Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2024 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
Hey everyone slow down to Warp Speed 20 or those Dilithium Crystals are going to blow !!!!!!
Great work by everyone, and I have been wondering if I should enter or sit back and enjoy what everyone else is doing.
Time to get started, don't know if I will finish before the due date, as have been busy with real-life stuff
and in my down time was side-tracked having fun with Critter morphs (very easy for me to do). ;-P
This is my environment base, need to add a concrete type landing pad, and moon-type base structure, followed by a few odds and ends.
Then onto modelling a rocket ship.
Can't slow down. Having too much fun. :)
I forgot to show the rust shader I created. Nothing much, really. I took a texture map I had and added color and used DCG's Enhance:C for a blender in the color channel as well as for the bump. I like how it turned out.
Unfortunately, it didn't work out in the image like I wanted. I was going to use the rust shader on my mushroom trees, they needed a bit more color and a less uniform bump. I chose the orange color for the mushroom. When I added the rust shader to the original mushroom shader in a multi channel mixer with a fractal blender, I lost the color. I sort of got what I wanted, but the rust shader didn't show up so well. It's there, you just can't tell. :(
Morning each. I won't get a chance to progress today (in truth I spent too much time on Carrara yesterday, and now I have to play catch up with other things). I just wanted to suggest this to Antara regarding the handholding: Try moving the hands across the girl's stomach so they're nearer the camera. The pose might not be 'realistic', but it'll look better to the camera - it's an old theatre trick. ;)
Almost finished the scene fillers, still have the shaders & lighting to sort out.
Will need to use the Anything Glows for the landing lights.
Am also using a few of the Carrara items, never done so before so am interested in seeing how they fit in.
Have included my shader as the base for the windows on the Alien building, feel free to comment.
@ EP and Antara
Thank you for your suggestions and comments.
I tried to exclude the shadows (as in reality), but the effect in the final rendering is terribly weak. Of course, I prefer the initial solution also because much better suited to a comic book :)
Hello Pimpy
Excellent work - I prefer the initial version as well, gives it a more retro-cover feel !!!!!!
Update from me, onto the Rocket model tomorrow, so I got one of the costumes sorted for my characters.
DAZ3D render of the Space Patrol Officer, have not made up my mind which Carrara method for the setup I will use yet.
Both look great! That's why I said it was a very small criticism. The original is really, really good, so don't worry about it.
I was thinking of a daylight scene with filtered forest light, but as I began to set up my key lights, I found that I think I prefer a night scene. With that in mind, I've decided to try and take an Avatar-like approach to the alien flora, mixing in a slight glow to some of the foliage and grouping some low intensity shape lights with the replicated plants.
I'll post the results soon.
I don't know if you know this or not, so if you do, please forgive my explanation. AG on its own only emits light. It doesn't actually look as if it is glowing. To do that, you need a glow in the glow channel. You can restrict the AG to only light where there is a glow channel.
I don't know if you know this or not, so if you do, please forgive my explanation. AG on its own only emits light. It doesn't actually look as if it is glowing. To do that, you need a glow in the glow channel. You can restrict the AG to only light where there is a glow channel.
Hello EP
Any advice is always more than welcome.
What I am hoping to achieve is a series of 3 rings, one in the centre, the other in the middle, with the final one on the outside
all looking like they are flouro light rings to help spaceships land. All different fluro colors.
I also want to do a Fluro gas station sign that reads " Last Fuel for 314 Light Years", will be a few other chuckle factors as well.
Was going to do this render in DAZ a while ago but decided to try and do it in Carrara.
Landscape, Landing Pad and Alien house are Carrara built items by me. Early days yet but I'm progressing.
Regards, Bunyip
I know I said I wasn't going to do any work on it today... well I couldn't stop myself.
First off the rust shader. It's not particularly impressive, but it doesn't look too bad once applied. It's just a grey colour representing a painted metal pole, mixed with a brown/orange greyscale using a cellular pattern. I've included a close up of the pole, since it's fairly small in the final scene.
The sign was simply knocked up in Photoshop on a 1024x1024 canvas, and one of Ron's grunge brushes applied over the top to give the dirt effect. This was then saved as a jpeg and applied to the colour channel.
I've also added the girl and started tweaking the lighting. It's just down to tweaks from now on for the image, and of course the titles.
Hi Tim
....I'm sorry but why you have not applied rust shader on metal surface? You have a car!
Um... the pole is a metal surface.
Anyway I don't want a rusty car - it affects the resale value! Besides it's a Range Rover (despite what the name says). Who ever heard of a rusty Range Rover? I doubt many have ever even been driven off road!
You are right!
I knew somebody with a rusty Range Rover. It even went off road- when the driver was going to fast for winter conditions that is... ;-) Rust was the least of his car problems after that.
