@skinklizzard - If I use one much smaller the pommels on the rapier dont' come out. I have decided to up the resolution and see if that makes up the difference.
wow cant believe this month is almost half over already, so here is the start for my entry this month, A "mother/Daughter" pic of my characters Delicate Delussions(frame left), and her daughter, Delema. no post work.
there are some changes that I can make, but I welcome suggestions,advise, comments and crits.
I rotated Dante to show more of his arm tattoo. I hope I managed to make him look like he is looking at the camera.
I have used an Advanced spotlight above his head.
you just needed to tilt his eyes up a bit and a bit to the side. but turning him to show the tattoo lined it up sideways maybe still raising the eyes about 10% on the up-down slider might get them looking at the camera
One way to ensure the eyes are pointing at the camera, select the eye, then move the Up/Down & Side to Side sliders so the normal arrow of the Cartesian origin for the eye is only visible as a point. You're not far off. I would almost suggest to get it spot on, you create a camera with the same properties as the current camera, and change the focal length of it to zoom in to the eyes to get them more accurately angled. That way you avoid risking messing with you main camera properties.
Marjoemartino,
Mother & daughter? Surely they must be sisters? There doesn't seem to be much of an age gap visible to me between the figures in clothing, skin wrinkles or saggy body (just from my own saggy body these things become visible, accelerated by the kid's existence, let alone giving birth to them as a mother). The pose differences certainly indicate a power dynamic between them, with "mum" being the boss. Very good, that. The lighting and accessories indicate a kitchen (?), so the hint of a weapon in "mum"'s hand seems to be trying to tell a story that is not entirely obvious from the image or its current title. A title like "Don't mess with my girl" might help tell that story.
ok which one do you guys like better? the first one has more fuzzing in the background, the second one has the rapiers in better focus, It looks like that's the trade off.
I only see 1 image. But it looks very good.
With DOF there is often a bit of a trade off between what you want and what you can actually get.
Decided to try something in black and white, probs need to work on the lighting but for now I'm pretty happy with
Black & white is a little more complicated than swapping the image type to monochrome. One thing to immediately do is to increase the Contrast.
richardandtracy_e725004c1a's image is brighter... and darker. There's a contrast in B&W photos that you need to emulate.
I also like a bit of emulated soft focus on top, but that's slightly more PS/GIMP work. Not a LOT more, but it's more to think about.
Anyway, here's two seconds of GIMP work on your original just as a demonstration.
(NOT MY ORIGINAL IMAGE!!!)
Thanks to the suggestion, I felt like anything above 30 was a bit to much, but I did add some contrast. Not to sure if it's enough / to much but I do hope it adds something to the image.
I like #6. The shadows and light are stronger. This is the one with the increased contrast?
Decided to try something in black and white, probs need to work on the lighting but for now I'm pretty happy with
Black & white is a little more complicated than swapping the image type to monochrome. One thing to immediately do is to increase the Contrast.
richardandtracy_e725004c1a's image is brighter... and darker. There's a contrast in B&W photos that you need to emulate.
I also like a bit of emulated soft focus on top, but that's slightly more PS/GIMP work. Not a LOT more, but it's more to think about.
Anyway, here's two seconds of GIMP work on your original just as a demonstration.
(NOT MY ORIGINAL IMAGE!!!)
Thanks to the suggestion, I felt like anything above 30 was a bit to much, but I did add some contrast. Not to sure if it's enough / to much but I do hope it adds something to the image.
I like #6. The shadows and light are stronger. This is the one with the increased contrast?
I rotated Dante to show more of his arm tattoo. I hope I managed to make him look like he is looking at the camera.
I have used an Advanced spotlight above his head.
If you tilt his head up slightly ( riase his chin ) I think you will get him looking directly into the camera.
If you want to stick with a single light source I would suggest trying for a Split Lighting Pattern. You can see a camera, figure, light layout in this tutorial.
Version E here just out of IRay. I changed the textures of the right runner's outfit, and moved the first vehicle I had used to try and get some shadows (It was hidden last version, and right behind the center character in the other versions it was in.) just outside of frame stage right with it's taillights eluminated and facing the characters.
I do enjoy the way your images evolve.
My first though was the figure on our left's outfit was too dark but it is relfecting all the light sources. Interesting effect. You have a nice pool of blue light on the ground which is also highlighting your figures and separating them from the shadows in the background.
