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OK, I've got them all in position. Now I have to work on the arms and hands - seeya in a while...
Good work and nice idea, there is only one thing I'd like to point, the gaps between mermaids are not equal, and I guess it'll effect the hand pose between each other, ofcourse It'll depend on how you intend to pose the hands.
Finally, I've made my mind on my second entry after making tree trial scenes, G3F with bathing suit, Iray Skydome and a couple of beach props.
I am really new and have no experience with lighting yet so this is my try.
Which program and renderer are you using?
We all have to start somewhere and joining in on these new user contests is a great way to start. Welcome!
You should be able to find good advice on lighting in the previous contest threads that has had lighting as focus, so it's time well spent browsing this forum. For direct advice on the lighting in your scene we need to know what you are rendering with, as lights work very differently in different render engines (Iray, 3delight, Poser, etc).
I think this will be very good when you got all the arms and hands posed. Looking forward to see the next version.
A personal opinion: I don't know if it's because I got a weakness for redheads, but the red one really stands out from the rest. I'm definitely no expert on colour composition, but to me it feels like all the rest goes well with each other, even the purple one, but the red one is the odd one out, breaking an otherwise nicely flowing colour scheme.
But unless someone more knowledgeable confirms what I said, as always, please feel free to ignore me.
All the easier to get two entries out of it
As for your question about the cyber eyewear, my preference would be the first or the last one.
I am using DAZ Studio and PSP.
Both body and swimsuit looks nicely wet, which makes the dry hair and face look a bit off. The hair could also use some posing, especially on her left side it falls unnatural and seems to disappear into her chest.
There could of course be perfectly logical reasons to why hair and face is not wet like her body, but when I see the scene I get the feeling she's sundrying after having been out in the water. If I knew how to make hair look wet I'd tell you, but unfortunately I don't have a clue about how to do that.
Iray or 3delight in DAZ Studio?
I agree with you Isidorn, I think I have some wet hair made for Victoria 4, I will try to use it hoping it'll fit in Genesis3, I'll add wet skin to her face and see how she will look. Thanks.
I see isidorn has been busy giving out good advice already this morning.
h_habash - I agree with isidorn. Unless your model is one of those women who goes in the ocean and doesn't get her hair wet, it should have a wetter look. Try playing with the 'Glossy Layered Weight' and the 'Glossy Roughness' with the setting really low. I've been playing with fur trying to get a post fight look with the fur so that it still looks a little wet and I think the settings might work on your model's hair. Unfortunately, my DS is busy and I can't bring up a model right now to test it out. The settings I have on my fur, though, are GLW - 0.132308 and GR - 0.376540. Try those out and see if the hair looks a little damper. You may have to play with the adjustments to get the look you want. I agree, too, that your need to try and adjust the hair so that it falls back a little more against the girl and the lounger. If the hair morphs that come with the hair won't do it, you may need to use a dFormer for the hair. Fortunately, I think hair is one of the easier props to dForme.
dracorn - I really like where you are going with this. As for the red, I think she goes well with the color scheme, but isidorn is right that she does seem to stand out a little more than the others. I'm not sure if this was intentional or not. I think it is because her colors seem to be a little more vibrant that the colors of the other figures. If it wasn't intentional for her to stand you, you might see it you can tone her colors down a little so she blends in a little more. Unfortunately, I have no idea how you would do that since I don't know your process or whether those are standard texture that come with the mermaid. If that is G3, I don't have that tail set yet. It is coming along,
Llynara - I love a good kissing scene. Try setting your female's eyelids at about half mast and see if that helps. Half mast on girls always seems to give them a more sultry, desirous look when kissing. Right now, she looks like she expecting something bad to happen so she's keeping her eyes wide open. Never good for kissing scenes. You might also try dipping the male's head a little closer and play with the camera angle. Overall, I think it is a good start. You might want to consider changing the background and or lighting because, at the moment, your two characters seem to match and blend in with the background.
