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Much better Xangth. More dramatic and the colors just pop.
I agree...this is looking really nice.
If you do have time for another version before the end of the month, my only suggestion is to look at your shadow settings...adding a touch of shadow softness might be worth considering.
I took a week or so off from this piece, to try to get a new perspective...rest my mind..
I've done some final moving around and tweaking..I think I'm gonna call it good...but I figured a few more eyes before I hit R for a final render.
Lord . . . have mercy!
Wow, you guys and gals really worked me on this one. :roll: The render with volumetric lighting took over 13 hours, I can thank sirustalcelion and Dollygirl for that, and I do! A special thanks to Scott-Livingston and all posting to this thread who made this such a wonderful learning experience. As you can see from the before and after images below, what a difference. The final image is far more "dimensional" and mood focused. Every suggestion is responsible for the improvement. So, give it one final critique if you like. I thank you all once again for a great time! :-)
Just a little reminder this is a short month so you only have one more day to get your entries into the entry thread if you would like it considered for the contest.
Also of note, I wanted to mention you can participate in the WIP Thread and get help, ask questions, etc and not enter the contest if you so choose :) I realize not everyone enjoys contests etc and it was brought to my attention people may not realize they can participate in the WIP but not enter the actual contest and just enjoy the learning experience.
Yes, the end of the moth is already near again. I guess I have come to a final version with my soothsayer.
I spent hours trying to find the optimal version of light in the ladys face always shifting between somthing of canldelight and something mysterious coming from the crystal ball, but mixing orange yellowish light with blueish light made her look sickly green.
I decided on the candle light colour as diffuse light source and the bluish light as specular only. I'm still not entirely sure if i like that blue in there or if it looks too painted, especially on her lips.
Well I guess I won't render that again before the end of the contest
P.s. I am wondering why this picture seems to go blurry once I post it, it still was very clear when I turned it to a jpg file. I have the impression others don't have this problem.
Really I shouldn't point this out beings I am the QUEEN of typos, second only to one or two other people that I know of LOL but I couldn't resist but picture it literally and giggle :)
OK back to our regularly scheduled programming..ROFL
Really I shouldn't point this out beings I am the QUEEN of typos, second only to one or two other people that I know of LOL but I couldn't resist but picture it literally and giggle :)
OK back to our regularly scheduled programming..ROFL
Hehe, it is a funny thing to imagine. Oh well since it seems I will stick around here, I will in due time climb the throne of the typoqueen. Do you feel the challenge? :coolhmm:
Hehe, it is a funny thing to imagine. Oh well since it seems I will stick around here, I will in due time climb the throne of the typoqueen. Do you feel the challenge? :coolhmm:
I usually have a hard time coming up with ideas for a theme but I already had a picture of a render for "The End of the Month Draws Near" ( not exactly what you said but that is what my brain came up with ). ;-)
Thank you every one for your nice and helpfull comments, and sorry I didn't reply sooner. Have spent most of the last couple of days in bed feeling like ****, and I am on the improve now.
Decided to make my image a simple portrait and redo the lights. What do you think?
Greetings! You might try a spotlight on her hair and face, say at 10 degrees and around 20% intensity. Place light slightly above her height. You can also play with different colors to see what you like. The idea here is to give her a bit more life and "sparkle" to the hair. Hope you are feeling much better soon. :-)
Before and after image shows better what I'm suggesting. It may not be the feel you are after?! :roll:
I like the background much better here, but I guess a spottlight on her hair as suggested by giovannipaoloartist might do some good to make a better contrast between her hair and the background. I prefer this crop as well compared to the full body version. Very nice work.
Get well soon
Yes, feel better soon!
This has come a long way.. I agree that the portrait is a much more sound composition.
My only suggestion would be to pick one side or the other to have dominant light, and the other to have lesser light- full on face looks flat. Usually warmer light on the dominant side, cooler light on the lesser side.. see the 3 point light set up for portraits that was given earlier.
The little bit of color in the background is nice and subtle. :-)
Before and after postwork,without the border- hopefully I didn't overdo the contrast and over light the face as it is a bad habit of mine! It just seemed kind of grey and fuzzy. Also, I couldnt morph away the idiotic looking second bow with the hair settings, so I got rid of it in photoshop, as well as some stray pixels here and there. (I suppose I could have left the bow, it was in the dark, but it was looking like some weird knob of "I dont know what that is", and I couldnt get rid of the one I didnt want without also losing the one I did want. I need to learn to do what Teofa suggested about making groups and hiding them, or learn about deformers... Another contest, another month!)