@Kismet2012 I did not upload the first picture again to save space on the server (I'm an IT person so it matters to me :) ) please look further up in the forum
@Kismet2012 I did not upload the first picture again to save space on the server (I'm an IT person so it matters to me :) ) please look further up in the forum
Mother & daughter? Surely they must be sisters? There doesn't seem to be much of an age gap visible to me between the figures in clothing, skin wrinkles or saggy body (just from my own saggy body these things become visible, accelerated by the kid's existence, let alone giving birth to them as a mother). The pose differences certainly indicate a power dynamic between them, with "mum" being the boss. Very good, that. The lighting and accessories indicate a kitchen (?), so the hint of a weapon in "mum"'s hand seems to be trying to tell a story that is not entirely obvious from the image or its current title. A title like "Don't mess with my girl" might help tell that story.
Yeah I was wondering if that would come up, without background it is an easy thing to think. I myself get that when I'm around my mother in public, especially if my grandmother is with us, though she is 20 years older than me we are often cunfused for brother and sister.
Keeping in mind that they live in a fantasy world, and I am leaving out alot of their story, here is a little--
Delicate Delussions: Age: Unknown, though she has seen the birth,life and death of several mountain ranges, oceans, and deserts in their own time. She is what we would call a "Highlander", for all intents and purposes she is imortal, otherwise she is no different from a normal 20 year old human. As such she has had several families through her lifetime, all of which have grown old and died like normal humans, except for Delema who is the only child Delicate has had to somehow inherit the "Highlander" trait.
Delicate learned early how painfull and dangerous it could be to watch her family grow and age while she stayed the same, so she started "dying" around the time her children reached the age of 10-15. The leaving of Delema's father and siblings was probably the hardest for Delicate due to the fact that Delema could always find her no matter where she went when she left home,(hence the name Delema), at the time no one was aware of Delema's inherating the Highlander trait, which manifested as the ability to sense other Highlanders when she was a little girl, though due to Delicates proximity to her Delema never sensed another until after her mother left, which then confused her ability to find her mom.
Delema: Age: aprox. 30,000(thousand) years old. The only child Delicate ever bore that inherited the Highlander trait from her mother. Can sense other Highlanders regardless of distance,(wich is how she knew her mom was still alive even after her "death" in an attack another clan) though she cannot tell who she senses she only knows where they are and can find her way to them fairly easily-- which taught her some valuable lessons as she searched for her mom. She did not suddenly stop aging like her mother, instead since she inherited the trait she started to "slow" when she reached 16 years old, as a result it took her about 300 years to reach the look of a young 20 year old.
It took Delema almost all of this time to find Delicate due to the fact that she too has had several families of her own. this scene is actually supost to be shortly after their reunion, they are in Delicates curent home, so yes kitchen is right, and yes mom is definatly in charge Delema always looked up to Delicate, now she's proud of the fact that she finally found her.
I'll have to adjust the thumb on Delicates hand it is supost to be sticking out more. "Don't mess with my girl" would probably make a good subtitle for the picture.
sorry for the ramble, and thank you for the feed back.
Hrrumph. There's an older bloke with salt & pepper hair & white mustache always hanging about in my bathroom whenever I'm there, getting between me & my reflection in the mirror. See quite enough of him, so tend not to want to render similar pictures.
Otherwise.. wow. Remarkable. Not sure there is quite enough white in the grey of his hair and would expect some white strands in his eyebrows (well, I have, and I hope I look younger than he does). And as men get older there seem to be the odd rogue eyebrow hairs that get quite long (an opportunity for strand hair maybe?). The side lighting brings out his wrinkles and creases brilliantly.
She looks exactly as you said you wanted her to look. Slightly vulnerable, shy and unused to doing what she's doing. Lighting and pose are good.
Plants and gardening in DS are a problem. The bunches of flowers look a little like the bunches a forgetful bloke buys at the garage for his wife on his way home on mother's day when a colleague reminds him. I can't suggest anything better, but that's a little how it feels. Would the bunches grow discreetly like that in a real garden or would there be various sizes of bushes/bunches pressed against each other, possibly with different colours slightly intermingled? Would real flower colours really be that bright and unsubtle, or is there shading in the petals, with softer pinks, yellows and whites in the pallette? l am just offering some thoughts trying to think of ways that could make a good image better still.
