October 2015 New User Contest (WIP-THREAD)

KA1 · October 2015

It is the learning that's so much fun, and a great community and feedback from everyone on here during the process. I also find that as the competitions have themes it helps me to go outside my comfort zone and actively think outside the box to get an idea I like. Also, as happened with this competition after seeing @sonja11 underwater WIP it got me thinking I'd really like to try an underwater scene, not to enter the competition with, but as a learning exercise off the back of here!

The feedback offered by veterans @DollyGirl and @Linwelly, as well as each other is priceless :)

Lyam · October 2015

isidorn said:

daybird said:

Wow Ka1, one cool pic after the other.

You are to good for the beginner thread. When i see such cool pics, i have no hope to gain a price.

I know the feeling, but remember we are all winners here with all the advice and everything new we learn here.

I too agree that the more you play the more you learn and the better your renders get. I enter contests all the time because it's really fun even though I never expect to win . But I learn something new with every one I do and before Daz3d the best I could make were weird deformed snowmen, you know the ones with the three imperfect circles stacked on top of one another. Anyway, if you haven't got your fill of contests for the month, there's a fun one in Novica's thread in the Art Studio section. http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/63727/contest-entry-thread-because-i-said-so#latest ; She giving out prizes and it's also sponsered by First Bastion who is awarding his products as prizes. Yeah I entered that one too. I think I'm getting addicted. Cheers!

IceCrMn · October 2015

Yep I agree as well.The first contest I ever got into was an RRRR, it was great fun.The others were very helpful with stuff and I learned alot watching them :)

As far as winning one goes, it's not always going to be the one that looks the most realistic.The render engine isn't whats being judged.

There are many factors they judge the entries on.So just be creative, do your best, ask for help if you need to, there is no such thing as a bad question :)

Knittingmommy · October 2015

I know I've learned a lot just by attempting to enter this contest. The feedback has been more than worth the effort. It doesn't matter if my render wins because I think I've already won with the amount of useful tips I learned here from all of you.

IceDragonArt · October 2015

Linwelly said:

Sonja11 said:

Linwelly said:

Sonja11 said:

Linwelly said:

Sonja11 said:

Ooops wrong one. this is the right one with the bubbles done

very nicely done, I like the light on the girl, that from the jellyfish and that from above. What I noticed is that the causic effect is present all though the water, or as I guess that is your background plane. If you look at underwater images the caustic effect is seen only on surfaces, not in the water itself (well ok the water surface looking up in the water is all caustic itself). So you need to move your background out of reach for the caustic light or you can alter the angle away from it. I hope you find a solution.

Yes this have been a source of frustration for many hours now lol. These are actually gel lights and nothing I do seems to fix the issue. The caustics just werent working at all no matter what I did. And since this is only my 4th render or so I know absoloutely nothing about how most of this stuff works. although I will say that doing this contest and reading as much as I can in thr forums has made a huge difference in what i now know. So many thanks to everyone who has been so helpful!

I have been thinking about this for a little, well I don't own the gel lights and I made my water caustics myself but I guess your problem is with the distance of the background panel ( I believe you are using one?). So if you can't move it any further away to avoid the effects from the gel lights, what you could try is to rotate it a little around the horizontal axis (could be x or z depending from where it startet out) so that the top part drops a little bit into the direction of your scene and hopefully shadows itself out from the gellight. Thats something you need to test (make a spot render on the backpanel to see if it had any effect, takes less time). I can't say that this will work but if it works you might then need to add another light (normal, from the side at a low intensity) so that your backpanel won't get too dark. I hope that gives you some ideas about what to to.

I will give this a try as soon as I am able. Going to be a long week at work and not sure I will be up the frustration level I may encounter lol. I lost all of my poser content last night and have had to uninstall the entire program and reload everything. I have all the Daz stuff up and all the poser stuff I had saved in files but still have about half the content I now need to track back down and load again. Hopefully, the files that have this render in it are still where they are supposed to be. (they should still be on the computer but I've been a bit afraid to look lol)

good luck with that! Hope it works to reinstall and find everything again

Well, fixed the problem but still loading a ton of the free content that went missing. So hopefully it won't happen again. Great opportunity to learn how the files work though lol.

