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Thanks! I really love working with Octane.
I agree with you about Networthy's ray gun - it looks great!
Here is another shot of the drone doohickey, and a full scene progress render (I think I'm getting very close to the final version).
I've done a lot of work on the time machine shaders. I used mix shaders with emitters and the new noise node for the lights/power source thingies (I'm really having to much fun with these highly technical terms). For the body I used the dirt shader, I also moved it a bit and adjusted a few things around it, as well as dino's hand on it.
Of course I added the little drone I made, but also gave our protagonist a gun (with all new shaders), adjusted her pose, and gave her an appropriate expression. Oh, the rest of the scene is Stonemason's Enchanted Forest which is perfect for something like this (i have had to do a bit of re-arranging though).
Sorry to take up so much space, but I've had my head buried in this for a few days and I've only now come up for air. I'm about to dive back in, though.
I replicated the plant object I created in Carrara's Vertex room to give me some background for the scene. The plants also help to 'flesh' out the scene, giving me some detail at the side of my image.
The bottom image is a screen capture of what I have so far. Some of the elements aren't complete, and I'm still working on lighting and shaders. I think I'm going to tinker with a rust shader and use it for building up the shaders for the mushroom trees.
Thanks! I really love working with Octane.
I agree with you about Networthy's ray gun - it looks great!
Here is another shot of the drone doohickey, and a full scene progress render (I think I'm getting very close to the final version).
I've done a lot of work on the time machine shaders. I used mix shaders with emitters and the new noise node for the lights/power source thingies (I'm really having to much fun with these highly technical terms). For the body I used the dirt shader, I also moved it a bit and adjusted a few things around it, as well as dino's hand on it.
Of course I added the little drone I made, but also gave our protagonist a gun (with all new shaders), adjusted her pose, and gave her an appropriate expression. Oh, the rest of the scene is Stonemason's Enchanted Forest which is perfect for something like this (i have had to do a bit of re-arranging though).
Heh, heh. I like the size of the drone thingy in comparison to the other characters in the scene. That little tiny thing standing up to a great big, slobbery dinosaur. That's perfect.
All of you guys are doing outstanding work!
Looks like our take on alien jungles will be a bit different David. Your jungle looks great by the way.
I haven't fleshed mine out yet. I just have added details to the immediate area around the dead astronaut and the ship. I have some ideas for trees I want build and the lighting is definitely not going to stay the way it is. I want to get the deep twilight look you get with a heavy forest canopy, and have motes of light on the main subjects and to bring focus on certain background elements.
Skeletons in spacesuits and derelict or crashed spaceships have always intrigued me. So many questions that imagination needs to answer. There was an old scifi show from the 70s called The Starlost. The most vivid memory I had from the series was the dead astronauts (skeletons) in spacesuits in the control room of the massive space ark.
Never heard of that show. I'll have to look it up.
A little more progress. I've built a vertex grass object and replicated it around, along with some trees in the background. They're really just default trees with the shader tweaked a bit, since I haven't got the hang of the tree editor. The grass texture at the mo is just plain green - it needs jazzing up. I used a distribution map in the replicators for placing the plants.
Simple plane for the water, with the "turbulent muddy water" preset shader tweaked for more opacity and a better brown.
Still need to add my "rusty thing" and the figure. Then it's on to the lighting...
There is so much fun going on in this thread, I get dizzy and truly dazzled (nope, not just the play on the thread title!) just browsing through it.
It would be unfair to single anyone out, but just based on the latest few posts:
Tim_A, I love the Car-into-the-swamp scene settings and lighting. The Green in the trees is a bit overwhelming, but it might be appropriate for the retro-low-quality-color-print look, if that's what you are going for.
booksbydavid, wow! that scene is so amazing, I now want to know much more about the world and the story.