Cropped instead of re-doing photo angle for the sake of the contest because I need the wider angle for something else and didnt want to do 2 long renders. Blurring the candle flame took the render time up from 10 to 27 1/2 hours, at .5 shading rate- I dont want to think how long the render time would have been on a better setting!
I tried another version before going back to this one. Sometimes you can look at all the pieces seperately in test renders, but when you get it all together, its not an improvement. So glad I saved versions- thanks for suggesting that.
Best of luck everyone!
I'm seeing lots of nice progress from everyone...great work and nice improvements, all of you!
Ditto what Scott said.
I concur, it is good to see how everyone has grown, and how final images have come together nicely!
I don't know if the contest organizers take suggestions for areas where we want to improve, but looking back at some contests from days gone by, I found some areas where I would like to push my skills because I know they are lacking. Some of them may have been done fairly recently and I appreciate people not wanting to go back to them right away... this is more my "list" and I didnt compare dates of previous contests when making it. Feel free to suggest ways I ought to grow that I am blind to, or ways you feel the folks who have been participating as a whole could grow most collectively, as that helps everyone. Some of these might not be "fun" per se as I could imagine they might be a pain to learn, but with the motivation of a contest I would be more inclined to be both brave..and knowing there was help available, willing to struggle. I hope others chime in on where their interest lie as well, and what they want to work on.
Thoughts:
Using Depth of Field, F-stops and Focal point (I struggle with distortion issues with this!)
Incorporating Reflective Surfaces- Glass, mirrors, water, tears etc
Making your own shader (surface, light, camera..)
Naturalistic posing with props
Cast a shadow- use shadows as part of the design
KISS- (Keep it simple stupid) Do more with less, a scene with less than 10 total "things" be it lights,cameras, props etc.
The subtle art of facial expressions to tell a story, perhaps interaction between two characters
Destroy it- take any prop and change it, through deforming, creating groups of polys and then hiding them, (or other methods I dont know about) OR Start from scratch- import a blank, non textured OBJ into any rendering program, and make it work in a scene.
Color dynamics- Pick a color scheme from color theory (analagous, complementary, etc) to intentionally limit your palette to more than 2 but no more than 4 (tertiarty) hues
Using skydomes, HDRI spheres, and other surfaces to create environments
I am looking forward to next month's contest. Thank you to the organizers, the community volunteers, the sponsors, and my fellow contributing artists for making this a fun way to grow. I appreciate the time it takes to make these things happen.
Thanks for the suggestions, Fiona! We're always looking for new ideas.
We have a "list" we go by to cover most topics in a year and then we repeat so if you come in in say May and not January we will loop back around to those topics again kinda thing. A fair few on your list are on ours as well :) Though we are always looking for ways to add in more things. I swear we need more than 12 months in a year LOL :)
And then we throw in there we have some "just have some fun" months where its whatever you want to do just "apply what you have learned" :)
So if you want more info on some things, you have two choices in general:
1) Wait as we will come back around to it again
2) You can post to the New User Forums and create a thread on a specific topic with questions etc and the CVs will come in and help you with anything you may need :)
That forum is here: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/categories/97/
Though I am making a note of the things you mentioned, I just wanted to be sure you knew you didn't have to wait to find out more :)
I want to chime in here and say thank you to the admins and everybody else particpating and/or giving advice. It was a lot to learn again. And I have to say that going through the different topics one by one ist a good way to learn as in the beginning I was totally overwhelmed by all the things one can dial up or down, activate or hide or whatever else. This definitly helps to concentrate on one thing at a time.
So thanks for the great opportunity and thanks to the community making this possible.
As has been said before there are really great improvements for everyone and I guess we will give the judges a hard time again.
But, hey, that's just for the fun of it.
See you all next month again.
And posted.. Thanks for the kibitzing on it.
