January 2017 - Daz 3D New User Challenge - Composition

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Comments

  • AloreeaAloreea Posts: 285
    Aloreea said:

    I have been working on this for several days, and have started over so many times.... And this is what I ended up with.

    It took a while for me to get the lighting and her clothing the way I wanted for quite a while. For her clothing, I wanted a wet and torn kind of look. I used this product for the shirt > Boyfriend T-Shirt Wet and Dry for Genesis 3 Female(s) and I used cut out in order to make the shirt appear torn. then I made the jeans look as muddy as I could. I don't exactly remember what I did to do that, I was in the "zone" at the time, lol.

     I also couldn't decide whether to make the background with rain or not. 

     

    When I finally decided to let it render I decided to stop it halfway so I could make sure that I was doing it right. 

    So what do you think so far, should I let it continue rendering?

    It looks like a good start.  Composition isn't my strong suit so I'll let others comment on that but, at first glance, it looks a good use of the rule of thirds.  I like your surfaces but you may have the shirt a little too transparent.  I'm not sure.  I like the rain.

    If you could edit your posts to fix the width of your image so that it is 800 px, that would much be appreciated as it is the preferred maximum width in these forums.  You can find instructions on how to do this here and here.

     

    You think so? Thanks, I'll work on fixing the shirt and the post width too

  • barbultbarbult Posts: 23,018

    Here's my contest entry, "Goth Angel". Made in Daz with a tiny bit of background adjustment in Photoshop.

    The resources for this contest were wonderful, thank you for including them! I think this composition is within the realm of the rule of thirds, and I also used leading lines (the wings/ feathers, and the arch leading to the head), framing (again with the arch), and light and color on the subject to pull him out from the background and draw the eye.

    I hope you like him. :)

    You mentioned an "arch leading to the head", but I can't identify that in the composition.

  • barbultbarbult Posts: 23,018

    Hi All

    I'm brand new to Daz, 3D art and art in general. I've been using Daz for about a week, so this is all new to me. I thought I'd give this challenge a try.

    Any feedback is appreciated.

    You have a lot of interesting elements in your image to make it a "lived in" room. I think that is unusually perceptive for a beginner, so good work! There are a couple distracting elements along the edges that are pulling my eye away, though. On the left is something reddish, that I think might be a surf board???. Since that character is watching surfing on the computer screen, that might be a significant element of the story, but the framing of the image is cutting it off, and I'm not even sure that is what it is. Perhaps a change of render aspect ratio or camera angle would clarify how it fits into the theme of the image. In the top right corner is something that looks like wood and white. That is also drawing my eye away from the main scene. Perhaps removing it would help, if it is not an important part of the story.

    When creating your art, be mindful of copyrights and usage restrictions. Take care that you have a legal right to use any elements that you add to your scene. I'm concerned about the image the appears on your character's computer screen in this case.

  • barbultbarbult Posts: 23,018
    yhzmurphy said:

    Still can't let this alternate view go...any help or advice (or even therapy) welcomed.  One thing I'm struggling with is that I'm zoomed in so far every control is super sensitive and even minor changes are getting hard to tweak.  Is there a way to reset the scale of the Daz interface without impacting everything in the scene?  It feels like I'm trying to do molecular level work with pliers...

     

    I really like where this one is going!

  • ShortcutShortcut Posts: 68
    edited January 2017
    Shortcut said:

    I probably enjoy fiddling too much but I'd like to get some tips to try and improve the detail on my figure's mouth. The little specular highlights on the lips are kind of noisy and distracting. I figure they should be a bit smoother and I was wondering if there was a way in the render settings, perhaps in the filter settings, to do this, rather than fixing it in Photoshop? The lower edge of the bottom lip should be in shadow too but it has rendered a bright line underneath. The image was rendered with the Iray engine. Anyone?

    My guess is that you might be able to fix that by playing with some surface settings on the figure itself but I'm not positive.  Which figure and makeup did you use?  Was it with Iray materials or did you use a 3DL to Iray conversion? Also, what lighting setup are you using?  Those kind of things can help us give you better answers.

    I'm using Victoria 7 Iray materials. No conversion from 3DL. No makeup anywhere except eyes. Rendered with saturation at 0.0 (i.e no colour). Lighting used 2 spots, one from high above left to light the side of the figure's face, a softer fill from the front and slightly to the right, another spot from behind. I doubt the spot from behind has anything to do with it as it wouldn't be lighting the face. I might try a render for each light on its own to see if that identifies a possible culprit.

    I also used 'Translucency Medium' on the Victoria 7 Iray skin, but I don't know what that actually does or how it affects the final render. It was an option to click on so I clicked, without knowing, which is a bit daft, but sometimes I try renders with some things on or off to see the change in effect. I can't recall if I've tried that with this option. If anyone could explain it that would be great :-)

    Post edited by Shortcut on
  • barbult said:

    Here's my contest entry, "Goth Angel". Made in Daz with a tiny bit of background adjustment in Photoshop.

    The resources for this contest were wonderful, thank you for including them! I think this composition is within the realm of the rule of thirds, and I also used leading lines (the wings/ feathers, and the arch leading to the head), framing (again with the arch), and light and color on the subject to pull him out from the background and draw the eye.

