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My son got the Invisalign and a pulsing product (can't remember the name of it, it's like a bite tray which goes into the mouth for 20 minutes a day) to send pulses through the gums and teeth. It really helps speed up the time needed for braces and is very gentle. Have you heard of it?
Invisalign does beautifully with both width changes and vertical. His teeth were awful on the bottom and they are perfect now. Invisalign isn't just for "mild" cases anymore. I had my doubts that it could work so well (no rubber bands, smaller brackets, all clear materials and no metal) but it really did the job!
Thoughts on a stylized moon from NASA photo. For stylized and NPR effects, have you tried GMIC filters? There is a plugin for GIMP.
https://gmicol.greyc.fr/
and
http://gmic.eu/gimp.shtml
I only recently discovered it when Philemot created a free plugin to Carrara. But you don't need to use Carrara, it works with GIMP. You could use GIMP/GMIC as a filter after your Studio render. Or, you could use GIMP/GMIC on the moon before the render and then create a texture map for the face of a cylinder and add it to your Studio scene.
@Novica I've heard of Invisalign but the orthodontist didn't talk about that as an option for my older two boys who are currently in braces. I just thought it was for relatively easy fixes. My last one will be getting braces soon. His teeth are in worse shape than his brothers' teeth. I might talk to the orthodontist about Invisalign and see if that is an option and how much it costs when I take my youngest in for his appointment.
@Diomede. I do have G'mic and I've played with it a bit. There are lots of things in there and I haven't played with everything. I'll have to see what I can do with my moon in there too.
Lots of writing, but I haven't been rendering quite as much. I did manage to get this one this one done. I think she turned out pretty good. She's Catrina on G2F. I think she converted to Iray quite well. I'm running behind schedule on projects and I really need to buckle down and get things ready for the 3rd Annual It's Raining Men Contest. I haven't even started working on the post yet to kick off the contest. Yikes! and it starts in a few days. I'll get there.
Catrina Sugar Skull Blue
Gallery Link
Just playing around tonight. I tried a few new skills in Gimp, adding shadows of the figure where there was none before. I'll have to work on that because it didn't quite turn out the way I thought it would. Her feet don't seem to be as firmly planted as they should be. Both the background and shadows were added in Gimp after the girl was rendered.
Just a little gripe. I really hate following a tutorial and the person forgets to add one key piece of information that helps you follow along. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful for the tutorial but, if I'm following along and I've never used this tool before, it certainly would have helped to mention that you need to press the 'alt' key with the mouse button to subtractive paint in the weight map for dForce!!!! I've never used the weight map before. I could hear the mouse click and I could hear a key press, but I had no clue which button she was pressing. I had to figure that out on my own. Luckily, I knew it had to be either the control key or the alt key. It would have saved me about 15 minutes if that had just been stated instead of assuming some idiot like me was trying to follow along and had never used weight maps before!!!!
Okay, rant over. Sigh. I don't know why I had to render Salvatore with a peasant shirt and had to try dForce, but I did. This is not going to be a quick setup and shoot the thing. I did happen to have the shirt that was used in the tutorial, though, and thought what the heck. Two birds, one stone. Grrr.
I had the same problem. I fiinally had to ask. Shadows are tough to get exactly right. The back shadow looks right but there is something slightly off about the leg shadows, but I can't figure out what it is. I feel like the way you did it should be right but for some reason...lol. That kind of stuff can drive you insane!
For the shadows, you take your figure and duplicate her. Turn the copy solid black and then move it off to the side and a little lower. Add some gaussian blur ( I might have blurred it too much and the legs sort of went wonky when I did that) and then adjust the opacity so it isn't quite as black. I'll work on it. Once I'm done with my book and can work on a few Gimp tutorials, this will definitely be one of them because it uses a tool that I haven't covered in tutorials, yet, to select the copy so that it can be filled in with black.
I don't think I'm going to hit my deadline and be finished by the 31st. However, I only have a few more chapters to go and then I can do a round or two of edits before beta reads. If I buckle down, I'll be finished by the first part of November. Hopefully, @DarwinsMishap's new guy with my cat tattoo will be in the store by then so I can work on my cover. I'm so excited about that tattoo. It looks amazing and I wrote in a description of it into the book. It's so rare that physical descriptions in a book actually match the cover art. I just hope I can do a good with it. If I can't get the look I want, I'm having @Llynara do my cover cause I know she'd probably be able to nail it. We'll see.
Well, I'm exhausted already but I managed to get the 3rd Annual It's Raining Men contest posted and it's now live! We have a very nice prize package so far and I'm looking forward to seeing some very creative entries this year.
Thanks again for taking the lead. Get some well deserved rest.
Yeah, you wonder if the artist actually read the book. One of my favorite artists, Michael Whelan, does read the book, so his artwork is exceptional. I've heard from an author at a book fair that when you work with the big 5 pupblishers in New York that you don't get a say about the cover art. All you get is, "We love love love this cover, don't you love love love it too?" I've read some of my favorite author complaints that they hated the covers. That's pretty common.
Don't worry so much about a hard date, KM. Finish the book when you feel it's ready. It's going to go through a lot of revisions. Looking forward to reading it.
@dracorn Yep, I've heard that, too. It seems to be the number one complaint of authors who go the traditional publishing route.
