How to make an aura type glow around a character
dragotx
Posts: 1,134
I'm working on making a Paladin for one of the Old Gods from Lovecraft's universe, but I would really like to be able to make a black aura around her that looks like it's writing around and moving. But I have absolutely NO idea where to even start with something like that. Does anyone have any ideas?
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Mmm... Render a regular light aura and then reverse that in Photoshop?
This doesn't do it?
https://www.daz3d.com/sy-marvelous-magic-iray-for-genesis-3-and-8
Shader for the Skin
https://www.daz3d.com/hot-metal-shaders
Internal glow. You could Edit | Duplicate the figure, scale it large and add this shader to the whole guy and opacity to make an effect filled clone.
And this is pure lava
https://www.daz3d.com/iray-fire-royalty-for-genesis-3-female-and-male
The Ascension one from SY Marvelous Magic is close to what I'm looking for, but much stronger. I put that set in my cart even before I started thinking about his new pic, I may try it and see how it works for this project. The shader sets are not the look I'm going for, I want the aura to be separate from the body. Essentially I'm going for this look, only much more evil looking:
Hmm, possibly, how would one go about rendering a regular light aura though? None of hte props I have (that I can think of anyway) give the look I'm going for
If you are aiming for a non-moving image, I'd suggest Ron's brushes (after seeing your example)...
As for the props, render one version in connection with the character, and one stand alone, then put both renders together as a layer in PS or gimp, and play around with the layer merging settings. But I keep thinking that brushes are still your best bet.
I have no clue, and have never done it. But if I had to I'd go about it something like this:
Since it's an aura, it implies powerful stuff. Something's emitting light and affecting everything around it. Otherwise it's not really an aura I suppose, it's just color.
So I'd first think about using emissive surfaces to actually emit light in your scene. And I suppose you also need some type of rays emitting from the surface to give it more power. So then I'd take it into something like Nuke or other post processing software and use a "god rays" function. It's really fast and generates cool rays. And I think you can even use canvases as an input so it knows where the scene objects are, and can alter the rays based on where the objects are. And I think you can even animate them.
Damn, I really can't think of any good ways to do it other than post. Geoshell might work, but I think it will be really tough to get the shader too look right.
That's what I was afraid of, but kinda what I expected. I've got several of Ron's brushes, but I haven't spent the time yet to learn how to use them. Guess I know what I'm doing tonight.
I love the light ray idea, and will definitely be playing with it some when I make a heroic paladin, but for this particular use I don't want the aura emanating any light at all. You're absolutely right about the power it represents, but this character is going to be about as close to pure evil as you can get, her aura is going to be more of a total vacuum, devourer of worlds kinda thing, so I don't see it as having any light escaping from it.
I'll keep the geoshells in mind, but I think I'm going to try for using some of Ron's brushes for now. They're something I've been meaning to learn anyway, now's as good a time as any
It would require post, at least in Iray. I'd render the scene with a geoshell projecting the light, then render just the figure (using canvases) then bring it in to image editior of choice, airbrush the aura on a layer between the character and the background, and composite it all together.
In 3DL, I'd use pwGhost or pwEffect on the Geoshell. Probably the ghost effect. Or two of them, one with the pwEffect and one with the AreaLight shader
Postwork with brushes is honestly one of the best bets for this sort of thing.
But this is how you do it in Iray:
Set up your scene, using a normal emissive aura.
Turn off the emissive and render the scene using only environment lighting.
Turn off the environment and render the scene using only emissive lighting.
Take the two renders into your image editor. Stack the emissive render on top the environment render. Invert the emissive render and set it to multiply.
And there you have it, light that eats light. In a physically correct manner.
You can also desaturate after inverting if the inverted color effect is too trippy.
Use bloom effect on the emissive render if you want glare effect.
I used SickleYield's God Rays tutorials, a flattened cycliner, and BOSS Studio Lights to try & put a halo/aura around Mother Mary but my results were just so-so.
you actually could use LAMH converted to geometry and an emissive shader added too
it could even be flattened on the Z axis and set behind the figure
the other obvious way is to use two figures one bigger with cutout opacity and emission set behind the other again flattened
In my opinion at this time DAZ Studio is very limited for effects. Your best friend will be GIMP or Photoshop. Or you can get "sprite props" in the shop as suggested above.
As for me, I just imagine the evil character stepping around surrounded by black fog following her movements. You may like this Blender demo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmBxaFgawLI
EDIT. And this is to export DAZ assets to Blender
http://diffeomorphic.blogspot.it/
Wow, Padone, thanks much for the heads up on the diffeomorphic addon to export DAZ to Blender !!! I just tried it and it amazingly does a great job on bringing materials over and making a very nice node structure in Blender. Although there are some errors, for example I had a simple metal surface in Studio that was converted into a color node feeding normal info into the diffuse, glossy, and fresnel nodes in Blender.
