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On this one, the one thing that jumped out at me was that his arm does not look solidly connected to the ground. this can be fixed in post work I am assuming by drawing some of the grass up around his arm. and his face is much warmer in tone that hers. That may just be the lighting. but those are the first things that drew my attention. That and the fact that he has a serious body going on lolol.
And please take anything I say with a grain of salt. I'm a very inexperienced at 3d still. I am trying to look at is from the perspective of a reader and what I notice when I am book shopping
Hi Kath. That looks like Modern Kilt and you need to use the Dynamic Clothing Engine in order to drape it I got it while it was on sale last year and like it the more I play with it. I'm glad I learned how to use dFormers to morph clothing though since it does help to have that skill. It also helps to learn how to morph clothing using Blender or Hexagon, also, but that skill is harder to learn. I'm still working on that skill.
Do you have Dynamic Clothing Engine or have you been trying to fit the kilt manually? If you have it and are still having problems, I suggest this tutorial. It really helped me a lot when I first started trying to use the Optitex clothes. I think the tutorial is for a previous version of the cloth engine, but it is still applicable. The cloth engine is a little fudgy at times. You need to make sure that you redrape your figure every time you move it. If you still have problems with poke thru, try hitting the drape button again. That usually takes care of most problems. Luckily, I have that kilt so I stuck it on an M4 character I've been working on and tried the kilt out. I hadn't actually used it yet. It looks quite nice, but I had to drape it twice to get it to settle onto the figure's pose properly. I tried to put my character in a somewhat similar pose with the leg sticking out. He is the first picture. I also tried it with a G2 male with the M4 body shape. He is the second picture. There is the tiniest bit of poke thru at the bend of the leg, but not much.
BTW, DestinysGarden has a LOT of plaids in her Esstential Shaders 3. You might want to check it out if you don't have it already. I bought it recently and the plaid selection is huge. The product says 50 plaids. Not all of them are appropriate for a tartan, but a lot will work well with a kilt.
Also, I like the second hair on your character. I like the couple pose, but as Sonja11 said, that arm in the grass just screams fix me. Other than that, there are only little fixes like the hair going thru the dress and his fingers on her shoulder needing to be adjusted slightly. Just my two cents.
ALL: Thanks for the feedback on the cover logo. I am going to mull things over this weekend and come back to it with fresh eyes next week to see if I can resolve it in a way that the publisher likes and that is good/exciting (as we all know, those can be mutually exclusive goals!). Right now I'm going to have some fun and focus on a few interior illustrations that I promised him. Nothing too exciting, but chance to break out some SF props and weapons. I normally do this type of art in a program called Strata 3D, so this will be a new experience for me to do it in Daz Studio.
Kathryn, That new cover looks great, but ... in my eyes, the woman has a problem with her back. Too rigid. She's with her man, both a more or less lying on the ground, and her back looks as if she's sitting in a stiff corset on a hard bank. She should be able to move her body - if not, she will not have much fun with him.
lol! Thanks Sonja and no worries, that's why I posted it. You're right about his arm, I didn't catch that, I can fix it right up in Photoshop, no worries. I can add a bit of a shadow too. That will definitely help. The lighting was supposed to be a hi def dramatic thing, I didn't realize it would come out so uneven. I think they need to have different skin tones but she's looking a bit green - huh? lol!
Oh and about RPG's I wanted to add if you are interested in D&D there's a group that live streams their game on Twitch.tv, I can send you a link with info if you like. They're a blast to watch and I love 'em because the game is a way of telling a story. They'll be streaming Monday evening if the host gets Comcast to fix his cable line.
Thanks Cherp! Hmmmm good point. Let me see what I can do. I'm still working on the pinning thing so not everything moves at the same time.
Hi Cathy - thanks for the tutorial! I'll check it out! The kilt is driving me nuts! I do have Dynamic Clothing and the first time I tried it, I got it to work. But I did move him and re-draped - after that it didn't work at all. Before it had Kilt under the Cloth Item and Genesis 2 Male under the Figure. Now I can't get the figure to show up on there for nothing. Before I started into DAZ I did a crap ton of Photoshop work so got really good at doing cloaks and kilts by hand. Most of the pics earlier in this thread where I have a cloak or kilt are ones I painted so honestly, I was just going to paint over this one. lol! I've got those Essential Shaders on my wish list, but I'm also trying to improve my skills at making my own textures, so I'm going to try that first but I'll probably end up using the Essential Shaders. lol!
