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I think its actually a really good example of using lighting and framing to draw the eye to the subject of the portait.
Thanks evilded777 and nonesuch00. What do you think of this cropped version?
Better than the 1st crop but the 4 candles and the book and the empty space in the picture are important to the overall look of the image to me. Despite the character's weird looks the uncropped image conveyes a sense of peace.
Better not tell her she's weird...!
She is the Princess of the Night, an evil faerie character I created. This is why I colored her skin like the night sky and gave her full moon eyes.
Going the other way again, I like the cropping. It emphasises the frameing provided by the objects on the table and tightens the focus further on the figure.
At least for me.
This one
It's not the flies that she's concerned about!
I want to thank everyone for their recommendations. I personally, prefer the cropped image for the contest. I do want the portrait to be a little closer than the full scene, without sacrificing the props or candles.
I agree. She doesn't get lost with the tighter crop and you keep the elements that add context.
Well I'm not judging so no worries about the one I like best.
I crashed my entry 45 hours in and at 75% complete! Oh! It is rendering again but only at 25%. I've cropped it now similar to the horn lady that like apples but made the background interesting but not competivite with the fact it's supposed to be a portrait. I think I finally got the lighting right too. This time I am rendering directly to file. Although, I have yet to find a scratch file it is rendering intermediate results to, to copy eventually over to my Render Library directory so I hope it's not all in a RAM cache only to crash again.
Here's an update on my previous attempt. I pulled back a little, and changed to a more "classical" theme. I need to adjust her hair a bit still, somehow it ended up stuck inside her head...
I like it but I think the horse needs to be soft focused, slightly blurred but I'm not sure if the horse if far enough away such that that would look plausible. Can cameras do such a focusing trick? Also the horse's nostrils are flared like it's running if there is a more to relax them.
Horses will flare their nostrils like that even if they haven't been running.
My render is at 1557 iRay iterations & 77% complete and set to converge at 98% after 2 days and 2 hours of rendering directly to file. I don't know if it will finish in time to enter contest but it is certainly too late to try to render again if the lighting isn't good on this render so if it's not good lighting I will use Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 to 'auto-adjust' whatever it auto-adjusts when you do that. I'm not sure but I think that's allowed.
I'd canceled out and submited the unfinished render except it's rendering directly to file and apparently DAZ Studio has not written out any of the rendering it's done for the past 50 hours to a file on disk anywhere as incredible as that might seem. If that's the case, I would have been better off rendering to a new window because I can both see and save those results when I cancel out.
It's not easy keeping up with this thread, but it's always a pleasure seeing everyone's progress!
I got inspired by a promo image I saw and tossed something together that I think I will have as my second entry. This is a small WIP render. Comments and suggestions appreciated!
I love the attitude she is displaying.
Perhaps just a slight snarl to her lips?
You can always tell when someone is smoking for effect rather than enjoyment.
So either as a tough gal she needs to be enjoying that cigar or you can replace her with Teen Josie obviously out to impress her peers by smoking a cigar she doesn't want to smoke.
I kind of like that attitude she seems to have going in her expression. Kismet, I'm not sure it's the cigar she isn't enjoying as I've seen a lot of cigar smokers have that same exact expression. Maybe the smoke is getting in her eyes. :) I think it looks good. I'm not sure what I would change if anything so I have no advice whatsoever! I like the image!
I smoked for 27 years she is an addict who has burning eyes and nose from smoke and she is not enjoying that cigar. Smoke needs to curled around her nose and eyes.
Okay, very late, but I would appreciate some feedback if you get the chance.
Trying the toon renders again. I'm trying to add eyebrows, but I cannot figure out how to use LIE to add the eyebrows (DG toon eyes and eyebrows). Whenever I try to add them, I end up with a bunch of gray on the skin and no eyebrows. Advice would be most welcome!
Let me know any other suggestions you have. I messed around with creating my own background this time. I don't have photoshop.
Using visual style shaders with 3Delight. Thanks!
I don't usually read much fiction, but I've been enjoying reading the old John Carter novels, so I decided to make a portrait based on the books.
John Carter, My Protector
Well I like the image but I'd try to make the sword look more silvery, and shrink the thing on the barbarian's shoulder if not remove it.. Maybe I'd give the female light green, orange-brown or yellow-brown eyes if you can find the right shade but the blue ones look good too.
For the eyebrows you can download the male & female fibremesh eyebrow freebies at Deviant Art by Laticis Imagery. I'm not sure if eyebrows improve the image though given their neutral expression as you see just a hint of what looks like eyebrows on them although that might just be the gradient of changing shadows on the head.
Hey, Holloko,
In May's contest I was struggling with eyebrows, it was actually you who helped me figure out the last step to the process below that I use for my toon brows.
You said you don't have Photoshop, but you are going to need something similar, I use GIMP personally. I take a face texture that I like the shape of the eyebrows on and load it into GIMP. Then I take the color selection tool and select the eyebrows. I tweak the tolerance a little until I am happy with how it selects the eyebrows. Then I paint the selected eyebrow all a single solid color. A nice extra touch you can do that is optional is to use the edge selection tool to create an outline around your eyebrows.
