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So I finally came up with this image (first from bottom).
That was the idea I was trying to get to with the archer - yay - I hate it. :down:
I went back through the horse poses trying to get inspiration. Jumping looks silly and I don't like the rearing poses. But what about this lunging one.
If you ever want to know what a horse is paying attention to - watch his ears. He's basically looking at whatever his ears are pointing at. Since their ears are on the sides of their head - if they were bug-eyed, they'd look like some of those beady-eyed lizards looking about with their eyes going in different directions.
So check out this second and last image. The horse is lunging like he's dodging something. I've seen that look many a time, right before my horse spooked at a piece of paper fluttering past him. He was certain it was a tiger that was going to eat him and promptly tried to climb the nearest tree. But with the horses eye and his ear, you can tell he's looking at something on the ground. Okay, napkin probably won't cut it, so I threw the dead body in there real quick with a bardiche in his back. I don't have anything for blood so I'll have to do that post. But the horse looks better,we have an archer, the trebuchet will be burning in the back ground.
And I completely lost my POV shot now - yay - NOT - I hate it. :down:
Now after all of this. I don't know where I'm going to go with it or if I'm just going to scrap the darn thing.
Thoughts, ideas, inspiration? Does anyone have a preference for any of them? Or do I got back to my original idea and try again?
Thanks gang!
Cheers,
Kathryn
I realize this advice may be too late for the POV shot for this image but something I learned the hard way was to lock my camera. I would go back and forth between Perspective and Camera often to check on changes to poses, prop placements, etc and forget which one I was in...and sometimes it was way to late for a simple Undo click to fix. Now when I get a camera angle/placement I really like I lock it in place so I cannot accidentally change it.
If I want to try a different angle (sometimes seeing things through Perspective I see another angle that could be good) I load a new camera and lock it in place. That gives me the added benefit of looking at the scene from 3 or more different angles without having to make a lot of adjustments to where I am looking.
If you are going with the second image, I would suggest you widen your camera focus slightly to take in the entire scene without cutting off the archer or the guy on the ground.
I prefer this image as it tells a more interesting story of the battle that has been waging.
Hi Kismet, I like the cat chasing the red laser dot. A face spot the black cat would be nice though, and in the moment the tail has rather few hair compared to how fluffy the whole cat is.
The one on the floor is really excellent with the hair and the pose.
I have added a spotlight to highlight the face of the black kitten.
Unfortunately, I only have the LAMH Free Plugin and the fur is a preset. There is very limited adjustability to the fur in the free version. I do not like it either but if I move the tail it will not be natural to the kitten.
Hey Kathryn. I'm quite new at this, so this is just an quick observation that may or may not help. I noticed thru your many changes that you limited your image to a landscape orientation, the longer side of your image is horizontal. Maybe if you used a portrait orientation, turning the image vertical, you could bring the horse and rider closer to the viewer, giving it more height and presence. And it will allow you to fit more of the bow and arrow in the front. You could bring bring the rider and archer much closer together for a more urgent scene.
Ok, don't loose your head over it, and take it a step slower I'd say.
To go back to your post before this, there is a pretty good reason, I have not started to look into the Iray yet, I started my journey into Dazneyland with 4.7 a well prooven an looked through program where you can find tons of tutorials etc in the net and rely on the knowlege of the forum members for good. Still consiering myself a noob with 4.7 an the myrards of possibilities I let the experenced users go ahead with the Iray and all its beta quirks... one step at a time.
Now important message: safe often and if not shure about the outcome safe to a differnt file name! Once you know which way you wnat to go you can still delete everything you don't need anymore.
Take your Time an try posing your people yourself, it's no that bad if you go through it one by one. If you take a look at the older contests we had the callenge to take an imgae from the net an imitate that pose to the best of our abilities, now I don't say you need to do tha now but what I took from that was to look through the net for similar poses, even in cases where I know exactly what I am aiming for. I have tried several times to take a preset pose and go from that but in the end I resetted alway to zero and made it myself, just comes out clearer an more defined to your needs.
Best thing to start is the hip as this affects the way the legs will or will not touch ground. I pop open the scenes tab an select every body part after the other.
Suggestions for your render: I thing the charging horse position as you had it for the longest time is good an useful done, I like the idea of the guy throwing the axe and the render with it ist one of my favourites.