Shinji - That is a tough call on the specs. I like them all. For the scene you are going for, my first instinct says #2, but I don't like that you can't see your character's eyes in that one. I do think the style is appropriate. My second favorite is #3. Waiting to see more of the full scene. I like what you have so far. I love that you seem to be getting a handle on your lighting and colors. You've come a long way since your very first entry way back when. From what I've seen so far, it is hard to chose between your two setups. There are good points for both the full size and the closeup view. I think I'm leaning more toward liking the long view, though, I'm waiting to see whatever your next posting is before making a final decision on which I like better.
isidorn - I think the concept is kind of cool and I love that you swapped their roles with the female being the hero. Posing looks good so far, but I'd love to see a version with the actual props to see how things look and where you might need input. I think it could be a very good image.
Thanks Knittingmommy, I'll try the setting and see, I'm also trying a deferent hair styles and play with shader, I belive I already have a wet hair style set but forget which one
, I've managed to add some rolling water beads for her face, maybe I'll add some to her upper body also it depends on the hair style and length.
Thanks for your comments/suggestions.
h_habash: You are right about the positioning. Looks like I need to dust off the 'ole math book to be more accurate; then the arm positioning will work better. I wasn't planning on absolute identical poses - the faces will have their own expressions, but I think the arms need to be the same for the esthetics of the render.
isidorn & Knittingmommy: These are G2 gals, and Lorelei Meretails + textures came with only 5 colors. I was playing with the diffuse (3Delight) to make the red one out of the purple one - which is why they are opposite. It's true the red one stands out, and may I can play with her coloring so that she blends a little better. I was wondering if perhaps I should switch positions so that the red one is on the bottom and the purple is on the top? What do you think?
I'm also thinking that I like the black background, and maybe I can add some very subtle coloring in Photoshop, but we'll see when we get there.
Regardless, when I'm done, you can rotate it and it won't matter which direction it's facing.
I assumed that she was glistening with beads of sweat from sunbathing rather than having just come out of the water.
Well, this was my intention from beginning, but I thought to take the challenge and do some work on the hair
and increase the wet look on her body as well, maybe at the end I'll stick to just same existing wet skin if I couldn't solve the hair issue, I've tried Isidorn glossy setting once but it didn't work yet, I'm not giving up yet 
.
I've tried V4 wet hair but it wont work with Iray render even after applying Iray shader to it, so I'll keep working on the same original hair and figure it out soon. [Hopefully]
Ah, I see. Then you might want to consider, possibly, toning down the amount of the wet look on the swimsuit. The suit looked wet enough that it looked like she had just been in the water and that is where my head went. I'm not sure the suit would get that went from just sunbathing, but not positive about that. I don't remember the last time I actually sunbathed with a swimsuit or how wet is got, but I don't think that much. Just remember that all we can do is offer suggestions on our take of what we see and our opinions should always be taken with a grain of salt. No two people are going to look at the same image and have the exact same thoughts. In the end, you have to figure out what works best for you regardless of what others' suggestions or opinions are. And, I promise, none of us are going to take offense if you don't follow our 'suggestions'.
As for the wet hair, that is always tricky. I do happen to have that Wet Hair for V4. If I remember correctly there was a surface setting that needed to be changed because the Iray Uber shader messed it up. I might be able to take a look at that and check it out when my current render is done. Since I wouldn't have to leave the Iray setup with which I'm currently working, I can try to pop the hair in and see what the settings are and get back to you if I can get it to work. I probably have another hour to before my current render is done then I can check it out. I'll let you know later if I figure out how to get the hair to work in Iray.
dracorn - I looked and I actually do have that tail. I'm not sure I've actually tried it. It has been awhile since I tried doing any mermaid stuff. I'm not sure switching their positions would make a difference, but you can try it. Unfortunately, my DS is busy with a project I can't close out or I'll lose all of the work on my current scene as I'm working with a possibly corrupted scene file so I can't load up the tail and play with the colors to see if I can offer any suggestions after looking at what you started with. The screen shots for the product don't help much with tail color options. If you can't figure out how to mute the color on Red a little with 3Delight, you might consider rendering two layers. One with just Red and one with all of the other mermaids. Then you can try and adjust the saturation and gamma settings in DS or do a little color correction in a 2D program and then combine the two renders and merge them together if you are comfortable with that precess. Personally, I would try to do it all inside DS because my GIMP skills aren't that good yet. Unfortunately, I'm more comfortable with Iray than 3Delight so I'm not sure what the best way of accomplishing your goal is. Hopefully, someone more familiar with 3Delight will pipe in and offer some suggestions. And, having Red stand out isn't necessarily a bad thing. It all depends on where you want the image to go. I really wish I could offer better suggestions.
