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Very cool, all of you!
Magaremoto, does that volumetric fog lighting work quickly for animating and such? Is that what you're going for?
Just curious, is all. I have done some fun experimentation with foliage realism, and Carrara can pull it off quite well if you're willing to wait for those renders. First I'd work the shaders into looking just about right as far as color and detail, then I'd work on translucency. Once I'd get the translucency just right, under the right lighting conditions, I was very impressed with the realism! The problem was, for me, of course, the render times.
that's the point DB, I'm trying to avoid translucency and play with textures; in the example above the color channel has maps multiplied by a factor of 1.x or 2. This method seems to wash a bit cast shadows upon foliage; not as realistic as translucency but it shorten the render time. Another issue I'm facing is an oversaturation of the green hue when enlightened a lot. I'm going on with testings anyway.
As for the cloud dome, I think it is needed for animations as it enhances the sky lighting and it's much faster than an emitting dome in rendering speed. On the other hand if you wanna use clouds in the sky you'll lose their details and get only thin and fading clouds.
Very cool.
So if I'm understanding this correctly, you're using volumetric light from the Carrara volumetric clouds system, right?
I'll have to back up a few pages and check out your setup for that again. Sounds very interesting and looks really nice.
I'm imagining the idea that, since we can set the v-clouds to be affected either by only the sun light, if one is used, or all lights in the scene. This should make for some fun possibilities using a few (or perhaps even one or two) accent lights to apply color in certain directions - in effect, coloring a portion of the atmosphere.
Have you tried playing with light cones from spot lights within this v-cloud light dome? Iam really getting inspired to go back and try a whole bunch of new ideas, and to revisit ideas that I've started to experiment, but haven't pursued fully. With 8.5 accepting Genesis, I've been spending a bit of experiment time with that - but the clothing/hair content availability still isn't caught up enough for my tastes. So just tonight I was perusing Predatron's store again, checking out his stand-alone figures, Morphs and additions for M4, M3, V4, V3... makes me want to just get down and create some cool characters with whichever figure I enjoy animating the most right now - leaving whatever gives me a headache for later, side-line experimentation. It's been forever since I've tried using M3, V3 and that whole range. But I already know that I love animating fourth gen figures and every figure I've ever purchased from Predatron. TheAntFarm also has some cool stand-alone figures I'd like to check out.
Hmmmm... sorry for the extended babble, Remo, but you've got me all inspired now to get my stages set up for their final animation renders, and that might just include that volumetric lighting idea... not sure... have to give it a go. But until DAZ does some more tweaking on the DUF - to - Carrara, I think I might just stick with their older excellence in figures and props. I love the new stuff, but it's really slowing me down. Pred's LoRes figures are really fun and easy to animate. Makes me want to grab the rest of his cool things, like that killer Droid and the leader - Droid Commander! Grab some monsters/creatures from AntFarm... it's really fun going back in the catalog and checking out the stuff from years back. Even stuff that might look corny in the promos... we have Carrara... we can texture these things to have a whole new, super-awesome appearance!
Edit: When I said "even things that might look corny" I was not referring to anything from AntFarm's or Predatron's stores! Their stuff all looks cool! Over the past few months, I haven't had any Carrara time to speak of, but I was sneaking in a purchase here and there... stuff that I haven't had much time to even check out yet, like AntFarm's awesome Rabbit Hole Sci Fi scene, Space Blocks, Pred's LoRes Masked Hero, ect, a whole pile of cool stuff accumulated over a bunch of small buys here and there... looking forward to optimizing them!
Wow... am I still babbling in a thread that should be all pictures? Shame on me! I better get some rendering accomplished! :ahhh:
well, this a comparison with cloud dome off and on: as you can see I've been using a yellow sun color to simulate real world. unfortunately the dome affects only marginally cast shadows but it plays an important role on shaded surfaces. Light cone is an option but you might have unpredictable results. In my scene I also put an omni directional light (bulb) to wash occluded shadows in each direction, but in carrara you have endless possibilities to set up your scenes.
Not trying to be nit-picky or ubernerdy but our sunlight isn't yellow, it's blue. On a Kelvin scale it is "very blue" but in Carrara I tick ambient (or my "fake" GI lights) to be just off-white into a "sky" blue - which is around 52 - 53 on Carrara's color hue picker wheel... I leave the "sun" white and make any "bounce" light have the blue tint, since that is how camera white balance generally works (trying to make the brightest light "white").
These Kelvin color charts need to be taken with a grain of salt - as in, use these as accent tones or bounce light, not your main light source (which should be closer to white). For instance, when I do a scene that is suppose to be lit with candles only, I don't use the candle color on all my bulbs, Instead I use a high "gold" color on the candle bulbs with a short falloff distance, then use the deep red/orange that is the Kelvin equivalent in the bounce light.