    I hope you like him. :)

    You mentioned an "arch leading to the head", but I can't identify that in the composition.

    It's the window he is sitting in. The sides come up to an arch, instead of squaring off like a normal window.

  • barbultbarbult Posts: 23,018
    barbult said:

    Here's my contest entry, "Goth Angel". Made in Daz with a tiny bit of background adjustment in Photoshop.

    The resources for this contest were wonderful, thank you for including them! I think this composition is within the realm of the rule of thirds, and I also used leading lines (the wings/ feathers, and the arch leading to the head), framing (again with the arch), and light and color on the subject to pull him out from the background and draw the eye.

    I hope you like him. :)

    You mentioned an "arch leading to the head", but I can't identify that in the composition.

    It's the window he is sitting in. The sides come up to an arch, instead of squaring off like a normal window.

    Thanks for taking the time to explain!

  • IceDragonArtIceDragonArt Posts: 12,548

    Hi 

    After looking at all the comments here and other posts I went away and rethought my entry for the comp. Here is my latest effort. Please be kind I have only been using Daz for little over a week. I'm completely new to this.

    I call the render "Amazment". I used Daz3d and GIMP for post work.

    I really like this!  I do think a rim light behind him would help him stand out from the background.  Not too strong but something.  You could do it in a pale blue or something like that to help reduce the impact as well.

  • IceDragonArtIceDragonArt Posts: 12,548
    Aloreea said:

    I have been working on this for several days, and have started over so many times.... And this is what I ended up with.

    It took a while for me to get the lighting and her clothing the way I wanted for quite a while. For her clothing, I wanted a wet and torn kind of look. I used this product for the shirt > Boyfriend T-Shirt Wet and Dry for Genesis 3 Female(s) and I used cut out in order to make the shirt appear torn. then I made the jeans look as muddy as I could. I don't exactly remember what I did to do that, I was in the "zone" at the time, lol.

     I also couldn't decide whether to make the background with rain or not. 

     

    When I finally decided to let it render I decided to stop it halfway so I could make sure that I was doing it right. 

    So what do you think so far, should I let it continue rendering?

     

    This is a really great start.  I wonder if we could see her face better if that strong light on (my) left was moved to shine on her face from the other side.

  • IceDragonArtIceDragonArt Posts: 12,548
    yhzmurphy said:
    yhzmurphy said:

     

    I'm really liking this a lot!

    Try switching to perspective view and using that to move around the scene and not your camera. I don't know if that will help or not but I have a bad habit of moving my main camera after I have the perfect position.  And I don't know if the perspective view will help with how sensitive everything has become.  You may try going into smooth textured mode as well, that may help a bit, although it looks a bit odd if you aren't used to it.

    Thank-you, both for the encouragement and the suggestion...I'll try it tonight and see if I can speed up progress.

    Another face-palm moment...was this perspective view there all along???  Extremely useful tool and much smoother.  I still have to hand tweak my camera setting (I know...Captain Obvious), but otherwise zooming around to change things is much faster and easier.

    Ummm...yes?  Lol.  That's why you come here, to learn about these kinds of things lol.  I wouldn't know a quarter of what I know now if I hadn't spent some serious time in this particular forum.

  • AloreeaAloreea Posts: 285
    Aloreea said:

    I have been working on this for several days, and have started over so many times.... And this is what I ended up with.

    It took a while for me to get the lighting and her clothing the way I wanted for quite a while. For her clothing, I wanted a wet and torn kind of look. I used this product for the shirt > Boyfriend T-Shirt Wet and Dry for Genesis 3 Female(s) and I used cut out in order to make the shirt appear torn. then I made the jeans look as muddy as I could. I don't exactly remember what I did to do that, I was in the "zone" at the time, lol.

     I also couldn't decide whether to make the background with rain or not. 

     

    When I finally decided to let it render I decided to stop it halfway so I could make sure that I was doing it right. 

    So what do you think so far, should I let it continue rendering?

     

    This is a really great start.  I wonder if we could see her face better if that strong light on (my) left was moved to shine on her face from the other side.

    Thank you! and Yeah I thought that I should put a bit of light on her face..thanks for the feedback

  • yhzmurphyyhzmurphy Posts: 434
    edited January 2017
    Shortcut said:
    Shortcut said:

    I probably enjoy fiddling too much but I'd like to get some tips to try and improve the detail on my figure's mouth. The little specular highlights on the lips are kind of noisy and distracting. I figure they should be a bit smoother and I was wondering if there was a way in the render settings, perhaps in the filter settings, to do this, rather than fixing it in Photoshop? The lower edge of the bottom lip should be in shadow too but it has rendered a bright line underneath. The image was rendered with the Iray engine. Anyone?

    My guess is that you might be able to fix that by playing with some surface settings on the figure itself but I'm not positive.  Which figure and makeup did you use?  Was it with Iray materials or did you use a 3DL to Iray conversion? Also, what lighting setup are you using?  Those kind of things can help us give you better answers.