EP, the setup and the composition are fantastic and I want to spend a lot of time looking at the image to figure out every little detail of it. The only recommendation I might make have offered would be for a different lighting, but you plan to change that anyhow, and in fact I like your plans for it much more than my original idea had been when I looked at the image.
dustrider Great drone model, and the scene is coming together very well. I look forward to the final changes. My only concern is the visual confusion around the time machine area. I took me a while to figure it out, but that might change if you are still tweaking the changes or if the look of it will change when you render out the final scene in Octane. If you are open to suggestions: I'd make a stronger visual connection between the figure and all the techy things - gun, drone, time machine - through similar colors and/or materials. I.e. if the base material of the rime machine has similar color metals as the gun or the drone or her outfit's clasps and rivets, but only a dirtied up version of it.
Stezza, that's one freakishly scary cover, but so wonderfully in style with the historical ones I've seen.
... And I can keep at it going further back into the thread. All the modelling people are doing here is making me envious (in a good inspirational way!), I'm not nearly as good at it.
But, today I am here to ask for all your help.
My problem is this, I have 2 compositions for my intended cover illustration, and I cannot decide between them (well, actually, I have 7, but the other ones are small angle/pan/zoom variations of these basic 2, so storytelling-wise these are the 2 that really matter)
Normally, when facing such a dilemma, I would go back to the original brief, or the text for which the illustration is created, or talk to the editor or art director of the issue, but here it's all pretend, so I am really stuck!
There are pros and cons for both POV's and storytelling-wise they really are different, and I don't know which to pick, because as a reader, I'd probably want to read both versions... ugh!
These are not finalized at all, because before I do any post on them, I have to make this decision, but these are the 2 mock covers I have for now.
Even if you cannot help me pick one over the other, please share your thoughts and interpretations, or your ideas of what the story differences of each might be, and hopefully this will help me decide.
Technical comments are very welcome as well, since I am still in the process of making polishing changes on the scene before I render out the high quality render for postwork.
On the technical side:
Am I OK on the rule requirements?
* Rusted shader: the pipes are rusted painted metal. I will post the shader tree later.
* 2 enhanced items:
- The dress was created in MD, and then I imported it back, defined new Shading domains and textured it in Carrara. Then to add decorations that would match her hairpiece, I replicated spheres on the belt shading domains.
- The bed sheet was part of the Stonemason's set originally, but I duplicated it with symmetry to reverse it's orientation on the bed, added 4 more morphs to shape it and fit it correctly around both figures.
* For the unusual toolkit feature, I am using GI Brigtness from the ShadersPlus plug-in and lighting the scene entirely using the Indirect Lighting and the Scene's Abient Ligthting settings. No other lights whatsoever, just several glowing and light-emitting objects in the scene.
I can't tell you why really, but I prefer the one on the right. Both are excellent covers. My only criticism might be that the metallic shader on the robot looks a bit flat compared to the rest of the image.
Hi Antara,
I don't have any real deeply analytical reasons for my choice, so this is just my immediate emotional response. I strongly prefer the one where the robot is closer to camera and we are kind of looking over its shoulder. I feel like in that version I am sharing more in the character's story/viewpoint, whereas in the other one, where the camera is closer to the woman's head, I just feel less personally involved in the image - like a disinterested third party observer rather than in the scene. Hopefully that makes some sense.
Also, the left image seems too strongly tilted - it induces a little bit of vertigo - I feel like she's about to slide off the bed. :)
EDIT: Composition-wise, I think that the effect I like about it (sharing the robot's emotion) would be stronger if the scene were rotated a little bit so we were more literally looking over the robot's shoulder. This would also move the woman's feet a little bit further from the edges - they seem a little tightly cropped to me, but that's just personal preference.
Not sure if that helps at all, but you asked for thoughts. ;)
Mark
Been working on some alien flora. This one uses a vertex object as a base, and then grouped with the Willow preset from the Basic Plants directory in the Object browser. I replaced the shaders for the trunk and branches, and then created a color gradient for the leaves driven by altitude.