This is a link has a good chart based on the David Brin book. For a while I opened Brin's chart in photoshop to copy/paste the actual color from the chart so I would know exactly what color to make my lights, LOL. That is totally not necessary, but it got me on the right path with my color temps...
http://www.3drender.com/glossary/colortemp.htm
In your scene, imho, the yellow cast of your lighting is subconciously working against your scale. We have seen so many photos of real buildings vs photos of models of buildings under artificial lighting that we (subconciously) associate the yellow cast of indoor lighting with a model, and the bluish cast of outdoor sunlight with a real building...
(ok, taking off the nerd glasses now)
I'll nitpick this one! :coolgrin:
The sun is white (visible light) but when diffused through Earth's atmosphere we see blue. The skylight is bluish. Candles and lightbulbs are yellowish / orange.
A great resource (LightWave biased) is at www.cg-masters.com. The LightWave Lighting Instruments training is amazing and it covers the Kelvin temperature scale very well. The trainer uses that almost exclusively.
I'll nitpick this one! :coolgrin:
The sun is white (visible light) but when diffused through Earth's atmosphere we see blue. The skylight is bluish....
I didn't say the SUN was blue, lol.
Hey Holly, I always supposed you were not totally human, pupils too red :-P ; we have limitations in visible spectrum that makes us perceive sunlight not totally white but tending to yellow. Grabbed from Wikipedia: ...The wavelength of visible light in the air goes approximately from 380 to 760 nm [1]; the wavelengths corresponding in other media, such as water, will decrease proportionally to the refractive index. In terms of frequencies, the visible spectrum ranges from 400 to 790 terahertz. The highest average sensitivity of the human eye has probably 560 nm (540 THz) of the electromagnetic spectrum, more or less corresponding to the yellow citrine even though the average surface temperature of the solar photosphere of 5777 Kelvin gives a peak at 400 - 450 nm (blue-cyan, shades of blue) outside the Earth's atmosphere (peak emission wavelength-diagram WASteer) and the average of 510-530 nm on Earth because of atmospheric refraction or in the green citrine.
Anyway I never said the actual sunlight is yellow, a yellow color is needed to make daylight scenes more warm and realistic for my latitude imho.
@ garstor: thank you for the tip, I'll check it out. If I recall right, the blue of the sky is due to the least attenuated wavelenghts passing through the atmosphere or such.
Actually what I'm focusing on is the realism of shadows rather than lit surfaces, if you take control over shadows (and shaders as well) you may succeed with realism, just like best renderers do
If you say so, but in photography (which is my background) this is not a debate, it's just a fact LOL. Daylight is blue, candle light is orange. Everything else is white balance.
I subscribe to the belief that "photoreal" means it looks like a photo - as opposed to trying to be scientifically accurate or make exceptions for the human eye, etc, etc. When people comment on a 3D image looking "real", they typically mean it can be mistaken for a photo.
But obviously this is art. Make yourself happy. :)
Casual observation as a painter: blue sky means that shadows not influenced by local infill reflections will have a blue cast.
Like all colours, the colour of sunlight is relative, as far as the human eye is concerned.
Appearance in our work is more important than reality.
if you want to fake realism I would highly recommend James Gurney's book,
- its for artists, but that's what we are....
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=MvddjqkQy9UC&pg=PA66&lpg=PA66&dq=gurney+reflected+light&source=bl&ots=tqwF_ywgzG&sig=Gq-mOT67yHVUVEYR759cmVJSFL0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=TpSjU9j6KMW58gWSsYCYDw&ved=0CDoQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=gurney reflected light&f=false
An image thats taken a long time to create. One thing I constantly struggle with is creating "the atmosphere" that makes the scene mesmerising. Suggestions and advice are appreciated.
I subscribe Holly,
I think photorealism in carrara is hard to achieve especially if you don't have good materials, we rather can achieve "realism"-better: verisimilitude- just like vue does for example, not much more than this. As it's being said somewhere : It's a dirty job but someone has to do it" and I have fun to do it moreover.
@ Headwax:
"Like all colours, the colour of sunlight is relative, as far as the human eye is concerned.
Appearance in our work is more important than reality..."
well said, brain is very often deceived by eyes
I had a feeling yesterday as I clicked the Submit Post button that I had just set a can down on the kitchen counter. The label read, "Fresh Worms" and I had left it half-opened...
;-)
It was not my intention to rub anyone's fur in the wrong direction.
Hey Scottiedog,
I like the image. That moon is huge, but it does not seem to be throwing much light on the scene. What I would do is put a few spotlights in there and get some rim light on stuff, mainly the two figures. This will bring them out of the scene a bit.
