Digital Art Zone

Garstor, the picture is coming along very nicely! I really like the ocean shader.

A couple notes: You don’t need to use AG for the lantern light. You could just use a bulb light which may be easier to set up. A trick I use for getting a nice hot fire is to use the fire primitive (I always adjust the default colors) in conjunction with a bulb light centered in the fire and set to match the color of the fire. You may want to lower the default distance and also add falloff to suit your scene. I also enable the the 3D light sphere in the bulb’s effects tab, and in the editor I set the light sphere to realistic and adjust the diameter, intensity and quality to suit the look I want.

The fire primitive will cast shadows, so I always disable the cast/receive check boxes for the fire.

Here’s a couple samples where I used the method I outlined above to get different looks. I can try and post a more detailed tutorial tomorrow or Saturday if anybody has any questions.

Headwax, I never get tired of the Man with the Bowler Hat images you made. They are super cool.

19 degrees F here. But that’s why I choose to live here. I do like winter.

Garstor, Love what you’re doing there! I am not all that “Anything Glows” savvy. Can you add subtle lens flare to those? I’m sure you can - I think all Carrara lights can do that. Try using a scaled down warm glint, which is only using the halo, and making those colors amongst the warmer range - but you could leave one ring cool as that just helps the effect stand out and behave like a glint.

Also, just so you know, Distant lights don’t need to be placed anywhere special. They cast light in any direction you set them to from everywhere. So if you have a visible shroud (it is popular to use background-textured spheres that surround your scene with an image), you would have to exclude that from what the light affects or you won’t get the light. Again… just FYI.

Really like what you’re doing.

Head Wax, That is some awesome work, man.

BTW, has anyone seen Koutsuko (can’t remember how to spell her name) since the new forum started up? She always had those great Aiko renders. Really miss her around here, don’t you?

Man, everybody’s putting some great renders up here. Love the beverage can. I think that the crushed ice on the bottom may have too much reflection? Which may be why it casts the same color as the can. Instead of reflection, when you want a really shiny effect, try leaving those levels quite low - so you still have some. Then crank up the highlight channel (close to white, or 100%) and a fairly low shininess setting (between 0 and 20) to help to make it glisten. Depending on the bump and poly detail, you’ll see very different results regarding the shininess setting. 0 allows light to spread as evenly as it can. So increasing this number sharpens up the highlight focus - but larger numbers can totally remove the effect from the image.
Very cool work.

Love the Trees. Just a week ago, I was messing with the same idea (using a leafless, upside-down tree for the roots) and have been finding that the plant editor is actually a very powerful tool in its own right. Simply amazing what can be achieved. Gotta say, though… I like what you’ve done far better than my best attempt so far. It really looks good.

One of the tricks I learned in Daz while rendering with Reality was to render each light source separately, then take all the renders into photoshop/gimp as layers, and then mix them using different methods and values.

I’ve attached two pictures that were created using the same set of light-by-light renders but mixed differently.

Damn, EP.
You’re good!
Emersome nice pics!

I’ve been mucking around with an idea for a swamp scene and the idea of upside down trees is AWESOME.

I’ve been considering buying Dinoraul’s Bald Cypress trees from renderosity because they’ve got the moss on them but… then I was thinking… couldn’t I make some moss with a hair object… I’ve been thinking with playing with the hair stuff so I could learn how to use it so…. why be a wimp… but DRs trees are awfully cool… hrm…..

Garstor,
Back when I got Medusa, they had a supplement for it that had a whole pile of poses that place figures all over the ship, performing different tasks…
I know you’ve already spent the lot, but….       
Just sayin’

thepencilneck - 17 January 2013 09:43 PM

One of the tricks I learned in Daz while rendering with Reality was to render each light source separately, then take all the renders into photoshop/gimp as layers, and then mix them using different methods and values.

I’ve attached two pictures that were created using the same set of light-by-light renders but mixed differently.

Very cool

evilproducer - 17 January 2013 09:30 PM

Headwax, I never get tired of the Man with the Bowler Hat images you made. They are super cool.

thanks evil and dartanbeck - you are both very kind

gillisgraphics - 17 January 2013 09:30 AM

Any suggestions for making it look more “real”? Especially the watery crushed ice/ water drops at the bottom.  (I recognize that the top lip of the can needs adjustment also)

The can looks fine. Nice shader.