I'm working on another render of Ronan so I'll hopefully be able to post that in a bit. Thank you so much everyone for your feedback, I really appreciate it!
Cheers,
Kath
Would love a link sounds like fun to watch!
Thankies much, Mitchell (?) The energy effects are RajRaja's Drag-n-Drop Magical Halos now on sale
It took me a bit of time to learn how to use it (becasue I'm not a PS ninja 
) , but long story short if you use them as a layer and set the blending option to "Screen" then you get the kinda translucent effect I got without having to mess with the opacity 
That's how "Lethao" caught the light from the artwork.
The font is Serpantine Medium, a commercial font that has a scifi vibe. My art director friend 3D'ed it in Illustrator. While I did the poses and expressions he was the one who came up with a visual peg for the lighting: the work of the Brothers Hildebrandt. He also tinted the author's name so that it matched the light catch of Lethao (which is the home planet of the characters).
The cover really is a labour of love and a collaboration with someone I've wanted to work with for years
Sorry for the late reply; I've just recovered from a gout attack
Many thanks for the kind words, Cathy
I keep telling Bam I couldn't have done it without him 
I do like the fist in the R
I think the yellow bio-hazard symbol from the first study would serve as a focus point if it were used in the second, but that's just me 
Thanks for the link to the Dynamic Clothes tutorial, Cathy
And apologies to those who know about this already: here's a link to a video tutorial of Dynamic Clothes- Using V4 clothes on G2F but the technique works equally well for V4 to V4, M4 to M4, etc. And it's pretty painless
Gout is a horrible thing! My sister suffers from it -- off and on -- and it is very painful. Good luck in getting your uric acid levels back on track.
Thanks so much for listing the font name: I actually think I have this as part of a font package I purchased several years ago. I will check to see if it's installed and keep it in mind for future SF projects. Also, thanks for the info on how you achieved the effects; that kind of info is very helpful. And even if you hadn't cited the Brothers Hildebrant directly, I would have guessed the influence/inspiration. I'm a fan of their work from waaaaay back (for those who don't know them, they did the classic movie poster for the first Star Wars movie). Great job all around!
Thanks. I also like the yellow biohazard symbol. I'm hoping it might come back when I actually integrate it on the cover. Work on the logo will probably take a breather for the rest of this week as I focus on some other illustrations for the book.
I'm still working on the Dynamic Clothes tutorials, hopefully I can get the kilt fixed soon, but
Sorry for the delay, my laptop had a bout with what I thought was a virus, but I uninstalled my anti-virus software because it wasn't stopping anything, when I did that the crap tried to re-write my registery big time. Looks like I'm going to be on the phone to Webroot and giving them a piece of my mind and getting my money back.
But now is the time to jump into HowReRoll on Twitch.tv, they just finished their last campaign on Monday and are starting a brand new one tonight. Any past episodes can be viewed on their YouTube channel. They have all the info on their Twitch page. You can watch without signing up for a free account but to take part in the audience text chat that goes on while they're streaming live you have to have an account. If you have any questions PM me. As long as the laptop cooperates I'll be off and on during the day. Here's the link http://www.twitch.tv/howreroll They start at 7:30 Central time tonight but if you log on early the chat is usually going. I pop in for a few on chat but my son watches it through his Xbox so we have it on the big screen so I usually watch with him on that. Anyway, let me know.
Now I have been working on fun stuff. First I'm really having a hell of a time with the Heart's War cover. I'm trying to apply the suggestions - first Rose's pose and softening her back. It's tougher than I expected plus the render times have suddenly shot through the roof and I'm not sure why. I've tried rendering each element separately but that doesn't help much, and I've tried making the image smaller, that hasn't helped much either. I've checked all of my surfaces and everything is set for Iray and there's plenty of light ( I know low lighting can slow down Iray a lot). The only thing I changed was her pose, I didn't alter the materials or nothing. Anyway, here's a solo render of Bryn by himself, it took forever but I let it complete the render.
