January 2016 New User 3D Art contest “Composition” (WIP Thread)

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  • LlynaraLlynara Posts: 4,770
    edited January 2016

    One more try before work! This might be pulled too far out. Not sure. Will look again tonight.

    Post edited by Chohole on
  • TabascoJackTabascoJack Posts: 865
    edited January 2016

    Hi all, just popping my head in.  I've been playing with shaders and refraction rates.  All I can say is if you move the dial on the refraction rate for water, you sometimes get totally weird renders.  I think I'm sticking with the current water shader as the other I tried don't have nearly the effect I want as the one from the Liquid Pack.  Anyway, I should have something up tomorrow.

    .

    .

     

    @TabascoJack - I really liked your last render with the closer view and two ships.  It is a nice composition.  I don't really have any insight or suggestions for improving it as I think it looks nice the way you have it.  You have a nice color palette.  If I were to make a suggestion it would be to have the ships a different color to make them really stand out, but I'm not familiar with that ship and don't know how labor intensive something like that would be.  And even if I might wonder how it would look with a more dramatic ship color, doesn't mean my opinion has any merit, just that my first thought when seeing this was I wonder how it would look if the ships had more focus or stood out from the background more.

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    Well, that is it for my dubious pearls of wisdom.  It is crunch time now and everyone (me included) needs to step it up before the deadline gets here.

     

    @Knittingmommy,  thanks for the feedback.  I added a little light to the front ship to help it pop a little bit, and submitted my entry.

    Thanks to all who provided feedback and guidance.

    I also want to take the opportunity to say that it has been a lot of fun seeing the creativity on display from everyone.  You all bring an amazing and diverse set of talent to the community.  I look forward to seeing where all of us go from here.

    Personally, I'm having a blast seeing what can be done by combining parts of different sets in various ways, swapping out shaders, and experimenting with the various iray settings.

    Thanks again!

     

    Post edited by TabascoJack on
  • AtiAti Posts: 9,078
    edited January 2016
    Llynara said:

    One more try before work! This might be pulled too far out. Not sure. Will look again tonight.

    I like this one better than the previous ones. In the previous ones, the trees seemed to be growing out from his shoulders. This makes that feeling go away.

    Post edited by Chohole on
  • evilded777evilded777 Posts: 2,437
    edited January 2016
    Teofa said:

    Last minute wip.  I found this lovely char, Lenore, in DS Creative Magazine. Love the Asian cast to her eyes.  I had been listening to Chess, the musical earlier.  Yes, still a fan of Murray Head and ABBA.

    This just popped into my head.  Its rough and I need to fiddle with posing details and such.  I'd just love some critique on the basic composition and image concept.

    "Not Much between Despair and Ecstasy"

    Chess...Murray Head...you win. I'll try to  make an actual contribution later :)

    Post edited by evilded777 on
  • giovannipaologiovannipaolo Posts: 249
    edited January 2016

    Hi all, just popping my head in.  I've been playing with shaders and refraction rates.  All I can say is if you move the dial on the refraction rate for water, you sometimes get totally weird renders.  I think I'm sticking with the current water shader as the other I tried don't have nearly the effect I want as the one from the Liquid Pack.  Anyway, I should have something up tomorrow.

    @giovannipaoloartist - I love this composition and I think you did it really well.  I have absolutely no idea how you could improve it.

    Thanks, much of the credit goes to those who suggested revisions. There has been some back and forth on the merits of NVIDIA Iray versus 3Delight so I have taken an image I've been working on compositionally and rendered it both ways with no post work.  The results are dramatic and very instructive.  Please understand, I have very little knowledge of Iray.  Can someone explain why Iray is "better" than 3Delight?

     

     

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    Post edited by Chohole on
  • KnittingmommyKnittingmommy Posts: 8,191
    edited January 2016

    I don't know that I would say one is better over the other.  I think it has more to do with which one a person is more comfortable working with.  I tried for a long time to get decent results with 3Delight and failed.  However, with Iray, I was able to get the results I was looking for because I seemed to understand it better than 3Delight.  The lighting works differently.  Some surfaces work differently.  Iray was more intuitive with me.  Now, I've learned a lot since I first started and I'm trying to go back and figure out 3Delight.  I'm doing much better in it.  While Iray is more photoreal in some respects one can get some very nice effects if you know how to achieve them.  3Delight can do some things that Iray just can't and vice versa.  However, I've seen some really fantastic renders in 3Delight that I could have sworn were done in Iray and I've seen others in Iray that I could have sworn were 3Delight.  It all has to do with the skill of the artist and how well they understand the materials and the engine they are working with.  Someone who knows both can do a render of the same scene and get pretty much the same results in either engine.  Most of us aren't that good. 

