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Me too....I was NOT impressed. I have learned to check for updates before hitting an overnight render.
That's the number one reason why I picked up Widows 10 Pro for my new computer - it gives me the choice to delay the updates.
I'm new to 3D in general and especially Daz Studio and I'm hoping you guys can make suggestions for improving this. Especially the lighting on the bear without bringing the overall light up significantly.
This is a straight iRay render. A couple of things I'm planning on fixing in post are the brightness of the phone in Jessica 7's hand, replacing the repeating pictures and bottles on the shelves with something to break up the repeating patterns and introduce some wear and tear on the counters. The counters are still far more pristine than any coffee shop I've ever been in. I also need to add a tip jar but will need to figure out how to make the money for it.
Any suggestions on improving the image would be appreciated.
Thanks!
OK, here's the final render with all the figures and the lighting. The spotlights were a challenge to position without getting into the way of the other mermaids or objects. I wanted to add rim lighting that was the complementary color to each mermaid, but I didn't want the light spilling over onto another mermaid or object. I used Advanced Spotlight for 3Delight. It has a cool feature that you can set the Diffuse or Ambient to 99.x, and then tell the spotlight to light only an object with that setting. Pretty kewel. I wonder if Iray has that ability?
So now I'm off to Photoshop to add the background. I want something plain, perhaps a color gradient in a radius that will complement rather than compete with the design. I'm going to try some of those Ron's Water Brushes that I picked up at a recent sale, and see how those look.
Well, it was a productive night! The image rendered for almost 3 hours...just about as long as the game. (Pens won! Woohoo!)
The original was way too intense. I toned it down some in post.
edit: to add original render with no postwork for comparison
Oh the second one is way better, definitely. I like this, especially that little sparkle touch to the axe. Nice work.
Your scene become amazing Dracorn, my first impression when my eyes see it is WOW
, I don't mean to disappoint you but it will be better if you adjust the turtles positions to have equal space between the mermaids, well done. 
A great improvement, the postworked one looke better especially there is smoke and fog in the scene, I'd suggest to tune down the boots more.
You know, h_habash, you are probably right. I was trying to line them up visually, as the math doesn't work since the mermaids' tails are curved, so it throws the whole hexagon to the right for the turtles. But I can see where evening up the spacing would probably look better. I have to re-render my final because I saved it as a jpg instead of a PSD, so it had a black background instead of no background. Still new at this Photoshop thang.
Good start Gadgetude, your Tip Jar can be made using one of the candy jar or jam jar, you just need to change the texture of chosen jar to bunch of coins or whatever type of tips you intend to have, and for that you may search google for photos to use as texture. (it depends on the jars in the scene if it can be used as I mentioned).
I'd suggest to give expressions to the characters, for example open the fat man mouth to show that he's already talking to the kid.... and etc.
mosjeschwartzman I agree with h_habash on using dark clothed version of the woman for your render. My only suggestion is to balance the plants in the picture, so they are equal on both sides and use them to draw the viewer to your lady in the chair.
You could try adding a spot light shining down onto the bear. The ceilling isn't visible in that location so you could add a light as if there was a ceiling pot light in that location.
I think your Alien's laptop is in the table. It may need to be raised up a little bit.
You could try adding primitives, either a torus with a very small centre ring or a sphere, both of which are flattened. Then add some kind of metal shader to simulate coins.
You might want to consider having Jessica looking at her phone? She has the phone in her hand and is waiting for a coffee to be served so she could be taking a quick look at her Twitter, FB, etc. posts.
This is a fun scene. I love the interaction between the surfer dude and the lady in the chair.
A water type background would make sense for this image. Really looking forward to what you do in post work.
Looks great.
Nice Job! - I think the bright colored clothes work better.
Some Notes: Her left arm pose feels unnatural. The overall composition is caught between two styles. In one case, it could be a straight pinup, in the other she could be doing something...like working on her tulips in her favorite PJs.
My tendency would be to do one of these things:
1) Go full pin-up and have her holding the pot in a against her chest or in some more traditional pin-up pose
2) Go full florist and have her intently manipulating the flowers
3) Do a hybrid "surprise" pin-up pose where she looks like she was just working the flowers but got caught by the camera in time to look up
4) Keep the current composition, but give her a single tulip that she can brush against her skin in an alluring manner.
Other elements that could be considered:
A.) Using Collision smoothing, deformers, or morphs to flatten her butt more against the chair so she's not hovering so much with buns of steel.
B) Play with the floor props. They add good color to the scene but the compsition looks off. She and her reflection are the stars of the scene, so you might consider making the render zoom in on her more somehow and tightening the props. You also might play with the props and other stuff to balance the symmetry or play with different colors and their reflections.
FINALLY getting around to doing something ... although at the rate I'm going, I'm not sure if I'll finish. For this one, I'm starting with posing and composition. Background, props, and polishing lighting to come later. I overlaid the composition guide that I am using. All opinions, gripes, comments, etc are welcome. Thanks!
Just learned something new:
If you are doing a render with no background with the intent to add one in post work, save your render as a TIF file, not a JPG. A jpg will insert black to fill in the background, while a tif will give you the checkered boxes.
Oh, @dracorn, you didn't! Poor thing. A .png will also give you that nice blank nothing that makes it easy to add a background later, too. I'm not actually sure which is better. I think it also stores more image information than a .tif, but I could be wrong. Some of these file formats and what they do, or don't do, confuse me. I only just learned about .png vs .jpg when I needed to know for an image a couple of months ago.
@Kaliadder I like the pose. It will be interesting to see where you go with that.
