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Thank to wonderful DAZ_ann0314, we now have an announcement in the New User Contests and Events Forum. That thread is Sticky (How great is that! Thank you, Ann! :)) and at the top of the forum, so there is NO need to update it.
Especially since we already have an updated thread in the Commons: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/48769 - thank you, diomede64!
Since the Commons is kept as an index to this one, I've added a link to in in the main announcement post of this thread to aid new (and returning) visitors in finding what they are looking for. So, if you need to quickly find the index thread, it's easy to locate now.
I am also very excited about new WIPs. :)
diomede64, what you are doing with that bear looks amazing! Is there a reason why you decided to make your own, instead of using the Poser one? (Same for the ducks) - is there some fault with those meshes or rigs?
By the way, are you going to create your own rigs, or use the original model's skeletons, to rig yours?
stringtheory9, that scene is brilliant! Love the dynamic, love the lake in the background, love the haze and the clouds above the mountain edges. Those clouds completely sell the realism of the scene to me.
What did you mean by modifying shader colors to mimic light from the sky? Did you make them more blue?
And does this mean that you are not using GI for these renders?
Fire volumetric object for snow spray - sheer genius!!! :wow:
The new trees look fantastic!
The only semi-critical comment I can make about this is lack of the sense of contact with the terrain for the man's right leg. The left leg is clearly stuck in the ground (although it's not yet making the dent in the snow I'd expect to see), but the right leg seems to be generating the snow spray while hitting thin air. Or maybe I'm not seeing it right?
Beautiful work! I can't wait to see more updates! :).
DarwinsMishap I love the quality of that render segment, but just in case the full resolution you are going for is too much for your system to handle, please keep in mind that for this challenge the image doesn't need to be in real poster size, so if you don't need this image to be that big in order to use it or some other purpose, you can safely reduce the resolution: as long as the shorter side(the vertical dimension) is at least 800 pixels, you are good for the Challenge purposes.
ooh! Nice progress! Love the snowy look on the top of the Queen's hair! the fur on the bears also looks better - is it a different lighting, or did you change the hair?
Great observation on the translucency bit! I think HowieFarkes uses it to help aid the look of indirect lighting for his fake GI setups. It works great for the outdoor scenes.
Thanks, Antara- I'll remember that and re-render it out.
I've made a studio/living room for the poster to be hung. The lighting test is from one of the default GI scenes in C8 with modifications. The only real shader put onto the scene is for the windows, which will have to be tweaked for reflection/refraction. I will be making the wall in the middle of the room the prominent one with a bright and almost harsh red to it to give it impact.
The lighting and sky hasn't been touched yet.
The poster frame, glass and paper has been modeled in C8 already, just need to tweak shaders and wait for the scene to be rendered to put into it.
I may use already made props for the furniture, I haven't decided. And I need to add ceiling lights and fix a couple of the walls (modeling issues). It was a simple model- all cubes put together to make this. I used the building that came with the scene as the idea/base and changed a few things in the set-up.
There is never any reason (or rhyme) for anything I do.
Bwahahahaha :coolcheese:
Any minor quibble that I might have with the Poser bear could definitely be addressed with a couple of morphs and some joint editing. There is no need to model my own bear figure. But when I fix the fur and add more detail (like a tail, more accurate neck/skull, eyes, teeth, and claws!!!!!) it will give me a sense of accomplishment even if it is not really an improvement upon the Poser bear.
The WIPs are amazing, fellow entrants. Keep up the good work.
I will have only intermittent internet access (and no Carrara access) for the next 10 days or so. Can't wait to see the thread when I get back.
Edit: To answer the question, I will rig the figures myself in Carrara. If I thought the models would be good enough, I would name the parts in Carrara and rig in Poser just so that it can be shared more widely, but now that I am getting used to it, I prefer Carrara's simple bones and weightmaps.
ooh! Nice progress! Love the snowy look on the top of the Queen's hair! the fur on the bears also looks better - is it a different lighting, or did you change the hair?
Great observation on the translucency bit! I think HowieFarkes uses it to help aid the look of indirect lighting for his fake GI setups. It works great for the outdoor scenes.
Thank's Antara.
Getting there slowly.... I so happy that you gave us more time on this challenge.
The fur on the bears, was a bit work on. Normally when I do put hair/fur on any animals, I normally use the texturemap for the skin (that comes with the model), in the Root Color channel and the Tip Color channel.
But for this one, by trial and errors, I found that setting the Root Color to white, gave a better result.
