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Interesting twist you chose to make here :D
You already got some feedback from Kismet, I will add some thoughts to that. I like the cats you added to the scene, they give a nice and menacing context, framing her left and right.
Her two long waepons cross a little sideways from her which makes them leading lines that lead away from the center of interest, you might want the rethink that.
I need to say a word about the pose and the weapons. Try standing in front of the mirror and imitate her pose, if you manage, try with a broomstick in every hand ;) (and then send a selfe
, no - I'm joking here, I'm a bad girl)
I know that life is hard when you go to the female pose sections in DS, there is that tendency to make the girls stick out their bum. If you want a believable fighter you need to get rid of the stick out bum. Probably reducing it to one long weapon might be an option that solves several challenges in one go.
The addition of a few props really makes a difference.
Here is a new one. I lightened the whole picture and added also some light in her face. I will include the old one as reference:
is she dancing or "day"dreaming: Actually you have it spot on.
The priestess of Elistraee knows her Mistress sees all who the light of the moon touches. She longs every day to be touched by the dark maiden, for the lady of dance to hear her prayers. Soon it will be time to return to the naked innocence of her birth and dance to the glory of Elistraee!
I am so glad I managed to convey that. The fact that you brought that up though as inspired me to adress it a little and so I closed her eyes and opened her mouth a little. She is infact supposed to be dancing and daydreaming. Or that is she is dancing to the glory of the Elistraee. I also took your advice on the emmissive light and made on of those. I did keep the original moon and sky. Here is my new picture:
Old one for ref:
Just as a bonus for anyone who wants to answer. Since you guys have seen my original image. Would any of you possibly think this could pass of as a painting? I know it might be harder to see after knowing it is originally a 3d render. Just wondering. Was fooling around with it in post. Would be very curious to see what you think??
Well I am kind of late to the party this month but real life has a way of getting in the way of things. So I decided to go with L'Adair's image:
So for comments, I like the fact that it looks like a photo of a diorama more than a 3D render, I keep expecting to see the stand used to hold the female figure in mid-air.
I think the lighting is really good too, and good depth of field.
On the critique side, the female figure looks more like she is jumping sideways away from her opponent instead of towards him as the scene seems to imply is happening, a slight rotation of her position so she is angled more towards him would help that.
We don't get to see the expression on his face because we are viewing from his rear I think a rotation to the side to include his face would help the feel of an actual fight scene.
I know the background was done in Photoshop but to me it does not feel like it is connected to the scene and it keeps drawing my eyes away from the scene, maybe if there was some additional imagery included it would help tie it to the scene more, as it is right now it helps add to the photo of a diorama effect the I mentioned so it is kind of like a catch 22.
I like the look of the render in 3DL but I have not had such good results with it so I used Iray for my render, all work done in Daz Studio 4.12 (beta) no post work
I really do like this piece and it took awhile to figure out how to replicate it with those changes but this is what I came up with - and I do need to adjust my lighting a little-:
Well I need to find computer and keyboard props, get a hair product, and probs need to fill up the background a bit, but I think this works as my second entry.
Hi guys!
Sorry I've been MIA I am getting over some bug or other that's going around here
I love all the new entries!!
No Nose if you check out Zeddicuss's Website there is an entire PC System and desk for free!
Elli
Thanks, definently looks better with the right props
Okay final go at this image. If I had time --I don't, we're off to Scotland tomorrow and I'm not packed!--I'd forget about her right hand holding that €£%^ scythe and bring it into her body.
Other than that I'm happier with the composition, though, omg, it takes days to render! lmao
Nice job. The only quibble I have is her arm looks a little distorted.
Wonderful job. I hope you have a great trip to Scotland. Safe travels.
As promised I created my own version with the Cirth Outfit and Scythe. I didn't have the patience to let it render for days so it's grainier than it should be. I hope you like it.