Then go back to Daz, and look at the Visual Style Shader you used for the hair. Write down the colors used for occlusion light, occlusion dark, diffuse light, and diffuse dark. Go back into GIMP. I then create an image where the eyebrows are the same color as the occlusion light, and save that as a separate image. Then I create an image where the eyebrows are occlusion dark, and save that as a separate image. Do that for all four colors. Here you can keep the outline black for all three images, or you could use the outline colors used by the visual style shaders Finally, create a transmap where your eyebrows are the only visible thing.
Now this is the part you helped me with.
Back in Daz, create a geo map of your figure. Make everything transparent except the face. Set the occlusion light, occlusion dark, diffuse dark, diffuse light colors to white, and on the left had side there is a drop down arrow. For each of the colors, click on the drop down arrow and apply the eyebrow image you made for that color. Finally, be sure to add your transmap to the transparency section.
Also, for female characters, I usually add eyeliner to all the maps as well.
It's a little tedious, but I like the results. I figure some day I will just have all my eyebrow shapes converted over and it won't take as long each time. However, if you don't care to have an outline around your eyebrows, you could probably just put a transmap on a geoshell and then just apply the same Visual Style Shader you use for your hair. Maybe you would even get the outline from the shader?
I'm probably missing something... and maybe this is too descriptive and takes all the fun out of it, but hope it helps!
Oh... also, for the hair. When I apply visual style shaders to the hair, I like to tell it to ignore the existing texture. I think to do that it's Ctrl + double click on the shader, and then just check a box that says "ignore existing texture" or something like that. It just makes the hair look a little less blocky.
I really regret trying to work on a second image at the beginning of the month when I got this one posed. I took a break from this one because I was putting off the daunting task of building these gloves. Then I had a week long family vacation, and here I am, end of the month, and what feels like a lot of work ahead of me still…
Anyway, hoping someone can help. I built these gloves, and was surprised with how easy they were to turn into a wearable object for Genesis 3 Female… but I’m having problems with the mesh deforming when I pose the figure. Basically all the black parts are supposed to be metal, and shouldn’t bend. Also the blades on the fingers are pretty deformed as well.
I tried putting all the individual metal pieces in rigidity groups. The problem is that I created a bunch of vertex groups in Blender to use as rigidity groups in Daz, but I can only use them as Face Groups for selection before I use the transfer utility. Once I use the transfer utility, I can no longer select the polygons via the vertex groups I made.
However, I am starting to suspect that this isn’t the right way to be going. The more I Googled to try to solve my problem, the more it seemed that Rigidity Groups are more for preventing objects from changing too much when a morph is applied to your base model. I am thinking that I probably want to be rigging the metal pieces to the bones of the character myself, as I suspect the transfer utility is just mapping vertices to the nearest armature. But… I have no idea where to start doing that...
Hello. Between work and other projects, its awhile since I've been able to sit down and do something. I got an opportunity and decided to try my hand this month. Any thoughts? Particularly with the lighting, and especially her skin. I played with the gamma setting and the camera focus to promote the realism. Her skin though is seriously lacking in the translucency (and maybe a little gloss?). I tend to lean toward Iray in my renders, but I'm not sure how to get the translucent effect with that method.
As always, any thoughts and comments are welcome.
I do not render in a toon style or have any toon shaders so I am not sure what to suggest to help fix the issues.
Personally I think you have done a good job on composition. My eye is drawn to your female's face. The combination of the light background and her darker tones draws the eye right to her.
The sword feels a little large and draws the eye out of the image. It is actually less distracting to me whenever I have the image with the sword slightly cropped off.
That shoulder piece does not bother me at all. You have some interesting shadows.
Everything is a suggestion. This is your image.
Nicely done.
I do not use Blender so cannot help you there.
I like the composition, especially the way you framed her eyes. I am guessing you have not done much with lighting due to the issues with the gloves?
This is a really nice image. I love the contemplative look on her face and the DOF on the wings makes them an interesting background element.
Her outfit needs some tweaking. Not sure how many adjustment morphs this outfit has but if at all possible try to get the geometric areas on her shoulders closer to her body to eleminate the shadows. There is also a section on her neck that is intersecting with her skin. Is the sleeve on the arm meant to only cover half her forearm?
Overall a nicely laid out image.
Well I'd change the black on the gloves to a onyx material or blue soapstone and the white to a diamond material. The rust color I change to topaz which is often a similar colored orange. If you can't fix the fake fingernails just delete them. Contest entries are due by tomorrow.
To disguise her outfit looking unfinished I'd make if computer system board green (actually looking again the green you have is OK if you change the circuitry to gold) and gold circuitry and both very shiney with the gold bright light enough to make flare reflections in a few places if you can do that without the necessarily likely overpowering the rest of image with too much light.
I can't help with the distortion problems, but to tell you the truth, they don't bother me at all. The focus is well placed on her eyes and it is an interesting composition. In light of the rapidly approaching deadline, I'd ignore the gloves details and concentrate on finalizing lighting to make the image a little less flat. Then let it render long enough to remove the noise and submit it to the entries thread. It is strong enough without fixing the gloves. (The fact that you made those gloves yourself is pretty impressive, although not a factor in the contest judging.)