    I'm using Victoria 7 Iray materials. No conversion from 3DL. No makeup anywhere except eyes. Rendered with saturation at 0.0 (i.e no colour). Lighting used 2 spots, one from high above left to light the side of the figure's face, a softer fill from the front and slightly to the right, another spot from behind. I doubt the spot from behind has anything to do with it as it wouldn't be lighting the face. I might try a render for each light on its own to see if that identifies a possible culprit.

    I also used 'Translucency Medium' on the Victoria 7 Iray skin, but I don't know what that actually does or how it affects the final render. It was an option to click on so I clicked, without knowing, which is a bit daft, but sometimes I try renders with some things on or off to see the change in effect. I can't recall if I've tried that with this option. If anyone could explain it that would be great :-)

    If you go to the "Surfaces (Color)" tab (ignoring the mispelling of "Colour") of the "Actors, Wardrobe and Props" view you'll find "Lips" under "Surfaces" of "Skin-Lips-Nails" for Victoria 7.  Lots of things to mess with in there that might help...

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    Post edited by yhzmurphy on
  • AGnawKneeMooseAGnawKneeMoose Posts: 26
    edited January 2017

    Playing Off the Rails

    [...]

    Playing Off the Rails

    Pretty cool picture this. I particularly like how you did the background! It's there, but unobstrusive or distracting. Which can't be said from the dominant pressence of the light blue light sabre; it sucks in all the attention but I'm not sure that was your intention.

    The girl must have some pretty strong muscles in her legs and abs and rather strong magnets in her boots to be able to maintain this position with such a smile on her face! She's seemingly  holding it effortlessly ;-)

    I'll try to comment on it:
    I find it hard to find where I should focus on; what are you trying to make me see? Surely you adhered to the "Rules" but rules are to be broken as well.
    In terms of perspective you mention the vanishing points, but way you tilted the camera makes for not one single straight line in the picture – eventhough there's an imaginary straight line on which the characters eyes lie. That makes the picture, imho, "restless" and without a guidance for me on where to focus on.

    Just to give an example: If you'd like me to focus on the girl, maybe tilting the camera in such a way the girls body is more upright would help me, because then she would appear 'normal' and the 'abnormality' of her surroundings would then lead me to see she's actually falling or almost falling if she hadn't clung her right foot under the railing..
    What I'd then be seeing is telling me a story in itself, with a main character, one on which I can focus and relate to.
    Maybe a bit more light on her would then help as well.

    I hope I'm making sense here!! It's rather difficult to explain I noticed.
    But to give you an idea to what I see now is two people – the man appears just focussed on his sabre and her daggers while the girl seems to enjoy the situation she's in greatly – in a light sabre fight but I can't make out where you'd want my sympathy to go to or if the girl's wining or actually about to loose? More helpful expressions on both characters will help, too!

    Ah, but abs, legs and magnetic boots are insignifant next to the power of the force...  :P 

     

    Thank you (and everyone) for the feeedback - very helpful.  I'll just let the picture talk to it, but at least I'm happier with the results.  I've re-framed, re-posed, re-lit, some postwork in GIMP, so... Playing Off the Rails 2.0.  Feedback always appreciated.

    Playing Off the Rails

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    Post edited by AGnawKneeMoose on
  • OK, me and Photoshop had a heart to heart, and I think this is improved over the last one. More of the background is visible, and the figure is a bit more vibrant, I think. :D

    (I'll edit in the picture after the message loads)

    Goth Angel 1.jpg
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  • OK, me and Photoshop had a heart to heart, and I think this is improved over the last one. More of the background is visible, and the figure is a bit more vibrant, I think. :D

  • OK, me and Photoshop had a heart to heart, and I think this is improved over the last one. More of the background is visible, and the figure is a bit more vibrant, I think. :D

    That's a big improvement!

    You can see a lot more of the figure's environment now and he's seperated well from the background. You might want to try playing with the DOF to help that seperation even more by making the background slightly out of focus.

  • yhzmurphy said:

    If you go to the "Surfaces (Color)" tab (ignoring the mispelling of "Colour") of the "Actors, Wardrobe and Props" view you'll find "Lips" under "Surfaces" of "Skin-Lips-Nails" for Victoria 7.  Lots of things to mess with in there that might help...

    Thank you for that, I'll look into those settings and experiment :-)

    ( How dare they spell colour like that :-p )

  • Playing Off the Rails

    [...]

    Playing Off the Rails

    Pretty cool picture this. I particularly like how you did the background! It's there, but unobstrusive or distracting. Which can't be said from the dominant pressence of the light blue light sabre; it sucks in all the attention but I'm not sure that was your intention.

    The girl must have some pretty strong muscles in her legs and abs and rather strong magnets in her boots to be able to maintain this position with such a smile on her face! She's seemingly  holding it effortlessly ;-)

    I'll try to comment on it:
    I find it hard to find where I should focus on; what are you trying to make me see? Surely you adhered to the "Rules" but rules are to be broken as well.
    In terms of perspective you mention the vanishing points, but way you tilted the camera makes for not one single straight line in the picture – eventhough there's an imaginary straight line on which the characters eyes lie. That makes the picture, imho, "restless" and without a guidance for me on where to focus on.