Here's a partial render of everything. After an 1 hour and 45 min stuck at 5% I got tired of waiting.
There's other stuff to fix but I'm just concentrating on the pose right now - does her back look better?
And then there's Ronan, I tried a couple of things with him. Here's one that I like except the shadows screwed it up so I cancelled the render.
But I like how the skin was turning out.
I did another one then did some post on it so you could see where I was going with it all.
I hand painted the kilt, and his hair adding some light highlights - not much since the intent is to use atmosphere which is why the background is blue.
So whatchya think so far?
Cheers,
Kath
kathrynloch: I definitely like the softer arch to her back on the Heart's War cover. A definite improvement. I'm going to make a few tiny suggestions (take each with the appropriate grains of salt):
POWERS BEYOND LOGO: Ugh. Now he wants to go with a more "Mad Max" or "Judge Dredd" look. I've asked him for some samples bfore I move forward with it.
Okay cool! Thanks Mitch - First - the size was an attempt to shrink the image to test render times, I definitely want to go larger but I'm trying different things to figure out why my render time went through the roof.
Now I like your idea of the point light. Different and intriguing. Let me see what I can do with it.
Yeah, me and the ground aren't getting along - either we have major poke-thru that I wouldn't be able to fix in post, or floating. At least with floating I can add ground in post to fix, but I'm still working on it.
As someone who used to paint gaming minis on a commission basis, let me offer you this suggestion. You're giving the publisher too many choices. While this is good on a customer service level, it can wreak havoc on you from an artist's perspective. Remember the publisher isn't an artist! Even if he was, he hired you for a reason, so you've got to paint him into a box so to speak. Clients can be wishy-washy on what they want especially if they're influenced by TV or whatever. Next time it could be that new movie with Vin Diesel - The Last Witch Hunter something or other. You know what I mean?
Let him give you samples and go with what works the best for YOU as an artist. Then do with what you did here - give him a choice of two, or at most four, then keep the elements you're willing to use specific. The hero, does he stay or go - don't give the choice of a heroine instead, for example. You get the R this way or this way, don't leave the door open or he'll continue to waffle and you'll be re-drawing until the cows come home. With a little practice and knowlege of your client you can actually influence his choices the direction you want to go. It's subtle but things like "this specific technique was proven with thus and such blockbuster" and stuff like that. When working commission I learned I had to direct the clients just like I directed the artwork I created.
I hope this makes sense. You have to lay down some bounderies otherwise you and your client will be going in circles for a very, very long time. By the time you get anywhere with the project you'll start hating it and won't put your best into it.
If you have any questions or run into a specific sticky wicket, just holler.
Cheers,
Kath
Here's a totally off topic, off the wall question. But as I'm waiting for DAZ's install manager to finish, I thought I'd ask this just for fun.
What is your total count of elements installed? (I have 731 installed more as soon as I reinstall Bryce.)
Do you have a favorite element or package that you migh consider your best "purchase" (or freebie, creation etc) ever? What is it? (Mine's probably the Gianni Pro Pack. I've got other hero packs but when all else fails and I can't get the others to work, I default to Gianni and he usually works like a dream.)
Do you have a least favorite? A "why did I actually spend money on that?" or a mystery element "when did I buy/download that one?" or "where did that come from"? If so, which one? (Mine's probably the Look at My Hair plugin. I can rarely find it and when I do, I can't get it work. I've had it for months but haven't created anything in it and barely had it open for more than a few minutes - it was also crashing my system left and right.)
Anyone else have anything they want to mention?
kathrynloch: Your advice is top-notch. Normally, I do as you say and limit the suggestions to the client and give more guidance with fewer choices (and let them know that they are exceeding the number of pre-agreed samples and that we're about to enter the territory of "extra charges"). But, alas, this is a long-term client who knows me too well for that to work. I had a personal relationship with him before doing another big project for him: Galaxy Prime RPG (I did logo, typography and book design, but not cover art: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0615521339?keywords=galaxy%20prime%20james%20shade&qid=1444933503&ref_=sr_1_1&sr=8-1).