    I've also noticed that DS has helped with the fact that it will try to decide the best settings for the engine it is working with.  For instance, I've used lights that I like with Iray in my current 3Delight render and DS automatically converted them to 3Delight settings and turned the photoreal settings off for me because I have 3Delight set as the render engine.  If I were to do the opposite and use 3Delight optimized lights in Iray, DS would attempt to fix that for me as well.  I don't know if it always works, but so far, I'm happy with the autonomy of that feature.  I just need to go in and tweak settings like intensity, shadow softness, cone diameter?(not sure if that is the right word as I can't check since it is busy) spread angle, color, etc.  It didn't do any of that in the beta version before 4.8 came out officially.  But this feature makes it so much easier to get similar results with both engines.

    edit: inserted correct term

    Post edited by Knittingmommy on
  • IceDragonArtIceDragonArt Posts: 12,548
    Teofa said:

    Last minute wip.  I found this lovely char, Lenore, in DS Creative Magazine. Love the Asian cast to her eyes.  I had been listening to Chess, the musical earlier.  Yes, still a fan of Murray Head and ABBA.

    This just popped into my head.  Its rough and I need to fiddle with posing details and such.  I'd just love some critique on the basic composition and image concept.

    "Not Much between Despair and Ecstasy"

    Chess...Murray Head...you win. I'll try to  make an actual contribution later :)

    This already looks pretty darn good.  Love the boots.  The only little bit of nit picky advice might be to crop of a tiny bit of the top of the render so that there isn't quite so much space above her.  I like the space to the left with the railng but I think if you knock off a tiny bit of the top it might make her even more of the focus than she is now.  But take that with a grain of salt, its mostly just a feeling.

  • IceDragonArtIceDragonArt Posts: 12,548
    edited January 2016

    Hi all, just popping my head in.  I've been playing with shaders and refraction rates.  All I can say is if you move the dial on the refraction rate for water, you sometimes get totally weird renders.  I think I'm sticking with the current water shader as the other I tried don't have nearly the effect I want as the one from the Liquid Pack.  Anyway, I should have something up tomorrow.

    @giovannipaoloartist - I love this composition and I think you did it really well.  I have absolutely no idea how you could improve it.

    Thanks, much of the credit goes to those who suggested revisions. There has been some back and forth on the merits of NVIDIA Iray versus 3Delight so I have taken an image I've been working on compositionally and rendered it both ways with no post work.  The results are dramatic and very instructive.  Please understand, I have very little knowledge of Iray.  Can someone explain why Iray is "better" than 3Delight?

     

     

    Like Knittinmommy said, its not a matter of better more of different.  I'm the opposite of her I find 3Delight to more intuitive and I struggle with Iray.  Although I am determined to learn both because they offer different things.  for me 3delight has a more fantasy feel and Iray seems to give a bit more of a realistic feel.  But you can do a lot in 3Delight to get a realistic feel as well.  So I am just going to learn both.  Lately I have been doing two or three renders.  I start with 3Delight then I switch everything to Iray and then to Reality (or vice versa) Its very interesting to see them side by side

    Post edited by Chohole on
  • IceDragonArtIceDragonArt Posts: 12,548
    Ati said:
    Llynara said:

    One more try before work! This might be pulled too far out. Not sure. Will look again tonight.

    I like this one better than the previous ones. In the previous ones, the trees seemed to be growing out from his shoulders. This makes that feeling go away.

    My only suggestion would be to move both him and the palm trees slightly too the left so he is not in the middle of the pictures.

  • LinwellyLinwelly Posts: 5,780

    I wouldn't say this one or that one is better. There are two main factors relevant. One are the engine settings you have, eg for me I don't have the necessarey grafic card to work fast with Iray and I lack the patience to wait. The other part is that Iray is a renderer doing stuff following the physical laws, especially where light is active. So you have light and you have shadow, you can put up different light sources you have the different shadows. With 3DL you have the option to cheat but you need to know and understand the options you have available. So I see it as more freedom but as well more possibilities to mess up

  • Teofa said:

    Last minute wip.  I found this lovely char, Lenore, in DS Creative Magazine. Love the Asian cast to her eyes.  I had been listening to Chess, the musical earlier.  Yes, still a fan of Murray Head and ABBA.