    Just to give an example: If you'd like me to focus on the girl, maybe tilting the camera in such a way the girls body is more upright would help me, because then she would appear 'normal' and the 'abnormality' of her surroundings would then lead me to see she's actually falling or almost falling if she hadn't clung her right foot under the railing..
    What I'd then be seeing is telling me a story in itself, with a main character, one on which I can focus and relate to.
    Maybe a bit more light on her would then help as well.

    I hope I'm making sense here!! It's rather difficult to explain I noticed.
    But to give you an idea to what I see now is two people – the man appears just focussed on his sabre and her daggers while the girl seems to enjoy the situation she's in greatly – in a light sabre fight but I can't make out where you'd want my sympathy to go to or if the girl's wining or actually about to loose? More helpful expressions on both characters will help, too!

    Ah, but abs, legs and magnetic boots are insignifant next to the power of the force...  :P 

     

    Thank you (and everyone) for the feeedback - very helpful.  I'll just let the picture talk to it, but at least I'm happier with the results.  I've re-framed, re-posed, re-lit, some postwork in GIMP, so... Playing Off the Rails 2.0.  Feedback always appreciated.

    Playing Off the Rails

    I really like the change in the position of her foot.  Looks good.  :)

     

    OK, me and Photoshop had a heart to heart, and I think this is improved over the last one. More of the background is visible, and the figure is a bit more vibrant, I think. :D

    Nice improvement.

     

    Shortcut said:
    Shortcut said:

    I probably enjoy fiddling too much but I'd like to get some tips to try and improve the detail on my figure's mouth. The little specular highlights on the lips are kind of noisy and distracting. I figure they should be a bit smoother and I was wondering if there was a way in the render settings, perhaps in the filter settings, to do this, rather than fixing it in Photoshop? The lower edge of the bottom lip should be in shadow too but it has rendered a bright line underneath. The image was rendered with the Iray engine. Anyone?

    My guess is that you might be able to fix that by playing with some surface settings on the figure itself but I'm not positive.  Which figure and makeup did you use?  Was it with Iray materials or did you use a 3DL to Iray conversion? Also, what lighting setup are you using?  Those kind of things can help us give you better answers.

    I'm using Victoria 7 Iray materials. No conversion from 3DL. No makeup anywhere except eyes. Rendered with saturation at 0.0 (i.e no colour). Lighting used 2 spots, one from high above left to light the side of the figure's face, a softer fill from the front and slightly to the right, another spot from behind. I doubt the spot from behind has anything to do with it as it wouldn't be lighting the face. I might try a render for each light on its own to see if that identifies a possible culprit.

    I also used 'Translucency Medium' on the Victoria 7 Iray skin, but I don't know what that actually does or how it affects the final render. It was an option to click on so I clicked, without knowing, which is a bit daft, but sometimes I try renders with some things on or off to see the change in effect. I can't recall if I've tried that with this option. If anyone could explain it that would be great :-)

    I loaded up Victoria 7 and tried to see if I could replicate that lip problems.  I could even though my lights were a little different than yours.  The specular noise was a little bit different and changing the lights only made the noise on the lips move position so that wasn't any help.  I did a little experimentation with some surface settings.  The first image (VictoriaLips01) is what I was getting with the default surface settings.  The second (VictoriaLip04) saw a little bit of improvement.  What I did was select just the lips in the Surface Tab.  I changed the Refraction Index to 2 and the Glossy Reflectivity to 0.  I think the Glossy Reflectivity had more of an impact than the Refraction Index did.  Finally, I played with the Crushed Blacks and the Burn Highlights in the Tone Mapping under the Render Settings Tab.  I'm a big proponent for playing with Tone Mapping.  It can really make a huge difference in the final image.  I upped the Burn Highlights to .35 and the Crush Blacks to .30.  I think if I played with it more I might have been able to get rid of it completely.  You'll have to play with those settings and see if they help you out at all.  

    Frankly, I'm not that crazy about Victoria 7's skin enough to go further.  If it was me, I would change the skin completely for some other characters skin.  Most of them are pretty interchangeable within the same generation.  So, that's what I did in the third image (Victoria705).  I just changed skins and all of the lighting and tone mapping is the same as the second image.  The noise is still there but different and looks more blended in and natural.  I don't know if anyone else will have any further suggestions.  My best advice is to just play with it.  

    I can link you to this great post of Sickleyield's on her DA page which has a breakdown of the Iray settings and what each of them does.  I refer to it all of the time when I'm not sure what a particular setting in Iray does.

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  • Ravynheart StudioRavynheart Studio Posts: 11
    edited January 2017
    Aloreea said:

    I have been working on this for several days, and have started over so many times.... And this is what I ended up with.

    It took a while for me to get the lighting and her clothing the way I wanted for quite a while. For her clothing, I wanted a wet and torn kind of look. I used this product for the shirt > Boyfriend T-Shirt Wet and Dry for Genesis 3 Female(s) and I used cut out in order to make the shirt appear torn. then I made the jeans look as muddy as I could. I don't exactly remember what I did to do that, I was in the "zone" at the time, lol.

     I also couldn't decide whether to make the background with rain or not. 

     

    When I finally decided to let it render I decided to stop it halfway so I could make sure that I was doing it right. 

    So what do you think so far, should I let it continue rendering?

     

    This is a really great start.  I wonder if we could see her face better if that strong light on (my) left was moved to shine on her face from the other side.