After seeing your scene with different camera anlges i finally found what bugged me about it: the ground is utterly flat. Do you have other grounds with a bit more structure to it, that would open a ton of possibilites with bodys lying within camera angle but not blockung the view etc.
If not you can try to use d-formers on the ground, if you have never worked with those before they can be a bit of a challenge, took me three month to get the hang of those, now I love the possibilites.
Alternatively I have used the morhing tissue mentioned in my post to robborfla1 as a ground ( yea I do that, making up stuff thats not meant like that), jus sclae it up to whatever you need shove the dieal around till you like the floor and throw your ground jpg in the diffuse map ( for better results in the bump map as well so its more the llok of grass and stuff).
ok thats a lot from me, I hope it helps!
Thanks Kismet! That's one of those "DOH!" why didn't I think of that? It's simple but brilliant at the same time. lol! I will definitely lock the camera. I was getting pretty good about using the perspective and loading a new one when I found a shot I like. And yes, like you, I get so focused I forget and the next thing I know - whoops! Wrong camera! Especially when using two monitors.
I'm getting better about Save As too - when I substantially change something, I usually remember to save as to a new file and I'll actually keep progressions. That's a habit from writing and also making tutorials for the web and youtube with my mini painting and photoshop stuffs. So I can go back to a couple of different saved versions of my original POV shot and tweak again (and lock those cameras! lol!)
And thank you for reminding me about not cutting off my subjects. I had told myself not to do that and I went and did it anyway. I'll fix it! Thank you very much! And thanks for letting me know which one you prefer.
I do like this image - I like my POV shot better - but in writing, editors always tell us authors - "be willing to kill your babies!" meaning the stuff you like the best, is often the stuff that gets cut. So that might happen with my POV shot, but I'll see if anyone else has any ideas and give my own brain a rest for a bit - maybe come back with fresh eyes later.
Thanks again for your help, Kismet! I really appreciate it.
Cheers,
Kath
Hi Lyam! Thank you! Now that's an interesting idea. I automatically go landscape because I've got two monitors that are landscape and this stuff is plastered all over 'em. But I'll definitely portrait a shot and see what happens. It doesn't hurt to try! Thanks again!
Cheers,
Kathryn
I agree... thank you for your input. I have made some adjustments to the upper body and added some additional details.
Ok... I think I'm almost done, but there's a lot of grain left in the darker areas. I think I just need more light in general. I may add some fluorescent tube lights above the scene.
The lighting scheme has changed. I changed the light on the guy. There's a more obvious overhead/key light, with a less intense fill light to preserve more shadow. (I think I'm using these terms properly. Lighting is its own thing altogether. Reminder to self: Get that textbook on digital lighting now that the school year is almost over.)
I also added a few plastic cups to the empty beer bottles, thinking about how a room looks after the party is over.
Okay - big deep breath - hehe!
Thanks Linwelly!
Posing - I really should start from scratch and I know this. I've looked at the user manual and tried both the universal tool and the poser tool in the viewport. Despite me trying to increase their size, the handles are tiny and the circles around the ball are as well. I can't hit 'em to save my life. I'd rather use something like that only with larger handles than use the individual sliders because I'm constantly going back and forth, but beggars can't be choosers so it looks like it's the sliders for me.
As for the render with the throwing the axe - that one was a half render in 4.8 and lray. But there's nothing stopping me from creating in 4.7, saving a copy, and then pulling it into 4.8 for just the render. That might prove interesting. I'll give it a shot and see what happens.
I usually start at the hip or shoulder with posing and stuff like that but it's the angles that kill me. Most often I'll have at least two viewers open.
For those who use two or more monitors, what are your favorite workspace layouts?
And yes, the ground is driving me nuts too - right now it's all I have. But I have some fantastic landscape brushes for photoshop. I can come up with great terrain in two minutes using those brushes. The hard part is getting it 3d. I don't have Bryce or any thing and some of the open source programs I looked at - well, they're iffy. But I do have Sculptris from the makers of Zbrush.
I actually sculpted a decent dragon's head from scratch with Sculptris but that was several months ago. I wonder if there's a way I can get the two to cooperate. I can at least make uneven terrain in Sculptris - nothing fancy and no trees, but I can make a mat of some uber realistic grass using a custom brush in photoshop and see how that goes. It doesn't hurt to try at least. lol! And I can make bump maps in photoshop - so let me play around with the different possibilities and see what trouble I can get into. lol!