    This just popped into my head.  Its rough and I need to fiddle with posing details and such.  I'd just love some critique on the basic composition and image concept.

    "Not Much between Despair and Ecstasy"

    For me, her foot seems a "bit" close to the border.  I like the light and the angle.  smiley

  • I agree with Knittingmommy.  I don't think it's a matter of one over the other.  It comes down to personal preference.  I'm new enough to this that I started with DS 4.8 and Iray, so never really dealt much with 3Delight.  I happen to like the photorealistic aspects of it.  I love the fact that I don't need to worry about ambient lighting or a backdrop if I'm using dome lighting with an HDRI image.  It's great that I can play with refraction and solid materials to get effects like the crystal in the staff in my last render.  

    That said, there are times when it would be nice not to have the restrictions of a physically based renderer, such as being able to use a linear point light and adjust falloff, or to have a light not cause shadows.  It really depends on what you want to do and what you're most comfortable with.

    My $.02

  • TeofaTeofa Posts: 823
    edited January 2016

    Yes, she was too low in the image.  I added a border and moved her up a bit.. I want to keep some space on top for a warehouse feel.  I fixed the gun pose and other little things.  Added more shadow to the upper left to frame her.  I want her to look pretty, but menacing with the shadowed face.

    Those boots are just the sci fi siren boots with a black leather shader applied to the whole boot.

    As for IRAY, I simply don't like photorealism.  I have tons of photos, but have never bought one to hang on my walls, save for the standard period of infatuation with Ansel Adams.  I simply like artistic realism.  I have a lot of contemporary CAA Western art, some Socialist Realism, Steve Hanks watercolors, etc.  Going for photorealism just isn't my thing.  I'll stick with 3Delight as long as it possible to do so.

    Thanks for the input.  I do value it.

    Not Much.jpg
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    Post edited by Teofa on
  • SaphirewildSaphirewild Posts: 6,647
    Teofa said:

    Yes, she was too low in the image.  I added a border and moved her up a bit.. I want to keep some space on top for a warehouse feel.  I fixed the gun pose and other little things.  Added more shadow to the upper left to frame her.  I want her to look pretty, but menacing with the shadowed face.

    Those boots are just the sci fi siren boots with a black leather shader applied to the whole boot.

    As for IRAY, I simply don't like photorealism.  I have tons of photos, but have never bought one to hang on my walls, save for the standard period of infatuation with Ansel Adams.  I simply like artistic realism.  I have a lot of contemporary CAA Western art, some Socialist Realism, Steve Hanks watercolors, etc.  Going for photorealism just isn't my thing.  I'll stick with 3Delight as long as it possible to do so.

    Thanks for the input.  I do value it.

    Hey there Teofa I would add just a bit more lighting to her face and move her up slightly or even back some other than that great render! :D

  • cherpenbeckcherpenbeck Posts: 1,409
    edited January 2016

    Could not make the antenna smaller in the original render without shrinking half of the town assets, as they are one module. But postwork did the trick. Nor the moon isn't sitting on the antenna any more.

    I know, not everybody loves the smaller vessels, but ...

    Skycity III

     

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    Post edited by Chohole on
  • cherpenbeckcherpenbeck Posts: 1,409

    @Teofa: Despite tha fact that her legs are too long somehow,  I love the picture, composition as well as the lighting. That could be a good manga cover.

  • cherpenbeckcherpenbeck Posts: 1,409

    @giovannipaoloartist :  This dragon ... I imagine him telling her:

    " You know, princess, there was this really big, big fish, and I was fishing, and my Mum allways told me not to go into deep water, but there he was, I couldn't let go, and then he went down, into deepwater, and me with him, and I remembered Mums warnings, but couldn't let him go, I just couldn't...  And then we fought, an he had teeth, I tell you, teeth soooooo big ... And then I was thinking I got him, but then he got me instead, and then there was all this water and i couldn't breathe and I had to let go and all that happened ...

    So you know why I'm late to our appointment!"

  • TeofaTeofa Posts: 823
    edited January 2016

    @Teofa: Despite tha fact that her legs are too long somehow,  I love the picture, composition as well as the lighting. That could be a good manga cover.