IceDragonArt · October 2015

KA1 said:

@Sonja11 You inspired me to attempt an underwater scene (not for this competition, just to see if I could actually get some sort of decent caustic effect etc) I'm quite pleased with the results I got after a little playing around for just a "learning things" render, so even though it's not a competition entry I thought I'd share it here as it was you that inspired me to attempt it!

Title - "Little Mermaids"

iRay render - PNG converted to JPEG with photoshop - No postwork

Wow thank you! It looks great! I'm still so new I squeek lol.

RobotHeadArt · October 2015

DollyGirl said:

Welcome RoboHeadArt. I like your color pallet, smoky blue is such a good color for moodiness. I like too, the play of the red light with her red eyes. that is a good way to balance the image and is a nice technique to move the viewer's eye across the image. If I was working on this image I would see if I could get her face in one of the Rule of Thirds sweetspots and the red sign in the opposite sweetspot corner. There is an option in Studio to turn on the Rule of Thirds in the viewport. Look for the arrow and 4 lines in the upper right hand corner. Click on that and you will see the option. I would also try and keep a view of the street below. I would add a lone car. Might even play around with the idea of having the car waiting at a stoplight. I think I would try and get a more yellow tint to the office window lights and I would see if I could get some light cones going with the street lights to make the light bounce back from the sidewalk. I would also play around with adding a primative sphere around the lights. Make them pretty transparent and emissive to help with the tranaction between the matter of the fog with the light. I think I would add a moon into the mix. The moon is a symbol for melancholy so that would add to the brooding effect. I would try and see if this little guy from Autodesk could help reinforce the gothic part of the image. (The link, Below is a picture of him in Studio. You want the obj format) I would also see if I could introduce a one more gothic detail such as wrought iron, spires or something like that to give some subtle hints that the artist is going Goth.

You have a good start. Now it is just the fine details to worry about. As always these are suggestions. More to make you think about just what you want to do then how to do it. Looking forward to seeing what you do.

Thanks for the advice! I don't have any formal training or background in art so tips like the Rule of Thirds are really useful. I've adjusted the framing of the character and placed the moon along one of the verticle thirds line. The windows are slightly more yellow as well and I placed some emissive geometry under the street lights to try to give the beam of light in fog effect. I had originally tried placing a pedestrian on the sidewalk but they looked like a smudge with the fog effect but hadn't tried a car. The headlights might make it more visibile, I will have to try that tomorrow.

IceDragonArt · October 2015

Knittingmommy said:

Okay, so here is my vampire all fogged up. I ended up using Jepe's Steam because I just wasn't happy with my attempts to put my overlays onto a plane. I'll have to keep trying to improve that skill in the future. It took a lot of fidgeting with settings, but I finally got the fog to show up in Iray. Once the Iray Uber shader was applied, Jepe's Steam was either too light so that you couldn't see the fog or it was too dark and looked like a dust cloud instead of fog. I had to play with the emissions setting a lot.

So, after 18 hours rendering time and no postwork, my vampire is again up for comments and suggestions.

I like this one a lot. The fog is definitely more foglike. (that's probably not a word lol)

IceDragonArt · October 2015

ewcarman said:

Xangth said:

Here is my next render up on my WIP for this months contest. Thank you for the suggestions! I added more things to make it more cluttered and worked on the textures and the lighting a bit. The image file size is now about at it's max for Bryce. Suggestions and comments are always welcome. This was built, textured and rendered in Bryce. There is no post work.

Title change

Title: "Is someone there?"

Nice ghost.

Couple things I'd like to suggest. The right arm of the male actor needs to be more involved in the scene - it seems to be just hanging there when there is otherwise the appearance of tension. The female actor is behind him and in that pose you will often find the male pushing their arm back some to keep the person more solidly behind and protected. Perhaps opening the palm up more to the female and reaching a little more to the right and back will better engage the two and really sell the tension a little.

I like the spider webs too, but I'm not sure about the light that is hitting the lower one on the rocking chair. The moonbeams seem to fall short of it and the spill from the candle doesn't seem to make it there. Not sure what to do about it - perhaps soften the spider web a bit.

I agree about the arm its the first thing i noticed. Lots of improvements in this one though.

IceDragonArt · October 2015

daybird said:

Mhh first try with new setting after the crash.

I like the perspective on this

IceDragonArt · October 2015

KA1 said:

Okay, after rendering for 2days 23hrs and 18mins....