You all have a little bit more time to get your entries in! Just another reminder :)
I agree that it is a lot to learn and agree that for me too, narrow focussed contests are helpful for concentrating on one thing at a time. Moreover, as a reference tool for future learners, it is a thousand times easier to look back at old contests and know where to find the most appropriate and helpful information when the scope of the contest is specific. There are many old contest threads I have set aside to read later simply because they said "many good resources on a lot of topics". The themes that directed me to specific topic resources are much more efficient and were definately read first. For me, it is the learning that makes the fun, so the theme doesnt need to try to be fun. I would even say the challenge of the restrictions is something which contributes to making things fun. Speaking of which I have been having a lot of fun, and the feedback is not meant to in any way discourage the organizers. It HAS been fun and a good learning experience. I am one of those people who often needs something like a contest to motivate me, and give me something to focus on. I would sit around with all the same opportunities to make art, and improve my skills, and be overwhelmed by the sheer vastness of what could be done to do anything at all. For some, the boundaries are useful.
There is a thread which has collected links to all the older contest WIP threads together. Jaderail started it, and I have been keeping it up since he left us. http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/28192/
Greetings all!
Thought some of you might want to see this continuing WIP. The final vision for this image is outside the scope of this forum as it requires additional "post work." I wish to thank all of you once again for helping me bring this vision to a higher place. The beauty of teaching comes from the knowledge your students impart upon you. Learning is synergistic when we are open to it. When we all understand that each of us has something to contribute, regardless of ones experience, the world is a better place.
Love to you all. :-)
Wow, I like it a lot with that halo, Giovanni! You know, if you're putting a small detail in like that, one way to achieve it in-render would be to make a plane and an opacity map, with no shadows. Come to think of it, you could have done that for the sacred heart as well, though I like the way you've done it here.
I want to thank everyone, especially Scott Livingston and TobiasG, for their help and patience with us this month. I really appreciate the feedback, and I hadn't heard the term "Rembrandt lighting" before. I'll have to remember it for the future.
Good luck, everyone! I'm looking forward to next month's contest!
Good luck everyone. Thank you all for participating in this months challenge. I saw some really impressive improvements by those that participated.
Good luck to my fellow contestants! Can´t wait for next month´s challenge!
Anyways, I know its too late but I just rendered an outdoor scene and if I rendered it earlier, I would definitely submit it as my second entry, what do you guys think?
I seem to be obsessed with dynamic clothing atm : D
I appreciate giovannipaoloartist showing how the image continues to evolve. The contest is over but for me the contest is quite a distant second to the evolution of the art.
I appreciate that it is probable easier to put the glow of the halo into the image with postwork.. but there are ways to have included it in the render. One simple way would be to find the area on the background image where you wanted the halo to be, and altered the background image you were rendering. (If you think about it, all the halo really does is make the background look lighter in those spots, the idea that it is attached to the figure may be true in "reality", but in 3-d space we are just recording what is seen, it can be an illusion.) Also, as he said, using sirustalcelion's technique of a plane behind the figure with different areas of transparency that you force a volume cone through.. opaque areas of the plane block the cone and light from coming through while transparent areas are like windows. You could also do my thing and make a light-plane disc with varying degrees of opacity that would create a rim on the Christ figure's head, particularly if you put a really bright point light with it. As was said, you could use a red point heart light for the heart with an opacity plane of a heart image for the sacred heart
For the heart I will offer an old painting tip for how to make lights and darks in a red subject: Cadmium red light is your friend for the light areas, and alizarin crimson in the darks. I had to paint a metallic red flashlight, once. Red reflects light very oddly. As I was approaching the problem I knew red plus white meant pink and that is the wrong idea, but what was right idea? Everything that is the "middle color value" looks that way because it is next to something darker, and everything that is a highlight looks that way because it is lighter than the middle tone. To do so without white or black, go to purple-r and orange-r versions of red, as purple is naturally darker and orange naturally lighter. When you put the three colors together, the eye will see lighter and darker red, and not even think about the purple or orangeness of it
In any case, thank you for continuing to post how the image evolves. I'm sorry for not commenting on it earlier, I stuck on how to be helpful with it.
That is a gorgeous image! I think you would definately have done well with it, thank you for showing it. I know nothing about dynamic clothing, at all. In fact, being new I barely own any clothes at all. I got a freebie a long time ago of 1000 different clothing obj files... what I ought to do is export a g2 figure to blender, fit them, and rig them, so my characters can have some new clothes!
Since this is the first image I have done which I would show in public, I don't have a gallery yet. I don't want to violate the contest restrictions.. when am I allowed to post the image in my about-to-be begun gallery?