Carrara Challenge #36 - Pinups and Cheesecake and Hunks - Oh My! - WIP Thread --Meet Ringo Monfort!

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  • JonstarkJonstark Posts: 2,738

    And more screenshots (detailed explanations will be edited in when I have the chance...)

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  • JonstarkJonstark Posts: 2,738

    And some more...

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  • JonstarkJonstark Posts: 2,738

    And more...

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  • JonstarkJonstark Posts: 2,738

    Last little bit..

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  • JonstarkJonstark Posts: 2,738

    Real life intrudes at the moment, so I'll have to come back to this to give full explanation for my zany choices. :)

  • TangoAlphaTangoAlpha Posts: 4,584

    I get to visit those warbirds when I go to EAA Fly-In in Oshkosh, just a couple hours from my house. I was really bummed to miss it this year - the Blue Angels were there. I love those guys. Last time I went, a couple years ago, I spoke to a pilot/owner of a war jet, which he flies in each year. Beautifully kept up, the jet costs him thousands of dollars in fuel just to make it to the show. Then, when he fires of the after-burners during his flight show, there goes another sevral hundred dollars! He says it's all worth it though!

    I love getting the chance to talk with some of these veterans at these shows. Stand around by a B52 and you'll run into some who've actually been up in one during the war. Amazing craft, they are. Seems so surreal to actually peer inside.

    Being an aviation nut, I've wanted to go to Oshkosh for literally decades. But it's so far away & so expensive & everywhere's booked up over a year in advance (& my camping days are far behind me!) & . . . maybe one year!

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,332
    Jonstark said:

    Now the flood of screenshots of the settings

    She's gorgeous!

    If I might add a bit... I see that you're using a Normal Map in the Bump channel. I also notice in the nice head shot render that her skin seems (to me) to be a bit too smooth. I don't mean abrasions... it's cool to have a super model without those... but all skin has texture.

    Some of the really good Normal Maps work best if the bump is turned to 100%, but no higher. But that can also be reduced to taste. Some Normal Maps aren't made in the original fashion of using ultra-high resolution modeling to create "real" geometry in the Normal Map - but rather some other means of estimating  a proper Normal Map, which is fine, but might not adhere to what I've just said above - so some testing might be necessary.

    Either way, I think 5% bump intensity isn't giving that Normal Map enough oomf to do its thing, is all.

    I really like your character. She looks an awful lot like the hotty that you made V4 into before. Gorgeous!

    I also love how you're putting in all of this time and effort to get your shaders "just right". That's an excellent practice, and you'll see that, by doing so, it's going to help you with all shaders, no matter what material you're trying to convey.

    Rock On, jonstark! And Bravo!

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,332

    I get to visit those warbirds when I go to EAA Fly-In in Oshkosh, just a couple hours from my house. I was really bummed to miss it this year - the Blue Angels were there. I love those guys. Last time I went, a couple years ago, I spoke to a pilot/owner of a war jet, which he flies in each year. Beautifully kept up, the jet costs him thousands of dollars in fuel just to make it to the show. Then, when he fires of the after-burners during his flight show, there goes another sevral hundred dollars! He says it's all worth it though!

    I love getting the chance to talk with some of these veterans at these shows. Stand around by a B52 and you'll run into some who've actually been up in one during the war. Amazing craft, they are. Seems so surreal to actually peer inside.

    Being an aviation nut, I've wanted to go to Oshkosh for literally decades. But it's so far away & so expensive & everywhere's booked up over a year in advance (& my camping days are far behind me!) & . . . maybe one year!

    If the time ever comes, you could always crash at my house! yes

  • MistaraMistara Posts: 38,675
    edited October 2017

    OK, a "Timing is Everything" announcement.

    There are no "specific" Carrara requirements (such as lighting, modeling, or hair) in this Challenge, but I propose adding one.

    This Challenge started on last Friday, the 13th of October.  On the following Monday, Philemo released the G'MIC pluging for Carrara, free for everyone.

    To encourage exploration of the new plugin, I'd like to add the following requirement in Carrara Challenge #36 - if you enter all three render categories (PR, NPR, and Halloween), at least one of your renders must include the use of the G'MIC plugin.  It can be used anywhere in the process, and not necessarily the final render.

    If you enter less than three categories, this requirement does not apply to you (unless you simply want to have fun exploring).