This is very cool! And you have the patience of a saint!

IceDragonArt · October 2015

RobotHeadArt said:

DollyGirl said:

Welcome RoboHeadArt. I like your color pallet, smoky blue is such a good color for moodiness. I like too, the play of the red light with her red eyes. that is a good way to balance the image and is a nice technique to move the viewer's eye across the image. If I was working on this image I would see if I could get her face in one of the Rule of Thirds sweetspots and the red sign in the opposite sweetspot corner. There is an option in Studio to turn on the Rule of Thirds in the viewport. Look for the arrow and 4 lines in the upper right hand corner. Click on that and you will see the option. I would also try and keep a view of the street below. I would add a lone car. Might even play around with the idea of having the car waiting at a stoplight. I think I would try and get a more yellow tint to the office window lights and I would see if I could get some light cones going with the street lights to make the light bounce back from the sidewalk. I would also play around with adding a primative sphere around the lights. Make them pretty transparent and emissive to help with the tranaction between the matter of the fog with the light. I think I would add a moon into the mix. The moon is a symbol for melancholy so that would add to the brooding effect. I would try and see if this little guy from Autodesk could help reinforce the gothic part of the image. (The link, Below is a picture of him in Studio. You want the obj format) I would also see if I could introduce a one more gothic detail such as wrought iron, spires or something like that to give some subtle hints that the artist is going Goth.

You have a good start. Now it is just the fine details to worry about. As always these are suggestions. More to make you think about just what you want to do then how to do it. Looking forward to seeing what you do.

Thanks for the advice! I don't have any formal training or background in art so tips like the Rule of Thirds are really useful. I've adjusted the framing of the character and placed the moon along one of the verticle thirds line. The windows are slightly more yellow as well and I placed some emissive geometry under the street lights to try to give the beam of light in fog effect. I had originally tried placing a pedestrian on the sidewalk but they looked like a smudge with the fog effect but hadn't tried a car. The headlights might make it more visibile, I will have to try that tomorrow.

The depth on this one is better. the windows closer to her look bright and like they are fading as you go further back. Not sure what made that happen but it works.

DollyGirl · October 2015

RobotHeadArt said:

Thanks for the advice! I don't have any formal training or background in art so tips like the Rule of Thirds are really useful. I've adjusted the framing of the character and placed the moon along one of the verticle thirds line. The windows are slightly more yellow as well and I placed some emissive geometry under the street lights to try to give the beam of light in fog effect. I had originally tried placing a pedestrian on the sidewalk but they looked like a smudge with the fog effect but hadn't tried a car. The headlights might make it more visibile, I will have to try that tomorrow.

Your welcome RobotHeadArt. Yes I see improvement with the composition. What I want you to try to do is make the lighting a bit more smudgy. This link is a google search of lights in fog. It would be good to study these and identify what you see, such as the blurriness of the lights or that they tend to form circles. On your image I would play with Depth of Field on the camera to keep her in focus but to blur the back ground abit. You may have to make your moon just a tad bigger because the blur will unbalance the nice triangle you have going between her eyes, the sign and the moon. Last month's contest was about DOF and how to do it. Here is the link to the first page and on it are tutorials for how to apply DOF.

Looking good. Waiting to see what you do.

Shinji Ikari 9th · October 2015

I found myself having a new idea tonight for a pov render don't know if it will be used though. Feedback would be appreceated.

DollyGirl · October 2015

Shinji Ikari 9th said:

I found myself having a new idea tonight for a pov render don't know if it will be used though. Feedback would be appreceated.

Shinji, so my feedback is that you should turn on the Rule of Thirds viewport in Studio and see what you get. Your image is pretty dark as well. Having darkness does not set a mood. It is the balance of light and dark. You know the story so you can see the tension and what might happend next but we, your viewers, can not. Maybe if you write down your story and "see" your image you can figure out what it is you are trying to tell us. Then using key elements from the story you can set up the image to reflect what you want to tell. Remeber, darkness is not your friend in images but shadows are.

IceDragonArt · October 2015

Shinji Ikari 9th said:

I found myself having a new idea tonight for a pov render don't know if it will be used though. Feedback would be appreceated.

