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Comments
I really like this scene and the way you have everything. Not sure I have tons of feedback here. It looks very nice as you have it to me.
You could maybe play with lighting inside vs the overcast of the outside but I feel you intended the inside to be naturally lit from what was coming from the outside and if that is the case then I think this looks as intended. Though it could be fun to add a light to the desk and perhaps play a bit with light. (That said, I just like to play a ton with lights and angles so its not really a necessity just something that may be fun to experiment with)
Thanks for the feedback. Very good point here. Funnily enough, I spent some time googling Orcs' blood. After some consideration I went with the commonly held idea of Oxygen being the chief factor to colour the blood here - yes, a debate on Orc blood colour is actually a thing... It was somewhat darker in the layer originally before merging. I will see if I can tweak it at all, though I am a little busy with Eleniel Gets Stabby Part 2 currently... She is VERY demanding.
I have changed the woman's pose so that she is looking at the camera and changed the lighting slightly. I would still welcome constructive feedback
Just playing with some ideas and this happened. Like a lot of my work, it wasn't really planned but the result seems to work. Comments?
I'd recommend dollying in, so it's not as obvious it's just a church floating in a blue void.
Also, the composition in general is kind of boring for a gothi-comic scene like this. I think it'd look better if you played with the focal length, so the image is warped like a Terry Gilliam film (he used 14mm focal length so often it's known as "The Gilliam", so give that a shot). Maybe a worm's eye view of Sir Christopher Lee there, looking down his nose and giving the viewer some scowl and some side-eye, with the belltower beside him.
Well, if you want some constructive feedback, I'll tell you what I think:
Otherwise, you could have a program analyze your "levels" (number of pixels for each of the 255 luminosity levels)
Here are the levels for your image:
Notice how you have a large and tall peak in one area? That means that you have a very large number of pixels all with the same luminosity.
Also, you seem to be lacking "Shadows" (the area on the left), and highlights (area on the right, although these don't need to be high, but in your case, there is almost none).
Here are the levels for my month's entry (on page 2):
See the difference? There is a peak (shadows), but it's narrow, and there is also a "healthy" dose of all luminosity levels.
Well, this is just my opinion anyway, I wish you all the best!
"Aiko Under Fire" v2
Intermediate.
Added complimentary orange-hued lighting, as suggested. I didn't want to distract from the dominant directional light though, so it's pretty subtle. Still, I think it helps the image pop more. Especially the highlights on the revolver.
I will only comment on the luminosity balance of your image (see my comment above your post for more info).
Here is a graph of your image in terms of "number of pixels per luminosity level" (left is black, right is white), also called "Levels" in photoshop:
As you can see, you have the majority of your pixels on a low luminosity (dark), and none in the high numbers, creating what is called a "low dynamic range image" (basically you didn't use half of the luminosity levels! that's a lot!).
Here is an example if an image from the internet (in Low Key lighting):
and here are its "Levels" curve:
See what my image's Levels (see post above) and this image's have in common? See what is lacking from yours?
I wish you all the best.
My first thought is that this could be cropped a bit at the bottom and at the top. The bottom has a lot of "empty road" that could be cut much closer to the gate, the top seems to be a too high too. Sometime cropping things works wonders.
Also, you might consider giving your character some more "body language". Is he waiting? is he inviting us in? Waiting us to leave? Consider those things.
Anyway, just my opinion. :)
I have to say overall I love your shot here. It is dramatic and conveys a dynamic scene. I'm pretty new at this, but my only suggestion would be a back light to better outline the edges of your figure.The left leg in particular, with a very thin and subtle lit border would look great and help highlight her overall form.
Thank you for your feedback! I am having a lot of fun playing with lights, but I'm finding it difficult to fully balance too much and too little. I've spent quite a few hours on different scenes trying out variations of 3-point lights with environment lights, and there seems to be a real mountain of skill and art to getting it 'right'. I had originally intended this scene to have a city backdrop (and a night sky) so I might revisit it once I have appropriate assets.
"Aiko Under Fire" v3
I doubled the output of the green key light to give the image more dynamic range. Not sure I like it, though. You can judge an image by its histogram all you want, but that can lead to things being overlit. I kind of prefer the murky muted palette of v2.
I also tried to angle the orange rim light so it outlines her legs better, but what's not apparent from the image is that she's shoved into a corner. There's no room to maneuver a spotlight behind her, and I didn't dare increase the lumens too much and ruin the rich red backdrop.
Still, I'll let others decide which is better.
Version G of mine.
Given that Fallout is a rather dark/ugly universe, and amungst what can be found at times are skelatons within the ruins, I've added some of my own as details.
That's one heckuva stance that guy in the center-right has. Running with both knees pressed together?
His left leg should be straightened. It's propelling him, so he should be driving his foot into the ground as hard as he can and using it to spring forward. His right leg can be bent, but his shin's a little too far gone. At this point, he should be preparing to swing it forward and plant his right foot on the ground. He's running as hard as he can; flinging his foot up and back like that is wasted movement.
First of all, thank you for trying out new things.
However, my point was not to "flood the whole image with more light", but rather to have a bit more highlights in a few select places, especially on the character.
In other words, it's not about having a uniformley lit picture, but creating contrast of shadows, midtones and highlights, by having an uniform presence of all brightness levels.
In your case, you "fixed" the image by increasing the luminosity of one light which, as you saw, didn't improve things, because you were trying to create a "spike" of brightness.
Levels of "Fixed" image:
As you can see, you are still lacking more than 50% of the dynamic range.