For the most part those actually are bunches of flowers off a single stem for those flowers and look like the ones in my garden I never touch and let them do their thing actually. so those aren't bad. if I had something else I'd change it would actually be to kill a 3rd of them so it looks more realistic. Some flowers bloom at different times. Alas; the things I can't change. I need to buy dead trees and resize them :)
Is it possible to scale the bunches up & down, and maybe tint some of the flower textures in a graphics package to create a couple of custom textures for the scaled bunches? That could be done without spending anything, and would be more like the sort of thing I was suggesting (I'm constitutionally averse to spending anything until I've exhausted all other options, and won't suggest it for anyone else).
I am sure I saw a tree freebie on Renderosity. Might have been called 'The Hanging Tree', which didn't seem to have foliage ,& could be scaled to suit. Not sure if it would work, but it's an idea.
I will look into it. I am warring with Daz right now as my lizardian has no eyes when I render and this is for an obligation I made a friend. So I need to figure that mess out :). but I could possibly alter the base color to make them look more dead.
A threat behind the girl (background blurred). The girl is ready to face it(stand soon). Face is turned almost half. One hand is ready to utilize dagger (it is attached on her waste and more than half portion of dagger already pulled). Face is farm enough. Focused eyes. Light is from front (slightly angle). Currently I don't have enough content to create exact scene similar to my imagination and powerful machine to create the dramatic light, (also not properly learned the light and camera system yet).
Thus my alternative submission. (3delight render, DAZ Studio, No postwork, tried to achieve blurred background but not successful yet.)
@Galaxy: always good to see another girl with a bladed weapon :)I love the pose. it's awesome. My only critique would be: Do you have something you can put behinder her, you can see where the ground meets the back drop, blurring helped, but adding some bushes, boulders, logs, anything like that would help, or even a combination to make it really camoflauge the seam.
A threat behind the girl (background blurred). The girl is ready to face it(stand soon). Face is turned almost half. One hand is ready to utilize dagger (it is attached on her waste and more than half portion of dagger already pulled). Face is farm enough. Focused eyes. Light is from front (slightly angle). Currently I don't have enough content to create exact scene similar to my imagination and powerful machine to create the dramatic light, (also not properly learned the light and camera system yet).
Thus my alternative submission. (3delight render, DAZ Studio, No postwork, tried to achieve blurred background but not successful yet.)
quick comment: the knife is in the wrong position in her hand. rule of thumb the hilt should be perralel to and follow the hands knuckles pretty much anything grasped in the hand follows the knuckles makes setting the angle easier and more natural
Interesting pose, looks like a nice action pose. I have a couple of comments where the usefulness is debatable, just take them as you will.
The lighting of the forest and figure are fairly similar, but not quite close enough to look as if part of the same scene. Would going to the IRay renderer cure this? I don't know, but it might. I agree about the idea of having cover nearby, though a back story of stalking an enemy also works.
On the dagger, you have a hybrid dagger/sword hold. It's a heavy bladed dagger, so you would expect the hilt to be parallel with the knuckles. The way it's being held is similar to the way a light bladed poignard for stabbing would be (like you hold a fencing foil). If that's what you want, the thumb needs to be more along the line of the hilt, and a lighter, longer, bladed dagger would be a little more in keeping with the grip. The light blade is more in keeping with a woman holding the knife, where skill rather than brute strength is needed.
@richardandtracy_e725004c1a - I forgot the eyebrows! I want to change the DOF anyways so I will try to salt and pepper the eyebrows. I'm old and bald so I wish I had gray hair. :(
@sueya - I like the overhead light better. Even though it doesn't give the split light effect as well it really seems to bring out his "I'm sexy and I know it" character better. The shadow on the wall behind him is still a little sharp so maybe try changing the light to a rectangle and playing with it's size could help make him stand out front. The eyes looking at the camera the way they are now is really a powerful bad boy look though.
@Coryllon - I definitely think you improved this sooooo much. The comments about the plants did make me think that if you played with scale on them it would give a more natural feel to them. That said, I love it.
@No Nose - I think this has come down to artistic choices at this point. We can give you advice but this is a really powerful image and I think you have to just consider suggestions and then do it the way you feel it. Very good work.
