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
Giovanny, I fear you are drawing conclusions a bit to fast, especially those about your fellow paricipants.
For one, many of us are new here as well and still learning for one thing the "etiquette" around this forum. So I at first was hesitant to comment on other participants renders. Especially when it comes to knowlege about the tecnical details of the program, as we all are trying to learn that.
On a secont point, your comment about people coming along without an artistic background isn't really encouraging for fellows like me to even start commenting. I am but an hobbyist, well I guess than i'm not entiled to make my art at beautful as I can?
Furthermore, well yes I guess you have a far better understanding on things concerning the art as you obviously have a huge background on that, what do you expect one hobbyist ore another can even find to make a point about?
As well you need to consider that many of us do this in their spare time, and real life has a first grab on us, so yes sometimes it takes time to respond.
So please have patience with everyone around here. There even might be another silent "A" student sitting among us.
Giovanny
I do not have a background in art or photography.
Like Linwelly I am a hobbyist.
My work has improved over the year and a half ( approximately ) I have participated in this contest but it has done so only because of the input of others. I often feel guilty about not commenting more on the work of others. I feel like I am getting all kinds of good advice but I am not returning the favour to others.
I do not feel qualified to critique the work of others, especially if I have no idea how to “fix” the problem. I can tell you what I like or do not like about an image. Is that helpful? How do I know?
Your image is quite compelling and pleasing to the eye ( at least mine anyway ). I hope that helps.
Linwelly and fionathegood, when it comes to glass there are a couple of things to remember. First is that glass is transparent. That means light goes through the surface and never comes back. That is how 3Ddelight would treat a surface that is made of glass. Second what we see when we look at a clear glass is the reflection of the light from the surrounding area. Next you need lots of photos to get those pretty reflections we do see on glass.
Now you can fix the never come back by providing an environment in your scene that captures those photon rays and makes them bounce back into the scene. The environment can be a sky dome, a sky box, a sphere, or a cube or an enclosed room. They must encompass the whole scene and they must have their textures facing to the inside. The more variety in the texture of the environment the more interesting the light reflected on the glass will be. Make sure you have reflection active on the glass surface and to make is more realistic you will want to use refraction as well. I would suggest using the default glass shader that comes with DAZ as a start.
To fix the lack of photons and help tell 3Delight that you want them to bounce around for awhile, you must go to the render scene tab and make sure that you have Max Raytrace Depth set to greater then 2 but usually not greater then 5. That your shadows on the lights that have shadows on are all set to raytrace. And that the render shading rate is of 0.1.
Rendering glass takes a long time. The more lights you have in the image the more calculations you are having 3Delight do. This is a serious drain on your computer if your scene is big with lots of geometry and light sources then you might not be successful in creating the clear glass look.
I learned about this by getting this shader by Age of Armour:
http://www.daz3d.com/metalized-glass-shaders-for-daz-studio The tutorial that comes with it is just fabulous.
Below is an image that I used the above technique. You can see how clear the vase is, the refraction of the water and glass on the flower stems and notice the fancy glass on the cupboard in the background.
Giovanni, I really like that you added an interaction between the two subjects it just adds to the interest of the piece. I see too that you have been working on the lamb's wool as well. Wool is so hard to recreate when using displacement and bump. I don't have the DAZ Lamb so not sure if this suggestion would work but you can try. I would sub-divide the lamb to get more polygons and thus more points for 3Delight to manipulate. Then I would see if dropping down the displacement effect would help soften the edges just a bit. Of coarse, this is all predicated on if you have a nice bump map. I would also play around with subsurface scattering just because wool is hair and that might help with the highlight and contrast on the lamb. These of course are just suggestions. You have gone into an area that I have no pat answers. I have always thought I should play around with a sheep to see if I could get a better representation of wool but never had the time or need to do so. So my friend you are getting ideas of what I would do but I do not know what will be successful.
Dollygirl, the glass shader that comes with the DAZ basic is all fine. I used that one to make my crystal ball. The reason I went back to experimenting was that these shaders give you the impression of the full body glass. In some cases this is just not what you want. I guess the problem solves itself when one uses a vase or somethin as container. But anyways I just tried to give some information to fionathegood onbehalf of her reflection question there. So for the moment I'm not going to follow this matter more, but thanks in any case. One can spend hours with details like this
Thanks DAZ_ann0314 for taking the time to respond, your thoughts were illuminating. (Hehe, iluminating, get it? I find myself so amusing :-P) I think the topic is worthy of exploration and I would like to hear what others think, but I don't want to continue to derail this thread from its purpose of helping people with their WIP. So if its okay with you, can we start another thread to discuss it? (If yes, I will leave creating the thread to you since it is your contest and your request for feedback about the submission guidelines.)
