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Comments
Lol, wish I was there, I don't like cold weather :).
I agree. The first one has another camera angle. They are both good, but I think the first one is real good
The owl is beating a hasty retreat.
Great start. My eyes keep getting drawn to his face which is nicely lit by the light. The low level fog is effective as well.
The only quibbles is you cut off the toes of his feet at the bottom of the image and his lips might be a bit too shiney?
Overall a very nice image
Has anyone come across this Cropping Guide? I find it very usefull if I am not sure where to position my camera on a figure.
Just had a thought to add some crows overhead in the trees, I believe there was one with adan Twaites freebies.
I was thinking about adding something from Ron's Birds. I'll give it a try in the next version.
Thanks for your feedback Kismet, it was late night/early morning where I'm at and I should have been trying to get some rest when I was messing with things.
The toes will be a simple fix, but I'll have to mess around with his lips to remove some of the shine.
Probably try to see what I can do tonight.
Looking at the ground they're walking on - does the new chunky stuff look anything like snow, or the slick look like ice?
I think you are on a very good start. :)
Hey, Sonja, as you're just starting out with this, a few things to think about. As stated by Chohole, the trees need some ground. The wolves also need some shadows, but lighting will likely take care of that. One thing to consider: are they on stiff ice or on snow. With the latter, they will sink into the snow a little to a lot, so a bit of build up where the stand and darker areas from the print holes the leave and stand in. You're getting some sloping tangents from the hills going into the silhouette of the first wolf. One way to break it is to tilt the camera so the horizon is higher. In addition, if you want trees, you might put in some large dark tress in the foreground. This can give you depth and scale. You can even play with depth of field where the trees in the foreground and the horizon line have some blur. Have fun with it.
I love the idea of this pic. There are a few little things you might consider that could boost it. Just suggestions, mind you.
You can control how much of his silhouette you show with the placement of the trees. You can keep the back obscured and define the front a little. A little brightening/saturation brings your eye to him but doesn't keep him from being part of the "lost" look.
If this is rendered in 3Delight, Alessandro_AM made some of his Promo-Light-Sets available there: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/819390/#Comment_819390
You could try those as a starting point.
I don´t know if you are familiar with Uber Area Lights in 3Delight? Maybe it is just me, but in my opinion the Uber Area Lights bring out very beautiful details in the LAMH-Fur.
An other advantage of Area Lights in 3Delight is the Fall-Off-Option. You can adjust the amount of light on a specific object and where the light will start to fade away, so other objects will not be influenced by the light. Just in case you are interested in Uber Area Lights, there is a very good explanation by Szark: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/14536/tutorial-uber-area-lighting-the-basics/p1 ;
But before I forget there is a disadvantage of Area Lights too and thats the increase of render time.
Thanks for all the suggestions. Here's the next version.
I added some birds, they are hardly visible, but add to the overall detail. I like it. I rearranged the trees a little, so they don't blend with the character. I also used the geometry editor tool to hide some of the branches that were "in the back" of the soldier, it was bugging my eyes a little. I also made him a little more brighter compared to the background.
My concern now is that he looks kind of separated from the rest of the scene, like he is just put there in front of a background. (Which he actually is, he is on a separate layer so I can control him independently of the rest of the scene.)
Yeah, I'll make a new version of this, and just brighten the face and hand+map part of him somehow... Not yet sure how.
EDIT: it was easier than I thought. I changed the image to where only the face, the red part, hand and map is brightened, not the rest of the soldier.
Snow can certainly look like that, though the shapes makes me think of snow that someone has cut up with a shovel to make it melt faster. (Typical behavour around where I live in springtime). There's also one small pile that looks like a perfect pyramid, which seems a bit off. Maybe make the larger piles a bit smaller and add a some more?
As for the ice I think it more looks like water melted from the snow. But I also think that look is enhanced for me by the thought I mentioned above, that the snow looks cut up to melt. If you really want it to be ice, perhaps making it more reflective could help? (I'm just guessing there). Otherwise, if I may make a suggestion, you can go for the look of snow melting on the ground there. As I said in an earlier post, the people aren't dressed for an extreme cold so melting snow fits in well I think.
I'll also mention one thing that catches my attention. The snow that goes up against those two wall pieces in front of the bent traffic sign pole. That snow has a very sharp angle against the right wall piece (the angle going from the top of the pile and down towards right) making it very eye catching because it looks unnatural. Unfortunately I know more about snow than I do about DAZ, so I have no suggestion atm how to fix that. Unless perhaps placing something that blocks the view of that sharp angle?
Thanks everyone! Won't be able to work on this again til Wednesday probably but will go check out the lights for sure. Yes its 3Delight. Render times on my PC tend to be very quick so if it slows down a tiny bit its not the end of the world. I really like the idea of a couple of trees in the foreground as well. And they will most definitely be sinking a bit into the snow.
Oh I think Alessandro's lights for the light LAMH promo will be perfect for this. Will load them up as soon as I can
I think the snow also helps selling the look of him actually being there. Had the snow only been in front of him and not also between him and "us", the viewer, it would have been a different matter.
One thought about the falling snow. It works very similar to heavy rain or fog when it comes to effecting visibility. It looks like it's snowing pretty heavily which would rather drastically limit how far you would be able to see. So in my opinion the background is too clear. I'm not sure what way would be the best to go. Adding more background snow that litteraly blocks most of the background would be imitating how it works in real life, but I'm not sure how possible that is to do, or for that matter, if it would look good. Changing DoF to focus more on the character and blurring out the background could work. Or perhaps add some fog effect (like atmocam, if you have that)? That would also make the background less clear.