Thanks so much for the help, Linwelly! I really appreciate it.
Cheers,
Kath
Ok I'll try to get some problems solved here,
first, yes you are right going with those handle to pose would drive me nuts as well, so I choose the body part in the scenes tab and then open he parameters tab to shove stuff around with the xyz dials and the rotation accordingly, for most body parts that is bent and twist, takes some getting used to not acting right on the place of where you change things but its easy to get the hang of it.
Now for the gound, I don't use any other programs than DAZ 3d ( as my knowledge of any other program is rather limited I try to do everything in DAZ) and as you have some kind of ground there in your render you can take it and give it some shape with d-formers. here is a link to a tutorial that give a good idea of what to do.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SEBV2GHJHA
alternatively here is the link to the free Prop morphing tissue I mentioned before
http://www.most-digital-creations.com/free_poser_poses_textures_morphs_props_24.htm
you need to download that and move to the correct folders by hand, load into your daz scene, scale up and load the jpg of the ground you are now using into the diffuse channel: voila landscape, no trees but formed ground in Daz-
As for monitors, I have two as well the small one of my labtop I use has a high resolution and a smaller screen, the large one has a lower resolution, that one I normally use for putting together my scene, when rendering I shove the image back and forth for different impressions.
I agree, there isn't anything I would nitpick on anymore besides what you mentioned yourself :lol:
awesome scene!
For posing, I find myself using the perimeter settings much easier to work with than the viewport tools since it is just a matter of selecting a body section and then simply adjusting the slides for twist, bend and side by side parameters.
For creating more realistic ground effects..have you tried Wilmap's scene bases? www.wilmapsdigitalcreations.co.uk/view_product.php?id=189 They come with excellent texures or you can easily load your own on top of them.
Nest try. The sofa in Junk Alley looked a bit too soft, so I gave him a rusty car (is there a way to add age and grime to the windows, lights, tyres and chrome parts, besides postworkt?). Also made the guy angry looking.
Now I think it's not people he's fighting, as he would tackle them with his fists. I'll let him fight against a mean dog.
Lookin' good. Real good. Keep it up. As for aging the car, I'd recommend the hybrid grunge bundle.
The dog is added. He's fighting a mean doberman. I think, poses look right so far, except that the millenium dog LE doesn't seem to be able to tweak ear position. The scene still needs a bit work on some surfaces.
Well, I finally had some time to get back to this. There are some great renders in this WIP thread.
@Gallows - Thank you!
@Linwelly - Great advice. I still struggle with getting the story out of my head and into the image.
I tried adding bosses, but they ranged from creepy (like they were looking up the dress of the girl on the left) or just not quite right. What I ended up with was adding an intern - made the new female figure smaller, thinner, and gave her pink hair to suggest younger and to sell the intern idea. The intern is carrying boxes but drops one which initiates the vortex. I added warning stickers to some of the boxes in post to try to sell this concept. On the box that has been dropped, you can see part of a warning sticker under the open box flap.
Sort of a Pandora's Box of paperwork.
A lot of the detail of the warning sticker is lost because of its size, so I included a copy here for kicks.
I pulled in on the camera, but I've still got some tweaking to do with the camera angle and a few more things. Hopefully I'll have time to get it ready to submit.
Thanks everyone and good luck!
One thing that strikes me is the space between the cloud of papers & the plant on the filing cabinet.
If you could slide the desk & the person behind the desk towards the left of the picture, you could pull in a bit closer.
Other than that, it's looking great!
Thank you.
I squished the scene left-to-right and that seemed to help. I was able to pull in more and fix a bunch of issues.
I think this is just about finished - if for no other reason than I won't have much time to do any more. :)
Hm. Now I got the car old and rusty in all parts (found the shaders). But somehow I managed to change something with the light, which doesn't look so good. And the camera angle changed as well. How can I give my camera a fixed position so that after tweaking the picture I can return to the same image position?
I tried, but as you can see, with three tries I got three different camera angles in my picture.
The default for looking in to the Studio window is Perspective. What you want to do if your Perspective is in the position that you want the render to reflect then go up to the Tool bar Create->New Camera. When the box opens tick the Apply Active Viewport Transforms: . The camera will be positioned in the same orientation as what your current Perspective view is. When you go to render just remember to select the camera in the view list.