Revision 2 (officially, but I think I've revised about 15 times so far)
@Linwelly - Trust me, no one wants to see a selfie of me with a stick out bum. LOL. I think you were right about the weapons. Too long to use 2 of them in the scene and just too busy. I wish I could blame the pose library for the stick out bum but I did that pose from a basic T-pose so that's all on me. Fixing it really did help the overall appearance of her as threatening rather than a bad actress in a B-movie. Even though I had said I wanted some weapon edge in focus when I played with it I liked the DOF better with the weapon seeming closer to the viewer.
@Kismet - Great eye. I think I got lost in detail somewhere and didn't successfully return to my composition. When I went back and looked at the thirds and where things were. I like this composition much better.
@absolutely everyone participating. I haven't had much time to give feedback on your pictures so let me just say....WOW!!!! So much talent in here.
Reckoning - The Sequel
I did add some post in PS to put a starry sky in the back ground, denoise a little, and resize.
I don't have any entries this month, but I do have a problem.
Look at this. Just look at those ugly jagged edges on the sleeve. What have I done wrong?
I've never had a render look like this before. Is my graphics card melting or something?
@TigerAnne - You can try increasing the Pixel Filter Radius under the render tab settings. That has apparently rescued some people. Hope your graphics card isn't melting. We need you in here.
Aww, thanks! I think I oopsied the pixel filter indeed, and that was most of the reason for the sharp pixels.
I'm definitely taking part in the DoF challenge, which is probably up next.
For those of you getting a lot of noise in their renders there is a De-Noise filter in Iray! It's listed under Filtering/Post Denoiser in the Render Settings. I came across it while working on my Cattitude promos and OMG I refuse to render without it now!! The default starting iteration is 8 for the denoiser but I've found you can get much more detail showing through if you set that to between 50-100
Almost to the end of the month and I wanted to post a little reminder...when you are finished with your image for this month, be sure to make a post linking the image you got your inspiration from along with posting the image you made.
Also of note after this contest is completely over, Ill be asking for some feedback. See what you liked about it..what you didn't...whether its worth trying again etc. I'll post a separate thread to discuss all that though
Ok, since I'm new at this (one month on Daz and no experience in 3D graphics), here it goes:
Critique on Linwelly's image on post 2:
The Good: Good idea, I love fantasy, and drow. Also, the compositional idea is quite good, and I like that the arm and sword are slightly out of focus.
The not-so good (sorry, I am a perfectionist):
1. The materials on the armor are more sci-fi than fantasy, nor do fit well into a chitin-like type of armor than the one that she wears.
2. The make-up doesn't seem to be blending too well, so when something doesn't work, my philosophy is to not use it.
3. I feel that the background is too blurred out. I personally don't like it, I tried it, and found better results with a well defined background that enhances the image, instead of just being there. I think you have some great elements back there, like the fire, and the oval-shaped door/gate, and it's a real shame that it gets hidden in the blur.
4. The skin: Black skin is tricky, and your image's skin seems to be too glossy (gloss weight), giving an excessive light reflectance. Black is supposed to absorb light, not reflect it.
5. The hair. I feel very few people menage to do hair properly, and this Drow is certainly suffering heavily from it. You need to use the right shampoo! ;)
6 Light: Females need a soft light on the skin, you are using a very harsh one. Try to reduce its intensity, and play more with shadows, making your character really stand out!
So, after my million points critique, here is what I did, I went to the very basics, using the G8 Binah character (included in Daz Studio), the Charm Hair G2F (included in Daz studio), and the Shadow Thief outfit (also included in Daz Studio). In other words, I'm just using the barebones.
Edit: Spelling edits, attached small fixes picture (rev1), and my postwork image.
TITLE: "Don't mess with the Drow!"
POSTORK:
Version C here. Added some DoF, and some smoke from the campfire just outside the frame. I also did some adjusting of his left leg because I saw that it was poking into the bench he's sitting on.