The birds are a nice addition. Little details like that might not be immediately noticeable, but they add to realism and we miss them when they're not there. A thought about the birds, depending on what mood you're aiming for. If you place them together in a group, or perhaps even better, several smaller groups, I think it would give a more sinister look - they're watching, they're gathering together, they're ready to defend the place he's aiming for.
Actually, I *AM* using the fog camera with this render. It has visibility set to 50 meters, which is supposed to be 10 times stronger (less vivible) than what is "officially" considered "heavy snow". I halved that to 25 meters, this is the result. (One of the birds is really looking out of place, let's pretent it's not there for now... :))
I think the character is getting too much attention here. I liked the one with the greater visibility better. What do you think?
Pine trees should make this interesting. They add a new color. I'll be interested to see how they contribute to the overall feeling.
You certainly have a good point. This might be more realistic but it isn't in favour of what you want to tell with the scene as his target in the background barely can be seen. I guess sometimes it's best to kick reality out the window. ;)
I still do like the decreased visibility though. Perhaps it could work with adding some light on the enchanted rock? Making it have a stronger glow about it that can shine through the mist?
The fog camera does not seem to let any light through after the visibility range, no matter how bright I make it. But adding a 5th layer to Gimp solves this. :)
Here's my latest that I rendered last night.
Something is visible in the bottom right corner that wasn't there in the last image. Too little of it is seen to tell what it is, and this makes me focus on that part only, to try to figure it out.
Thanks Ati, I thought that I had kept that out of the frame when I adjusted the camera.
I like the general feel of this image, and the character looks really good. I would like to share some ideas, for one, the lips are still very glossy, it looks a bit strange.
Your Character is very much ich the center of the scene now. maybe you can move him around a little so that the interesting parts are on the sweet sports of the third grid, his face for example.
In one of the earlier renders it seemed like the place has no roof, I thought that was an interesting part of it, maybe add snow falling in ot something else (moonlight?) to give that feeling again?
The fog at the floor looks very nice, only thing that bothers me is the cut of at the wall, I would expect something mor fuzzy there.
I'm waiting for the next steps ;-)
You know that expression, "save and save often"? Guess who forgot? Yep, me. I started my winter scene and had everything laid out and saved. Then I started tweaking and changing things and doing test renders and then changing things some more. You know, the usual. Well, I was in the middle of yet another test render when the power went out. And, no, I don't have a battery backup on my surge protector. It is on my list of things to get, but haven't gotten yet. So, I lost everything except my initial setup .duf. Anyway, I finally got most the basics setup again and did this render. I'm using AM's Winterland and turned off all of the trees to save on resources. I'll unhide those when I have everything all set for a final render. I just can't have the trees on while doing all of the fine tuning as it really bogs down my computer to a snail's pace. So, there are trees all around the cabin. I'm rendering in Iray. The ground plane has the default snow shader applied. I want to add some snow piles and maybe some blowing snow with Above the Fog if I can get it to do what I want in Iray. Will be adding smoke coming out of the chimney, but I'm not sure if I'll do that while rendering or use postwork with Gimp. Thinking of maybe adding a grizzly bear or caribou or some other animal in the background somewhere. I'm working on having a light glowing in the window.
This cabin is on my list of things I may want. I haven't decided yet, so I'm interested to see what you can make with it!
There seem to be two suns in the picture. One giving the shadow for the house (from in front of the house), and one illuminating the clouds and the horizon (behind the house).
I like the cabin. It seems to be well built and the logs look realistic. AM always pays attention to detail with his models so I would tend to expect this. You can even see the rings of the trees on the ends. The texture comes with a bit of grunge to it although I added a little more for a more worn effect. It looks like a typical one room cabin. It is textured on the inside so you could use it for inside shots. There is a fireplace on inside part of the chimney. The front and sides can be hidden if you need it for close in shots even though I think the cabin was geared more for outside shots. What I saw of the inside texture was typical for log cabins. I'm not sure why, but the cabin loads in at 90% scale. I actually scaled it up beyond that at I think 120%. I haven't put a human figure next to it yet for comparison, though, so I'm not actually sure what the best scale is yet. I just wanted it bigger for my scene. I'm sure I'll adjust it more as I add elements to the scene.
Just as an aside, while I was in Texas over Thanksgiving, we went to visit a place called Miller's Crossing Historical Village (friend we visited works there) which has some of the oldest buildings in Nachadoches, TX. There were several authentic log cabins that I got to see the inside of and took pictures. This cabin closely resembles them. The only thing missing is the patch that was typically put on log cabins to seal the cabins to make them airtight and the wood is a little different as this cabin looks to be made from wood that one might find in colder climates. However, I have seen cabins that don't have that patch (pitch? not sure of the correct name for it) feature when the logs are so evenly matched that the patch isn't needed.
The front door opens, but beyond that I haven't played with it much. I'll try and get you some screenshots of of the inside and let you know if the windows open and close, too. I haven't tested that out yet.
Yes, there seems to be. This is one of those things I need to fix. It is the Iray World SkyDomes. It is always harder to see these things in Iray until the render since the skydome doesn't show up. I keep forgetting to turn on the Nvidia preview and use that when setting things up. I've already changed the sun's position to behind the house to sort of line up with the visible sun in the sky map. Took me a minute to figure out where the sun was so I could change position. The presets that come with the set don't seem to line up with this particular skydome preset or I'm doing it wrong. I manually changed the sun's position instead. This is my first time using the skydome where the sky is actually visible so much. I used it in my bear cub render last month, but you couldn't see much of the sky (also used a different preset). The sky will be more visible in this render. I'll probably have to fiddle with the suns again once I do the render with the trees is I want the sun to be visible. I'll play with it more tomorrow. Until then here is my current test render with the change in the sun's position.
Edit: windows are permantly fixed and not the kind that open and close
-=-
Here's my two newest renders, trying to add HDRI sky/lighting as well for the first time.