Okay I kind of get what you are going for here. I think you need to move the point of view to just before the dark hits the light. And bring whatever it is that is chasing/ jumping out at the person into more detail and sharpness and blur the front a tiny bit maybe for more depth of field. I like the point of veiw for this but I think the monster should be more prominent so that we can actually make out the details of what it is.

Shinji Ikari 9th · October 2015

DollyGirl said:

Shinji Ikari 9th said:

I found myself having a new idea tonight for a pov render don't know if it will be used though. Feedback would be appreceated.

Shinji, so my feedback is that you should turn on the Rule of Thirds viewport in Studio and see what you get. Your image is pretty dark as well. Having darkness does not set a mood. It is the balance of light and dark. You know the story so you can see the tension and what might happend next but we, your viewers, can not. Maybe if you write down your story and "see" your image you can figure out what it is you are trying to tell us. Then using key elements from the story you can set up the image to reflect what you want to tell. Remeber, darkness is not your friend in images but shadows are.

The inspiration for this side project was actualy First-Person Shooter type games like 'Doom' and 'Doom 2', both of which make use of flickering lights in places. We were wearing a helmet in the first take, and not only did it block the top and lower corners, but the glass settings I used on the visor glass were distorting what we were seeing. I re-rendered the image without the helmet right after posting but fell asleep before the render was done or I would have edited my origonal post to add it for compareson. (Sorry about any spelling, I'm still waking up this morning.)

DollyGirl · October 2015

Shinji Ikari 9th said:

The inspiration for this side project was actualy First-Person Shooter type games like 'Doom' and 'Doom 2', both of which make use of flickering lights in places. We were wearing a helmet in the first take, and not only did it block the top and lower corners, but the glass settings I used on the visor glass were distorting what we were seeing. I re-rendered the image without the helmet right after posting but fell asleep before the render was done or I would have edited my origonal post to add it for compareson. (Sorry about any spelling, I'm still waking up this morning.)

Okay this is better but I still think you should turn on the Rule of Thirds. Remember this is single frame composition so although this would be acceptable as one of the frames for an animation is does not provide that gotcha kind of feel as a "picture" you would put on your wall. I would suggest that you reposition the zombie into the upper left intersection and put a spot on him so that you can see his ugly face. This would give us a reason for why the gun is in our view. As I said before darkness is not your friend, for the art type we are trying to teach, but shadows are. Also remember that what is really cool in a game is not necessarily good for this type of art. Go and look at the stills used to promote the game. What cover art do they use? I think you will find that what is inside the game is not even close to what is used on the outside of the box to capture the buyer's interest initially. I am not saying what you have done is bad but that the application is for a different kind of art then what we are trying to do here. Game artwork on the outside is totally different then the artwork inside of the game. You will need both if that is what interests you but for now we are trying to teach you what should go on the outside of your game box. If this image was on the game box cover or was promoting the game would you be interested in the game?

Looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

mjc1016 · October 2015

Shinji,

A couple of things to think about...

1. Usually there is some sort of light mounted on the assault rifle. This is especially important when facing zombies...they don't have a heat signature that would show on an IR rifle scope.

2. Changing the dimensions or the ratio of the image may help with the 'rule of thirds' stuff...

Linwelly · October 2015

KA1 said:

It is the learning that's so much fun, and a great community and feedback from everyone on here during the process. I also find that as the competitions have themes it helps me to go outside my comfort zone and actively think outside the box to get an idea I like. Also, as happened with this competition after seeing @sonja11 underwater WIP it got me thinking I'd really like to try an underwater scene, not to enter the competition with, but as a learning exercise off the back of here!

The feedback offered by veterans @DollyGirl and @Linwelly, as well as each other is priceless :)

Oh wow, that feels weird, to be called a veteran, since I started with the new user contests in January this year, so I still don't know half of it. But thanks, its good to know that I can help at some things, I try to do so where I can.

frank0314 · October 2015

No matter how long you been doing this there is always room to learn more.

Shinji Ikari 9th · October 2015

mjc1016 said:

Shinji,

A couple of things to think about...

1. Usually there is some sort of light mounted on the assault rifle. This is especially important when facing zombies...they don't have a heat signature that would show on an IR rifle scope.

2. Changing the dimensions or the ratio of the image may help with the 'rule of thirds' stuff...

How's this?

Kitti · October 2015

Hey guys!

Omigosh look at all these great renders so far! What a perfect challenge for Halloween, I'm so excited to see the finished entires!

