Dressing, shaping, posing, adding props - what is your workflow?
XoechZ
Posts: 1,102
Hello!
I am always looking for ways to improve my skills and to learn new things. One thing that I am always a bit unsure about is the (best) way to set up a new scene. So maybe I can learn something from more advanced people like you :-)
So, when you set up a new scene, what is your workflow after loading the base figure?
Steps that have to be done are:
- shape the figure
- pose the figure
- dress the figure
- add props to the scene
I do not mention camera and lightning here, because these things are obviously the last steps.
What do you think is the "best" workflow for these things? What works for you? How do you do it and do you have some useful tips and hints for setting up a new scene from scratch?
Any kind of response would be very kind. Thank you!
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Hello XoechZ,
I think predominantly its very much what suits you, how you feel when setting up a scene that works comfortably for you. For me it varies alot. I will load in the base figure, as im shaping that figure and working out what i want that figure to look like, the hair, clothes etc im working out how the scene will fit together. Through the work flow my end result in my mind will change a good 10 times! So once i have the figure all dressed for the ball, shaped how i want and wearing what i want, its then on to its surroundings. My figure will still be in their default pose like a human cross. Once ive finally decided on the surroundings (this again can change multiple times lol) then ill start working on the pose and positioning of the figure.
This is ofcourse, just one of many methods. If ive already worked out everything in my head, then the first thing that will go in is the surroundings and ill work my idea around that with minor alterations. One thing i have found is that the posing of the figure always comes last. Trying to pose the figure and work the surroundings around it ive found always throws in complications. A figure is alot more open to new positioning where as an inanimate object doesnt tend to play ball lol.
Hope this helps you a little
AA
As they say, there's more than one way to skin a cat, so what's perfect for one person could be bad form for another. Anyways, here's my general approach which may or may not be helpful...
The only time I'll pose the figure first is when I'm using dynamic cloth... pose figure and drape dynamic before adding anything else to the scene, preventing unwanted hiccups and keeping the drape from taking too long - then add scene props and build around clothed figure. (Well, if pose requires interaction with a prop, then it'll be added before running the drape too e.g. sitting on a chair in a dress, need the dress to react to the chair surfaces, so the chair has to be in place before running the drape.)
If it's a serial story, the scene might be an established location that is used time after time - very easy to load the scene and then set the action in the familiar location.
Generally speaking, I decide early on where to place my camera - a good framing of shot is often make-or-break for a scene and shouldn't be an afterthought... all my poses are then placed with my camera position in mind. And yes, I'd normally add lights after I'm happy with composition of scene... but last is not least - proper light setup is the most important part of scene building, it's just easier to add nuance once you can see exactly where everything is.
If it's a character/clothing test, portrait or pin-up, focus is on the character (always gets dressed in default "T" position before getting posed) so it gets primary attention and add props to suit mood of scene. If character is interacting with other scene elements (chair, tree, another character, monster etc) then I'll load these so pose(s) can be refined - I consider weapons the same as clothes rather than as peripheral props, always integral to posing.
I don't think in terms of rules as such, but that might just be because I follow them without having to consciously remember the steps (the more you do, the more automatic a lot of it can become) - my mood will also determine what I do when (except for dynamic clothing as per above - that is a strict rule for me because I feel the results are much better doing drape without lots of props bogging the system down).
i like to picture the scene in my mind before sitting at the computer. otherwise i end up organizing my folders all day
Thanks for your answers so far.
My main problem with setting up a scene is that I always end up in an endless circle of posing, shaping and adjusting things. When I find a good shape (morphs), the cloths look awkward, when I find a good pose, the shape gets lost, when the pose and shape is nice the clothes do not fit, and so on... frustrating sometimes.
So my hope is to find a workflow (or method) where all the different aspects work together and not against each other.
As was said, what works best for you, is best for you. :-)
I usually go from shaping/morphing to clothing, to posing. Then I add some lights so I get a better idea of how the final figure looks.
Sometimes I add the environment before I pose, sometime it's the other way around. Usually, adding an environment means some more tweaking of poses, and lights.
Bearing in mind that I usually do tableaus and not sequences,
-Scene/setting comes first. Leave everything unlit to get the speedy default DAZ "flat" lighting.
- Pick the actors I want.
- Try on some different hair, clothes, and shoes to get the social cues I'm after.
- Turn hair and clothes off. Leave the shoes on for accurate ground positioning.
- Pose and equip props to taste. I try to always include at least one grip or relatively complex surface contact in a scene (hand on door handle, foot resting on cushion, etc.) to "stitch" the characters into the scene. Some very quick intermediate poses with rough character placement and low-quality renders can be an iterative step, just to make sure a scene has the potential to work the way I'm visualizing.
- Get facial expressions set up and eyes pointed where I want them. Note: There seems to be a nasty bug in DS where some characters who do a mutual look-at between actors' eyes will crash the scene. You may find it handier to create non-rendering, brightly-colored primitives...I call mine "charactername_GAZE"...lock an actor's eyes on that, and then position the primitive where you want the line of sight to fall. Another hint: Once you get a character's expression set right, try dialing it back about 25-50%. Even with the greatly-enhanced control of newer generations' facial morphs, many an otherwise-good render is ruined by "PoserFace"...a lack of subtlety in the character's expressions. People are very practiced at reading faces; give 'em just enough to work with and leave it at that.
- Check hand and foot placement carefully. Look for collisions from multiple angles.