Ah, yes, that does the trick, thank you!
Hey everyone! I'm still kickin! I just got swamped over here but I'm continuing to work on my image. Again I had another major shift. I still want to go back and try the axe being thrown but I was messing around with stuff. This isn't even a render, I just used the bridge for Photoshop to grab this one. But what was once dead now lives - well, he did for about five minutes - considering where the sword landed. I think the archer ran for his life. lol!
I want to catch up on posts but I have to call it a night so hopefully tomorrow.
Cheers,
Kathryn
PS - maybe it's just me because I live in Texas but the trebuchet is really starting to remind me of an oil rig.
Okay, now I know I'm really tired. Goodnight and I'll chat with y'all tomorrow. :red:
Kathryn, even if (I assume, don#t know so much about horses) you made the horses pose a natural one, it looks wrong in this camera position. And the hind legs of the horse and the legs of the standing figure cover each other, which adds to the "wrong" look.
The earlier versions looked better.
The horse and infantryman's legs also bothered me. Odd how the man masks the horse.
The backhand swing of the sword while the rider is going past seems odd. Maybe if he were pulling the reins, the backhand would seem more natural on horseback. The horse just looks like it's going too fast for the sword direction IMO.
Also, I'm guessing you'd add fire for a final image. Without the fire, the background maybe tells part of a story, but you could lose the sides of your image and not lose a lot of storytelling in what you are showing. You could be more economical with that canvas, I think. Even with the fire, I could make the same argument. It's just amplified without the fire.
Kathryn
It is good to experiment. If you do not try different things you will end up withe the same result.
However, I have to agree with cherpenbeck and The Blurst of Times. Your prior image worked much better.
I am no swordsman but I believe they would not want to do a backhand swing from horseback. They would prefer to go with forward momentum of horse and let that momentum do most of the work. There is a bigger danger of missing with a backhand swing.
I also agree that the feet of the horse and the figure on the ground look odd. If the axeman was trying to take out the rider he would have been facing the rider as he approached. If the horse is knocking down the axeman, which is what I think you are trying to portray, he would be spun around and falling. I know there isn't a lot of time left but this video might help. At 54 sec's is a scene similar to what you are trying to portray: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IL5TqFn32PQ
In addition to what has been said already, I would like to point out the tangents between the tretbouchet and the rider, and the horse.
Right now it looks like the rider is growing a mechanical third arm there. I would try to move the trebouchet around so the it looks less awkward.
Okay gang - thanks everyone for their feedback.
Now I could fix the guy's legs and shift the angle of the camera etc. But remember I said I still wanted to try the axe throwing option. When I looked at the amount of work regarding the two, well, there was honestly no comparison. And as we all know the clock is ticking and unfortunately, my schedule isn't getting any less busy. Two of my books are going to audiobook and I'm getting slammed with auditions.
Anyway, since I try to save my scenes into different files when I get a drastic change for a new idea, I have a nice clean file of the axe throw that's practically there already. Plus I like the lighting in this scene far more than the battleaxe fight and it brings my POV shot back into play which is what I wanted in the first place.
Since everything was already there, all I did was render each layer separately. The background, then the trebuchet, then the horse and rider, and finally the axe. That way the only masking I had to do in Photoshop is where the trebuchet is breaking because of the fire. The trebuchet is all one mesh, I can't move the arms or anything independently on it. So I used puppet warp to bend it like it was breaking. Other than that., the only post work in this is of course the fire and adding a spin blur to the axe. Oh I drew in a rein on the bridle since he didn't have one and I bumped up the blur on the camera's depth of field. The entire thing only took me about 15 - 20 minutes in photoshop.
So I hope the post work is minimal enough - and definitely like this image more than the others. What do y'all think? Thanks again for all the advice and suggestions!
Cheers,
Kathryn
I like what you've done here. I've also enjoyed observing the process. Good luck!
I'm not sure I like the spin blur. It almost looks like he's holding a butterfly net, and he's out catching butterflies.
For another way to blur the axe, have you tried the Depth of Field effect? You have to set it on the camera, but it's worth experimenting with.
The way your subject masks the background, coupled with the dimensions of the trebuchet kind of make it look like the horse & rider are on fire.
I still think the left and right of the image aren't adding very much to your story.