Digital Art Zone

@Scott you can post to other threads as long as the Time Stamp shows you posted to this contest before you posted to any other thread or site.

u1bd2005_2 - 03 October 2012 11:37 AM

genesis, been doing a bit of work on the skin and clothes too, got nice skin texture simply by opening a 250x250 blank texture and splatting it with some spray paint on paint, quite enjoying my work so far

You're off to a good start, but the image map size seems a bit small if you try and do a closeup. I made a Zombie character a couple years ago using M4 and morphs++. I duplicated and renamed the image maps for M4 and edited them in Photoshop to provide a more "zombie" like appearance. If you edit the image maps, I cannot stress enough that you need to rename them so as to avoid overwriting the original files!


Here's what he looks like:

Spooky Genesis

Used only one linear point light in this render. what do you think?

I think Mr Demon is looking in disgust at his birthday present. Oh no, another pink dagger from grandma.

I would say if you want the dagger to be a focal point then set up a separate light for it and assuming the blade is silver, make the light fairly bright with a short focal length and a cone that just covers the blade. The rest of the lighting looks great. Dark and brooding.

bluemoon - 04 October 2012 05:17 AM

Used only one linear point light in this render. what do you think?

Looks really good. The lighting is perfect

Here's the start of my humble effort...

james.beery.07 - 04 October 2012 04:19 PM

Here's the start of my humble effort...

Ah Ha! I see you got past the surfaces issue. Looking forward to seeing where this goes.

Hi everyone, here's my wip so far... and my 2c

The kid was too much a child when I saw it back the next day - bit disturbing.. and don't know what to do with it; I like the child version but it may be too... mmmm... graphical... So I changed some features, for now... Don't know if I'm still working on a halloween theme - it is what I think disturbing enough but is it halloween? I'm dutch so halloween for me is pumpkin. Dutch people don't use pumpkin so if I'm going the wrong direction please tell me.

I notice that when you start a 'project' like this instead of playing around: I hit walls - big time

Lighting is gonna be a pain/challenge - I've been reading the earlier thread/contest about lighting and need it again and read a lot more!
It is so tempting to pick a preset and place it but then I still don't know anything about lighting so this old dog has to learn new tricks but his brain isn't that keen anymore, so Sas: I'm working on it but in an odd way it is intimidating... It is hard enough and then in English too...
And did I mention I noticed I lost some brain cells in time

For the scene I went to the pet-store and got me some snakes and the first one is in ; is there a trick that I can use for 'draping' the snakes?
There are shapes built-in but they are all going the wrong direction, in all directions lol. And I need them on the floor and around the kid crawling. The one I placed I followed every spine and bend/rotate/etc. Although i love the tedious bit there must be something easier?
And is there a solution that I can stop the snake from shining that much - I want it little bit less shiny and a more earthy feel, dusty.

The ground is not in place yet - I got me a house too! Superdeal on little Raven Nest. But when I import it in the scene... all is elevated and too big, is that normal or is that the correct size? I got confused and got lost in my own garden so removed it for later on.
Placed some of Lisa's plants and experimented with DOF. Was it meant for the mushrooms to be that big?

Still have to read about how to get this beautiful clouds/moon in the background that I see in others. And some mist/fog would be nice.
But this Uber-thing; uberenvironment/uberpoint/ubersurface/etc.... I don't know how I'm gonna pick that up.

As I said I hit brick walls big time and that has to do with 'what I WANT to do and what I CAN do'. I've worked in graphics for a reasonable amount of time, later on PS became my main tool. At first I thought DAZ was gonna be an extra utility for me but it starts out to be a main app and PS is gonna be the utility. Maybe you've noticed I have no discipline in workflow - because I have none. Any advice on workflows would be appreciated. Or any advise - please.

Thank you and Cheers!

bluemoon - 04 October 2012 05:17 AM

Used only one linear point light in this render. what do you think?

That's nice! And hot (as in temperature)

Jaderail - 04 October 2012 08:34 PM

james.beery.07 - 04 October 2012 04:19 PM

Here's the start of my humble effort...

Ah Ha! I see you got past the surfaces issue. Looking forward to seeing where this goes.