    @Aloreea :Or maybe bring in a spotlight on the opposite angle at maybe 40 or 60%? Just enough to fill in the shadows? Lighting is something I have been really focusing on myself. Dreamlight3D on Youtube says lighting is 90% of a good image, and he's got videos on Daz's youtube as well as his own channel talking about lighting, which are fantastic. He can explain the '3-point light setup' better than I can. I also checked out a lot of lighting tutorials for photographers, since we are basically doing the same thing. :)

    I like the dramatic side light angle you have going, so I wouldn't want to overpower that, just fill in the details with the second, less powerful light so you keep the drama of the shandows, and I think you'll like the results. :)

    I like the drama of the composition, too. 

    Post edited by Ravynheart Studio on
  • IceDragonArtIceDragonArt Posts: 12,548

    OK, me and Photoshop had a heart to heart, and I think this is improved over the last one. More of the background is visible, and the figure is a bit more vibrant, I think. :D

    Very good improvement I like it!

  • KnittingmommyKnittingmommy Posts: 8,191
    edited January 2017

    Playing Off the Rails

    [...]

    snip

    Shortcut said:

    I'm using Victoria 7 Iray materials. No conversion from 3DL. No makeup anywhere except eyes. Rendered with saturation at 0.0 (i.e no colour). Lighting used 2 spots, one from high above left to light the side of the figure's face, a softer fill from the front and slightly to the right, another spot from behind. I doubt the spot from behind has anything to do with it as it wouldn't be lighting the face. I might try a render for each light on its own to see if that identifies a possible culprit.

    I also used 'Translucency Medium' on the Victoria 7 Iray skin, but I don't know what that actually does or how it affects the final render. It was an option to click on so I clicked, without knowing, which is a bit daft, but sometimes I try renders with some things on or off to see the change in effect. I can't recall if I've tried that with this option. If anyone could explain it that would be great :-)

    I loaded up Victoria 7 and tried to see if I could replicate that lip problems.  I could even though my lights were a little different than yours.  The specular noise was a little bit different and changing the lights only made the noise on the lips move position so that wasn't any help.  I did a little experimentation with some surface settings.  The first image (VictoriaLips01) is what I was getting with the default surface settings.  The second (VictoriaLip04) saw a little bit of improvement.  What I did was select just the lips in the Surface Tab.  I changed the Refraction Index to 2 and the Glossy Reflectivity to 0.  I think the Glossy Reflectivity had more of an impact than the Refraction Index did.  Finally, I played with the Crushed Blacks and the Burn Highlights in the Tone Mapping under the Render Settings Tab.  I'm a big proponent for playing with Tone Mapping.  It can really make a huge difference in the final image.  I upped the Burn Highlights to .35 and the Crush Blacks to .30.  I think if I played with it more I might have been able to get rid of it completely.  You'll have to play with those settings and see if they help you out at all.  

    Frankly, I'm not that crazy about Victoria 7's skin enough to go further.  If it was me, I would change the skin completely for some other characters skin.  Most of them are pretty interchangeable within the same generation.  So, that's what I did in the third image (Victoria705).  I just changed skins and all of the lighting and tone mapping is the same as the second image.  The noise is still there but different and looks more blended in and natural.  I don't know if anyone else will have any further suggestions.  My best advice is to just play with it.  

    I can link you to this great post of Sickleyield's on her DA page which has a breakdown of the Iray settings and what each of them does.  I refer to it all of the time when I'm not sure what a particular setting in Iray does.

    @Shortcut   I posted my pictures along with a link to your pictures here on my laboratory thread.  This is the advice that I got for you from one of the vendors, @DarwinsMishap.

    The "noise" is reflection from the gloss and top coat from the lighting- if you copy the facial materials in the surface tab and paste it to the lips you'll have the same gloss/reflections from the skin to the lips.  You can lower it further if you need by incriments using the Top Coat which is usually higher on the lips than anywhere else.  Sometimes Top Coat and Gloss are both higher than the rest of the surfaces (barring eyes, teeth and mouth) to give that "She's just put on some lip gloss" look.

    So, give that a try and see how it goes.  DarwinsMishap does amazing figure creation and texturing so I would highly recommend following DM's advice.  Good luck.

    edit: I forgot to put the link to the post in my laboratory thread. Added that now.

    Post edited by Knittingmommy on
  • barbultbarbult Posts: 23,018

    OK, me and Photoshop had a heart to heart, and I think this is improved over the last one. More of the background is visible, and the figure is a bit more vibrant, I think. :D

    Now I can see the window.

  • social_stigmasocial_stigma Posts: 107
    edited January 2017

    Just did a quick test render (so a bit grainy) - wanted to get feedback for letting it cook all the way.

    This started out much differently. I worked on it for a week or so before finally realizing what i didn't like about it. Changed that and everything else fell into place (which of course meant changing everything else).

    Tried to incorporate a little of everything compositio-wise - a bit of rule of thirds, a hint of leading lines, a pinch of dramtic lighting, a dash of accent color, a dab of DoF - but didn't follow any rules to a T.