    LOL.  Thanks, I'm just thinking, by modeling standards, legs too long is somehow like the concept of too much chocolate, for me.  It don't happen.:).  Thats why I laughed.

    But yes, there is some forshortening from the camera position and I just went with it.

    Thank you.

    Post edited by Teofa on
  • TeofaTeofa Posts: 823
    edited January 2016

    Could not make the antenna smaller in the original render without shrinking half of the town assets, as they are one module. But postwork did the trick. Nor the moon isn't sitting on the antenna any more.

    I know, not everybody loves the smaller vessels, but ...

    Skycity III

     

    The smaller vessels show there is life in this city, to me.  I don't know what else to say.  You've put so much work into this, but honestly I liked some of the earlier versions where the city was not quite so crisp.  Just me.

    One of the joys of this hobby is the ability to constantly revise a scene.  Which is also one of the major curses.

    Post edited by Teofa on
  • cherpenbeckcherpenbeck Posts: 1,409
    edited January 2016

    Like giving it a bit more haze?

    next version

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    Post edited by Chohole on
  • GallowsGallows Posts: 95

    the Captive...different hair.

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  • TeofaTeofa Posts: 823

    Like giving it a bit more haze?

    yes :)

  • TeofaTeofa Posts: 823
    Gallows said:

    the Captive...different hair.

    You've shown a lot of progress.  I like the woman's "payback time" expression.  Your background and colors have improved.  The focus has narrowed to one area somewhat, the woman and her unhappy former captor, which is a good thing.

    The image is still largely centered, the right 3rd of it is empty.  Were this mine, I'd simply crop that off, even if it loses the interesting vase. (suggestion, not a must do)

    Non compositional comments, the hard shadows are, to me, too hard.  Her foot is in the floor.

    You are getting better, no doubt.

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  • IceDragonArtIceDragonArt Posts: 12,548
    Teofa said:

    Yes, she was too low in the image.  I added a border and moved her up a bit.. I want to keep some space on top for a warehouse feel.  I fixed the gun pose and other little things.  Added more shadow to the upper left to frame her.  I want her to look pretty, but menacing with the shadowed face.

    Those boots are just the sci fi siren boots with a black leather shader applied to the whole boot.

    As for IRAY, I simply don't like photorealism.  I have tons of photos, but have never bought one to hang on my walls, save for the standard period of infatuation with Ansel Adams.  I simply like artistic realism.  I have a lot of contemporary CAA Western art, some Socialist Realism, Steve Hanks watercolors, etc.  Going for photorealism just isn't my thing.  I'll stick with 3Delight as long as it possible to do so.

    Thanks for the input.  I do value it.

    That seems to have done the trick at least for me.  Its not bugging me now lol.

  • IceDragonArtIceDragonArt Posts: 12,548

    Could not make the antenna smaller in the original render without shrinking half of the town assets, as they are one module. But postwork did the trick. Nor the moon isn't sitting on the antenna any more.

    I know, not everybody loves the smaller vessels, but ...

    Skycity III

     

    Ulitmitely its your art and if you like the smaller vessels you should keepthem.  Looks much better with the shortened antennae

  • IceDragonArtIceDragonArt Posts: 12,548
    Teofa said:
    Gallows said:

    the Captive...different hair.

    You've shown a lot of progress.  I like the woman's "payback time" expression.  Your background and colors have improved.  The focus has narrowed to one area somewhat, the woman and her unhappy former captor, which is a good thing.

    The image is still largely centered, the right 3rd of it is empty.  Were this mine, I'd simply crop that off, even if it loses the interesting vase. (suggestion, not a must do)

    Non compositional comments, the hard shadows are, to me, too hard.  Her foot is in the floor.

    You are getting better, no doubt.

    What Teofa said.  Definitely better!

  • GallowsGallows Posts: 95
    edited January 2016

    the Captive...tighter shot...thanks Teofa.

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    Post edited by Gallows on
  • SaphirewildSaphirewild Posts: 6,647
    Gallows said:

    the Captive...tighter shot...thanks Teofa.

    This one is so much better it bring the focus where it should be now without a lot of bareness!!! :D

  • cherpenbeckcherpenbeck Posts: 1,409

    Like it better without the vase. Despite that - lovely picture now.

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  • GallowsGallows Posts: 95

    You are right.  It looks better without the vase.  Thanks!

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