    Thank you Philemo, for your outstanding work!

    If this additional requirement causes anyone difficulty, please PM me.

    I will add this requirement to the rules at the top, and remind you of the rule periodically in the current thread.

     

    seems like would fall under npr though?

    would our mac user friends can use plugin?

    Post edited by Mistara on
  • UnifiedBrainUnifiedBrain Posts: 3,588
    Mistara said:

    OK, a "Timing is Everything" announcement.

    There are no "specific" Carrara requirements (such as lighting, modeling, or hair) in this Challenge, but I propose adding one.

    This Challenge started on last Friday, the 13th of October.  On the following Monday, Philemo released the G'MIC pluging for Carrara, free for everyone.

    To encourage exploration of the new plugin, I'd like to add the following requirement in Carrara Challenge #36 - if you enter all three render categories (PR, NPR, and Halloween), at least one of your renders must include the use of the G'MIC plugin.  It can be used anywhere in the process, and not necessarily the final render.

    If you enter less than three categories, this requirement does not apply to you (unless you simply want to have fun exploring).

    Thank you Philemo, for your outstanding work!

    If this additional requirement causes anyone difficulty, please PM me.

    I will add this requirement to the rules at the top, and remind you of the rule periodically in the current thread.

     

    seems like would fall under npr though?

    Maybe, maybe not.  Could be either PR or NPR.  You might use G'MIC for just part of the scene.

    Mistara said:

    would our mac user friends can use plugin?

    A reasonable point.  But the requirement is aimed more at the multi-render artists here, who seem to not be phased by anything.  Do we have any Mac users who will enter a render in all 3 categories?  If so, I am willing to make an exception.  I did ask that if anyone was having difficulty wiith this requirement to please PM me.

    My intent was to find a way to integrate a Challenge requirement that would honor Philemo's work, yet also be fair.  If others object to the idea, I will certainly reconsider.

     

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,969
    Mistara said:

    OK, a "Timing is Everything" announcement.

    There are no "specific" Carrara requirements (such as lighting, modeling, or hair) in this Challenge, but I propose adding one.

    This Challenge started on last Friday, the 13th of October.  On the following Monday, Philemo released the G'MIC pluging for Carrara, free for everyone.

    To encourage exploration of the new plugin, I'd like to add the following requirement in Carrara Challenge #36 - if you enter all three render categories (PR, NPR, and Halloween), at least one of your renders must include the use of the G'MIC plugin.  It can be used anywhere in the process, and not necessarily the final render.

    If you enter less than three categories, this requirement does not apply to you (unless you simply want to have fun exploring).

    Thank you Philemo, for your outstanding work!

    If this additional requirement causes anyone difficulty, please PM me.

    I will add this requirement to the rules at the top, and remind you of the rule periodically in the current thread.

     

    seems like would fall under npr though?

    Maybe, maybe not.  Could be either PR or NPR.  You might use G'MIC for just part of the scene.

    Mistara said:

    would our mac user friends can use plugin?

    A reasonable point.  But the requirement is aimed more at the multi-render artists here, who seem to not be phased by anything.  Do we have any Mac users who will enter a render in all 3 categories?  If so, I am willing to make an exception.  I did ask that if anyone was having difficulty wiith this requirement to please PM me.

    My intent was to find a way to integrate a Challenge requirement that would honor Philemo's work, yet also be fair.  If others object to the idea, I will certainly reconsider.

     

    oh its a great way to get people to explore the new plugin - thumbs up :)

     

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,969
    Jonstark said:

    Not really working on my scenes yet, but instead have been rendering tons of bald vickies to nail down a skin shader that might be up to the challenge.  Got something I'm happy with; I don't claim it's the best ever (in fact I know it isn't) but it's the best that I can do (so far) and maybe through the course of this challenge I'll learn some more tricks to get even better.  BTW, almost none of this shader is my own innovation, instead it's various tips I've learned from the Carrara skin masters (Ringo, PhilW, Magremoto, DimensionTheory, Indigone, Stringtheory etc etc), which I've pieced together.  It's fairly complex so I apologize for all the screenshots but I wanted to be as precise in sharing as I could, both to help others and also to solicit opinions on improvements.