I did also add a yellow tint to the highligt. and set the shininess to 2 %.
I might even try to add some yellow to the tip color. A Polar Bear hair is actually hollow. The skin itself is black. All for catching those precocious sun-rays up here/there in the frozen artic.
I did also add more hair. The haircount for each bear is around 500 000.
Thanks Antara,
Regarding the shaders for the background mountains, yes, I used the standard complex snow for the mountains close to the lake and complex snow 2 for the furtherest mountains. The rocks were looking far to brown so I adjusted the colors to make the areas that are free of snow more greyish blue. The cloud floating on the lake for haze effect was doing that naturally for the lower mountains but I had to turn the cloud opacity way down to prevent the lake from looking icy blue.
For lighting I am using a single white "distant" light and the "sky light" box checked for rendering. I'm happy with most of the lighting so far except for the characters face. I tried indirect lighting but that washed out the scene so I may resort to some subtle spot lighting for the face... although I may find that I don't need it once I apply a nice hi res texture.
I've found the fire volumetric object to be incredible versatile with its many controls. I've managed to get it to do convincing rain, waterfalls, lava flow, ocean sea foam waves crashing agains rocks but the really cool thing is that with the motion controls they animate believably too. The one problem is that it glows so it takes a little tweaking the color to get it to fit into the scene properly. The snow spray in my render is currently way to bright compared to the shadowing around the skier.
The replacement trees are a big improvement (thanks Howie!). However I've lost a lot of the background mountains and lake due to their size though... but they really need to be there. So now I'm trying to figure out how to have my cake and eat it too.
You are absolutely correct about the floating ski. It lost contact while I was messing with the angle of the terrain. Added to my fix it list :-)
Thanks Dartanbeck. I can't wait to see what you're cooking up there!
Yeah... I have to agree with Antara on her comments towards Pimpy and Varsel. So... ditto that from me, as well!
Thanks Antara and Dartanbeck, but I have seen many beautiful things from old and new participants in this w.i.p. ... (will be a wonderful competition!)
And now this is my use of the replicator on a small area of a terrain :-)
Sorry I haven't been around much this week everybody, but life in the non-Carrara universe has been complicated... I hope to have some time to work on some stuff this weekend.\
This looks really excellent from what I can see so far. I'm most impressed with the sky actually. It looks really good.
Are you using full Indirect Light for outdoor render of the mountains? If so, you may reduce render time and still get very nice results if you use just the Skylight, which simulates atmospheric light.
Another possibility is to use an Irradiance Map. The trick is to render a low res version of your scene with the Save Irradiance Map option enabled. Then, disable the Save Irradiance Map option, and enable the Use Saved Irradiance Map option, and render the full sized picture. It will vastly speed up the light calculations. You can even change the camera angle as long as you don't change the lights.
I think this is coming along very nicely. I think the snow cloud kicked up by the skier looks kind of bright. The sense of action is really, really good!
I think this is coming along very nicely. I think the snow cloud kicked up by the skier looks kind of bright. The sense of action is really, really good!
Thanks evilproducer. Yeah, the fire has a glow to it so I will have to spend some time adjusting the color once I lock down my lighting.
In a way indirectly related to my render here is the fire volumetric object pretending to be a waterfall: http://youtu.be/8dS0jRzyxT0
http://www.sharecg.com/v/78502/browse/5/3D-Model/Carrara-Waterfall-using-Fire
And one pretending to be smoke: http://youtu.be/S6mmIPXdjvc
http://www.sharecg.com/v/78503/browse/5/3D-Model/Carrara-Smoke-using-Fire
Some great work coming along... you northern peeples must be freezin' ya butts off...
Been cold here as well so can relate to it.. only 28C today!
Been doing some re-texturing an stuff on some store models..
Allesandro's Kangaroo and 3DUniverse's Ostrich have been re-textured and with the ostrich some remodelling to get it to look something like an emu.. pushed and pulled some vertices and added hair.
I also knocked up a FairDinkum Daz3D Barometer to keep track of the weather...
Keep cool my friends.... as the WiPs are certainly hotting up ;-)
WoW!
Awesome, Stezza!:)
So much great stuff going on here. I may have to move in just to keep up with things. :)
Another successful replicator test. Yay!
I modeled a few branch type things and a couple of bells in Silo. I then imported them into Carrara for texturing. I used some free shaders created by res1yfb1(?). I added several different spots on each branch for the replicator to use distribution maps to give the bells a more random placement without being too random.
