AUGUST New Users Contest WIP Thread

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Comments

  • TeofaTeofa Posts: 823
    edited August 2012

    Ok, I tried it. Still have to fiddle with lights and the little dragon's pose. Edit, I did and replaced the image, this time .jpg

    Title is "Timeout Time". Darn kids, they could poke an eye out. :) And drat, now I see her left fist needs tweaked. grrr

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    Post edited by Teofa on
  • frank0314frank0314 Posts: 13,383
    edited December 1969

    Very nice. Just the perfect amount of dof in the background. Great job.

  • JaderailJaderail Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    Gee.. look at the fantastic art people do while I sleep. For art like this maybe I should sleep more.

    I'm making silly comments because I can not think of anything to say to the artist. They all look great to me.

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,040
    edited December 1969

    Damn! I was in the process of re-rendering my ATAT Star Wars scene. I had set up a surface replicator with 100,000 groupings of grass blades (well over a million individual blades), had my replicator with 100 storm troopers all set, re-arranged the lighting, set it up to render over a network while at work..... and the power goes out! :ahhh: >:-(


    At least the only thing I lost was the progress Carrara had made with the render. Everything else was saved.

  • JaderailJaderail Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    Oh man, that sux. At least it was not a total loss. You have me very intrigued. Looking forward to the render.

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,040
    edited December 1969

    Jaderail said:
    Oh man, that sux. At least it was not a total loss. You have me very intrigued. Looking forward to the render.


    I'll set it to render when I go to bed.


    In the meantime, here's an experiment that I did a few weeks ago. The main thing isn't the DOF. I was trying to create a nice looking carpet moss. I used a meta-ball object, created a mossy looking color shader and used hair for the moss. I copied the color of moss to the hair shader. The set was very simple. The woodland cyclorama that came with D/S 1.x as a sample, plus one of the rocks and one of the trees. Maybe the fern as well.


    Can you tell what's not quite right (aside from my modeling skills)? Hint: It has to do with DOF and there's a reason for it. There is postwork.

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  • TeofaTeofa Posts: 823
    edited August 2012

    oops

    Post edited by Teofa on
  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,040
    edited December 1969

    standfast said:
    oops


    oops?

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,040
    edited December 1969

    Here's the re-worked Leia picture, with the hair braid moved. No postwork, except for brightness (+10%) and contrast (+15%).

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  • TeofaTeofa Posts: 823
    edited August 2012

    On Leia, could you move that little bit of her costume that causes the hard shadow on her leg?

    Otherwise I love it. Its a minor thing, but its the only hard shadow in the render.

    and I went oops because I made a mistake and no post deletes here. Not oops at your render. oops.

    And thanks, contest thread! By using DOF I was able to really improve my favorite render, and forgive me for reposting it, but Im pretty happy with it. And, it follows the rules now

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    Post edited by Teofa on
  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,040
    edited December 1969

    Hadn't noticed the hard shadow. D'oh! May have to wait awhile on that. Maybe I'll see what I can do in post production.

  • IlenaIlena Posts: 280
    edited December 1969

    So here's a rough sketch just to see if I got the whole DOF thing right. Pose needs tweaking, expression, light as well; heck the whole scene needs tweaking but just to see if I got the general idea of it. What do you think?

    DOF.jpg
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  • ChoholeChohole Posts: 33,604
    edited December 1969

    It's a really good start, looking foward to seeing where it will go from here.

  • JaderailJaderail Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    Last First: I think you are doing very well so far, I would play a little more and see if you can sharpen the focus on your main character. Other than that I think you have done a very good job.

    You others just keep improving every time you post. As far as the Moss goes I'm at a loss to see the error. Darn nice moss by the way.

  • SasjeSasje Posts: 835
    edited December 1969

    Ilena52 said:
    So here's a rough sketch just to see if I got the whole DOF thing right. Pose needs tweaking, expression, light as well; heck the whole scene needs tweaking but just to see if I got the general idea of it. What do you think?

    This is a nice picture. :)
    I think its a little bit to late to say it, maybe you can some DOF behind her a small part of the hill , the DOF in the front is good.
  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,040
    edited December 1969

    Jaderail said:
    Last First: I think you are doing very well so far, I would play a little more and see if you can sharpen the focus on your main character. Other than that I think you have done a very good job.

    You others just keep improving every time you post. As far as the Moss goes I'm at a loss to see the error. Darn nice moss by the way.


    Carrara's hair is a render time effect. You can "style" the hair guides, set the shader up, etc. but the actual hair isn't calculated until you render. Because of this it doesn't play well with other render time effects such as the light cone, volumetric clouds or DOF. The hair will only work with clouds if the hair is in front of the clouds, not behind or intersecting. The DOF doesn't see the hair, just the underlying object. So, a human head with hair would render with the DOF focused on the head and blurry back ground, would show the head in focus, but the hair that extends beyond the geometry of the head would look like a blurry halo.


    What I did with the moss, was rendered the light cone separately as an alpha channel, I rendered the DOF and a depth pass, "drew" a shape to match the line of moss (the depth pass doesn't see the hair either just the object it grows on) and composited.