Done :) You can find the thread for this discussion as well as to discuss anything else you all feel may be worth exploring here: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/53003/
To answer some of this :)
1) Since most of those participating are New to either DAZ3D, DAZ Studio, or sometimes even art in general, we rely on the Community Volunteers (Lonnie, Chohole, Scott, Cris, Frank, myself, Totte, etc) to provide the feedback as all of them are veterans of 3D Art, varying artistic backgrounds, varying application backgrounds, etc. That said sometimes it can take a little while to get some feedback as they are all volunteers that donate their time to helping new members in between work and families etc :) We do hope new members will help each other as well but as others have mentioned, often as they are learning too they are hesitant to want to give advice. That said, to all of you, don't worry as much about how long you have been doing things or what background you have. Share your thoughts with each other, sometimes just a different point of view, a new pair of eyes, or a little tip or trick can make all the difference and I know I've personally learned useful things from new members and veterans here alike (like I really liked the idea in this thread I believe about having a Photoshop file with all the references around the image you are working on for example :))
2) We do not require anyone to participate in the WIP Thread in order to enter for the very reason you stated which I quoted above. Some people are more shy or reserved or prefer to watch and follow and work more independently and we want to encourage people to participate in whatever way they feel most comfortable. :) Kinda like some people learn by doing, some by reading, some by watching. None of those methods is better or more important than the other...they are just the different ways people learn and I have a lot of respect for how different each person's methods for learning are :)
3) Please see number 1 :) though I admittedly was a little lost on the "ignoring requests for help" part but I am thinking my answer in 1) covers what I think you meant :)
4) I would tend to agree. Each 3D App has its little differences in how it renders. DS I generally raise saturation and maybe levels, Poser I find renders kinda matte or dull (dim) so I tend to raise the brightness and also play with contrast or levels. Bryce tends to render more matte to me as well so I usually work with levels and contrast. Other apps have other things you tweak. It is par for the course even when working with titles like Maya, 3DS Max, and renderers like Octane etc. which is why we feel it is a part of the learning process when learning 3D :)
I hope that answers some of the questions and comments here :) Also of note, I believe you did get some feedback from Lonnie :) And once I am "back officially" from taking care of my hubby I'll go through and see if I have anything to add of use to those participating though usually I leave it to the volunteers who have more render time under their belt than I do :) They are more the experts than me :)
Well Giovanni, as I am selfish and our images are similar, I'll say what I can think of that might improve your image. SInce you and I are in the same boat though, take my advice with a grain of salt, I'm no master of Daz!
I like your image, but it doesn't seem believable to my eye. I think what my problem is is that the forest background and the foreground lighting don't mesh, and the lighting also isn't talking to the raindrops. We can see the direction of the sun, in the background, but we can't see it interact with any of the foreground elements. Then the light of the backdrop and the light of the foreground is similar in color as well, so it feels like they should be the same light when they are clearly not intended to be.
I've been trying to experiment with a way to do physical, renderable raindrops, which would slow down your render but would improve the quality a lot. So far, no luck. I'll let you know if I can figure it out. Something that might help you fake it would be putting in a volumetric primitive that would put some mist between the foreground and the background, since rain at a distance looks like mist, and forests are always full of spores and other particulates that catch the light.
I'll let you know if I figure out the raindrop situation. Maybe a different forest background that doesn't have obvious side-lighting would help.
Next step in my "only linear point lights" experiment: I gave some more light to the dragon and the face of the soothsayer lady, changed the place where the outside late evening light comes in and replaced the candle flames. I like the new ones better though they seem a bit blurry at the edges.
The blue light from the crystall ball still comes through the table, If there are any suggestiosn about that I would be very happy.
Other than that I really like the possibilites of the linear Point light. With a spot in a scene like this the light would go everwhere I dont wan't o have it.
Well Giovanni, as I am selfish and our images are similar, I'll say what I can think of that might improve your image. SInce you and I are in the same boat though, take my advice with a grain of salt, I'm no master of Daz!
I like your image, but it doesn't seem believable to my eye. I think what my problem is is that the forest background and the foreground lighting don't mesh, and the lighting also isn't talking to the raindrops. We can see the direction of the sun, in the background, but we can't see it interact with any of the foreground elements. Then the light of the backdrop and the light of the foreground is similar in color as well, so it feels like they should be the same light when they are clearly not intended to be.
I've been trying to experiment with a way to do physical, renderable raindrops, which would slow down your render but would improve the quality a lot. So far, no luck. I'll let you know if I can figure it out. Something that might help you fake it would be putting in a volumetric primitive that would put some mist between the foreground and the background, since rain at a distance looks like mist, and forests are always full of spores and other particulates that catch the light.