    My theory was that a really good skin shader should work well in all types of lighting, and so I tested this one out in a lot of different lighting circumstances, though it was mostly developed using PhilW's portrait studio.  Once it looked like I wanted there, I took it out into some Tim Payne and DimensionTheory Skydome and lightdome scenes, as well as some of the Carrara presets for GI and other light rigs, and even some GI inside of a Cube with 1 to 3 lights.  Here's some of the test shots, and I'll follow that with the screen captures of the various shader settings.

     

    I like them all - you've got the job on the daz r and d  team for Carrara :)

     

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,969

    thank you all, I mainly focused on lighting at first to simulate soft light bounces into a room, the background is only an image; the model is Maria by digital touch that comes with a bunch of beautiful maps, applied on G3F (correct, Vyusur); in the following wip I have increased the global illumination and acted on maps to enhance shininess via the curve filter, without pushing too much on the bump channel and give a likely result at a distance; actually I'm not satisfied with transparency,(maybe arms should be more "permeable" to light), and eyes bulbs, working on that smiley normalization in post

    @ Jonstark: as for the skin you are completely right, waiting for your tests; very often I use to scale down the scene by 10 because translucency and transparency work betterwink

    very nice contributions here showing carrara enormous potential laughyes

    most of that skin looks real surprise

     

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,969
    wgdjohn said:

    WoW!... you folks have been busy.  Very great renders and ideas... keep it coming.

    I've taken the approach of pinups on planes... well sorta... what if this were in the future??  The people/cyborgs of the future might have a somewhat different view of pinups for their space ships.

    Below is what I've come up with so far... it's taken me way to long and I still have a few things to work on like the shader for the ship... it looks rather rough... it doesn't in any of the promos.  Perhaps I may have camera too close.

    Oh... products are Starship Cyclone by petipet, Arcadia Rising by midnight_storiesOmri Hair for Genesis 2 Female(s) by AprilYSH  and StarBright by DCG.

     

    great to see thinking outside the box !!

     

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,969
    PhilW said:

    John - that's looking good!

    Here is my almost finished version - improved texturing on the main body and added the pin-up plus wording and a few bomb indicators that they used to show how many raids this plane had taken part in.  I might change the angle a little, plus there is some postwork to be done - a bit of dirtying up, and it looks like the UV mapping goes slightly astray on the fuselage and it might be easier to fix in post than with the model (if that is allowable).

    terrific piece PhilW pity to have her so far down the fuselage ,

     

  • JonstarkJonstark Posts: 2,738
    edited October 2017
    Jonstark said:

     

    Some of the really good Normal Maps work best if the bump is turned to 100%, but no higher. But that can also be reduced to taste. Some Normal Maps aren't made in the original fashion of using ultra-high resolution modeling to create "real" geometry in the Normal Map - but rather some other means of estimating  a proper Normal Map, which is fine, but might not adhere to what I've just said above - so some testing might be necessary.

    Either way, I think 5% bump intensity isn't giving that Normal Map enough oomf to do its thing, is all.

     

    Thanks Dart, I was going to say that I had already tried turning the bump up to 100% and it didn't look right, but your tip made me reconsider if I might have made an elementary mistake.  Turning the bump up looked great for extreme closeups of the face (though the neck looked too crater-y so it might be too much there) but any kind of distance shot it seemed to kill off most of the specular effect and just made her look 'fuzzy'.  I automatically assumed that this meant cranking up the bump amplitude was the wrong choice, but your thought made me decide to attack the problem from another angle.  What if the bump being cranked up isn't the problem, but rather that the highlight needs to also be cranked up as well to match?  So now I'll have to do some test rendering and see where that takes me...  :)    Here's head and body renders with bump at 100% and highlights about 24% to compensate. My gut instinct is that it's probably too much bump (especially on the neck in the head shot), but it does seem to bear out the idea of hiking up the highlight level at the same time as the bump will help keep the specular effect intact while also giving skin roughness.

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  • VyusurVyusur Posts: 2,235
    edited October 2017

    I would be happy to use GMIC effects in one of my artworks, but it doesn't work on my windows computer. Attached is print-screens.

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  • Bunyip02Bunyip02 Posts: 8,440
    edited October 2017
    Vyusur said:

    I would be happy to use GMIC effects in one of my artworks, but it doesn't work on my windows computer. Attached is print-screens.

    Hello Vyusur, I find that sometimes I have to hit the Render button 3 or 4 times for it to work, and then sometimes I have to go to the Render room and do a render from there to see the effect.