So it takes a lot of tweaking.
But apparently the latest development version uses the Principled shader, which will make things much simpler. I haven't tried it because some of the blog comments indicate a lot of issues.
Yes, the dev version is more "feature rich". This is the equivalent of the Maya plugin, in my opinion even better. For example you have options to convert hair to Blender dynamics. Also, Thomas is very active and he always replies on Bitbucket given him some time. So if you find any bug you can report it and it will be fixed soon.
Have you tried the dev version? I'm kind of wary....
No, I find myself quite comfortable with the standard fbx/obj exporters. I like to do things myself to have the best control. But I believe this exporter from Thomas is great and may fit anyone looking for a "quick" solution.
Okay, I took the plunge
And it seems to convert to PBR shaders reasonable well, though the G3 skin textures are jacked up, and some of the obj accessories are off in outer space. Though I'm sure part of that is my misunderstanding on the details.
But the big thing is that it applies a PBR node and connects stuff up to it, so tweaking is (I'm hoping) relatively easy.
BTW, Padone, I realize you like control, but you still have it with this solution. It seems to do all or most of the "grunt" work, and once it's in Blender you can now just tweak the nodes the way you want. I've been looking for something like this for a LONG time. Just setting up a Principled Shader for each material is HUGE. Tweaking then becomes just making sure everything is connected up to the right inputs & outputs.
FWIW, it seems like one of the big issues is that when it imports and converts G3 materials it only configures nodes for the bump and normals, but often not the base color (diffuse, glossy, etc.). But it brings the texture images in. So all you have to do is add an Image Texture node in Blender, select the color texture image, and hook it up to the Base Color of the Principled shader. Looks like some of the other settings need some tweaking too, but that gets you 80% of the way there.
This is awesome.
I'm glad it helps. As for me, I mainly have to get the character ready for animation so it's not just a matter of exporting. There are geometries and materials to be optimized as well as the rig itself. DAZ assets are great but when it comes to resources optimization there's much to be done.
Below the basic G2F I got in Blender in my first tests some time ago. She is ready to be loaded in multiple scenes as a referenced asset. So if I update the character all the scenes gets updated too. Also the rig is simple yet powerful with ik handles for hands and feet and drivers for basic expressions.
Anyway of course I agree that this exporter from Thomas is awesome. That's why I'm advising it. It just doesn't always fit my way of working.
Okay, I did a quick attempt in a post production software to make an aura. The nice thing is that you can change it in real time, without waiting for a render. You can change just about everything, the length of the rays, the position of the "source", the blur of the rays, the intensity, and on and on. And notice it can pull from the colors of the character to color the rays, like the aura is actually generated by the character. And you can even blur the streaks, all in real time as you move the mouse. Pretty cool.
BTW, don't be hatin' on her heels...
I've been using the aura effect a fair bit lately, it's really a hidden gem to have in the aresenal. Here's a few examples, with a short explanation on how to enable and use the effect to follow....
Aura on the Christmas tree lights (though the effect is low intensity and very small) and absolutely crucial to the creature in the fireplace:
Aura effect on the avenging angel:
Aura on both the treasure and especially on the Dracolich:
This effect is actually super easy to do in Carrara, on any object that has any percentage of glow in the shader (however if you don't have a glow channel you will need to add one, of at least 1% or aura will do nothing and have no effect). Simply select the object you want to have emanating an aura then choose the effects tab, check 'aura':
You can click on 'Edit' to change the intensity, radius, falloff, color etc of the aura effect, and it will give a little pop up window with a quick preview to show you what the aura looks like:
You can also do render passes specifically to separate out the aura by itself, which makes it very easy to use as a layer to combine with other renders in Gimp or PS to edit the effect. For example if I want to have the coolness of the aura effect in a PBR render like Octane, simply do a render pass just for the aura and then combine it with my Octane render:
As you can see by the aura passes, the aura effect can be 'blocked' by objects that are in between whatever is emanating the aura and the camera.
Oh wait, I just realized you wanted an aura effect that moves and writhes around your character. Now that I think about it I've done animations similar, here's one lit entirely by the glow of particles and the aura of the object particles:
You might want to try Sickleyield's Fast Flames. They are essentially billboard flames that can be placed as needed. I used them to create these flaming skulls and the flame in her hand...no postwork.
yes in Carrara it is easy and iClone 7 has popcorn FX
in DAZ studio there is potential for some enterprising PA to create an aura conformable or effect
My only issue with flames presets is there generally isn't any smoke to go with them, and where there's smoke there's fire. And vice versa.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sALEiZkCbAU
I love me some Blender fire and smoke....
I just need to add particles for the flying embers.
It is much easier to make such effects in programs, that support particles, like Unity 3D or iClone 7.
Below are examples rendered in Unity 3D.