I'll let you know if I figure out the raindrop situation. Maybe a different forest background that doesn't have obvious side-lighting would help.
Thank you for your feedback, your comments hit at the heart of the challenge with this piece. The latest version is iteration 5a, so right now I'm taking a break to rethink the approach. Much of it I like, some bothers me as it does you. Thank you again for your thoughtful suggestions! :-)
DAZ_ann0314
Given your personal circumstance, I'm sorry you took time away from your hubby to respond, a "special" thanks. An apology is also in order; my lack of articulation it seems, left you with the impression that I was not receiving feedback.. When I used the word "participant" I was not referring to those administering the forum. Feedback from Dollygirl has been terrific, Scott also. Please, no response is necessary, spend the time with your husband. Thanks for what you do! :-)
*Hugs* I don't know how long anyone has been participating, unfortunately. Even though I have read a number of the past threads, I have a disability that stems from many years of chemo that makes remembering names extremely difficult. Already once I have put the wrong name to the wrong art in my commentary and fortunately caught it before it was discovered.
Fairly obviously, I tend to provide long detailed commentary. Some people want detailed commentary. Some can take a lot of feedback in a chunk. And some prefer small manageable tidbits. Some want lots of affirmation and only a little critique. Some want the harshest critique someone will give them. This puts the commentator in a difficult predicament, particularly since we dont know each other well. The best feedback is given when the commentator knows the recipient and how they "tick". I am sure many of the community volunteers and our fellow artists are reluctant to cross the line into the "too much" area and thus say less than they could. It is better to err on the side of caution than to risk discouraging someone. As someone who has been a teacher and manager for a long time, as well as someone who has posted in other forums, my experience has taught me to tread lightly... but as a writer and a thinker I struggle to do so. It is just how I look at the world to see critically, deeply and with a very narrow beam of intense focus, thus I usually only comment on a few pieces, instead of little comments about many. Every time I write a detailed feedback post, I wonder if someone will be offended and I always hope not.
Because I tend to hyper focus, and give a few a lot of attention while neglecting others, I feel guilty. There are a number of people to whom I have given no feedback at all. The people I give feedback to depends on a number of things. Are there things I see that can help with their image? I am still learning and I don't stop to say "I would like to help but I don't h know how." Sometimes I see something and it looks good, so I gloss over it unless it is so good that it makes me stop and say wow. Sometimes I look at an image and dont know what to say to make it better. Sometimes it is a matter of what sparks my interest.
And sometimes it is a matter of balance. I tend to give feedback on the artwork of people who are giving feedback to others. Some come to the table asking for help but not giving any. No matter how little a person thinks they know, if they dont chime in with something, it comes across as this last.
Also, if I write a five paragraph essay about someones artwork, and they reply with "thanks", I get the impression that my feedback was "too long, did not read" and that I care about what I had to say more than the intended recipient did. This makes me reluctant to offer them detailed feedback in the future. Or they don't have the same amount of time to give to it, or they didn't like what they read... or a million other things. But when the degree of reply to the feedback is not remotely balanced to the feedback given, I feel like my time was wasted. So those who want feedback and get it and find it useful, or not useful should make sure that they reply letting the person know if the help was helpful or not helpful. Otherwise the impression is that the feedback wasn't read. (Not that this last applies to you in any way, I appreciate that you have taken the time to tell me what parts of the feedback I give are useful, and I know I have done poorly at making sure those who have given me feedback know I am reading and using it.)
And, to what Ann said about having time... feedback takes time, particularly the kind I tend to give. In days gone by I could write faster. But these days, the ideas are in the brain still, but the writing is not the quality that it once was. I spend as much time revising what I say as I do writing it. If I didn't you would see block paragraphs of run on sentences, words half typed, and random words from bad cut and paste editting sitting in the middle of sentences.....Wait, you already see those!
I know I gave you feedback about your first image and am sorry that I havent said anything about the second. It is decent and well on its way to being great. I honestly feel guilty about commenting on your second image when I haven't gone through and given any feedback at all to some people, though. But I will do my best to try to make time to take a critical look at it. Ideas take time to formulate, and sometimes an image needs to sit and percolate in the brain for a week. I know we don't have a week left. (Or at least I don't; I need to be done by Tuesday as I have a chemo appt and may be out of commission afterwards. It depends.)
I hope this helps you see inside the fiona a little and know where I am coming from. The commentary about the how and why of my feedback style isn't addressed to you specifically, or anyone specifically. Its just that giving and receiving feedback is a complex dialogue because people are complicated creatures.