  • IlenaIlena Posts: 280
    edited December 1969

    Sasje said:
    Ilena52 said:
    So here's a rough sketch just to see if I got the whole DOF thing right. Pose needs tweaking, expression, light as well; heck the whole scene needs tweaking but just to see if I got the general idea of it. What do you think?

    This is a nice picture. :)
    I think its a little bit to late to say it, maybe you can some DOF behind her a small part of the hill , the DOF in the front is good.

    Does that mean another camera would have to be added in the direction of that small part of the hill. I can keep focal length, but tweak the focal distance? Better to ask to be sure. Also thank you and other members for kind words on the picture. Haven't touched daz in a few weeks and only started to seriously learn it two weeks ago.:)

  • SasjeSasje Posts: 835
    edited December 1969

    You don’t need an extra camera just the camera that you use and play around with the DOF so that
    some part of the hill/ground in the back is more blur
    The fore ground is fine :)

  • IlenaIlena Posts: 280
    edited December 1969

    I hope result to sasje advice is good and here is the final render without any additional work in CS5.

    DAZ.jpg
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  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,040
    edited December 1969

    Your woman is next to a steep embankment. You could add a spotlight with a greenish color (not too saturated), wide spread, low intensity, and with a short range and high falloff rate positioned between your model and your embankment and pointing back at your model to simulate reflected light. This would add a bit of realism and make the shadows less harsh.

  • JaderailJaderail Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    Your woman is next to a steep embankment. You could add a spotlight with a greenish color (not too saturated), wide spread, low intensity, and with a short range and high falloff rate positioned between your model and your embankment and pointing back at your model to simulate reflected light. This would add a bit of realism and make the shadows less harsh.
    Good tip EP. Try to remember this though your talking to a two week user, they will need more info than just try this or that.

    I'm looking for you to explain it so they can do it. That is what this contest and all of the New User threads are for. Explain it so the other person can do it and learn as they do it. Your real good at this, so why not walk them through it if you have the time. If not I still thank you for the tip, and I can help them or another with the time can, if they wish to try doing this.

    Just wanted to throw that out into the thread. If you can help and the person wants the help jump right in and do your best. We all started out at zero in DS and without the Help files and Tutorials and personal help we all get or find none of us would be as good as we are.

    This is not pointed at any user I just decided that Evilproducer was a good example to pick. They understand what they explained in terms we long time users understand. A New User my need more info and help. Lets all keep in mind we should ALL help with the things we understand when we can.

    End of this Public Service Announcement.
  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,040
    edited December 1969

    Jaderail said:
    Good tip EP. Try to remember this though your talking to a two week user, they will need more info than just try this or that.

    I'm looking for you to explain it so they can do it. That is what this contest and all of the New User threads are for. Explain it so the other person can do it and learn as they do it. Your real good at this, so why not walk them through it if you have the time. If not I still thank you for the tip, and I can help them or another with the time can, if they wish to try doing this.

    Just wanted to throw that out into the thread. If you can help and the person wants the help jump right in and do your best. We all started out at zero in DS and without the Help files and Tutorials and personal help we all get or find none of us would be as good as we are.

    This is not pointed at any user I just decided that Evilproducer was a good example to pick. They understand what they explained in terms we long time users understand. A New User my need more info and help. Lets all keep in mind we should ALL help with the things we understand when we can.

    End of this Public Service Announcement.


    Sorry, I realize it was long on jargon, but I had an appointment. I'm also not familiar with the controls for D/S and the terminology. A spot light is a spotlight, but how are the other parameters named?


    I'll be brief:


    The spread of the light would also be called it's angle. It's how far the light spreads out from it's source. For reflected light, you'd want it to be set wide. In addition, D/S may or may not have a control for the half angle. That would be how much the light falls off towards the edge of it's angle. A higher setting would mean a softer delineation or diffusion between the edge of the light cast, and it's center. You'd want a higher half angle for reflected light.


    The intensity of the light of course refers to how bright the light is. If there's any kind of ambient light in the scene, you'd want to make the spot/reflected light a bit brighter so that it could be seen.


    The range of the light is how far the light will travel from it's source. Reflected light should be short ranged. The falloff would be similar to a half angle in that as the light travels away fro it's source and closer to the end of it's range it becomes softer and more diffuse. A short range light also helps with any unwanted shadows.


    The color of the light should be set to compliment the color of the object it's simulating being bounced from. If the person is standing next to a red wall, the bounced light would be reddish in color. Additionally, you can set up a myriad of lights to simulate ambient light, multiple sources for reflected lights etc. Grouped together, these complex lighting arrangements are called light rigs.


    There are lighting options in most CG programs that do the hard work of setting up lights for you. They calculate reflected light. It's generally called Global Illumination (GI) or Indirect Lighting (IL). Using GI can speed the set-up time of your scene, but it comes with a heavy time price when it comes to rendering.