Very nice Pimpy. This image reminds me so strongly of sitting on the living room floor reading my dad's old Analog science fiction magazines, that I actually went looking for them in storage. Your cover could go right onto one of them!
Sweet!
I have ray gun envy. :)
Looking good Tim. Were you planning on muting the colors on the trees and lowering the ambient light?
Quick light test.
@ MDO2010 - Thank you
@ Antara - the first one image is my fovourite but I don't like the main title ....(fidst of all Is not correct ...is it Dazling and not Dazzling) and in my opinion there is too contrast with the window angle on the background and the opposite direction of the title (Dazzling). And the (D) is too close at the woman's face face. if I were you I ll try to invertig direction (D small and the final G big and the same with Text stories ...but is only in my opinion...
Hi EP,
I like this test ...but were are the other plants?
Hi EP,
I like this test ...but were are the other plants?
They will be in there as I get further with my lighting. Takes to long to render with them all visible. I still have to reflected light and I may turn the visibility on, when I set that up (once the astronaut and ship are lit the way I want).
pimpy Your cover is uber cool. I love the shadow of the man inside the gorilla. The mad scientist's hair is a great touch too. So many details!
I didn't notice the lightening shadows until evilproducer brought it up. Maybe it's the weird science bending the laws of physics. ;-)
Many thanks, sukyL and my next haircut will be like this ...
:-)
@Antara: Thanks. The final scene will be lit for night, with car headlights and moonlight, but yes I agree the tree shader needs more work.
Re the two covers, I definitely prefer the second. For two reasons.
1. The camera angle in the first picture makes the girl's pose seem awkward. (actually she looks like she might fall off the bed)
2. The two figures in the first are roughly the same size within the frame. This means that subliminally we can't assign either one to be the subject of the picture. In the second version, the robot definitely appears bigger, and thus, dominant, and its pose leads our eyes to the girl. So it is very obvious that we are looking over the robot's shoulder at the girl. And thus the second picture tells a better story IMHO.
This is my first attempt at a tree of my own. It still needs work: there are still too many straight branches, and not enough leaves, and the leaf clustering is wrong. But the basic tree shape is there.
Argh. I just noticed that I did this too. Mine has "zz" instead of "z." Luckily, still plenty of time to fix it.
Argh. I just noticed that I did this too. Mine has "zz" instead of "z." Luckily, still plenty of time to fix it.
Glad to have helped you !
I saw just a little time before that Stezza too has the same wrong title ... is it a Virus????
Glad to have helped you !
I saw just a little time before that Stezza too has the same wrong title ... is it a Virus????
Or a viruzz? ;)
Antara... Wow!
I have to admit I went back forth, as both renders are so strikingly fantastic, but after looking at it up close, from across the room, and medium distance and analyzing everything about the scene, I think I have to say the 2nd render (the one on the right) is the one I think is ever so slightly superior in terms of framing.
This thread is so much fun to watch, people are putting together some of the most stellar work here and it's coming along so quickly. This was a *great* theme, seems to have sparked everyone's imagination :)
I started working on a scene on the very first day this one was announced, but since then have run into some problems (was going to combine a standard carrara render and an octane plugin together, but still running into a few memory issues with octane and currently can't get the scene the way I want, hopefully I'll find some solutions soon), so even though I started early to have plenty of time, I'm way behind and haven't contributed to the thread yet. Hopefully I'll free up some time tomorrow...
There's literally like already 5 different concepts in this thread that I've thought 'Oh that's a total winner!'. You guys have great imaginations, and some great skillsets too.
Thanks Antara for your comments and suggestion! I was considering doing something else for the time machine because it still didn't "feel" right to me. You confirmed what I was feeling! I may have to make my own, or see what might be available for free.
For your question - I also like the second (right) image better, it just seems to feel like it tells a more captivating story. It draws you into the image/story as more than just an observer.