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    Post edited by social_stigma on
  • daybirddaybird Posts: 645
    edited January 2017

    Please delet this entry

     

    Post edited by daybird on
  • daybirddaybird Posts: 645
    edited January 2017

    soc_stig said:

    Just did a quick test render (so a bit grainy) - wanted to get feedback for letting it cook all the way.

    This started out much differently. I worked on it for a week or so before finally realizing what i didn't like about it. Changed that and everything else fell into place (which of course meant changing everything else).

    Tried to incorporate a little of everything compositio-wise - a bit of rule of thirds, a hint of leading lines, a pinch of dramtic lighting, a dash of accent color, a dab of DoF - but didn't follow any rules to a T.

     

     I like this work a lot. Expression, pose and light works perfect with the DoF and background color. yes

    Post edited by daybird on
  • daybirddaybird Posts: 645
    edited January 2017

    First of all, thank you for the suggestions and tips.
    I try to do it as best as possible, but much does not work quite as I would, because I lack the necessary experience and the knowledge.
    I have reduced the light of the lamp. (I did not want to omit them.)
    Also, I tried to fill the empty space on the top left, without distracting from the main figure.
    In addition, I have inserted various small things to give the picture more life and dynamics.
    I am still testing various light and camera settings and I am looking for a perfect relationship between light and dark.
    I'm really envious of people who can eliminate all the annoying things with postwork.
    Since I am not at all aware of this, I try to create many things in DAZ and fail, because of lack of knowledge, often miserable.

     

    Änderungen 800.jpg
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    Post edited by daybird on
  • ShortcutShortcut Posts: 68
    edited January 2017
     

    I loaded up Victoria 7 and tried to see if I could replicate that lip problems.  I could even though my lights were a little different than yours.  The specular noise was a little bit different and changing the lights only made the noise on the lips move position so that wasn't any help.  I did a little experimentation with some surface settings.  The first image (VictoriaLips01) is what I was getting with the default surface settings.  The second (VictoriaLip04) saw a little bit of improvement.  What I did was select just the lips in the Surface Tab.  I changed the Refraction Index to 2 and the Glossy Reflectivity to 0.  I think the Glossy Reflectivity had more of an impact than the Refraction Index did.  Finally, I played with the Crushed Blacks and the Burn Highlights in the Tone Mapping under the Render Settings Tab.  I'm a big proponent for playing with Tone Mapping.  It can really make a huge difference in the final image.  I upped the Burn Highlights to .35 and the Crush Blacks to .30.  I think if I played with it more I might have been able to get rid of it completely.  You'll have to play with those settings and see if they help you out at all.  

    Frankly, I'm not that crazy about Victoria 7's skin enough to go further.  If it was me, I would change the skin completely for some other characters skin.  Most of them are pretty interchangeable within the same generation.  So, that's what I did in the third image (Victoria705).  I just changed skins and all of the lighting and tone mapping is the same as the second image.  The noise is still there but different and looks more blended in and natural.  I don't know if anyone else will have any further suggestions.  My best advice is to just play with it.  

    I can link you to this great post of Sickleyield's on her DA page which has a breakdown of the Iray settings and what each of them does.  I refer to it all of the time when I'm not sure what a particular setting in Iray does.

    @Shortcut   I posted my pictures along with a link to your pictures here on my laboratory thread.  This is the advice that I got for you from one of the vendors, @DarwinsMishap.

    The "noise" is reflection from the gloss and top coat from the lighting- if you copy the facial materials in the surface tab and paste it to the lips you'll have the same gloss/reflections from the skin to the lips.  You can lower it further if you need by incriments using the Top Coat which is usually higher on the lips than anywhere else.  Sometimes Top Coat and Gloss are both higher than the rest of the surfaces (barring eyes, teeth and mouth) to give that "She's just put on some lip gloss" look.

    So, give that a try and see how it goes.  DarwinsMishap does amazing figure creation and texturing so I would highly recommend following DM's advice.  Good luck.

    edit: I forgot to put the link to the post in my laboratory thread. Added that now.

    @Knittingmommy

    Thank you for all those suggestions! I'm definitely going to check out your laboratory thread.

    Attached below in order are outcomes of the different things I tried:

    1. The original with noisy specular highlights
    2. Glossy Reflectivity reduced
    3. Summer skin applied
    4. Replaced ‘lip’ material in surfaces tab with ‘face’ material
    5. Detail of ear comparing two different skin materials
    6. Whole image - new WIP

    Playing with the surfaces settings (glossy reflectivity, refraction index etc) managed to reduce the noisy effect but it was a bit hit and miss with all the different settings without knowing exactly what they do. Thanks for the link to sickleyield, there’s some interesting and very useful information there. I think if I had experimented more I could have better reduced the effect but I wasn’t satisfied with the progress I was making. The good thing about this approach was that it was localised to the specific body part where the problem was occurring.

    Then I applied Summer for Vic7 skin materials, which eliminated the problem entirely, but also changed the look of the image somewhat because it was applied to the whole figure/face. The skin was paler in the render, less flawed, but also introduced some other aspects which I didn’t like. It’s completely subjective and neither version is more ‘correct’ than the other, but as I started with the Victoria 7 skin on this figure I’ve become accustomed to its look. In using the Summer skin a lot of definition in the ear and the hand was lost, and some strange roughness was introduced on the neck which was noticeable in the final image. I simply used the out of the box settings and as I am discovering, each time I try something there are many ways to tweak and change things. My goal here though was to eliminate those noisy highlights in the lips, which it did perfectly.

