Michael and Friends Appreciation Association [Lots of images, please.]
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Great thread!
An older gentleman :
Very nice timbales. I like the combo
xmasrose & timbales, those are both very good.
Nice. I may have to reconsider that aspect of the contest if we get to run it again next year. I can understand why they did it that way the first year and this year, I just wanted to get it moving and it seemed sensible to follow most of the rules from the previous year. However, if it manages to turn into an annual event, I'm sure some of the rules will change and grow with the contest. I've already had to clarify a few for this year's contest so I can see possibly rethinking that rule for next year maybe.
Please do enter, though, I would love to see this contest become a yearly thing. It has takes a lot to get things going, but it has been very gratifying to see it continue to get submissions as the contest goes on so the more entries we can get the better. :)
Thank you nonesuch00
something I'm working on
This was a fun action scene. I was pleased with how shattered recolored for iray.
I like 3dl for toonish stuff, and some nearly photorealistic stuff. But MAN it's hard to get skin to come out right.
I struggled a lot with this one, but ultimately thought it came out decently.
Looks quite nice, although it's kinda dark in there =) Have you tried any of my recipes from the huge SSS tutorial?
What a super stylish render! The B&W treatment works beautifully with this elegant subject.
This scythe scared me quite literally. Your mastery of DoF is uncanny.
Cute actually =) Reminds me of this: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/oct/18/why-we-find-average-faces-most-attractive
The darkness was intentional. Originally I had a much brighter/evenly lit image, but that made it boring and flat.
Understandable =) Have you tried making the darker parts a bit less uniform "grey", though? If you're using UE, you can tint its AO, or just place low-intensity coloured pointlights in strategic places.
It doesn't look uniformly grey on my screen, maybe we have a tone variance between our displays? I never use UE, this is AoA Spotlight, distant light (outside), and a ambient light.
I also tweaked the tone mapping to make it a little more contrasted. I don't know, maybe it has insufficient color depth and I should have kept it at 16 bit.
What I normally do with 3dl is render at least double size, convert to 16 bit, shrink, then manipulate it a little, then back to 8 bit. I figure the interpolation of 4 8 bit pixels to 1 16 bit pixel 'helps,' if not a huge amount. Probably should render at 4x size...
I also try to render a little brighter and then change the mapping in post work, but, again, it's an imperfect solution. I miss having better color depth in 3dl compared to Iray.
I was encouraged to take another whack at it. Upped the light levels, rendered at 4x size... and yeah, looks better.
Yeah, there is actually more contrast about the image now =)
I think AoA Ambient may be "less forgiving" in darker interior scenes because it doesn't use any IBL, so if everything is occluded and there is not enough lighting, it does tend to give a more "uniform" shade as compared to something like UE2 with an image map plugged in. Of course, without an image map they are the same. But it's one of the reasons I never truly warmed up to AoA Ambient even when I was only using shaders written by other people, because it doesn't support maps.
I like AoA Ambient to fill in some vital detail that's lost by not using bounce lights. It's not as good, but it also renders sooo much faster.
Although having said that, now I'm wondering and will try it with bounce light instead... ;)
UE2 bounce light will be veeery slow if you're past DS 4.7 ((((
I have a very basic GI shader here: http://www.mediafire.com/file/igbgaxgcg3jhavc/Kettu's_Photon_Mapping_Kit.zip - it can do photon-mapped GI if you use all the scripting included, or it can do your basic raytraced GI, too. I haven't tested it in a while, but it may be faster than UE2 is in recent versions of DS.
Yeah, after it hung for 30 minutes I gave up on that.
I liked your Holiday image, @serene night. I was going to comment, but I can't find it anymore.
Thanks KevinH. I took it down. Didn't think anyone liked it. I figured I would rework it.
Taking a stab at portraiture. I figured I should branch out a bit, as I'm usally crap at portraits. But I like the way this came out.
Nice job! Very sultry looking and I like the eyes and watch. =-)
Here's one. Happy Holidays. Boyd is hamming it up as usual.The chair was interesting. I recolored the interior gold, and it reflected all the red of the seat. Someone needs to make holiday skimpwear for the gents. I think Vicky has like 10 sets. The guys have zilch unless they raid her closet.
Oooo... Merry Christmas, indeed!
Hmmm... Michael incest works for me.
Recent character 'Oscar' has, it seems to me, browner skin than I expected. So, I fell into a brown study.