I think this forum is very useful. Environments that will give useful feedback about art are hard to fid. I often ask for feedback and get "thats nice". We are so much better than many!
Done :) You can find the thread for this discussion as well as to discuss anything else you all feel may be worth exploring here: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/53003/
Thanks! Again, I appreciate your willingness to entertain dialogue! It is not meant as a critism of the contest to do so. I think it is a very helpful strategy for people to be a little comptetetive in the pursuit of improving their art skills.
Given your personal circumstance, I'm sorry you took time away from your hubby to respond, a "special" thanks. An apology is also in order; my lack of articulation it seems, left you with the impression that I was not receiving feedback.. When I used the word "participant" I was not referring to those administering the forum. Feedback from Dollygirl has been terrific, Scott also. Please, no response is necessary, spend the time with your husband. Thanks for what you do! :-)
Thank you, Giovanni. "Lord Have Mercy" is looking good. I'll be able to provide more feedback on it (and other images posted in recent days) tomorrow; I've had a busy weekend with (among other things) my son's birthday celebration.
Hey, Giovanni, I've been working on the rain issue and I have a (render-intensive solution). I was trying to make rain out of primitives in DAZ and thinking about how much easier everything would be if I was making rain in Blender instead, when I decided to punt and just make a rain obj in blender.
Here is my result with my .obj rain and an ageofarmor fog camera. I think a DOF would help with the foreground rain, but I think the background rain works the way it ought to.
The forum doesn't let me put the .obj here, so I put it on my DA page: http://sirustalcelion.deviantart.com/art/Raindrops-515881269?ga_submit_new=10%3A1424651979
Now that is really cool. Thank you for sharing, sirustalcelion.
Here's another go, I think I have been trying to put too much in my scenes too soon. Here I have tried something a bit simpler by just lighting one figure.
Done in DS 4.7 with no postwork.
One thing to get ideas from is to look at the various character light presets, If you have them. Also look at the "ready to render" tutorials. I think it is a great idea to work on light one element at a time.
The only thing I see with your girl is a bit of flatness to her face. You can put a very subtle spot or point kinda at her chin to warm up high spots.. cheekbones and forehead.
One thing to get ideas from is to look at the various character light presets, If you have them. Also look at the "ready to render" tutorials. I think it is a great idea to work on light one element at a time.
The only thing I see with your girl is a bit of flatness to her face. You can put a very subtle spot or point kinda at her chin to warm up high spots.. cheekbones and forehead.
I'm a little confused by the (missing) light in her face as well. There seems to be light on her arms and her chest, I guess coming from the side, but its blocked by the hair I believe. That spot could be a good idea.
Bless you for this thoughtful assistance. I have downloaded it, now I have to figure out how to bring it into DAZ. I enjoyed visiting your page and seeing your work. As I am very found of the red fox, I was especially warmed by your "fox reading," very nice! Thanks again for the generosity of your time and talent.
The image below is from a series of photos I shot covering these foxes for over a year. It was magical, as I was able to get within an arms length of them. Isabella would greet me at the door early morning and follow me to the barn for her breakfast. :)
I'm a little confused by the (missing) light in her face as well. There seems to be light on her arms and her chest, I guess coming from the side, but its blocked by the hair I believe. That spot could be a good idea.
Have you viewed your scene from above? That is where I usually go to position lights. I also use the "point at" feature sometimes to focus the light, this is especially true when I use a spotlight. You may already know this, but if you don't, this will help. :)
I agree with Linwelly and Teofa about the highlights on the face. I would also say that you could allow a little bit of shadow come to play in the image. That would help with the focus as well.
I'm a little confused by the (missing) light in her face as well. There seems to be light on her arms and her chest, I guess coming from the side, but its blocked by the hair I believe. That spot could be a good idea.
Have you viewed your scene from above? That is where I usually go to position lights. I also use the "point at" feature sometimes to focus the light, this is especially true when I use a spotlight. You may already know this, but if you don't, this will help. :)
Thank you everyone for your input. The face does look a bit flat, I tried to get the main light coming from the front but it didn't catch the face very well.
I agree with Linwelly and Teofa about the highlights on the face. I would also say that you could allow a little bit of shadow come to play in the image. That would help with the focus as well.
Thank you Dollygirl. Here is my latest version, not a great deal of shadow though.
Thank you Dollygirl. Here is my latest version, not a great deal of shadow though.
Hi Aaron575,
The face has become more 3d and the sparkles on her dress look very nice. What I would try is to increase is the shadow that the hands should create where they touch the skirt. I see a very short shadow for her left hand.