My first play around with Giuseppe by @DarwinsMishap. I think I'm in love. He has the most amazing cat tattoo. I knew DM would do an awesome job on it when I asked and it turned out perfect. Better than I even imagined it would. Thank you so much, DM! You're awesome! I still have some more experimenting to do with lighting to really focus on the tattoo and then I have to put on my character which I've been tweaking. I'll have the new version which will be going on my book cover soon. I hope, anyway.
I do have to say that Giuseppe's morph is awesome, too. I love your work, DM. Your males never let me down.
Giuseppe in Action
Gallery Link
I was looking at Giuseppe, but thought his skin was far too red, like he was sunburned or something. Was that just the promos?
Well done on that render, KM!
Dracorn- is he is ruddish colored, especially in the studio setting light rig I used, but check the promo thread- there’s a wonderful render in there with simulated sunlight that shows off his skin really well and a photo reference I used to get the coloring he has.
Thank you, @DarwinsMishap. I'm glad you like how he turned out. I was very happy with my test setup. I have a thing about playing with light and shadows. Can't do that very well on the book cover as it would be too dark in the thumbnail, but, here, it worked out very well. I can't tell you how happy I am with the tattoo you came up with. There just aren't enough words. :)
@Dracorn As DM says, it's all in the lighting and tone mapping. I didn't touch a single surface setting. It's a great skin and, if you play with the lighting in Iray, you can get a wide variety of looks. My lighting is just a different take on DM's great work. I used iRadience - Light Probe HDR Lighting for Iray. I believe I used light probe #30. I changed the dome rotation, too. I'd have to look at my file to tell you what my tone mapping settings were. I'm perfectly happy to share my settings if you want them.
I love this render!
Trish
@Stormlyght Thank you very much. :)
Great render KM, you just sold me. I'd passed him over because of the too red skin color. I'm not good at changing surfaces and such, but since it is a lighting issue, and he looks awesome in your render, I'm getting him. See what you did? LOL
Hey, I have no problem encouraging more sales of @DarwinsMishap's guys. They are awesome! And, thank you!
He does look really good! Don't forget you can also use the White Point in Tone Mapping to add a bit of blue to overall tint of the render. (you put in whatever color you're trying to reduce, aka in this case, red. But VERY light whitish pink will do it.
Thank you, @Novica. Yes!, Novica! That's one of the things I did. I adjusted the White Point. I don't remember if I used blue. I'd have to double check my settings. I think I used a very light pink, maybe? I'll post my exact tone mapping settings when I get back. Time to take the boys to karate.
I think the bigger problem here is that the perspective is off, I kind of though weell that looks good until i scolled down enough to see the floor. The shadow on the wall makes it look like she is 30 to 0 cm away from the wall, while the distance on the floor indicated something between two and three meter. As well the shadow on the floor should have a different angle to the person than the one on the wall. Next difficultee is the the diffuseness of the shadow needs to be reduced to a very low value where the feet touch the ground.
But you could sell it off as alice in wonderland theme :D
Your naked guys do look at their best as usual :D
Ah, thanks DM. I appreciate that.
Thanks for the tip @novica and KM, I will try tone mapping on him later today. You guys are an unbelievable font of information :)
@Linwelly I think that's one of the problems trying to place the shadows manually. I need to brush up on how they work because I have no idea where the shadows should be based on the light source. I know what to do if the light is directly overhead. Once it starts moving from one direction or the other, I have no clue where or how intense it should be. I'm sure there must be a tutorial for it somewhere. Just need to find one. The point was to try to do the shadows manually. I think I'd much rather do a render where the shadows are rendered, but it's a technique I really should learn how to do better. As for the room, that was all 2D and added in a separate layer. The floor was yet another layer using the perspective transform. Not bad for a first effort but not great. I'll keep playing with the techniques and learning more about shadows and light sources and how they interact.
Okay, here is a screenshot of my tone mapping settings for my render using Giuseppe. It might give you an idea of where you might want to go with your own renders if you want skin closer to what I did. I started out with Tonal Rage but adjusted some of the tone mapping settings so these settings don't actually correspond to any of the Tonal Rage presets. At least, I don't think they do. It's always possible. I usually start with Tonal Rage to get it close to where I want and then adjust settings as needed. It's an awesome product.
Of course, tone mapping is only part of the equation. A big part of it is the lighting, too. For the lighting, I used iRadiance Light Probe HDR for Iray. The light was DLTP-Light Probe 30-Direct and I changed the dome rotation to what you see in the screenshot.
I hope this helps anyone. I love playing with lighting and tone mapping. You can get such a wide variety of looks from the same surface textures whether that's skin or materials.
The only time I played with shadow in a similar way was my silouhette picture. And there I made two renders one on the person and one of the person with a shadow on a non visible gound plane, so didn't need to make the shadow myself and had them at the same angle for all the people on the image. I think creating all the 3d effect in post is a rather difficult task, that's why I prefer my render as close to finished as possible (still not very accustomes to postwork though its getting better bit by bit)
@Linwelly I have to admit preferring to do it that way, too. However, I was curious about the technique and I can see how knowing how to do might come in handy. It's definitely not something I'd use on a consistent basis. It was a lot of work and didn't exactly turn out how I thought it would. I still like doing as much inside DS as possible and then doing minimal post.
It took me a bit to find an easy tutorial to demonstrate my main point here. The main problem with shadows being drawn in CAN be the gradual feathering OUT from the whatever is casting it. This tutorial , look at STEP SIX. Yes, there are also very hard shadows, but that requires very hard light. Feathering usually gives a nice, realistic result.