I shall revise my statement to say off road in a controlled manner! ;-)
Hi I spoke too soon last time about feeling better...I'm back amongst the living again, pretty sure this time. :roll:
Wow! I think we need to start selling tickets to this thread. Every page is a wonder of imagination and a spectacle of Carrara know-how.
Trying to get in some comments I meant to post Monday (10/13), so forgive the out of placeness....
Networthy The raygun is stunning! The detail is wonderful.
dustrider I blame your mechanical doohickey shader for knocking me off the time-space continuum. I read up to that point yesterday, then can't account for the rest of the day. The metals look beautiful and love the design!
booksbydavid It's a delight watching your world of alien flora spring to life. Great details and I like the sense of scale you establish with the plants vs humans.
Stezza Yay! So glad you were able to get something going. I so hoped someone would introduce a little Cthulhu into the mix. Man! That Mr Happy is mean motor scooter. Really like your page layout and background texture too.
evilproducer I like your introduction of vegetation of other colors to break up the green. Curious to see how it plays out in the night scene though.
Tim_A Looking Good. That's nice looking water too. I'm really curious what you're going to encounter there. Nice vegetation. Oddly I love plants, but have never tried the plant editor.
Antara quote "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.
"
Antara Yes, I believe you have the requirements down and the robot makes the final one for the mechanical item. I think you had a screen cap of the scene set up earlier. Does the shadersPlus plug in have anything specific to it a screen cap would help illuminate? [Edit found the ShadersPlus set up screen cap way back]
Concerning the two scene choices... Sorry if this complicates matters, but I had the opposite reaction of others. My initial choice was the one on the left. Because it shows the robot's emotion better. I agree the angle is a bit too much and does make the woman look like she might slide off the bed. I would suggest pivoting it a bit more so we are looking over the woman's body and focusing on the robot's face more. This would also preserve the focus on the hand clasp. I really like how the robot he is clutching his face with his hand and this gets lost with the right side image. If you go with the right side one, then maybe pivot it a bit, it looks kind of flat, but I can't figure out how to suggest exactly at the moment.
Overall, the scene is nicely detailed and the colors are so rich. The scene is beautifully lit with the shader plus glow panel. Also, I'm struck by the detail in the robes and how they are draped over the bed. In the updated image, the light on the robot's side might draw the eye a bit too much. I agree with booksbydavid that I'd like to read the story behind the cover.
About the title, if anyone misspells the magazine title and doesn't catch it, Don't worry. I wouldn't make you go back and re-render on account of that. That would be pretty mean.
Sorry Bunyip02 You've already entered there's no turning back now. ;-)
Nice lunar surface reminds me of classic craggy moon surface like in Destination Moon.
pimpy Seeing them side-by-side, I definitely think the original, physics defying one (on right) with the lightning shadows is better and more dramatic. The wall looks too plain in the redo.
Tim_A Vegetation looks good. Cool night scene. I like how the leaves are glowing red from below, presumably from the car's tail light. I like the camera angle as well.
I hope to have something to show after my rehearsal tonight. It will just be the key lights plus the light effects for the bioluminescent plants. I will still need to add the bounce lights maybe another key light or two and maybe a rim light.
One of the advantages of using procedural shaders is the relatively low overhead. They can take just as long to render, especially if refraction and Fresnel effects are used. 88 Master Shaders and look at the low texture map size and memory overhead.
I've made some progress on my cover. I wanted to try an under water scene, but was failing miserably, so I'm using some of the ideas from this tutorial by Mark Bremmer (http://www.markbremmer.com/3Bpages/darkarts.html#). I wanted deeper water, so opted not to go with the water surface. The main part that gives a good idea of the depth and light attenuation in water is the distance fog. This is set in the Scene effects tab with ambient as sky (ambient is 0% because not sure if I like the effect of it yet) and atmosphere set to distance fog. The distance fog start radius is 60 feet and the extent radius is 250 feet. I selected a very dark blue for the fog color.
There is a single distance light aimed straight down (brightness 100%) and a single spot aimed at an angle high above the scene. I made a caustic map in FilterForge with the Caustics filter by Blenderman. Then added it to the spot's gel map in the effects tab. I also enabled the cone effect which is a bit lighter blue at 100% intensity, with use gel enabled, and some turbulence added. When the light cones hit the ocean floor, the caustics show subtly.
I wanted to have sea life falling dead through the water to the floor below. So, I set up a couple of surface replicators on planes perpendicular to the ocean floor-- one with sharks and the other tunas. Both are set so there is 360deg of variation on all axes to make the figures look like they are falling randomly and -100% scaling to give the look of varying distances. I like the shadowy figure effect, but using ambient light illuminates them a bit, destroying the effect.
