let you do some neat tricks, but when lights and shadows come into play, you need to be able to see all angles to make sure everything is right.
Thx for this good advice!
Until now, I use the perspective view to change my sight of view when I check my scene.
This little hint will make things much faster.
I did notice that about the girl but was leaving it for the moment as the tree being moved down will move it forward slightly and then a decision can be made to move either it forward or the girl back slightly.
I managed to find a script on @mcasual 's site https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts7/home called Mjccasualdroptotop which allows you to place one figure/object on top of another and used it to drop the girls, tree and presents on to the top floor of the building. I also moved the older girl to the right slightly and moved the younger girl back so that they look more like they are hanging decorations on the tree. When I used the spotlight with xrotate set to -65 I found that the shadows still looked a bit confusing so I changed the angle to -35. I hope that the use of the script doesn't count as cheating!
This is definately my final image.
One of the most important lessons I've learned in several decades as a commercial artist - Cheat. Cheat like crazy. ;)
I agree with @DigitalSteam, when you are creating an end product, the end justifies the means. (I mean, there are some caveats with IP and hopefully you don't have to murder things to make a render... but in general)
My second submission.
Squires Table
I wanted to do something with the newly acquired armor and this is the result. I didn't think I would have time to finish this before the entry deadline but it came together in time.
Sorry, weird double post...
I thought the holidays would give more time to work on renders, not less... I was wrong. Still drawing strings. >.<
We'll see how much time I can squeeze in to tweak some details tomorrow, but just in case, here's where I'm at:
Strings Attached
"I hate these parties, you're just going to get drunk and flirt with all the other girls."
"What? That doesn't happen!"
Very well done! Now everything looks fine, and you improved the picture a lot. I like the attitude to make things perfect. I hope that you will win a prize this month as you definitely deserve it.
Scripts are no cheats, they are tools. When a program allows the user to use scripts, it increases useability by adding user defined features, be it DS or Maya or any other program.
Fine scene. The first imagination who popped up in my mind was, that the squire was so exhausted, that he falls immediately in sleep, after cleaning the armor of his Lord.
The candle light is well done here. Not to bright, to look unnatural, but bright enough to reveal the interior of the tent.
Nearly tycide, nearly that what I have in mind. I think the light inside is a little to low, but I know, if you make it brighter, it will erase the reflections of the city on the window.
Nice one. Have a happy and safe new year.
I'm pretty new to getting up to speed with DAZ Studio, so maybe I'll post one as well. :)
I just made this the other day when I saw that a plug-in I was considering buying came bundled with a big tutorial/manual. That was the tipping point, because as the parody lyrics go, "I Like. Big. Books. and I cannot lie!"
The wrist looks weird to me... also, I did minor color and saturation adjustments in Photoshop as I would with a photo.
@daybird Thanks, pretty much what I had in mind when putting it together.
The lighting is a fine line, great to get the feed back on it.
@Shinji Ikari 9th Thank you, I hope you have a great new year too!
Wishing everyone a happy new year as well!