Unfortunately, the surfaces came with this model - I made no changes to it. :( All I did was put it in the scene and add the bucket and lighting. But I'm getting better - this is the first time I've used a prop with a character!

bartman23 - 05 October 2012 04:24 AM

Hi everyone, here's my wip so far... and my 2c

The kid was too much a child when I saw it back the next day - bit disturbing.. and don't know what to do with it; I like the child version but it may be too... mmmm... graphical... So I changed some features, for now... Don't know if I'm still working on a halloween theme - it is what I think disturbing enough but is it halloween? I'm dutch so halloween for me is pumpkin. Dutch people don't use pumpkin so if I'm going the wrong direction please tell me.

I notice that when you start a 'project' like this instead of playing around: I hit walls - big time

Lighting is gonna be a pain/challenge - I've been reading the earlier thread/contest about lighting and need it again and read a lot more!
It is so tempting to pick a preset and place it but then I still don't know anything about lighting so this old dog has to learn new tricks but his brain isn't that keen anymore, so Sas: I'm working on it but in an odd way it is intimidating... It is hard enough and then in English too...
And did I mention I noticed I lost some brain cells in time

For the scene I went to the pet-store and got me some snakes and the first one is in ; is there a trick that I can use for 'draping' the snakes?
There are shapes built-in but they are all going the wrong direction, in all directions lol. And I need them on the floor and around the kid crawling. The one I placed I followed every spine and bend/rotate/etc. Although i love the tedious bit there must be something easier?
And is there a solution that I can stop the snake from shining that much - I want it little bit less shiny and a more earthy feel, dusty.

The ground is not in place yet - I got me a house too! Superdeal on little Raven Nest. But when I import it in the scene... all is elevated and too big, is that normal or is that the correct size? I got confused and got lost in my own garden so removed it for later on.
Placed some of Lisa's plants and experimented with DOF. Was it meant for the mushrooms to be that big?

Still have to read about how to get this beautiful clouds/moon in the background that I see in others. And some mist/fog would be nice.
But this Uber-thing; uberenvironment/uberpoint/ubersurface/etc.... I don't know how I'm gonna pick that up.

As I said I hit brick walls big time and that has to do with 'what I WANT to do and what I CAN do'. I've worked in graphics for a reasonable amount of time, later on PS became my main tool. At first I thought DAZ was gonna be an extra utility for me but it starts out to be a main app and PS is gonna be the utility. Maybe you've noticed I have no discipline in workflow - because I have none. Any advice on workflows would be appreciated. Or any advise - please.

Thank you and Cheers!

Hallo Bart het ziet er goed uit en het licht dat is moeilijk maar je leert het wel.
Ik zelf heb er ook nog steeds moeite mee, ik gebruik meestal een bestaand licht set en experimenteer er mee met de kleur en soms de richting.
De slang, misschien dat er ergens poses zijn for free.
De glans van de slang ga naar surfaces, Specular en verlaag de Strength(wel de slang selecteren)
Een beetje van dust kan je doen in Photo shop of met een shader Grime-Inizer for DAZ Studio

Hi Bart you’re doing fine it looks good, the lights can be difficult but you will learn.
I used mostly an existing light set and experiment with the colors and some times with the directions
About the snake maybe there are some free pose somewhere.
The glossy of the snake go to surfaces, Specular lower the Stength.

For the rest keep going you can do it

BlumBlumShub - 04 October 2012 06:35 AM

I think Mr Demon is looking in disgust at his birthday present. Oh no, another pink dagger from grandma.

I would say if you want the dagger to be a focal point then set up a separate light for it and assuming the blade is silver, make the light fairly bright with a short focal length and a cone that just covers the blade. The rest of the lighting looks great. Dark and brooding.

Thanks for the feedback. At the moment I am not sure what I want the focal point of the render to be, I was just seeing if I could create a nice lighting effect using only one light in the scene.

Frank0314 - 04 October 2012 08:44 AM

Looks really good. The lighting is perfect

Thank you Frank

bartman23 - 05 October 2012 04:26 AM

That's nice! And hot (as in temperature)

Thank you bartman23

current wip, need to work on the skin some more though

you might try and add some shadow to your lighting on your figure and save as a png, then overlay it on your background that will also help with the skin..right now it looks like he is floating ... he needs to be grounded...