The camera angle and focal length is good, probably what you were going for. I suspect you might want to push the perspective more as soon as you get a ‘branded’ texture on the can, that’s an artistic choice though.

The ice and water drops? You’re right to be concerned.

Most of the water drops on the side of the can look ok but there are particular drops that stand out as ‘stuck on’ especially that one long streak. It starts at a point and gets bigger. I’ve just spend a few minutes throwing water at a coke can and rather than trying to explain what happens the best I can suggest is that you try it out yourself. (It’s fun too).
Whatever you’re doing to get that effect though, is working well.

On the table? Is that Ice? If it’s water it’s too lumpy, if it’s ice it’s probably too clear and too sparse.

Throw a few irregular, sharp edged lumps in there and make the shader more opaque, either through refraction with a bump map, absorption, in-scattering or translucency (or all of the above). A touch of white in the colour channel will help too.

I do like that shader on the can.

Thanks guys….

The roots and the water level would depend on the tide, but I see the point. So for believability, I might have to adjust the mud level….

It’s still a WIP.

Here’s a better picture of the trees.
The tricky part is to get the root and the tree to line up.
As you can see I haven’t quit got it yet on the biggest of them.

When creating the root

in the plant editor
set the trunk length to a low number ( I use 1 )
set the decay to zero.  you don’t want the root to taper into the ground. and it’s easier to align with the tree.
the trunk with is dependent on the tree, so create the main tree first, then adjust the width of the root to match the base of the tree.
It did look like the with of the tree is dependent on the length of the tree, so this was trial and errors…..

I did also set the gravity setting to 5 up under the tree shape tab.
This way the branches will stretch up, and after flipping the tree, the roots will stretch down.
Then under the expert tap, play with the different settings for the branches.

head wax - 17 January 2013 08:25 PM

Also do you know the technique of masking? It really saves render time because you don’t have to re render the whole image if part gets messed up. Basically you stick a vertex plane close to the camers, for this plane set highlight etc to zero in the texture room and have no colour. Make sure it casts and recieves no shadows, Then just erase the polys on the vertex plane that contain the part of the image you need to re render. Keep the plane close to the camera and it won’t screw up reflections on your image too much.

There is also the tech, of using the camera with anything glows - it acts as a kind of fill in flash.

I have a morphing prop that I have used as a render shield.

These days though I tend to just duplicate my camera and resize the view window on it to cover the area that I want to re-render.
You have to change the render dimensions in the render room to more closely match the original size and then it’s a little more work to match up in photoshop. It can be quite a bit faster to render than the ‘masking technique’ depending on the scene and scene settings.

(Yes Carrara does have a saveable spot render facility, it’s just a bit odd to use)

Thank you all for your feedback. I really appreciate the advice from everyone.

I think I was over complicating it with the ice so I scaled that back. I also couldn’t leave the can alone and rebuilt the droplets. Let me know if you think it is better or worse.

I also added a fill card so that the darkest side of the can was a tad brighter and the droplets had a nicer reflection.

By the way, if anyone is interested, the can and the droplets are two instances of the same master object. The metal can (with the label artwork in the future) is one object. In the exact same position, with a second instance of the same master object, I applied a water shader and added the droplets as a displacement map to pop them outside of the can. That way I can adjust master object and change the shape of the can later, and the drops will just pop out of the new shape.

gillisgraphics - 18 January 2013 07:53 AM

By the way, if anyone is interested, the can and the droplets are two instances of the same master object. The metal can (with the label artwork in the future) is one object. In the exact same position, with a second instance of the same master object, I applied a water shader and added the droplets as a displacement map to pop them outside of the can. That way I can adjust master object and change the shape of the can later, and the drops will just pop out of the new shape.

Very neat trick. With my unskilled eye, I’d have to say that the can is just about perfect now.

I think adding a large ice cube or three would be the piece-de-resistance.

Garstor - 18 January 2013 08:45 AM

gillisgraphics - 18 January 2013 07:53 AM

By the way, if anyone is interested, the can and the droplets are two instances of the same master object. The metal can (with the label artwork in the future) is one object. In the exact same position, with a second instance of the same master object, I applied a water shader and added the droplets as a displacement map to pop them outside of the can. That way I can adjust master object and change the shape of the can later, and the drops will just pop out of the new shape.

Very neat trick. With my unskilled eye, I’d have to say that the can is just about perfect now.

I think adding a large ice cube or three would be the piece-de-resistance.

Thank you Garstor!