In case I don't make any more changes, here's the image by @Kismet2012 that inspired me this month.
I am unlikely to have time to make more changes, so here's the image by @Kismet2012 that inspired me this month.
This is my final image
Moving home
well I finally got around to buying some hair, I like the way it looks, felt like the wall needed some decor as well...
Here are some tips that I hope might improve your composition:
The Spear: The left hand should have an underhand grip, with the elbow close to the body. It' a much more natural position to handle staves.
The Light: You added some cool fire in the background, but it needs to cast some stronger orange light. I see it, but it not very noticeable, it could have been used to case some interesting colored rimlight on the characters.
The Postwork: I would remove the stars. The fire would cause enough light pollution to block them out. If you want to use some postwork, I would add some smoke and some orange light going upwards from the fire.
The Pro tip: Next time, try making a scene where creatures react to what's happening. For example, instead of having the pumas and the character taking a selfie in front of a huge fire, make them run away from it.
Hope this helps!
Nice idea, but I would like to point out a few things:
1) The spotlight seem to be pointing at the character, and yet the light is cast on the wall behind him. I think you might be using a prop + 1 light, and the light might not be aligned properly with the prop.
2) You have a lot of boxes, a dark room, and yet the boxes are not casting any harsh shadows (I see them, but they are very, very soft, that's because the light is too diffuse). Try putting a spotlight coming from the right side (of the room), and probably position it low (above the ground), so that it casts light on the feet and the boxes towards the left
Hope this helps!
Welcome to the New User Challenge @Deadalus
This month is a bit special for a newcomer but you made a great start there and with the basics no less. I think its a clever stategy to first learn with what you get with the program and do the shopping once you understand what you need to buy plus the special shop terminology :D
Let me give you some reaction on that as I think there are some things woth looking at a little closer. The makeup and the hair I commented on earlier, they are valuable aspects.
The background, I like how you put that in words, it's your view and you give good reasons as to why you see it like that and all good aspects to think about.
The material of the armor, this is a personal preference of yours. Personal preferences are a thing on might want to be very cautious with. For example if I want to critique a piece of music, but I might be a fan of classic music and the one I critique on is a folk song, would help nobody to say its a bad folk song because I like classic music, right? Its a different thing when I say there is trouble with the rythm in your folk song.
I'm not taking offence in what you say, I just wanted to use the chance to pinpoint something that I needed to understand an learn as well, in order to help people improve on their artwork and not make it my version of the artwork.
Lets take a look as the topic skin, as you say dark skin isn't easy to make good images with. Now if you look as photos of human black skin tone or rather dark skin you might find that is aktually has a rather high specular value, One needs more light to make the details on dark skin visible and with that more light bounces off as well. So to say darker skin absorbs light needs some differenciation. There is some interesting info on that on this page, It's for photos but a lot of that can be used in DS very nicely
http://www.gcphoto.com.au/Gold_Coast_Photography_Studio_Blog/18_Dark_Skinned_Model_Photography.html
And while we takle light settings, your last aspect is quite an interesting point which I want to look at closer.
you say:" Females need a soft light on the skin, you are using a very harsh one. Try to reduce its intensity, and play more with shadows, making your character really stand out!"
I know this information is around, and there surely is some thruth to it but again lets differenciate.
Females need a soft light, when you want to make an image that emphasizes aspects that are traditionally associated with female attractiveness: alluring softness, gentleness etc.
Let's unhinge this thing from the gender aspect: You would use a soft light as well for fluffy animal images or a landscape of lush greens and inviting hills, or the portrait of a grandfather with his baby grandchild, right?
You would use a harsh light for the image of a man to pronounce traditional male aspects, edgy muscles and jawbone, indication of power and danger, a motorcycle, impressive architecture. Its all about context and which aspects I want to pronounce.
So to put a soft light on someone with a sword in hand, threatening you is basically taking away from the raw danger, and that is why I used harsh light in my image.