@marjoemartino - I do still get the feeling they are siblings but, hey whats a few thousand years. LOL. There is some poke through on the jacket but that could be cleaned up with PS or GIMP. I am frankly amazed thet there is no hair poke through. That is my bane. The belt could also be resized to hug the hip just a bit tighter but captivating characters and a great implied story. I have nothing to offer as reards your lighting....perfect.
@dragoneyes002 - Remind me never to get in a knife fight with you. Which leads to...
@Galaxy - I think you might have a really good lighting set up. Set your camera up for some depth of field to get the ground and the background to take seond chair to her alert expression. That really need to be the foreground. You might try paying with Tone Mapping in the render settings and play with the exposure value (might need very small changes) to help the shadows pop and give a more ominous feel. Alternatively, you could bump the crush blacks just a little ( I really mean a little), to create a stronger shadowing to make the whole scene more sinister.
@sisyphus - I am going to have to rethink backgrounds completely. Thank you for an pretty keen example. That's pretty inspired. Do you really think like that...'oh, if i use depth of field that will be great background'. If so, then I hate you and am in awe. I absolutely will steal that idea.
Just got version F out of Iray here. Added an instance of the vehicle that is off camera stage right in the background to try and add some life in this dystopian night.
Comments
@skinklizzard - If I use one much smaller the pommels on the rapier dont' come out. I have decided to up the resolution and see if that makes up the difference.
wow cant believe this month is almost half over already, so here is the start for my entry this month, A "mother/Daughter" pic of my characters Delicate Delussions(frame left), and her daughter, Delema. no post work.
there are some changes that I can make, but I welcome suggestions,advise, comments and crits.
Title: Meet my "little" Delema
1
you just needed to tilt his eyes up a bit and a bit to the side. but turning him to show the tattoo lined it up sideways maybe still raising the eyes about 10% on the up-down slider might get them looking at the camera
Sueya,
One way to ensure the eyes are pointing at the camera, select the eye, then move the Up/Down & Side to Side sliders so the normal arrow of the Cartesian origin for the eye is only visible as a point. You're not far off. I would almost suggest to get it spot on, you create a camera with the same properties as the current camera, and change the focal length of it to zoom in to the eyes to get them more accurately angled. That way you avoid risking messing with you main camera properties.
Marjoemartino,
Mother & daughter? Surely they must be sisters? There doesn't seem to be much of an age gap visible to me between the figures in clothing, skin wrinkles or saggy body (just from my own saggy body these things become visible, accelerated by the kid's existence, let alone giving birth to them as a mother). The pose differences certainly indicate a power dynamic between them, with "mum" being the boss. Very good, that. The lighting and accessories indicate a kitchen (?), so the hint of a weapon in "mum"'s hand seems to be trying to tell a story that is not entirely obvious from the image or its current title. A title like "Don't mess with my girl" might help tell that story.
Regards,
Richard.
I only see 1 image. But it looks very good.
With DOF there is often a bit of a trade off between what you want and what you can actually get.
I like #6. The shadows and light are stronger. This is the one with the increased contrast?
yeah, it's a bit stronger then 5
If you tilt his head up slightly ( riase his chin ) I think you will get him looking directly into the camera.
If you want to stick with a single light source I would suggest trying for a Split Lighting Pattern. You can see a camera, figure, light layout in this tutorial.
I do enjoy the way your images evolve.
My first though was the figure on our left's outfit was too dark but it is relfecting all the light sources. Interesting effect. You have a nice pool of blue light on the ground which is also highlighting your figures and separating them from the shadows in the background.
@Kismet2012 I did not upload the first picture again to save space on the server (I'm an IT person so it matters to me :) ) please look further up in the forum
Fair enough.
Thank you for the clarification.
ok, final version. I think...
Yeah I was wondering if that would come up, without background it is an easy thing to think. I myself get that when I'm around my mother in public, especially if my grandmother is with us, though she is 20 years older than me we are often cunfused for brother and sister.
Keeping in mind that they live in a fantasy world, and I am leaving out alot of their story, here is a little--
Delicate Delussions: Age: Unknown, though she has seen the birth,life and death of several mountain ranges, oceans, and deserts in their own time. She is what we would call a "Highlander", for all intents and purposes she is imortal, otherwise she is no different from a normal 20 year old human. As such she has had several families through her lifetime, all of which have grown old and died like normal humans, except for Delema who is the only child Delicate has had to somehow inherit the "Highlander" trait.