The cause of the sealife die off is the radiation radiating from the damaged containment unit. For the concentric rings, I used the thin torus1 from Carrara's Basic Objects collection which I flattened a bit with the scale widget then duplicated, which nicely duplicated each successively as a larger concentric ring. I just want these to suggest radiation radiating outward rather than solid rings. I experimented with the shader tree until I got something that looked like what I was after. Basically the alpha channel has a spherical gradient, the bump channel has a wood pattern for a concentric ring look, transparency is set to 97%, and the glow channel is a multiplier of a color gradient with radial turbulence (10%) and an overall value of 3%. An image of the shader tree is attached.
The lighting for this scene is proving difficult. I want my concentric radiation rings to look like they are glowing, but I don't want to use indirect light because it's taking a very long time to render probably because there are so many rings and the distant fog effect. So, to simulate the light from the radiation, I inserted a ring shape light that is set to illuminate a 20ft x 20ft area, but decided to exclude the containment unit because it was making very distracting glare on the glass. The ring light is a bit overbearing and I haven't quite come up with a color to my liking, but it's getting there. I also set up a glow channel with the robot's red eye texture map and added a red bulb with limited range to illuminate the front of his face. I'm trying to get the liquid at his feet to glow as well with a bulb, but might also add glow to the shader channel. I rendered with skylight on, but indirect light is off. [Edit: to add that the concentric radiation rings are set to not cast or receive shadows]
I'm probably going to render out passes, so I can gain control of some of the lights and water effects in photoshop.
Next, I need to add some texture to the containment unit base, so I can add my yet to be designed rust shader.
Nice job Suky! Very informative.
Here's my attempt at the night scene. Just the key lights and the lights grouped with the trees. I need to make some adjustments, and I don't know where the hell my light cone went. It's only pointing straight at the friggin' ship for cryin' out loud!
Oooo! I like that.
I've had issues in the past with light effects not appearing. Not often, but it's aggravating when it happens.
One thing, you might want to add some color to your main light, maybe more green to go with the jungle. It seems a bit bright at the center of the image. Just my opinion.
Otherwise, this image is shaping up nicely. Like I said, skeletons in spacesuits will get me every time. :)
If you have DCG's Shader Ops, there's a fake fresnel option that really works well for simulating a glow. You can use it in the glow channel.
Sorry :roll: , that little thing seems to do that. I started working on it and emerged hours later (or earlier depending on how you look at it - about 2:00 am) dazed and disoriented! Glad you're feeling better. Your project is looking quite impressive so far!
Here is an update on mine. I ditched the original Time Machine model for a new one. I was lucky to find a nice one modeled after the 2002 movie on shareCG by Morpheus. It has a nice steam punk feel to it, but the mats/shaders had to be completely redone. I'll post a pre-shader fixing render tomorrow or Thursday - the computer is busy rendering what might be the final render ..... maybe (the one rendering now is about the 40th try).
Enchanted Forest really kicks the crud out of render speed, but I really like it! This render ran for about 4 hours. I decided to try to do the entire project in Carrara without any post work, including text, which means everything has to get rendered in Carrara/Octane as a single image. So this image is just a part of the roughing out process for me, I typically need several "finish" quality renders to make sure everything it "perfect" (I fix a couple issues, render, find more issues, fix, render, find more, fix, render, etc.).
Doing all the text in Carrara has proven a bit more challenging than I thought it would be. I needed to place the text in the focal plane so it is clear, and not a victim of DOF, which I'm also using in the render. I think I finally have everything in place, and all the little problems that rendering at higher resolutions always brings out so clearly.
So, the attached image is just capture of the the first round after adding the majority of the text to the render with the new time machine. It was rendered at the 2000 pixel max resolution for the forums. I will probably do one thing in post, reduce the image size to post here. the image I'm rendering now is 2400 pixels tall (to ensure I get the best details).
EP - your space skeleton is looking quite impressive too!!
Bookbydavid - yours is just mind boggling!
So many great projects this month!!
Dustrider
Love the cannon underneath the drone.
Always a difficult choice when there is only so much page available for a scene.
sukyL
Hope that flu stays away, they can keep hanging on so make sure you are looking after yourself.
Also thanks for the info about what you are doing with the lighting, will need to see how that fits in with my landing pad lights.
Everyone keep those renders going !!!!!
If you have not joined in yet there's still time.
Update from me. Spaceship about a third done.
All real rocket scientists & Aerodynamic Engineers look the other way or have a good giggle.
A felt the same way about the light on the ship, so I darkened the color in the light and reduced the brightness some more. I also did the same on the astronaut, but somehow shifted the light so it is not shining him directly. Ahh well. Something else to fix. Here's the render that ran while I was sleeping to illustrate.