Of course, this is not a "must have" in all situations, in High key photography you would expect (sometimes) a 50% dynamic range, with an exponential increase starting from the 50% luminosity pixels to the 100% luminosity ones.
EXAMPLE:
But notice how smooth the increase is and how well it covers 50% of the dynamic range. Also notice that this is good for a delicate image, and not for a dynamic "action" one.
Now, I am just trying to make you aware of things, I am not asking you to change anything, after all you are the artist, and it's your creation, so the final choice is yours.
But, if you feel something is "off" at least you will know why.
Take care and happy rendering!
How's this with version H? Besides trying to tweek the pose of the guy in question I also added a helmet to the skeliton on the right side of the bridge.
Personally, I like the amount of details you have added. Bullet cases on the ground, small broken rocks, rubble, etc. It must have taken a lot of work.
The things that stand out to me are:
Overall, you should be wary of "adding" more stuff for the sake of it. Make sure that what you add is meaningful and that doesn't interfere with the elements already present in your image.
Just some food for thought. :)
That does look a lot better, though now his chest and shoulders should be rotated back and up. They're twisted to the right so far he looks like he's staring off the side of the bridge, rather than at whatever is shambling towards him.
My first image violated Rule #7 it seems. It would help if I read all the rules before posting.
I do however have a new render to submit.
Intermediate Challenge. "Anticipation"
This took a lot of prep work, and was inspired by messing around with the Fleet Commander outfit and DForce. It is a fantastic outfit, and more than met my hopes with its mesh and what I wanted to accomplish. It has obviously been auto shaped to G8 (Victoria) but I spend a fair few hours playing with setting and manipulations to get the jacket to open the way I wanted. I also added bones to the clasps so I could re-pose them after the fact (DForces and unjoined meshes don't play well, I just eliminated them from the simulation). This is not the 'final' render. The first iteration had way too many fireflies around the left arm. I moved some lights and let it render for around 90 min (I have an older 970 card, and renders seem to take an awful amount of time). there are still a few fireflies, but letting it fully render out (it was only 35% done) will probably correct those. It is close, but I need to tweak some of the emissives and want to let it settle and get some feedback before making final adjustments.
Comments and suggestions are welcome.
Thank you!
Thanks for your comments. In regards to certain things you mentioned,
The cones are suppost to represent sparks from the thrown rock where it's hitting the bridge (tried to tweek the lumins on this one. Also added a map to control the areas of the prop that are lit.)
The orange light on the creature is from a fire that has broken out on the side of the bridge, and the creature is pushing through (again tried tweeking the lumins.)
and finally the character that is croutching is in the process of reloading, so the main character is trying to cover them.
When I checked where he was looking/shooting he was actualy firing off to the left of the thing from his perspective so I had to adjust his upper body some more to try to get him on target. (Where he was aiming would have at best grazed the things arm if that.
Anyway here's version I.
I have added some more shadow to my image by changing the direction of the lighting. This may end up being the final version.
The problem with this is that we, the viewer, have no idea what he's shooting at. You could move the camera back so we see more of it, or (what I'd recommend) cheat it. Make it look like he's shooting right at the thing's arm. There's no context for what it is, since this is a single image.
You can also "cheat" in other ways. Since we see those two streetlamps at one end of the bridge, we will subconsciously accept that there's more streetlamps at the other end, behind the camera. So you're free to have some lights above and behind the camera, providing more light on your characters.
Wow, what a big difference. Now it looks much, much better. Thank you for listening to my advice, even though I gave it on such technical terms :)
Intermediate Challenge
"Anticipation" (v2)
I ended up with an odd exploded artifact on the cape's DForce form after reloading the scene so I needed to fully re-simulate. As I was simulating anyway, I decided to tighten up the sides to give the coat a bit less of a sag. I lessened the Emmissives in the Sci-Fi interior kit parts as I wanted to rely on my scene lights, and reduce some of the render noise. I also added 4th light, to brighten and highlight the figure in the reflection. I'm crazy happy with how this turned out. This rendered in 2 hours, although I did apply an Nvidia denoiser after the fact. The Fleet Commander Outfit is possibly my favourite new wardrobe item. I plan to have some more fun with it.
As before, any recomendations or suggestions are welcome.
Thank you!
Thank you for the feedback!
EDIT: Not too happy with my render. I will upload a new one soon.
Thie image seems kind of indecisive. Like, it should either be brightly and evenly lit, or dimly and moodily lit. I don't think the elongated shadow is particularly effective in this kind of in-between state.
And I think you should throw some bright rim lighting on that guy in the window, because I couldn't even tell he was there.
I am thinking that my brightness settings are off. In two of my computers at home that figure is brighter and much more clear, but looking at it on another PC it isn't. I'll play around with the light I have on him.
Thank you for the comment on the shadow. I'll look at shifting that key light so its angle isn't so extreme an angle.
Brightened it a bit at the back to bring him out from the shadows a bit more.
Intermediate
"Anticipation" v3
The brightness on my main PC's monitor was a bit too high, so I've adjusted it against another monitor. Hopefully this will help make my images less dark overall. I've made some adjustments to the lighting position, and levels. Overall light levels are not as stark across the image. I also let this render longer over night, and once more applied a post render denoiser. Most of the noise was in the reflection and didn't look too bad but it only takes a few seconds to apply so well worth the extra step. The inline denoiser did not produce results I was happy with. I did make a minor change to her undershirt. The whites washed out with the new lighting angle so shifted to a grey.
If I can I will submit this as a second entry.
Title: Kayaking
Software: DAZ 4.9 - iRay - Photoshop (for levels and photo filter)