- Turn the clothes on and check for pokethrough. Thanks to autofit tech, it's not nearly the problem it used to be. Occasionally, I'll still have to export a figure and clothing to a 3d program and "brush" the clothing polygons to deal with pokethrough, then re-import the clothing as a static OBJ. As long as I'm careful, the positioning is dead-accurate and the materials snap immediately into place. Also I sometimes thicken clothing to get two-sided materials and so it doesn't look skin-tight; again, not the problem it used to be with older releases. Obviously, this is an optional step for those with access to a modeling program. This step (except for, I think, the thickening) can also be accomplished with some of DAZ's built-in tools, but I've never learned to use those, so I can't help with them.
- Establish at least one worthwhile camera shot. (This has probably been cooking at the back of my head since the very beginning, but not always.) Try for an interesting angle or perspective, avoid the Here's-Your-Aunt-Tilly-Blocking-Out-the-Eiffel-Tower-With-Her-Stupid-Hat throwaway tourist snapshots. Unless that's what I'm deliberately after :D
- Lighting, for, me, almost always comes last. This is a discipline unto itself, and tomes have been written on the forums and elsewhere about it. I wish I were consistently better at it; my results can be very mixed. As a rule of thumb, I try to establish at least one interesting "meridian" line, where shadow and light break roughly halfway across at least one significant actor or scene element.
- Use the first couple of passes of progressive rendering to check lighting.
- Turn hair back on and check lighting. UberHair is my BFF :D
- Tweak render settings and take the shot :-) I generally render one light source at a time, and then composite using Screen mode layers in PhotoShop.
- Above all, I'm patient with my process. It may take me up to 25 hours to set a scene the way I want it. It rarely takes less than a half-day.
I try to picture the scene before anything. Then I create a scene using only the setting, but without lights. Adding and positioning odds and ends(shrubbery, trees, debris, grass, or furnishings. Any people in the scene I usually create, dress, and save as scene subsets until I have the cast completed. Then import the cast into the scene, position and pose them. Look at the scene from various camera angles, chose the most appropriate, then begin experimenting with lighting. Then tweaking or, if necessary, revising.
Workflow is as unique. What works for one person doesn't often work as well for another. My workflow and pipelines vary according to client, project, timelines, budget, departments involved, and probably a dozen other factors I don't think about anymore because they're part of any project.
Creating a full 4 color separation still image for print has a very different workflow than one I would use for creating an initial concept piece. Which in turn differs from what I would use to create a storyboard.
Best advice is to figure out what steps work best for the way you think/create.
I often have a problem where due to slow rendering times, there is often not enough time to do all the final adjustments to a project that I want, plus I find that having to wait hours or days to see if one little tweak renders ok or not puts a big damper on my interest level for the project. Having realized this, I have been trying to adjust my workflow for speed boosts. I try to identify the items that are likely to cause the majority of the render slowdowns, and if reasonable, save those until last. For example, in Bryce, clouds/fog/smoke/steam can easily add days to the render time, and in DAZ Studio lots of items with transparency applied can slow the render way down, so unless it is critical I will add those to the scene last. That allows me to much more quickly go through the basic steps of adding items to the scene, doing test renders to verify their positions, cycle through different clothing items to see which looks best, adjust poses, etc. without having to wait forever for a very large number of test renders. Then after the constant minor adjustments are mostly done, then I add the stuff that will slow the render way down and work on that part.
I find that I often try a few different things before setting on the right combination. Therefore, I will avoid spending a lot of time fine adjusting a pose until after I'm more sure of a character's rough pose, position in the scene, clothing, and other objects in the scene that will touch the character, since the size and shape of those objects will affect the pose and I don't want to waste a lot of time making adjustments that I'll have to delete and do a second or third time. I'll just slap a stock pose on the character and worry about the hands and expressions later, for example.
When appropriate, I also avoid messing with custom materials until later, because I don't really know what it's going to look like until the final lighting is set up, and that final lighting might require quality settings that are super slow to render. Of course that doesn't always work out, sometimes you need to work with it sooner, but other times it can be avoided.
Well, for me the positioning of the camera is about the first thing I do, because it is inseparable from the composition, and the composition is the only reason that there is a picture at all, otherwise it is just a bunch of things scattered around higgledy piggledy. So once I've decided that I'm going to do a picture, say, in a bar, I look for a good vantage point which will give me an interesting composition. Then, I find, all the other components fall into place, and the meat of the picture materialises from there.
I'm always starting with a scene in mind, and that means I have a rough idea how I want to compose it. So first I put the camera about where I think it should be and set the render size and ratio.
Then I load characters and apply shaping and texture to them first.
Then I clothe and add hair, jewelry, etc. I want them as complete as possible before I add the set so all I have to do is pose.
Then I add the set.
Then I pose. I might adjust camera position here if a figure needs to be bigger or smaller than I planned, or the composition looks cramped to me, etc.
Then, when everything is set up with the proper composition, I set depth of field on the camera, add lighting, turn off all the hairs' visibility, and do a test render, usually with shading rate at 1.0.
I keep doing test renders and adjusting lighting until it looks the way I want it to look.
Then I turn the hairs back on and do the final render at shading rate 0.1 or at most 0.2.
Xoechz,
I usually follow the same sequence as yourself but I occasionally add the props at the end of the pose stage. I'm currently doing a series of renders with my Victoria 6 HD fantasy warrioress character, armed with two of Porsimo's fantasy weapons swords. These are are not dainty little girlie weapons, they are so big that they occasionally end up sticking into parts of Victoria so I have to adjust the pose to suit.
Cheers,
Alex.
To my way of thinking any workflow that ends with the idea on screen ready to render is the proper workflow. I have no set way I do things, some times I'm playing with building a set or just looking at one, this then inspires a idea I build on. Other times I'm just playing with a figure and the morphs and I end up with a full scene render. I get most of my best idea's just playing around, a set workflow would be for my comic work which has prebuilt figures and scene sets ready to drop the figures into.
TIP: For most poke through issues I find the Poke-away products for G1 and the G2 figures very useful.