I ended up doing a render today to show someone what a particular lighting rig looked like without any other lighting in the room although I did end up turning the ceiling light on, too, and that actually isn't part of the lighting rig. I liked it so well, I may add some more lights and possibly work on it a little more. If I manage to get both done, I may turn this into a second entry. I had no idea I would like the image so much considering I just threw it together to show off this particular lighting. I haven't quite decided, but I would like input on your guys think of the image.
Now that you opened the can of worms, I had to look it up:
PNG: (Portable Network Graphics) is a raster graphics file format that supports lossless data compression. PNG was created as an improved, non-patented replacement for Graphics Interchange Format (GIF), and is the most used lossless image compression format on the Internet.
TIFF (Tag Image File Format) is a common format for exchanging raster graphics (bitmap) images between application programs, including those used for scanner images. A TIFF file can be identified as a file with a ".tiff" or ".tif" file name suffix.
TIFF FILE FORMAT. TIFF stands for "Tagged Image File Format" and is a standard in the printing and publishing industry. TIFF files are significantly larger than their JPEG counterparts, and can be either uncompressed or compressed using lossless compression.
TIF file extension, pronounced Tif) TIFF is the format of choice for archiving important images. TIFF is THE leading commercial and professional image standard.
I did know that the Tiff was uncompressed, but contains less data that Raw, but Raw applies to cameras. I'm still happy with my choice of Tiff rather than PNG, but now I understand more what a PNG is and will be using it in the future.
In Photoshop, my Tiff will convert to a PSD, and after post work I can export it out to a PNG. I would have to study further to see which one holds more data.
Edit - File Size Comparison: I took a jpg 1800 x 1200 image and saved it as a PNG and TIF file formats:
JPG: 265 kb
PNG: 2.72 mb
TIF: 8.23 mb
Without further research, I would say by the file sizes that TIF holds more data, which is what I want going into Photoshop. However, I may be exporting as a JPG in order to fit into the 2 mb DAZ forum limit.
@knittingmommy, I think it's a good start. I definitely agree that it needs more lights. The pose is wonderful. The reflections in the glass are intriguing, I'd love to see what more you can do with them.
One item that is a little distracting: there's a light shining on the underneath of the railing on the right of the image, but no real apparent source of that light.
Tif and png will preserve the 'alpha' channel...
Tif, by default is uncompressed. Png by default is compressed, but unlike jpg it uses lossless compression.
So in order of 'best'...exr, 32 bit tiff, 16 bit tiff, bmp, png, jpg...jpg is the 'worst' of the lot.
Thanks, @TabascoJack I think that reflection is part of the lighting rig. I was showing off what the Architectural Lighting Rig for Iray could do for a room before adding lights for the figure. I hadn't done anything with the rig itself other than load it in. I think I can adjust the size so that is sits outside the ballet bar and the light shouldn't hit the bar at all. I'll have to play with it now that I know I'm actually going to try doing something with it. When I first set it up, I was treating it as a throw away scene. However, once I got it set up and saw the resulting render, I found I liked it and wanted to see where I could take it.
I did put a plane outside the window with an image on it when I found that the window would be reflecting in the mirror once I set the shot up. However, I don't think the minimal light coming from the image is the source of the light so I'm pretty sure it is the light rig.
Thanks. I understood about half of what @dracorn said. Unfortunately, she lost me somewhere. In order of best to worst, I can understand. I've been using .png for most things going into GIMP for postwork, but I'm guessing I'll have to try out the tiff formats. Just about the only thing I use jpg for is to post in the forums. I usually have a copy of the original in a .png format. The alpha channel thing was what I was needing to preserve a few months ago when I was trying to figure out which format I needed to use and ultimately chose the .png format. I'll give the tiff one a try.
Cool! The Architectural Lighting for Iray rig is on my wishlist......along with a couple hundred other things.
Ohhhhh poor Dhandle that is so not fair of windows to do that right in the middle of rendering omg!!!! I do look forward to seeing the dress revamped though!!!!
I do agree with Dracorn the one with the postwork is so much better and it really pops out at the onlooker now that you have some color added to it and as well I like the sparkle on the axe!!!!
I like it and I think it was worth the small investment. I got it on sale when fairly cheap. I have the version for 3Delight as well. I love the presets that come with it, too. The lighting is subtle enough to light a whole room and usually you don't notice the lighting that much although there are presets for much more dramatic lighting, too. I adjusted the lights and pulled out in the render a little to give a wider view of the room just to check the lights and I think it looks good. Tomorrow I'll work on changing some textures and adding some lights to the figure itself while trying to not having them show up in the mirror!
I've included the wide view with the lighting adjustment for you @TabascoJack. It is definitely a set you should try to snag on the next sale since it is already on your wishlist.
I need some constructive criticism please I can't quite seem to get this quite right
I know you are still working on this @Knittingmommy but my first thought was a studio is usually very brightly lit.
Glad to hear about your experience with the ALR. I have debated getting them in the past but couldn't make the commitment. Maybe I'll consider then a little more the next time they are on sale.
The right arm and shoulder need some slight adjustments. They are intersecting his torso.
Do you want his hand on his chest? Right now it looks like it is floating slightly above and not making actual contact.
You have some nice lighting and shadows and a rim light on his left (our right as we are looking at the image) will help to bring him out from the background.
I would also take a look at the parameters setting for his eyes. He looks a little cross-eyed. Unless that is the look you want.
I would also consider either moving the plant more into frame or completely out of frame. You do not have to put the entire plant into frame.