In Carrara lights and shaders work together. It is not easy, I agree. Any "system" is difficult to get a grasp on as one bad decision can be effecting others, so it's hard to know what to change at first - especially if you concentrate on only one aspect. There are no "universal shaders" for Carrara because things look very different under different lights and you may need to tweak shaders for each scene. I also say Carrara is an art tool, not a science tool. You make your own choices... It's definitely a skill, but I disagree that it is impossible. I've had Carrara renders mistaken for photos, but photorealism is not why I stick with Carrara as that's just one "style" of 3D and not my favorite, tbh.
In a renderer like LuxRender where the lights are rather rigid and shaders are supposedly based only real world parameters, it is easier to get "realism", but that's all you get. Carrara is much more flexible, in my opinion. However if you don't have the Luxus plugin, it's not expensive and might give you the results you are looking for with less guesswork.
If you stick with Carrara's renderer, definitely pump up your shader tree with the Veloute and ShaderOps plugins (if you haven't already). They do a lot for Carrara's shader controls.
The scene in itself is enchanting. Lovely concept. The water surface came out nicely and with Stu's suggestion about rim lighting the whole scene would be brought to perfection. :)
Thank You stu. I agree with your observation. This is the kind of feedback I really need to improve my game. To go back and improve aspects of the image.
Another image that took over 200 hours to create. My work is always about the integration of Photography with Art. Octopus, water, moon, mermaid top done in Carrara. Images was done in 8192 x 4320 px resolution.
The beautiful Brazilian model was shot in a swimming pool of a hotel. The water splash on the model is real not photoshopped.
Image created for my portfolio.
Any suggestions and advice is always welcome.
HI Scottidog :)
I think some reflections of the Girl and octopussy arms in the water surface would help,.
easy to do with multilayer Photoshop files.
I don't know if you also use After effects,. but,. Videocopilot have a nice free Mirror plugin, included as part of one of their tutorials.
very handy and easy to use.
excuse the quick grab, but Hopefully you can see the 3D dragons wing is reflected in the river, which is Video
You could also load the moon and star field image into the scenes' backdrop and then use a realistic sky. The stars and moon then would appear "behind" the atmosphere and perhaps add some depth. I think a sense of depth, no matter how it is achieved, is what is really needed.
The concept is beautiful, but at this stage it looks like a bunch of 2-D elements composited together, which it is, but why advertise it?
3DAGE, I agree some reflections would add to realism. I did learn After effects for a month lat year but by now have forgotten it. Once I finish the jobs on hand, I'm planning to just sit in front of my Mac for a solid 2 to 3 months and learn it everyday.
evilproducer, adding some clouds to add depth is a good idea, will definitely do that.
Start of a small weekend project.
I am just replying to this thread to place this on the watch list! I know, 95 pages too late, but hey...
~GO
It's never too late! There's a lot of cool stuff and some great info and tips in those 95 pages! Add some stuff if you wish!
Nice job Ilena52. It's very difficult to get a night scene that doesn't look muddy. I know I have issues with it still. I think you're off to a great start. I do think the figure in the second image needs a bit more emphasis. If there were a way to either expand the highlight from the moonlight (which is acting as a rim light) I think he would stand out more. This may be a case where artistic license and light linking come into play. You could insert a spotlight and have it interact only with your figure, and position it so that is creating a rim light in roughly the same areas on your figure that the moonlight is illuminating- maybe slightly larger. Then all you should need to do is increase the brightness a bit more.
These are just suggestions, so if it's not your cup of tea, then don't sweat it.
Nice job Ilena52. It's very difficult to get a night scene that doesn't look muddy. I know I have issues with it still. I think you're off to a great start. I do think the figure in the second image needs a bit more emphasis. If there were a way to either expand the highlight from the moonlight (which is acting as a rim light) I think he would stand out more. This may be a case where artistic license and light linking come into play. You could insert a spotlight and have it interact only with your figure, and position it so that is creating a rim light in roughly the same areas on your figure that the moonlight is illuminating- maybe slightly larger. Then all you should need to do is increase the brightness a bit more.
These are just suggestions, so if it's not your cup of tea, then don't sweat it.
Don't sweat it? Like I'll come for you with a baseball bat for offering suggestions and a sound ones at that? :)
No, that's the reaction that Dartanbeck, evilproducer and I reserve for each other! :coolgrin:
Seriously, nice work you've got going there. The final result will be amazing.
Isn't it an unspoken rule that we start these threads over again once they reach 100 pages?
Isn't it an unspoken rule that we start these threads over again once they reach 100 pages?
Yes the Mods will always split a thread on the first post on page 101 and that strangely enough is post number 1502, and not post number 1501 as one would think it would be.
The mods do that? I thought that it was by user consensus; I recall starting this thread some time back after the "A New Hope" thread reached page 100. :)