Knittingmommy - I liked your suggestions very much. I often play with diffuse in 3Delight to alter colors (not sure what the equivalent is for Iray). In fact, every mermaid has a diffuse color alteration to make the human skin match the tails. This happens to be my favorite mermaid with the exception of Arki's V4/M4 mermaids that look like lionfish. They're on Runtime, so we should see them when she brings them over. I'll probably pick them up too because they're kewel... even though V4/M4 are a pain to load.
So I calmed down the red, and bumped up the hair color on the other mermaids, and added some color to the skin of one I missed. I rearranged them so that the colors were more evenly distributed, and also because people like the redhead. =o) I added expressions as well.
Now, I have never taken trig, so I went to my husband for assistance and now they are mathematically positioned. It looks much better. I'm still working on the hand-arm positions which will work now that I have the mermaids in the right position. Included is a close up render of their faces.
That's looking great so far, dracorn! Looking forward to seeing this develop further.
Oh, I like this very much! Love the expressions and Red looks so much better blended with the others when she is toned down a bit. Nice! Yeah, I never took silly things like trig either. Fortunately, I have a husband who is good with the math thing, too. Waiting to see what you do with the arms, but this is looking so much better already!
I call this "The Briefing"
I am using DAZ Studio with postowork done in Adobe Lightroom
I love this! Wish I could figure out how to do that kind of lighting...
I liked the idea that she's just came out from swimming more than just sitting for sunbathing, it's more challenging and I've never done it before, I didn't thought about the swimsuit until you mentioned it
, I'll keep it in my mind and correct this if I give up with the idea of fully wet set for the scene 
. Thank you Knittingmommy
Dracorn- love, love, love the mermaids! Wow!
SGTGhost- And very cool military render!
Thanks for the great suggestions. I'll be working my way through those next. I spent the weekend figuring out how to get rid of the grain, and I did! Even on the little computer that could! (It's actually a great computer, just not built for doing 3D stuff.)
Here's a PARTIAL render, which took forever, but looks pretty good. The fix in Poser 11 was to boost the samples in Superfly render settings from 3 (default) to 10, which is really changing the value of it, squared- from 3x3 to 10x10. So the render took a LOT longer, but looks a LOT better too. There's some texturing in the clouds, but that was already there in the background. It was the skin and hair that was giving me the most trouble. Plenty more to tweak, but happy with it as a starting point.
Yes they are positioned perfectly.
Can you do a quick render of what the V4 Wet Hair looks like when you render it? I'd like to see if we are getting the same results. So far, I'm not liking how this hair is put together when it comes to trying to convert it to Iray. Also, do you happen to have any of the Iray hair shaders that work with any hair? I'd like to know what you have to work with when it comes to hair and Iray. Or, did you happen to pick up the Wet Hair: Color and Movement pack to go with Wet Hair or do you just have Wet Hair? Because the materials in that pack are easier to convert to Iray than that materials that comes with Wet Hair. For some reason, Wet Hair doesn't seem to do anything based on Iray settings. I can't even get it to take an Iray hair shader correctly. I've never seen a hair act like this.
That's the same problem with me with this set of wet hair even with 3DLight render unfortunately I didn't allow the render to advance once it was obvious to me it's not working but I can tell you're getting ribbons coming from the head backwards instead of hair look which I had when I do my trial, I couldn't figure it out even with existing hair shader I have (I forget the set name
), right now I'm rendering my scene with my first Idea of just wet body, once it's over I'll look at my content and let you know, I'm sorry I usually forget the names (pardon my old memory 
). As far as I remember, It was working well in the previous DAZ Studio versions.