    The last tip suggested swapping the surface properties on the lips from another part of the face. This was a great tip and produced a very noticeable result, mostly eliminating the distracting noisiness from the lips, so thank you to @DarwinsMishap for that.

    I’ve posted the new WIP image, including postwork as previously, from this render. An additional change includes placement of a leaf in the bottom left corner to bring down the brightness in that area and help keep the eye from wandering out of the frame.

    Black and White portrait of Woodland Elf

     

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    Woodland_ElF_Detail_Material_Replaced.jpg
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    Woodland_Elf_New_WIP.jpg
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    Post edited by Shortcut on
  • Shortcut said:
     

    I loaded up Victoria 7 and tried to see if I could replicate that lip problems.  I could even though my lights were a little different than yours.  The specular noise was a little bit different and changing the lights only made the noise on the lips move position so that wasn't any help.  I did a little experimentation with some surface settings.  The first image (VictoriaLips01) is what I was getting with the default surface settings.  The second (VictoriaLip04) saw a little bit of improvement.  What I did was select just the lips in the Surface Tab.  I changed the Refraction Index to 2 and the Glossy Reflectivity to 0.  I think the Glossy Reflectivity had more of an impact than the Refraction Index did.  Finally, I played with the Crushed Blacks and the Burn Highlights in the Tone Mapping under the Render Settings Tab.  I'm a big proponent for playing with Tone Mapping.  It can really make a huge difference in the final image.  I upped the Burn Highlights to .35 and the Crush Blacks to .30.  I think if I played with it more I might have been able to get rid of it completely.  You'll have to play with those settings and see if they help you out at all.  

    Frankly, I'm not that crazy about Victoria 7's skin enough to go further.  If it was me, I would change the skin completely for some other characters skin.  Most of them are pretty interchangeable within the same generation.  So, that's what I did in the third image (Victoria705).  I just changed skins and all of the lighting and tone mapping is the same as the second image.  The noise is still there but different and looks more blended in and natural.  I don't know if anyone else will have any further suggestions.  My best advice is to just play with it.  

    I can link you to this great post of Sickleyield's on her DA page which has a breakdown of the Iray settings and what each of them does.  I refer to it all of the time when I'm not sure what a particular setting in Iray does.

    @Shortcut   I posted my pictures along with a link to your pictures here on my laboratory thread.  This is the advice that I got for you from one of the vendors, @DarwinsMishap.

    The "noise" is reflection from the gloss and top coat from the lighting- if you copy the facial materials in the surface tab and paste it to the lips you'll have the same gloss/reflections from the skin to the lips.  You can lower it further if you need by incriments using the Top Coat which is usually higher on the lips than anywhere else.  Sometimes Top Coat and Gloss are both higher than the rest of the surfaces (barring eyes, teeth and mouth) to give that "She's just put on some lip gloss" look.

    So, give that a try and see how it goes.  DarwinsMishap does amazing figure creation and texturing so I would highly recommend following DM's advice.  Good luck.

    edit: I forgot to put the link to the post in my laboratory thread. Added that now.

    @Knittingmommy

    Thank you for all those suggestions! I'm definitely going to check out your laboratory thread.

    Attached below in order are outcomes of the different things I tried:

    1. The original with noisy specular highlights
    2. Glossy Reflectivity reduced
    3. Summer skin applied
    4. Replaced ‘lip’ material in surfaces tab with ‘face’ material
    5. Detail of ear comparing two different skin materials
    6. Whole image - new WIP

    Playing with the surfaces settings (glossy reflectivity, refraction index etc) managed to reduce the noisy effect but it was a bit hit and miss with all the different settings without knowing exactly what they do. Thanks for the link to sickleyield, there’s some interesting and very useful information there. I think if I had experimented more I could have better reduced the effect but I wasn’t satisfied with the progress I was making. The good thing about this approach was that it was localised to the specific body part where the problem was occurring.

    Then I applied Summer for Vic7 skin materials, which eliminated the problem entirely, but also changed the look of the image somewhat because it was applied to the whole figure/face. The skin was paler in the render, less flawed, but also introduced some other aspects which I didn’t like. It’s completely subjective and neither version is more ‘correct’ than the other, but as I started with the Victoria 7 skin on this figure I’ve become accustomed to its look. In using the Summer skin a lot of definition in the ear and the hand was lost, and some strange roughness was introduced on the neck which was noticeable in the final image. I simply used the out of the box settings and as I am discovering, each time I try something there are many ways to tweak and change things. My goal here though was to eliminate those noisy highlights in the lips, which it did perfectly.

    The last tip suggested swapping the surface properties on the lips from another part of the face. This was a great tip and produced a very noticeable result, mostly eliminating the distracting noisiness from the lips, so thank you to @DarwinsMishap for that.

    I’ve posted the new WIP image, including postwork as previously, from this render. An additional change includes placement of a leaf in the bottom left corner to bring down the brightness in that area and help keep the eye from wandering out of the frame.