It all turned out very well. I'm not totally sure about the lights and shaders yet. Oh, and I still haven't come up with a name to fit the Challenge rules yet. :(
Looking quite lovely, David... truly! Thanks for the great tips as well :)
Goggle modeling and jacket texturing under way.
String- that is some fantastic lighting! I can't wait to see the final.
Books- you're really going on those bells, fantastic work on the modeling.
Thanks, Antara. I followed that tip and will see how long this one takes. Hopefully not too long, I've got a lot of work to do on this here 'puter. lol
Pimply- wow, that's great terrain work! I do like those snowmen, they had me snickering when I caught sight of them (had to go back a few times after thinking.......what the heck?). Can't wait to see the final.
Varsel- impressive work on that randomizer. I think you should keep the bear, he fits right in. :) As for the Eureka moments, do they ever. My head wants to 'splode when I get'em. Yours worked perfectly. I do like the hair you've put on the bears, so far, great work.
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A quick if cleaner render of the wall.
I have added pre-made furniture props into the room for the final, though they aren't shown since I did that after doing the render.
I am currently re-rendering the winter scene to go into the poster.
I also went back and read the rules and specs.........and had an idea. I'll post that once I get working on it. XD
Lowered the render settings as well as the size (after reducing the pixels from the original specs given on the front page) and started rendering at 8:30 this morning.
Eight hours later... XD
Give it a try with indirect lighting unchecked and keep sky light checked. Indirect lighting is emulating the light bouncing of the mountains onto the trees and visa versa but you may find that you can't notice much of a difference as most of the lighting will be coming from the sky anyway. You will be able to render that scene way way faster. If it looks to dark check the Gama checkbox and play with the values between 1.8 and 2.2 and the sky light %.
Give it a try with indirect lighting unchecked and keep sky light checked. Indirect lighting is emulating the light bouncing of the mountains onto the trees and visa versa but you may find that you can't notice much of a difference as most of the lighting will be coming from the sky anyway. You will be able to render that scene way way faster. If it looks to dark check the Gama checkbox and play with the values between 1.8 and 2.2 and the sky light %.
Great tip- so far it's worked. It's been only two and a half hours and it's 84 % done. Thank you!
Also remove the check from "Interpolation". Seems to make a big difference for me. Not even sure what it does! LOL
I believe it is supposed to smooth out the ashing artifacts you can get with GI sometimes.
I believe it is supposed to smooth out the ashing artifacts you can get with GI sometimes.
I did a quick try, since it is used for the indoor scene where the poster is-that's exactly what it does. I didn't have it for the mountains, but when I took it off on the indoor scene........wow. ASHY everywhere. So, it's back on, since the indoor scene doesn't take long to render even when it's on.
Proof that I have been at least thinking of this challenge. Not that I've had much time to actually do anything substantial. We'll see about this weekend. Tomorrow will most likely be a wash, as I am anticipating a long day and a physically difficult one.
I still didn't like how the hair came out, so I've been experimenting with making some basic crystal shapes and replicating them on top of replicants. They're pretty crude as it is still experimental.
I also have another idea formulating and depending on which idea I like better and whatever my time constraints turn out to be, I may ditch the hoar frost image in favor of the other idea.
Truth be told, it's been unseasonably cold and snowy (not as bad as Buffalo, those poor bastards). With the earlier than expected winter difficulties of living in the styx, I'm finding it hard to get motivated to do a winter themed image since I'm chilled to the bone by the time I get inside. I hope that when things settle down and we get to some more seasonably cold temperatures and not record cold temperatures my motivation (and body temperature) will increase.
Forgot to upload screen shot.
I'm duly impressed with what you've done with that so far. I've always wanted to try something like that, but never have had the time. I hope you do continue this idea, I think it'd be freakin' awesome to see in a final rendering.
I know this is little consolation for the Arctic temperatures you are having there but those are really starting to look like frozen ice crystals... very cool!
It's just a funk I think. Normally you have a somewhat gradual cool down to acclimate. This year it was like someone threw a switch, and it has not let up. This weekend will be warmer finally.
Great WIPs here, everyone and very topical - we are getting the news bulletins down here of the heavy snowfalls - we should be in a blistering hot Summer, but are getting icy gale-force winds straight off the Antarctic. Must be all this global warming.
Hey, stringtheory9 - I'm seriously impressed by the modelling, subject, render - everything is just perfect and as photorealistic as it gets:)