EP, thank you! Great catch on the shader. It's actually has been driving me nuts. Because the metals I try to create either look flat (and I am going for the shining and polished look, so it's not a matter of bump), or too dark in this lighting. Changing the color to something lighter than black makes it flat, leaving it black makes the shader too dark, changing the reflection makes it either mirror-like or looking too dull. I'm starting to give up on it and leave the improvement of it for post, if possible at all... I suspect the ambient + GI are partially to blame here, but still. Or did you mean that it looks too flat as in not bumpy or diversified enough?
On your new WIPs: love the vegetation! Those rooty things look great. The lighting is getting there, but not quite there, yet, I think. You are using gels at this point, right? the way I'd go about is by setting a really bright, huge and very distant spot with the gel (unless you'd like to just use a mesh to filter out lights - something like a round flat primitive scaled and random-surface-multiplied on an invisible half-sphere, and then you can use distant or sun light instead of gelled spots - you can also render the replicated mesh canopy in background and then blur them to create forest depth in your DOF post), and I would amp the Ambient to about 80% of very dark blue to fake skylight and add details to the shadows. (Or not blue if sky/GI light is not blue, but say, brown-green from the forest canopy translucency and bounce)
MDO2010 Thank you so much! Very helpful comments. I didn't catch the vertigo effect, but you are 100% correct, as soon as you mentioned it, I started seeing it too, thank you! I think the tilted titles add to the effect, so balancing the title might actually stabilize the image more. Also I'll try to render out a less extreme version of that POV and see if that helps.
pimpy, thank you! To tell you the truth, visually, I like the first one better, too. And thank you so much for catching the title error! The titles are just a test at this point, I intend to change them for the final image after I do the post on the initial render, so thank you for your recomendation! I might even render the titles out as a separate layer to add into the image, but I will probably just use photoshop instead.
I agree with EP about your current WIP: it's absolutely perfect, except for the lightning shadows. If you rendered out passes, you can probably just paint over the shadows in the Shadow pass layer and thus get rid of them without re-rendering. Or you can check OFF the "Cast Shadow" settings on your lightning planes and re-render. or leave it as is, those covers were far from perfectly realistic! :)
Tim_A Thank you so much for the detailed comments! The relative figure size is a great aspect I hadn't thought about. Thank you!
And great progress on the tree, the leaves are already less eye-killing green and the trunk structure is great. I usually struggle to get a good realistic trunk.
Jonstark and dustrider, thank you! It seems the consensus is leading towards the second image, and I agree, it does tell a more involved story.
So here is my slightly updated version of it. One of the things I am trying to preserve is the held hands articulation, which seems to be much less apparent from the second (and this current one) POV, but I tried to emphasize it more here, so hopefully it can be seen better. Is the angle change minor enough not to take away from the positive aspects of this POV (involved look, over-the-shoulder perspective at the scene, the robot's dominance in the narrative, the emotion of the robot's pose, etc.)? And can the hands be seen clearly enough?
I'm probably only a quarter of the way done setting my lights and light effects. So quite a way to go.
Thanks for the suggestions, however, I try not to use the scene's ambient light at all if I can avoid it, and in this case I can easily avoid it. I'm actually looking for areas of deep shadows to set off the more brightly lit areas. This will come in handy if I decide to use the Scene toon effect or a filter in post to generate a comic book look to the scene.
Light linking is going to figure heavily in this scene and no GI. For instance, at this moment, I have two distant lights set to 25% with a greenish hue (I will more than likely brighten those a bit due to my tests) for the look of light filtered through a canopy. One distant light ignores the trees and uses soft shadows, and the other lights the trees exclusively and uses hard shadows. The spot lights are to provide controlled motes of light. I use the gels partially for the shadowed look, but also to create shadows in the light cone if I use them. I may use a volumetric cloud instead of a cone depending on how my tests look. Gels will also render faster than light passing through an alpha channel in my experience.
Very nice. Would love to know the story for this one. This also makes me want to look a little more closely at GI Brightness in Shader Plus. I'm really loving the lighting on this one. :)