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Comments
I've played a bit with the refraction setting (50% strength and 5.0 index) and I'm really uncertain as to what it has bought me on the water surface. I've not looked at how this particular water object is put together, but I'd probably need to play with transparency settings, reflection settings, bump/displacement maps, etc. to get some more mileage out of the refraction controls.
The water is very still right now. As you said, some more waves might make it more believable.
Personally, I find the dude jumping from the ship distracting. If there were more people jumping overboard... hm, that might be too busy. Your call, either way! :)
Yep, I'm going to have to start working my way into learning the deformation tools. I'm going to need a bit more time to make that look good, hehe. I may even have to rework the water plane all together on this one if I want more "motion" on the surface.
p.s. that's a short haired Nidale figure jumping from the ship for the record.
Edit to replace the image with a new version now with a replaced water plane with deformer technology. It isn't very well done yet, but it's better than before.
Burning Ship - Kameha Kameha version
Just because I can. Still rendered in Daz Studio with no postwork.
Burning Ship - "Holly Son Goku Batman!" version
Adding a full size screen saver version in 1920 x 1080 size for the fun of it.
I like the lighting. What's a bit lacking, imo, is some drama - some pose, or backdrop, or something more to hint at what's happening. Right now, this is mostly "just" a closeup - some sort of action or added context would be cool. Just an idea :)
Kismet2012, the reflections themselves look really nice, and the lighting is good. I agree with Tobias's comments quoted above. Aside from that you might want to take a look at some of the surface settings on the armor, especially on the less reflective surfaces. A little bit of grit, some bump and/or displacement, etc. might go a long way in improving the realism of the render.
Might also be interesting to lower the opacity of some of the surfaces so we can glimpse the face of the person wearing the armor (assuming it's not a robot, that is...).
I think this is a great start. I don't know what sort of water plane you are using, but if you can add or increase displacement a little that might help to create more of a ripple effect.
Certainly willing to go back and try some. In the mean time I've jumped over to working on my "forcefield" effect in my "Reflections of Fear" render. This has been a bit of a bugger to get lit nicely, but I'm pretty near what I was intending now.
Edit: A few more adjustments and I get a result I really like. Certainly more tweaks can be done, but this bottom composition was what I had in mind when I started playing around with this composition.
zmortis, you've got a bunch of good renders here, but Reflection of Fear 6 is my favorite. Nice lighting and reflection effect!
Certainly willing to go back and try some. In the mean time I've jumped over to working on my "forcefield" effect in my "Reflections of Fear" render. This has been a bit of a bugger to get lit nicely, but I'm pretty near what I was intending now.
Edit: A few more adjustments and I get a result I really like. Certainly more tweaks can be done, but this bottom composition was what I had in mind when I started playing around with this composition.
zmortis, you've got a bunch of good renders here, but Reflection of Fear 6 is my favorite. Nice lighting and reflection effect!
Thank you for the complement. That one took a lot of tweaking to get a result I was happy with. The "force field" is actually based on a photo of stained glass on my side porch door. I used it for the color map and the bump map of the plane, and then colored most of the lighting except the ambient to match it. A lot of tweaking of scale, amount of bump effect, and light settings was required to get that look. A little bit of transparency/opacity tweaking happened as well. It certainly isn't a natural lighting setup as I'm putting light sources where no source has a right to be, hehe.
Lightning Strike
Rendered in Daz Studio. No postwork. Not really reflective surfaces related, but some light reflections involved anyway.
Kismet2012, the reflections themselves look really nice, and the lighting is good. I agree with Tobias's comments quoted above. Aside from that you might want to take a look at some of the surface settings on the armor, especially on the less reflective surfaces. A little bit of grit, some bump and/or displacement, etc. might go a long way in improving the realism of the render.
Might also be interesting to lower the opacity of some of the surfaces so we can glimpse the face of the person wearing the armor (assuming it's not a robot, that is...).
I do have Stonemason's new Dirt Shaders I haven't played with yet. Totally forgot I had them. :red:
Hi, everyone. First time posting a render on the Daz forums (and actually my third render overall).
First thought was to do M.C. Escher style reflective sphere, but I see someone else may be working on something similar...
Racked my brains and finally decided to make some mirror spectacles. I hope my concept behind the piece translates. As I said, i'm just starting out, so any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Please click to see full-size image. Thank you for your time.
Well as a first posted image that is very good. :coolsmile:
I agree! The reflections look great too, although for realism I would think they should probably be darker and/or the surface more transparent. Maybe only a little bit, if he's supposed to be wearing mirrored sunglasses.
A very nice render. Was this done with Poser and or using the LuxRender engine? It doesn't seem like a Daz Studio 3Delight render in the lighting look. If it was done with 3Delight, I'm curious about what render settings you used.
Thanks. Although i'm afraid everything was set up in Daz and then rendered using Octane. I can give you more info you're unfamiliar with it.
Thank you for being so welcoming, everyone. Here's a more realistic rendition:
Thanks. Although i'm afraid everything was set up in Daz and then rendered using Octane. I can give you more info you're unfamiliar with it.
I've read up on Octane, and plan on buying the Daz plug-in when I have a spare $500+ lying around, hehe. It does very nice work like this with renders in my looks at it's output. Unfortunately the plug-in was still a beta variant when I last looked (a couple weeks back). I've been hoping for a final release version using the version 2 Octane before making the jump.
p.s. also a nice adjustment on the transparency of the lenses. This is a very good contest example. If I were to do any adjustment for my taste, it may be to ease up a tiny bit on the depth of field bluring, just a matter of preference though.