I think the key to wrangling him in is simple (and similar to what I did last time): I need to see the final artwork for the cover and then -- as the deadline approaches -- give him 2 or 3 options that he can use. I really need the cover to feed my inspiration and guide as as to the color choices. If you look at the Galaxy Prime cover, you'll see that it guided a lot of choices I mad: I had to go with white to make it pop, but the hints of blue were added to give it interest, and the drop shadow was needed to define the edges of the letters gainst the multi-colored background. Ditto for the purple bar at the bottom: the bottom of the cover painting is mostly dark, but has a bright spot in the middle (which was aesthetically the best place for the author's name [the only other good place was above the title]). I just couldn't get the author's name to work with outlines, glows, etc. until I finally went old school and put a purple bar across the bottom.
Right now I'm going to "sit" on the logo and focus on some interior illustrations that he needs of Sci-Fi equipment, vehicles, and stuff like that.
OFF TOPIC: I don't know if I have a favorite item, as it changes from project to project. But I did have a "When did I get that?" moment. I was looking at the sale items at Renderosity one day when I saw a cool cowboy figure that I'd been wanting for a while. It's based on the "Bad" cowboy from the movie, "The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly." I logged in to buy it, and found out that I'd owned it for TWO YEARS! Yup. I'd bought it at a previous sale, probably installed it on a system that had since crashed and was not part of my runtime backup, so it had slipped through the cracks.
Something like this has happened to me more than once (but that's the worse example). I tend to know what kind of projects I have on the horizon (SF, Superheroes, Cowboys, Zombies, Pirates, etc.), so when the items go on sale, I grab them and hold them for use later. As in the case of the pirates, sometimes the project planning is four years or more ahead of actually using the items! So, it's very easy to forget what I've got.
I'm counting 1703 items at the moment, and my favs are the Dragons and the Big Cats. (Started in October last year, but then, I'm a hoarder)
Besides, Your cover has definitely improvend. She doesn't look like a stiff doll anymore. And mmitchell_houston ist right, opening her lips a little bit would further improve.
Definite improvement on her back. I am headed up to elevate my foot, sounds like the perfect time to have a look at the game in an hour or two lol. Thanks for the info!
Couple render -- I see improvement in her back, but there is something still off and I can't quite put my finger on what that is exactly. I think it is the way she seems to be either sitting on his lap or floating around his lap. It just looks odd. Maybe if her knee were more visible to give the impression of balance, but I just don't know. I think her head needs a little tilt as well. However, any impressions I give should be be followed at your own peril. I may give very bad advice as I'm still learning. His arm is definitely still floating in mid-air. But I DO like it better than the first render.
The two hero renders -- While I'm not good at advice yet, I am good at tracking down helpful info. I have more links for you that may help with your shadow problem in Iray. I excel in research and sometimes become obsessive/compulsive when it comes to tracking down details. Anyway, I think you might find these links helpful in dealing with softening shadows in Iray. The first few of links are over at Deviant Art. Diffuse Lighting, Iray Canvass Tutorial, Creating Dust and Atmosphere in Iray. While the last one doesn't really deal with lighting, it does help in diffusing the lighting in a scene as well as add atmosphere and you might find it helpful if you haven't come across it yet. The next link is to a forum post that I bookmarked when I came across it. The original OP gets a little testy, but, if you go towards the bottom of the page, Richard Haseltine and Chuckdozer do an excellent job of explaining with examples how to changes in lighting are affected by changing the light parameters themselves in Iray. I think you might find it useful if you haven't already come across the information yet.
As for the renders themselves, I like the skin in the first render, too. The highlighting of the hair in the render is really good. I like that. You are doing these for the October New User Contest? You mentioned atmosphere and since I've become intimately acquainted with the topic this month while working on my render for it, I guessed you might. If you are going for atmosphere, yeah, I like the setup in the first render better. It just screams atmosphere. Ronan's hands are a little off. You might want to try spreading his fingers just a tad or repositioning his hands slightly. I know they are clenched, but his fingers look like they are squeezed inside each which is never a good thing.
