@Tyonn: I personally think this image is much better. While still making one wonder what’s further down the river, you’ve allowed the viewer to actually see the turrets. However, look at the intensity of the light on the left towers. Then look at the intensity of the light on the right. Notice the light on the left appears to hit those towers straight on. While on the right the light hits those towers more on the right side. If the light was straight on then the light should hit the right towers somewhere between just to the left of center going towards the right. Plus, any light being blocked by the tower in front of it would create a shadow. Still, I like it.
Dave, yeah, I missed a trick there, I was so focused on one thing - the edge where the ground meets the background - that I lost sight of the content of the image.
Thanks Michael. There are lots of experiments I’m trying to coax you into, when you’ve got the time…
Odaa, aye, I’ve got to agree. This rendered out while I was at work, and it took - a while… and my main concern was the orange light was going to disrupt the hidden join between ground and background. I threw in the pits to explain the light. But you are right.
Tyonn, the composition of the scene is interesting. As far as making it better goes, I will advocate for looking at the lighting first - then materials. Much depends on the power of your CPU though to take advantage of the most sophisticated lighting effects. Although it may seem like a step backwards, you could experiment with something along these lines.Bryce 5 minute project - rendering a simple grey scene - a tutorial by David Brinnen
Setting everything to default grey and rendering with sunlight and TA ambient light (or IBL on a slower machine) - to get a feel for what the lighting alone can do for for scene. I reckon that lighting is more than half the battle with any scene. It is also more consistent between scenes. Often you can change the entire content of a scene and keep the lighting more or less as it was with the last scene and no one will think to comment on that aspect. So if you get to grips with lighting first, it will offer an improvement to every subsequent scene and leave you free to concentrate on the subject and materials. That’s just my view.
We shouldn’t forget to mention that Sunlight combined with Light Domes and 3D Fills also can illuminate a plain grey scene, thanks to the Distant option in the light lab.
David, I love these Victoria renders and I like that you’ve developed what appears to be a light catcher to match the shadow catcher. Clever.
Michael Frank, outstanding work as per your usual. Incredible.
Savage64, you’ve really got a feel for these “studio” style images. What fascinates me is level of undeniable realism you achieve. Truly bar raising work here!
@Tyonn: I personally think this image is much better. While still making one wonder what’s further down the river, you’ve allowed the viewer to actually see the turrets. However, look at the intensity of the light on the left towers. Then look at the intensity of the light on the right. Notice the light on the left appears to hit those towers straight on. While on the right the light hits those towers more on the right side. If the light was straight on then the light should hit the right towers somewhere between just to the left of center going towards the right. Plus, any light being blocked by the tower in front of it would create a shadow. Still, I like it.
I’ve tried everything I know to get the reflection of the sun just perfect on the towers, even tried moving the camara around, I just can’t seem to get it right no matter what I try lol. Maybe the sun is going down to the left? lol I dunno. I’m glad you like it though, Thank you.
Here are my attempts at an underwater scene, I followed David Brinnen’s tutorial on caustics, not quite what I envisioned, couldn’t get the misty effect, and the godrays the second one is without the godrays .
(I made a mistake and have another post somewhere but cannot find it to delete it)
Another new birdie in my collection. Ken Gilliland’s earred owl (I didnt know where to find the ear tufts until after I read the pdf after I did this, after I “installed” it, go figure). House Mouse and Serrge’s Potting Shed.
With text done in Sketchup and exported as a Collada .dae file (very easy to import into Bryce).
The pumpkin lantern hasn’t turned out as well as I wanted it to… I’m doing another render with just the lantern and the text.
Picked up the Moon Gate by Jack Tomalin/DAZ as a freebie today. It’s got a very nice stone pattern. I used V4 shape on Genesis, and then applied V3 “Wicked” by Moyra on the V4 MFD dress. Hair is Trixie by Goldtassel/DAZ The pose was from one of the preset poses of M4. It was to mix and mesh up all those different types. Saved the whole scene in DAZ4.0 and exported all at once as an object. Bryce 7 had no problem opening or rendering it. Just had to refresh the dress transparencies. I really like the neckline of this dress. Only cropped, no other postwork.
Although I’ve been around the block a few times, I’ve just discovered this thread… there are some really great images here, and quite a lot of nice conversation. I’m a little less active here than I was before, simply because I’m a bit more tied up elsewhere… I don’t remember if I’ve posted this image anywhere before, so I thought I’d give it a go. The final size of this piece is about 20"x24.” There’s less post-work and compositing here than you would think. All the models are my own. The cumulative render time was about 125 hours. (Some of you may think that’s a lot of time, but I render everything at the maximum size possible, in order to print larger, higher quality images.) You can also find a version of this image in the latest edition of Photoshop Creative.
Great fairy tale image, great colours. There is a real part, nevertheless there is a lot for the beholder’s imagination to make up.
The first dragon has a wood-like appearance. There is the fence and the scene fades into the fog at right. The second one leaves a more mystic impression on me, the sky colour underlines this impression.
The coffin also looks great with the heads, shards and skull.
The unhappy Halloween is great. Just the lantern looks flat, but you’ve discovered that already. The second one does look better but I would expect the pumpkin to be hollow. Perhaps it is, but it is not obvious.
Got the Ken Gilliland Pelicans loaded and ready to go. Here is my first effort testing out sending to Bryce (from DAZ3) and then using Duplicate and tilting the object pelicans slightly. I like the way they turned out. Can’t get too much “closer” for the whole bird. It shows the construction a bit more obviously. Cropped but otherwise as renedered.
The pelicans turned out excellently.
The bird in the shed looks good, too. A tiny bit of light for the wing in the shadow, perhaps? Same for the one flying over the roof.
Good use of the Moon Gate. The lady doesn’t look happy.
