Stuff I wish I knew
BorisBadenov
Posts: 51
in Art Studio
So I've been around for quite a while but never been very active. I would like to get involved more but there's always something I don't know that's keeping me from progressing.
For example I just bought Asbru Crossing in a recent sale. The promo images look great, but the set doesn't include any of the cool running water rapids or waterfalls or background landscape. I have no idea where to even begin to make something that looks halfway decent. My attempt looks pretty lame.
How were those promo images made?

Comments
Many ways to approach this: it *could* be a single photo used as a background image - there are ways of composing photographs in a sort of 1:3 portrait format, for placing onto an L-shaped background model. You could also take something like a morphing terrain and render it as blue-ish, glossy plastic and have that be the "water". Or you could create a flat plane primitive with a hundred or more divisions and then "deform it" to be the bumpy, undulating surface for the water which again could be rendered glossy and/or glassy. (There is a tutorial on Youtube about the deformer tool in DAZ Studio; a simple morphing plane is included in "Everyday Morphing Primitives" in the DAZ store.) And there could be morphing 3-D rocks under the semi-transparent water plane... or not.
And you could always use a model of a forest with a river or creek but that would load up the system quick... I'm a believer in rendering backgrounds separately; a background can easily be a 3-D scene created with polygon models, and then you put the "flat" background image onto a 3-D background prop.
There is a bit of "sleight of hand" involved in achieving good water effects; look at Ansel Adam's famous silver-based photo of the Serpent River where parts of the "real" river appear fairly wet while other parts (like where the water is churning and muddy perhaps) look like a cheap plastic model. I like looking at Frederic Church's famous oil painting of Niagara Falls, from the days before acrylics.
P.S. Some really neat water effects here, some of the best I've seen. http://www.daz3d.com/fountain-collection-for-iray
Ok so it's not foaming, rushing water but still....