Delicate learned early how painfull and dangerous it could be to watch her family grow and age while she stayed the same, so she started "dying" around the time her children reached the age of 10-15. The leaving of Delema's father and siblings was probably the hardest for Delicate due to the fact that Delema could always find her no matter where she went when she left home,(hence the name Delema), at the time no one was aware of Delema's inherating the Highlander trait, which manifested as the ability to sense other Highlanders when she was a little girl, though due to Delicates proximity to her Delema never sensed another until after her mother left, which then confused her ability to find her mom.
Delema: Age: aprox. 30,000(thousand) years old. The only child Delicate ever bore that inherited the Highlander trait from her mother. Can sense other Highlanders regardless of distance,(wich is how she knew her mom was still alive even after her "death" in an attack another clan) though she cannot tell who she senses she only knows where they are and can find her way to them fairly easily-- which taught her some valuable lessons as she searched for her mom. She did not suddenly stop aging like her mother, instead since she inherited the trait she started to "slow" when she reached 16 years old, as a result it took her about 300 years to reach the look of a young 20 year old.
It took Delema almost all of this time to find Delicate due to the fact that she too has had several families of her own. this scene is actually supost to be shortly after their reunion, they are in Delicates curent home, so yes kitchen is right, and yes mom is definatly in charge Delema always looked up to Delicate, now she's proud of the fact that she finally found her.
I'll have to adjust the thumb on Delicates hand it is supost to be sticking out more. "Don't mess with my girl" would probably make a good subtitle for the picture.
sorry for the ramble, and thank you for the feed back.
Marjoe
The first challenge I entered here was 'Raining Men'
We have so many amazing female shapes and skins and so few male one's with character I really wanted to do a male as well. So, second entry...
Weary
Hrrumph. There's an older bloke with salt & pepper hair & white mustache always hanging about in my bathroom whenever I'm there, getting between me & my reflection in the mirror. See quite enough of him, so tend not to want to render similar pictures.
Otherwise.. wow. Remarkable. Not sure there is quite enough white in the grey of his hair and would expect some white strands in his eyebrows (well, I have, and I hope I look younger than he does). And as men get older there seem to be the odd rogue eyebrow hairs that get quite long (an opportunity for strand hair maybe?). The side lighting brings out his wrinkles and creases brilliantly.
Regards,
Richard.
Coryllon,
She looks exactly as you said you wanted her to look. Slightly vulnerable, shy and unused to doing what she's doing. Lighting and pose are good.
Plants and gardening in DS are a problem. The bunches of flowers look a little like the bunches a forgetful bloke buys at the garage for his wife on his way home on mother's day when a colleague reminds him. I can't suggest anything better, but that's a little how it feels. Would the bunches grow discreetly like that in a real garden or would there be various sizes of bushes/bunches pressed against each other, possibly with different colours slightly intermingled? Would real flower colours really be that bright and unsubtle, or is there shading in the petals, with softer pinks, yellows and whites in the pallette? l am just offering some thoughts trying to think of ways that could make a good image better still.
Regards,
Richard.
For the most part those actually are bunches of flowers off a single stem for those flowers and look like the ones in my garden I never touch and let them do their thing actually. so those aren't bad. if I had something else I'd change it would actually be to kill a 3rd of them so it looks more realistic. Some flowers bloom at different times. Alas; the things I can't change. I need to buy dead trees and resize them :)
Is it possible to scale the bunches up & down, and maybe tint some of the flower textures in a graphics package to create a couple of custom textures for the scaled bunches? That could be done without spending anything, and would be more like the sort of thing I was suggesting (I'm constitutionally averse to spending anything until I've exhausted all other options, and won't suggest it for anyone else).
I am sure I saw a tree freebie on Renderosity. Might have been called 'The Hanging Tree', which didn't seem to have foliage ,& could be scaled to suit. Not sure if it would work, but it's an idea.
Regards,
Richard.
I will look into it. I am warring with Daz right now as my lizardian has no eyes when I render and this is for an obligation I made a friend. So I need to figure that mess out :). but I could possibly alter the base color to make them look more dead.