    Black and White portrait of Woodland Elf

     

    That looks SO much better.  I'm glad you found some of the tips useful.  I'll have to let DarwinsMishap know that the last tip helped you out.  

    If you happen on my thread, be sure to check out the list of tutorials that have others and myself have posted to it to see if there is anything that would be of help to you.  I'm trying to keep them organized with an index on the first page about the 3rd post down.  We're adding more all of the time.

  • barbultbarbult Posts: 23,018
    Shortcut said:
     

    I loaded up Victoria 7 and tried to see if I could replicate that lip problems.  I could even though my lights were a little different than yours.  The specular noise was a little bit different and changing the lights only made the noise on the lips move position so that wasn't any help.  I did a little experimentation with some surface settings.  The first image (VictoriaLips01) is what I was getting with the default surface settings.  The second (VictoriaLip04) saw a little bit of improvement.  What I did was select just the lips in the Surface Tab.  I changed the Refraction Index to 2 and the Glossy Reflectivity to 0.  I think the Glossy Reflectivity had more of an impact than the Refraction Index did.  Finally, I played with the Crushed Blacks and the Burn Highlights in the Tone Mapping under the Render Settings Tab.  I'm a big proponent for playing with Tone Mapping.  It can really make a huge difference in the final image.  I upped the Burn Highlights to .35 and the Crush Blacks to .30.  I think if I played with it more I might have been able to get rid of it completely.  You'll have to play with those settings and see if they help you out at all.  

    Frankly, I'm not that crazy about Victoria 7's skin enough to go further.  If it was me, I would change the skin completely for some other characters skin.  Most of them are pretty interchangeable within the same generation.  So, that's what I did in the third image (Victoria705).  I just changed skins and all of the lighting and tone mapping is the same as the second image.  The noise is still there but different and looks more blended in and natural.  I don't know if anyone else will have any further suggestions.  My best advice is to just play with it.  

    I can link you to this great post of Sickleyield's on her DA page which has a breakdown of the Iray settings and what each of them does.  I refer to it all of the time when I'm not sure what a particular setting in Iray does.

    @Shortcut   I posted my pictures along with a link to your pictures here on my laboratory thread.  This is the advice that I got for you from one of the vendors, @DarwinsMishap.

    The "noise" is reflection from the gloss and top coat from the lighting- if you copy the facial materials in the surface tab and paste it to the lips you'll have the same gloss/reflections from the skin to the lips.  You can lower it further if you need by incriments using the Top Coat which is usually higher on the lips than anywhere else.  Sometimes Top Coat and Gloss are both higher than the rest of the surfaces (barring eyes, teeth and mouth) to give that "She's just put on some lip gloss" look.

    So, give that a try and see how it goes.  DarwinsMishap does amazing figure creation and texturing so I would highly recommend following DM's advice.  Good luck.

    edit: I forgot to put the link to the post in my laboratory thread. Added that now.

    @Knittingmommy

    Thank you for all those suggestions! I'm definitely going to check out your laboratory thread.

    Attached below in order are outcomes of the different things I tried:

    1. The original with noisy specular highlights
    2. Glossy Reflectivity reduced
    3. Summer skin applied
    4. Replaced ‘lip’ material in surfaces tab with ‘face’ material
    5. Detail of ear comparing two different skin materials
    6. Whole image - new WIP

    Playing with the surfaces settings (glossy reflectivity, refraction index etc) managed to reduce the noisy effect but it was a bit hit and miss with all the different settings without knowing exactly what they do. Thanks for the link to sickleyield, there’s some interesting and very useful information there. I think if I had experimented more I could have better reduced the effect but I wasn’t satisfied with the progress I was making. The good thing about this approach was that it was localised to the specific body part where the problem was occurring.

    Then I applied Summer for Vic7 skin materials, which eliminated the problem entirely, but also changed the look of the image somewhat because it was applied to the whole figure/face. The skin was paler in the render, less flawed, but also introduced some other aspects which I didn’t like. It’s completely subjective and neither version is more ‘correct’ than the other, but as I started with the Victoria 7 skin on this figure I’ve become accustomed to its look. In using the Summer skin a lot of definition in the ear and the hand was lost, and some strange roughness was introduced on the neck which was noticeable in the final image. I simply used the out of the box settings and as I am discovering, each time I try something there are many ways to tweak and change things. My goal here though was to eliminate those noisy highlights in the lips, which it did perfectly.

    The last tip suggested swapping the surface properties on the lips from another part of the face. This was a great tip and produced a very noticeable result, mostly eliminating the distracting noisiness from the lips, so thank you to @DarwinsMishap for that.

    I’ve posted the new WIP image, including postwork as previously, from this render. An additional change includes placement of a leaf in the bottom left corner to bring down the brightness in that area and help keep the eye from wandering out of the frame.

    Black and White portrait of Woodland Elf

    Great progress on this! It is looking nice!

  • yhzmurphyyhzmurphy Posts: 434
    edited January 2017

    Well, I went back to the outside view, and fixed a few things, some minor tweaks, swapped the uncarved block for the ship (like I had done in the other view).  I also spent waaay too much time creating my own sailing ship to put in a bottle.   Now to crawl back inside the bottle...

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    Post edited by yhzmurphy on
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