I think that one might be pretty much done. Depending on what you're after, you could give him thinner lips, more pronounced cheekbones, or a slight upward or downward tilt to the mouth - but that's really very minor details.
I think that one might be pretty much done. Depending on what you're after, you could give him thinner lips, more pronounced cheekbones, or a slight upward or downward tilt to the mouth - but that's really very minor details.
I am well impressed. :coolsmile:
Other Self
A different direction this time with a mirror/window looking into a different world. You have to question though whether that doppleganger is going to be as friendly as she seems.
I think my Bryce render "Jade Dream" may just lose out to this as my second contest entry. I hate to let down bryce like this, but I do have a water render already, and no real mirror render now.
Don't forget to click for full size.
Now that I'm satisfied with the "Contest sized" render above, as always it's time to "experiment". This time I'm going way off the beaten trail with the composition of this piece. This is still rendered with no postwork in Daz Studio.
Edited to add the larger version.
Now to break the illusion and show this is actually done as a single unretouched render in Daz. Yep this would have been a bit easier with a rectangular mirror, but I had to work around the oval one instead. I basically built a box using rough planes to make a room, and then furnished it with enough details to look good in the reflection. Absolute accuracy was not needed as most of the room wouldn't be represented in the render. This blocked out the set of the "Easy Environment: Autumn" so I could make it look like the two figures were in two separate environments.
I also picked up the plugin whilst it was in beta because they have a discounted price. The plugin has some pretty nifty features, but to be honest it just as easy to export to the standalone when you require the latest features. We've been waiting on the update for a while, although it should be any day now...
Back to the subject at hand! I hope i'm not out of line for saying this. I admire your enthusiasm and this is certainly an environment for experimentation, but I feel other users would be able to offer more advice if you cooled your jets a little. I'd like to offer feedback on your work, but i'm not really sure where to start. I really like the latest pieces. I think it might be effective if instead of a window the "Other Self" was being reflected in an actual mirror, like a mirror world. And maybe, if it's not too cliched, have the figures pressing their palm to the glass. Just a couple of ideas.
Now we're getting there! Good call, everyone's been spot on with the advice.
Eased up on DOF a notch, thinned the lips, put him on a diet and brought in the cheeks. Also added some character to the face, and tweaked the mats and lighting to accommodate the changes.
Now I'm relieved he has a skeleton lying there, not a gagged victim... :)
I know, right? I don't want to go too deep, but he's a doctor and my intention was that the skeleton is just metaphor... It's open to interpretation.
Wish it was that easy for me to lose weight. :-P
This is an excellent render.
I tend to work and tweak in batches as time allows. That means I frequently put out several variations in a 4-5 hour window. Many of those variations don't make it here because not enough of a difference occured or I didn't get a result I was interested in. Since it is a different work flow than other people may use, I perfectly understand if people don't bother to comment or offer suggestions. That being said, I do still listen to suggestions (as can still be seen above), and will attempt to follow them if I can.
In terms of removing the actual reflection and just having the two models touching hands through the "mirror" as a simulated reflection, I thought of doing something similar originally. Then I realized that I would not actually have rendered reflections to achieve that "effect" by removing the reflection all together. I thought this would kind of go against the original spirit of the contest which is to deal with relections in renders instead of just simulating reflections.
That being said the poses could be refined to have the figures touching hands, and the "wall mirror" resized to a "wall hanging mirror" to look less like a giant window. I'll attempt that during my next working session (probably in a couple of days as other projects are calling as well). I'll plan to keep the mirror's glass reflection though just so I am still incorporating actual reflections into the image result.
In terms of the contest itself, only two image submissions per contestant are allowed. No matter how many different things I do here in the WIP thread as brainstorming or experimentation, I still have to pick two that meet the contest rules for the contest. If you want to understand which images need "help" out of the many variations I've put up here, then look at my contest entries thread to see the two images I am putting out as my current entry choices. Those are the ones which may need to be tweaked/altered for improvement, unless I start a new project I like even better than the current submissions. If that is more work than anyone wants to bother with, then I'll understand once again if someone declines to offer advice. I do welcome constructive criticism, but I don't expect everyone or anyone to feed a need to provide it. I also try to offer constructive criticism where I can, but if I can't see something I would try differently with an image, I also pass on providing it.
Finally, I appeciate the comment about using the stand alone version of octane rather than the Daz Plugin. That is a cheaper option anyway. I was just worried about how complex porting the file over would be, and what level of materials manipulation had to happen in Octane to make it work well. Thanks for the comment, and look forward to my variation based on your suggestions in a couple of days.
Hi, zmortis. I wont bother quoting, as it's quite a large chunk of text. If your happy with the level of feedback your already getting then by all means who am I to tell you to slow down. If the time comes when you require advice on a particular piece then i'm sure you'll ask for it. I'm new to forums and just wanted to be courteous and return the favor, but I personally didn't know where to direct my attention because there was so much going on.
I never said to remove the reflection. I think it would work better if you shrunk down the window so it looked more like a mirror, but better still would be to have a freestanding mirror reflecting the room and composite a scene with the doppelganger behind the glass. That way it would look more like a portal than a window, and the reflection would illustrate the "barrier" between the two words.
Lastly, with Octane it's a simple as setting up your scene and exporting it as an .obj with collected mats. Then load it as a mesh and replace textures that don't translate well by dragging and dropping Octane materials onto the zones. (Things like lights and certain shaders that don't work in the standalone won't be compatible with the plugin either). Lighting can either be a default daylight environment that simulates sunlight at different times of the day (and in different places in the world), a HDMI for mostly ambient lighting, or you can set up emitters that convert surfaces into lights; like light bulbs, fire, etc...