OT stuff -- Count of installed according to the DIM (remember that the DIM also includes duplicates if it installs both the Daz and Poser versions so I usually divide my count in half)? or total count including freebies? If you are including all Daz programs, I doubt I will be able to give an accurate count of everything, but I'm around the 6000 mark which includes both paid and freebies. I started a year ago in August 2014 and I admit to having a worse hoarding problem than cherpenbeck!
If it is free, I do tend to download it even if I don't currently have a use for it. I picked up quite a bit more than I should have during my first PC festival last year, but I was new and they had some really good bargains with prices of older products in the under $0.79 category. I have since learned a little more discretion. I will also download the Daz freebies even if they are a texture pack for an item that I don't have because one never knows when the actual product will show up as a freebie. I have Daz Studio, Carrara, Vue and Bryce although I haven't quite figured out the latter three and do most of my stuff in Daz Studio so I have products for all of them. I just recently installed a new 3 gig hard drive because I was running out of room
on my computer as I only had 1 gig installed.
I haven't really come across a "why did I actually spend money on that?" yet, but I'm sure it is in my runtime somewhere. "when did I buy/download that one?" or "where did that come from"? I do definitely have lots of those, too many to name. High on the list, though, would be a lot of the fantasy, skimpy costumes for the female models. I have to admit that I will sometimes buy one of these outfits if they include some really cool weapon and there is the possibility of using part of the garment to kitbash for some other look, but only if the price is really low. I can't see paying a high price for something when I know I'll only use a small portion of it. However, I got a lot of really nice looking bows that way.
LAMH -- I've had this and Garibaldi since last year and I'm just now trying to figure it out. Especially, the LAMH because there is the possibility of exporting it as a .obj for use in Iray. It is hard to figure out, but so worth it. Again with the links, if you haven't found his Youtube channel, Alessandro has a lot of good tutorials on using his LAMH product. I'm especially excited about what he has been able to do with it in Iray lately. I just love his furry critters and have all of them.
What I want to know -- What is the thing that was the most frustrating part of learning Daz Studio, the thing that gave you the most issues, but once you learned it, you had an ahah moment or an epiphany and everything fell into place?
For example, I like playing with the aniblocks and/or trying to figure out how to make my own animations from either combining aniblock or combining poses and creating aniblocks. I'm getting quite good at posing and making aniblocks, but most of my aniblocks look choppy or I have a problem where I will have a foot sink through the floor or float above the floor when I don't want it to either sink or float. I just learned how to stop it from happening, but it took a long time and when I finally figured out how to fix the problem it turned out to be SO easy that I felt like an idiot for not figuring it out sooner. But, now I know how to fix the problem and things are so much easier and I might actually finish a little animation that I've been working on, or not working on because of frustration, for about six months now. There are still lots things about Daz Studio that I still have to learn, but that is the one thing that had been frustrating me the most and now I'm so glad I stuck with it and figured it out.
So, what was yours?
I did NOT mean to be so wordy or long winded tonight. Here is me going back in my little corner.
I was in the middle of posting when Chrome crashed - while I worked to get that running I discovered that I might have a virus on this thing. That's despite running Trend Micro, HitmanPro/Alert CryptoPrevent, Glasswire Firewall, and WinPatrol. Nothing freaking twitched. The only thing that did it's job was WinPatrol. When Chrome crashed I went to it to see what was going on. WinPatrol had everything right there, unfortunatley it doesn't alert me, I have to go look at the logs. So I'm hitting up Geeks To Go and we'll see if we can get it solved, In the meantime I think I can keep the virus at bay until I can get help - I hope.
Okay first - let me show y'all what I've got so far.
I've got Ronan with atomosphere - Yeah you're right, Cathy, the hands look weird. I'll fix them.
Then I have him with light atmosphere and brighter light.
And finally no atmosphere.
I did pick up First Bastion's A Distant Army so I want to see if I can do a render along the lines of what we were working on before. But we'll see.
Now here we go with Heart's War.