Well, I just HAD to pop in and give a shout out to Dreamlight for the Render Sphere because it is without a doubt the BEST atmosphere tool available anywhere!

I bought it a while back from his website, and I can't believe I almost forgot I had it until I went rooting around my (shamefully disorganized) content library. After getting a real solid chance to play with it for this contest, I'm adding it straight to my favorites toolbox.

Oh and of course mad props to the Giant Fantasy Spider. Unfortunately he was only on sale for like a day, but don't be shy about bringing this little guy home - he's definitely worth it. I can personally vouch for him and have thoroughly enjoyed his company during this month's challenge. Now I know what you're thinking, but don't worry - he's house trained. ;)

Seriously, it looks like the DAZ Shop is gearing up for some super awesome sales and bundles. TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THESE! Now is the best time ever to buy a premium membership, I may have a lot of regrets in my life but I have never ever EVER second guessed this decision.

Happy Halloween!

isidorn · October 2015

Kitti said:

Oh and of course mad props to the Giant Fantasy Spider. Unfortunately he was only on sale for like a day, but don't be shy about bringing this little guy home - he's definitely worth it. I can personally vouch for him and have thoroughly enjoyed his company during this month's challenge. Now I know what you're thinking, but don't worry - he's house trained. ;)

If I'm not enterily mistaken, the larger specimen of spiders tend in general to be female. Just saying... ;)

Kitti · October 2015

isidorn said:

Kitti said:

Oh and of course mad props to the Giant Fantasy Spider. Unfortunately he was only on sale for like a day, but don't be shy about bringing this little guy home - he's definitely worth it. I can personally vouch for him and have thoroughly enjoyed his company during this month's challenge. Now I know what you're thinking, but don't worry - he's house trained. ;)

If I'm not enterily mistaken, the larger specimen of spiders tend in general to be female. Just saying... ;)

Hm, you're probably right. Her milkshake brings all the boys to the graveyard and with a badonkadonk that smexy it's easy to overlook the hideously unshaven legs.

IceDragonArt · October 2015

Shinji Ikari 9th said:

mjc1016 said:

Shinji,

A couple of things to think about...

1. Usually there is some sort of light mounted on the assault rifle. This is especially important when facing zombies...they don't have a heat signature that would show on an IR rifle scope.

2. Changing the dimensions or the ratio of the image may help with the 'rule of thirds' stuff...

How's this?

Much better. I can see the zombie/monster and it makes more sense now.

Shinji Ikari 9th · October 2015

mjc1016 said:

Shinji,

A couple of things to think about...

1. Usually there is some sort of light mounted on the assault rifle. This is especially important when facing zombies...they don't have a heat signature that would show on an IR rifle scope.

2. Changing the dimensions or the ratio of the image may help with the 'rule of thirds' stuff...

or this?

mjc1016 · October 2015

My kids like zombie shoot-em-ups....so the new one has their approval.

Knittingmommy · October 2015

Aaargh! I was running a test render on my vampire in a slightly different camera angle with a couple of changes to the lighting. I thought it looked so good I decided to let the render run at higher quality. After 14 hours, I look at it and notice for the first time that a couple of his fingers are inside the cane!!! So, I fixed the fingers and I'm re-rendering my vampire now. However, I thought I would post the two current renders side by side and get some opinions and comments from all of you. Let me know what you think.

Kitti · October 2015

Knittingmommy said:

After 14 hours, I look at it and notice for the first time that a couple of his fingers are inside the cane!!! So, I fixed the fingers and I'm re-rendering my vampire now.

Oh no, I hate when that happens! I feel your pain, even though 99% of the time no one would ever notice (I don't think I would have seen it here unless it was pointed out) but I totally understand how it can turn into the only thing YOU see and it's like this giant glaring mistake staring you in the face...

I'm not familiar with Iray but maybe someone else can answer this better: Is there a way to "spot render" just part of an image? In this case just the hand? That way when something like this happens instead of having to completely start over and re-rendering the whole thing you can just redo the part you fixed at a fraction of the time then piece it together in photoshop?

Not sure if that's even possible with progressive rendering - seems like it might be difficult to get the resolutions to match? Hopefully someone has an idea or solution for these situations!

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October 2015 New User Contest (WIP-THREAD)

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