     

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  • VyusurVyusur Posts: 2,235

    Many thanks, Bunyip!!! I will try again.

  • Bunyip02Bunyip02 Posts: 8,440

    wgdjohn - very nice

    PhilW - Cupcake is looking great - hope you get that UV mapping sorted

    Diomede - caveman painter looks very interesting

    Jonstark - skin looks fabulous to me

  • VyusurVyusur Posts: 2,235
    edited October 2017

    Bunyip, thank you once again! Now it works.

    BTW, your dino rocks!

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  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,332
    Jonstark said:
    Jonstark said:

     

    Some of the really good Normal Maps work best if the bump is turned to 100%, but no higher. But that can also be reduced to taste. Some Normal Maps aren't made in the original fashion of using ultra-high resolution modeling to create "real" geometry in the Normal Map - but rather some other means of estimating  a proper Normal Map, which is fine, but might not adhere to what I've just said above - so some testing might be necessary.

    Either way, I think 5% bump intensity isn't giving that Normal Map enough oomf to do its thing, is all.

     

    Thanks Dart, I was going to say that I had already tried turning the bump up to 100% and it didn't look right, but your tip made me reconsider if I might have made an elementary mistake.  Turning the bump up looked great for extreme closeups of the face (though the neck looked too crater-y so it might be too much there) but any kind of distance shot it seemed to kill off most of the specular effect and just made her look 'fuzzy'.  I automatically assumed that this meant cranking up the bump amplitude was the wrong choice, but your thought made me decide to attack the problem from another angle.  What if the bump being cranked up isn't the problem, but rather that the highlight needs to also be cranked up as well to match?  So now I'll have to do some test rendering and see where that takes me...  :)    Here's head and body renders with bump at 100% and highlights about 24% to compensate. My gut instinct is that it's probably too much bump (especially on the neck in the head shot), but it does seem to bear out the idea of hiking up the highlight level at the same time as the bump will help keep the specular effect intact while also giving skin roughness.

    Nice. Keep in mind that I was only giving constructive crit, but I really like it now - but you should be the ultimate judge.

    But on that note, if bump/normal makes things look funny at a slight distance we might have to increase the pixel resolution. My standard default rendering (for speed) was always Object Accuracy = 2, but if I use enough bump or normal to get a closeup to work, I'd have to crank it up to 1 or even 0.5 to get the fuzziness to go away.

    Man, she's looking great!

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,332
    Vyusur said:

    Bunyip, thank you once again! Now it works.

    BTW, your dino rocks!

    Awesome!

    ...and, yeah - Bunyip, your Dino Rocks!

  • PhilWPhilW Posts: 5,145
    head wax said:
    PhilW said:

    John - that's looking good!

    Here is my almost finished version - improved texturing on the main body and added the pin-up plus wording and a few bomb indicators that they used to show how many raids this plane had taken part in.  I might change the angle a little, plus there is some postwork to be done - a bit of dirtying up, and it looks like the UV mapping goes slightly astray on the fuselage and it might be easier to fix in post than with the model (if that is allowable).

    terrific piece PhilW pity to have her so far down the fuselage ,

     

    Yeah, having seen the Memphis Belle image that was posted by UB, I might look at repositioning her!

  • magaremotomagaremoto Posts: 1,227

    almost done, no work or school uniforms in my archives, sorry; the most difficult (yet funny) part is the tweaking of the lighting as if in an interior

    a bit of gamma and saturation in post

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  • VyusurVyusur Posts: 2,235

    Very airy and beautiful picture, Magaremoto!

  • VyusurVyusur Posts: 2,235

    Dart, thank you!

  • UnifiedBrainUnifiedBrain Posts: 3,588

    Jonstark - terrific looking skin!  Hope that you and/or Magaremoto consider making a video tutorial.  I am still somewhat lost.

    Bunyip, very cool pencil filter of the Dino!  Thanks for posting that screenshot.

    Vyusur, so glad you figured it out.  Sometimes GMIC is a little glitchy.  Nice render! 

    Magaremoto - gorgeous room light!  The skin washed out a little, but it still looks great.

    Dart and HW - still eager to see what you come up with!

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,332
    Vyusur said:

    Very airy and beautiful picture, Magaremoto!

    +1 yes

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,332
    Vyusur said:

    Dart, thank you!

    My pleasure! 

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