I'm happy to discuss this further with you or anybody else who wants to chime in, this surely has more than the aspects I mentioned above.
Now for your image, that is a nice action pose and the magic effects work very well with the situation and helps guide the view to the character. The bright spot in the mist on the lower right is taking attention away from your character and makes you loose detail of her.
Now I assume you want her skin to be absorbing the light (as from your comment above) I still think you can give it a better balance when the whole image is a bit darker.
Maybe try to move on partition of the hair behind her back to give the viewe a better view on her body (not sure if that is possible with that hair)
I think it's an impressive example what you can do with postwork. well done!
On the topic of background blur, I had given this some thought previously too. Do we approach the scene from the perspective of a photoshoot or are we making a book cover (where anything goes)? Shooting a model with a 50-80mm lens from 3 meter away will typically create a DOF about 1 meter thick, its perfectly reasonable to have a blurred background. Just that DS has yet to simulate the bokeh with larger lens and we're stuck with generic blurring (or is there any setting?)
Thank you for the input, you make some very interesting points there. If I understand correctly, the softer lights might have a better use as an expression of a delicate subject (or subject matter), so that in that case a female warrior would instead require a harsher light. Makes sense.
About the textures/make-up...yes, completely subjective, I just wanted to express a personal opinion on those. It's just that I can't seem to understand what the armor material should be, and my brain just gives me the "there is something strange here" message. Which is fine, after all in fantasy & sci-fi there can always be unknown materials.
Finally the skin, well, again you are right, glossiness does bring out features that otherwise get hidden by darker colors tones. However, I would like to point out that real-life to 3d rendering can be very different. Here is an example of a real life model and her 3d model. As you can see the glossiness on the 3d model is much much lower than the real one.
Real Model (Duckie Thot): Lots of Glossiness
3D MODEL of Duckie Thot: Not so much glossiness
What I want you to notice is that with dark skin, it's not about glossiness, it's all about contrast. And you can achieve it with with either some very white hair, like I did, or some golden jewellry, or anything else you feel works depending on your personal preference.
Also, I have learned not to rely too much on how other people do things (like photograpers) because it might not always be the only solution, nor the solution that is right for you.
Anyway, discussing this with you made me learn something, so thank you. And thanks for the warm welcome too! Take care.
Here's what I have noticed about lights and cameras. There's a large amount of tips and tutorials from the prespective of a real-life photographer, which makes the whole subject a bit biased towards doing things in a very specific way, which for the 3d world (or create the effect that you want) might not always be the best way. I mean, it's 3D and I want it to be more than reality, right?
Now, regarding DoF, I feel that what you are not being told is that when you focus on something, everything else around it gets a bit blurry. The problem is that is a feature of your brain so, when you add blurriness around the subject you want the viewer to focus on you have 2 blurriness effects at the same time. The one from the artist, AND the one from the brain. So, in my opinion, you should need very little of it, especially when you have an interesting background.
My take on the subject is that, if you want to add blur, add it in postwork, where you have more control over it. Just render your subject(s) and the background separately and, say in photoshop, you can try applying different levels of blurriness to the background only, and see which level of blurriness works best for your composition.
I'd like to also post another interesting thing I just did with this drow and for this contest, this time around also using the Dark Fantasy weapons (found in Daz Studio), and the HDRI from DimensionTheory (also included in Daz Studio).
NOTE: I used some slight bloom effect from the rendering settings, but otherwise NO Postwork and NO DoF! Also, it was super fast to render!
TITLE: Use Light against your enemy
POSTWORK:
NOTE: I've included everything I did for this contest in this post, including the reference picture so that you don't have to look throughout the thread.
Here is the image that inspired my work:
Here are the final editions of my images:
Thank for the feedback. It's a shame you didn't post it sooner as I have no time to do any more work on this. The light behind the man is coming through the window. There is also an ambient light in front of him to ensure the room isn't too dark.