I found a script which points the eyes at the camera
I have made two versions- one with a side light (left) and one with an overhead light.
The side lighting makes the figure seem much more 3 dimensional, and a great deal more interesting.
Regards,
Richard.
A threat behind the girl (background blurred). The girl is ready to face it(stand soon). Face is turned almost half. One hand is ready to utilize dagger (it is attached on her waste and more than half portion of dagger already pulled). Face is farm enough. Focused eyes. Light is from front (slightly angle). Currently I don't have enough content to create exact scene similar to my imagination and powerful machine to create the dramatic light, (also not properly learned the light and camera system yet).
Thus my alternative submission. (3delight render, DAZ Studio, No postwork, tried to achieve blurred background but not successful yet.)
@Galaxy: always good to see another girl with a bladed weapon :)I love the pose. it's awesome. My only critique would be: Do you have something you can put behinder her, you can see where the ground meets the back drop, blurring helped, but adding some bushes, boulders, logs, anything like that would help, or even a combination to make it really camoflauge the seam.
quick comment: the knife is in the wrong position in her hand. rule of thumb the hilt should be perralel to and follow the hands knuckles pretty much anything grasped in the hand follows the knuckles makes setting the angle easier and more natural
much better!!! I personally prefer the side lit one but thats subjective
Galaxy,
Interesting pose, looks like a nice action pose. I have a couple of comments where the usefulness is debatable, just take them as you will.
The lighting of the forest and figure are fairly similar, but not quite close enough to look as if part of the same scene. Would going to the IRay renderer cure this? I don't know, but it might. I agree about the idea of having cover nearby, though a back story of stalking an enemy also works.
On the dagger, you have a hybrid dagger/sword hold. It's a heavy bladed dagger, so you would expect the hilt to be parallel with the knuckles. The way it's being held is similar to the way a light bladed poignard for stabbing would be (like you hold a fencing foil). If that's what you want, the thumb needs to be more along the line of the hilt, and a lighter, longer, bladed dagger would be a little more in keeping with the grip. The light blade is more in keeping with a woman holding the knife, where skill rather than brute strength is needed.
Like it though.
Regards,
Richard.
Playing Catch up...
@richardandtracy_e725004c1a - I forgot the eyebrows! I want to change the DOF anyways so I will try to salt and pepper the eyebrows. I'm old and bald so I wish I had gray hair. :(
@sueya - I like the overhead light better. Even though it doesn't give the split light effect as well it really seems to bring out his "I'm sexy and I know it" character better. The shadow on the wall behind him is still a little sharp so maybe try changing the light to a rectangle and playing with it's size could help make him stand out front. The eyes looking at the camera the way they are now is really a powerful bad boy look though.
@Coryllon - I definitely think you improved this sooooo much. The comments about the plants did make me think that if you played with scale on them it would give a more natural feel to them. That said, I love it.
@No Nose - I think this has come down to artistic choices at this point. We can give you advice but this is a really powerful image and I think you have to just consider suggestions and then do it the way you feel it. Very good work.
@marjoemartino - I do still get the feeling they are siblings but, hey whats a few thousand years. LOL. There is some poke through on the jacket but that could be cleaned up with PS or GIMP. I am frankly amazed thet there is no hair poke through. That is my bane. The belt could also be resized to hug the hip just a bit tighter but captivating characters and a great implied story. I have nothing to offer as reards your lighting....perfect.
@dragoneyes002 - Remind me never to get in a knife fight with you. Which leads to...
@Galaxy - I think you might have a really good lighting set up. Set your camera up for some depth of field to get the ground and the background to take seond chair to her alert expression. That really need to be the foreground. You might try paying with Tone Mapping in the render settings and play with the exposure value (might need very small changes) to help the shadows pop and give a more ominous feel. Alternatively, you could bump the crush blacks just a little ( I really mean a little), to create a stronger shadowing to make the whole scene more sinister.
@sisyphus - I am going to have to rethink backgrounds completely. Thank you for an pretty keen example. That's pretty inspired. Do you really think like that...'oh, if i use depth of field that will be great background'. If so, then I hate you and am in awe. I absolutely will steal that idea.
I's almost 2 AM...I'm going to bed
Just got version F out of Iray here. Added an instance of the vehicle that is off camera stage right in the background to try and add some life in this dystopian night.
looking at the stars.