Do you have shadows on raytraced for your lights? Sure that is not useful for all your lights but I would try to do so for some.
For my picture, I have to say that I probably will not have time to work on it more and that was too busy with some of my unexpected plans. Good thing is that I learned a lot about lightning so I expect to be able to do much better in the future. I will try to do more in next month contest.
Thank you Dollygirl. Here is my latest version, not a great deal of shadow though.
Your welcome aaron575. It is amazing what just a little shadow does to an image. I see improvement. Just that little bit helped.
Sorry to hear that gulan7. But I am glad that you did learn. That is the best part. Till next month then.
Aaron, if you put your two images side by side the improvement is more than "just a bit". Sometimes a little tweak leads to big results. Nice improvement.
Linwelly and Dollygirl...
Thank you, both! I am finding that documentation from Dollygirl and the demo and settings Linwelly gave me very helpful. (The vase is very pretty, also, nicely done)
According to the documentation, the max raytrace depth is calculated by how many surfaces the light is supposed to pass through on your glass vessel. Mine is supposed to pass through 4, and the original raytrace counts as one, so I would only have to have a value of three to include the outside, inside, outside, inside of the lantern as one would look at it However, I am finding that I truely do no like how it looks when I see the reflection of the light on that back side. I think I am making an artistic decision and saying my glass is too frosted to see it, as I cant see a second candle reflection in any of my reference images!
The second piece of information that I really have ended up needing from what you guys gave me, surprisingly, was (quoting the AoA documentation) "Reflection Blur - This allows for "soft" reflections." and "Reflect Samples - How many times the reflection of each pixel (or sub-pixel) is calculated. 1 or 2 reflect samples should provide sufficient results in most cases where the Reflection Blur is set to 0%. When using blurry reflections this setting can be increased in order to reduce noise from reflections. If noise persists in blurry reflections even at very high sample settings try setting the shading rate (See Render Settings) to a value less than 1." I already was at a shading rate of .5 for my most recent "good" quality render, and will go down to .1 if possible for my final render.
Also- I already have a roof and walls to my room, I just haven't been making them visible. Hopefully adding them will give the raytraced light stuff to bounce off of. In test renders, the glass isnt picking up reflections from anywhere, and I think thats probably a good thing, as it is frosted glass, and also I dont want the glass to be too "busy". Also, a concern... I'm not sure I want to put the rest of my objects into a mirror-surface sphere, that will bounce a ton of light around and perhaps make the whole scene have more ambient light than it is supposed to have?? (Which is what an HDRI ball is, really, is looking at your scene with the light from the insides of a big mirror ball bouncing around.) It is supposed to be dim in the attic bedroom. I already had max raytrace at 400, I made it 500 just in case and brought the room walls roof and floor in tight around the subject. 500=500cm, 5meters, or approx 15 feet for us Americans. Each square on the grid is a meter, right? I think that should be enough? If the surface if the glass looks "dull" except for where the light comes through, thats okay. It is not completely clear glass, it is a bit frosted. We'll see how it looks. It is getting to be crunch time for me as I have to be done a bit early... and I still have the bear eyes nose and fur color to fix as well as bumping the light back up by 5% as I thought I liked it better duller during the test render, but didnt in the full version...AHHH where has the month gone?
I hope my final render will be tomorrow while I am down in the city getting chemo. Hopefully I will set the computer up to render while I am gone, and when I come back, "poof!" TY for the help. One "last" set of questionw that I came across by accident after my last render...
Is the second "crop" a better composition? It happened by accident and I was like.... oh snap, is that better? And then I looked at it with the golden rule crop function setting turned on, and it works for the rule in the crop from 3 directions. I felt dumb, but on the other hand, for the sake of the story, do I need the background??? (And at this point I am so attached to it we could be married...)
Also, I am not seeing a render setting that will let me increase the PPI. Do I just make the image proportionally bigger to make it less pixelly? Or am I missing something? What size do people typically use for "final renders"?
Thanks everyone for all the input! I think I have grown and I wouldnt have been able to do so without everyones help.
(PD... dont look for changes in the glass yet, still working on that aspect)
Your welcome fionathegood. I like the new "crop" the best, makes the little girl the real center of attention. Your original is good too. As for PPI DAZ does not use the PPI short hand. It just gives you the number of pixels to each side that you want. So set the size to what you want say a 300ppi 8x10 would be 2400 x 3000.
As to the pixelly stuff, quality is actually determined by several different settings in the Render tab. Other things too but for now we will just say we fiddle with the ones on the Render tab. Because you have glass in your render you should have at least the minimum set already. But if you are interested, Adam has a nice set of render setting presets for free here, that you can try out.