    Learning to set up your lights to simulate GI can be a process, but if you want to do animation or even better than halve your render times, it's a good idea to learn the principals. Try looking for tutorials. Others here, may be able to point you towards D/S specific versions. Maybe Jaderail might know of some since he/she(?) put me on the spot. ;-)


    This example image uses a shadow catcher (3D view turned off to simplify scene) to catch the "shadows" of my model so that I can composite in Photoshop later with a photo I snapped of my driveway. There is nothing really for light to bounce off, so I used three spots to simulate the bounced light from my driveway. The lights are set at 10% brightness. The effect is cumulative- so a total of 30%. The other light is a distance light to simulate sunlight. Since I was only using this angle, I didn't need to get complicated and place lights for reflected sky light. I played around with it at first but decided later that it didn't really help the scene, so I set the scenes' ambient light to 20% with a color that would be complimentary to the sky's light. An animation would have been a different story.

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  • JaderailJaderail Posts: 0
    edited August 2012

    Wonderful TIP. Thank you for sharing, I'm sure others can learn from it. Just for that I'll do a DS version tomorrow. It's late in my world right now, and I'm not 100% due to going to the clinic today. Again, I say thank you.

    Just as a side note, I did include the phrase "If they ask for the help." Do not feel you have to do it. That was not the point of the post.

    EDIT: I'm a He. Yes I know the name Jade is odd for a guy but I'm a DROW not a human.

    Post edited by Jaderail on
  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,040
    edited December 1969

    Jaderail said:
    Wonderful TIP. Thank you for sharing, I'm sure others can learn from it. Just for that I'll do a DS version tomorrow. It's late in my world right now, and I'm not 100% due to going to the clinic today. Again, I say thank you.

    Just as a side note, I did include the phrase "If they ask for the help." Do not feel you have to do it. That was not the point of the post.


    No problem. I was just poking a little fun at you, and it wasn't meant to be taken seriously. My initial post seemed a bit terse and full of jargon, so I felt a bit more of an explanation would be warranted. I have some more scenes that illustrate the idea a bit better, but they tend to be complex and visually, it would be a bit confusing.


    I know a lighting contest was done recently, but that was more for mood and/or portrait lighting. Perhaps a good contest to think about in the future would be ways to use standard lights- be it distant, spots, etc. to simulate GI without the use of GI render functions, HDRIs and other IBLs (image based lighting) and purchased or free third party light sets.

  • ExtremeAlphaExtremeAlpha Posts: 82
    edited August 2012

    This is my first attempt with DOF rendering. I must admit that I used Photoshop and added two alpha channel layers using the lens blur filter and another layer using motion blur filter to get the final effect. The bottom image is the untouched render.

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    Post edited by ExtremeAlpha on
  • JaderailJaderail Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    TonyCoe said:
    This is my first attempt with DOF rendering. I must admit that I used Photoshop and added two alpha channel layers using the lens blur filter and another layer using motion blur filter to get the final effect. The bottom image is the untouched render.
    Well, thank you for joining the fun. Also for being so forthright with what you did to the top image. This Contest and thread is about getting the effect you want without postwork effects. I see that your going for a BLURRED effect as if the car is moving. Nice effect, it's just not the one that DOF produces. Depth of Field gives the effect of the objects not in the main field of view as being out of focus. Your going for a movement blur, that's a different concept. Think more along the lines of a hall fading away into the distance when looking at the person walking toward you up the hall when you are looking at the person. Depth not Blur.
  • atticanneatticanne Posts: 3,009
    edited December 1969

    Why are the posts in this thread running over into the right margin? I can't see all of what's being said. Waahhhhhh

  • ExtremeAlphaExtremeAlpha Posts: 82
    edited December 1969

    Jaderail said:
    TonyCoe said:
    This is my first attempt with DOF rendering. I must admit that I used Photoshop and added two alpha channel layers using the lens blur filter and another layer using motion blur filter to get the final effect. The bottom image is the untouched render.
    Well, thank you for joining the fun. Also for being so forthright with what you did to the top image. This Contest and thread is about getting the effect you want without postwork effects. I see that your going for a BLURRED effect as if the car is moving. Nice effect, it's just not the one that DOF produces. Depth of Field gives the effect of the objects not in the main field of view as being out of focus. Your going for a movement blur, that's a different concept. Think more along the lines of a hall fading away into the distance when looking at the person walking toward you up the hall when you are looking at the person. Depth not Blur.

    Thanks for your input. Now that I have a better understanding of DOF I'm going to go back and try it again.

  • JaderailJaderail Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    TonyCoe said:
    Thanks for your input. Now that I have a better understanding of DOF I'm going to go back and try it again.
    Very Welcome. It's easy and fun once you GET it. No postwork needed. That's why I thought others might like to learn it and play with it.
  • JaderailJaderail Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    AtticAnne said:
    Why are the posts in this thread running over into the right margin? I can't see all of what's being said. Waahhhhhh
    Some of the images are not getting, resized by the forum software like they should Anne. The forum team knows all about it and I'm sure it will get fixed as soo (opp's) as FAST as possible.
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