I made some of the suggested changes but honestly the render is just stupid. It get's to 5 percent on both Ronan and HW then at two hours it stops completely. So it looks really grainy. Splitting the image doesn't help, so I don't know what to do. Frustrated I jumped into Photoshop to see what I could fix with post.
I'm still working on her hair but I hand painted the grass and flowers, Hopefully that helps a little.
Thanks Cherp! I'm definitely turning into a hoarder. Even though I haven't started on my contemporary novel covers yet, if I see one with an appropriate weapon or pose, I grab it if it's on sale. lol!
Did you get a chance to jump in? I was off and on last night so I didn't get to see all of the chat.
lol! No worries I do it all the time. I think part of the problem is she doesn't have any squish against him. I know there's a way to fix that but I can't remember off the top of my head. There's been a couple of victories for me where I muddled through then all of a sudden GOT IT! Oh the dynamic kilt was just one. I started the PDF tut and realized I was doing the right thing, I just needed to take it a little further. lol! So you can see Ronan's kilt looks much better. Doing my own textures which I did on the kilt too but that started with the DAZ Horse 2 awhile back. It's one of the things I really like doing and helps make the stuff my own just a little. Ya know?
hehe!
Okay gotta run. Can't stay online too long until I know for sure what I'm dealing with in the virus department.
Cheers,
Kath
Haha no I promptly fell asleep right before it started. I am going to go watch some of the you tube ones as soon as I can. Worked a lot of over time this week so am having a hard time staying awake in the evening lol.
I think i like the bright torch with atmosphere the best. Adn the flowers help quite a bit in making things flow together better
Couple render -- I have to say that seeing the whole render does help with perspective. How she sits doesn't look quite as odd when viewed as a whole. It is a shame her leg is sticking out of the back of the skirt. As for squish, yes that would help, too. I highly suggest Zev0's Breast Control and Glute Control products as well as Ironman13's Squish products. Between the two of them, they can cover a wide range of morphs for just such a need as adjusting certain parts of the body to make it look as if there is an impact of some sort. If you don't have any of those, d-formers are what you need to use to morph or modify body parts. Again, it takes a little time to figure out how to use them effectively, but it is a skill worth learning. You can also use d-formers to help with fitting clothing over exposed legs such as in your lady's pose. This is one of the best youtube videos I have found on d-formers and how to use them. They are useful for a wide variety of situations. This video shows how to make a morph and then turn your d-former into a slide dial that you can then save so that you won't have to redo the d-former that you made. I have to admit that when I learned how to use these, I morphed everything I could get my hands on, landscapes, animals, hair, clothing, skin. You name it. I morphed it.
The 'painted' in flowers do make an improvement. Another possibility is to use flower objects from another landscape. Do you have any flower objects that you can snag from any of your other products so that you can position them around the couple and have them look more like the surrounding vegetation? I don't know if there are any free flowers on any of the other sites, but that is a possiblity as well. Your flowers look good, though, so I wouldn't worry about it if Photoshop is your preferred method of fixing the problem. I tend to look for other ways because I just don't have your mad skills with Photoshop (well, Gimp for me) as those are skills I'm still trying to improve.
Ronan -- His kilt looks so much better!!! I love the look of Ronan in the doorway best. I like the way the light and shadows hit the archway behind him.
OT -- That whole post and I forgot to mention my favorite product. That would be Rawart's Cat World Regenesis Bundle. While I had already created the main character (Hero) in my current labor of love, Cat World is what gave me the hint of a possiblity that I might be able to do my own cover as my character is an alien of the feline persuasian. I have become addicted to creating the picture of him that I see in my head in Daz. He is getting so close to the vision in my head. Hence, my need to learn how to use LAMH as it is definitely needed.
I hope you get your virus problem fixed. It is horrible when that happens, just ruins your whole day and nothing gets done.
Thanks Cathy. Okay I gotta take some stuff to my dad in the hospital. He's doing okay but wants some things from home. So here's this really quickly. I've got to finish this cover because it's holding up publication of the new print and ebook of Heart's Ransom. Since this is the sequel it goes at the end of the book in case folks would like to purchase the next one. :)
Oohh, I like you how changed the flowers in her hair. The grass around his hip and forearm also looks better. I think it looks great, Kath!