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This is version 2
I have added a pitcher and 2 glasses. I have also repositioned the lights and lowered the brightness
I have also moved the camera left and down so that the loungers are fully in view
It matched my shoe....
Hey,
I like the color scheme in your render. The red color supports the important objects well and builds a good contrast to the grey of the environment / background.
Your picture has a few issues, though, the most prominent being the stretched socket texture, the very prominent seam in the socket texture (left lower corner) and the girl's shiny plastic skin texture. Also the stone texture on the columns would look less flat and more realistic with a normal map (or a higher normal setting, if the map is present).
The objects do not appear too logical to me. What exactly is this socket, how did it get there? How did the car get on the socket, and why?
That's a good improvement in my eyes.
The left girl is the most important "object" in the scene, from her central position and the lighting. The right girl's importance is also supported by her position in the foreground and the thirds rule, perhaps you can give her a bit more importance / make her seen better by a subtle additional light and playing with the location / direction of this light.
If the third empty deck chair is supposed to be part of the story, there could be something to catch the viewers eye, like a towel etc, either to trigger the viewer's imagination or to underline the intended story.
@ sueya
Two suggestions...Along the same lines as Fisherman_B comment above.....If you divided your image into 4 equal squares, ALL of the interest and focus would be in the bottom right hand square. So, and idea might be to change your camera angle a little and zoom in so the only thing in your render would be what is in the bottom right quarter now. The big white wall and the empty chair don't really add to the story your image is trying to tell. At least for me, the long white wall distracts from it.
The second would be some minor tweaks to poses. Both girls are a little stiff in places. The leg closest to the camera on the girl with her back to us could be bent more. It looks like it could even be bent enough for her foot to touch the floor which would give her legs a more natural pose. The other leg may need adjustments afterwards, but its hard to tell without making the changes first. The second girl could use a little twist at her waist so she's turned more towards her friend and perhaps a slight bend so she's leaning just a touch more towards her friend. More twist and less bend would ease the stifness in her posture. That said, there are alot of things right with the poses too! Looks like you didn't have any issue getting them to appear seated on the chairs! The girl with her back to us in particular looks like she's solidly planted on the chair. Her hand on the chair also looks great and is a nice touch!
I like the green glass too! It's a nice splash of colour. If you do decide to reframe the image so there isn't as much white wall, that pitcher will be even more dramatic!
~ Novbre
@Fisherman_B
@tycide
I appreciate the insight into your workflows, it's great to be able to compare to my own. Leaving and coming back with fresh eyes is important to do periodically as my eyes fatigue and mind turns to mush after staring into the workspace viewports for too long :). IMO having the overall render rough-outlined prior to the graphical software work is definately the ideal method, I just didn't adhere to it very strictly in this case. On this particular composition I combined a bunch of elements from the material (that was provided on this thread) to direct the attention towards the focal point of the piece. In doing so I may have lost sight of the overall story and i should reevaluate what is happening with each tweak i make.
@daybird
Yeah i see what you mean with the scenery, perhaps I should have started out with something more tree-friendly like a a jungle environment or something that provides better hiding places-she is definately visible to the 2nd Borg in my latest render so something has to be changed. The skewed perspective/focal length and water ripples were actually intentional but it wasn't meant to come out so exaggerated so perhaps those need some work too.
Thanks for all the input thus far.
Here is version 3 of my image. I have zoomed in and altered the poses of both girls . One of the feet of the girl in the bikini now touches the floor. I have adjusted the lighting slightly and recoloured the glass table top for the table with the pitcher and glasses on it.
You have tightened that up quite nicely. Now that we are closer and more personal with your actors, the image is much more engaging. I'd like to offer a couple of things to consider.
1. Remember from the composition competitions where there was a discussion of the rule of thirds. You might be able to work your camera angle around a bit and get both actors into slightly better relationship with each other using that as a guide.
2. The actor on the left seems to be the more animated one - talking and gesturing and so forth. She seems a bit stiff in that pose given her role in this story. Perhaps a small pose change to give her a better sense of engagement with the other character. I'm thinking that if you were to bend her right leg at the knee and put her right wrist on her knee with her hand dangling a bit, she might appear much more engaged and far less stiff. It would probably mean she'd have to lean forward a little too, which might really sell it.
3. Assuming this is a pool area, a couple of towels thrown around and some other appropriate debris could add some interest too.
4. If you choose to swing that camera around, you may expose more of the actor on the right. If so, you might try a small pose change there as well where her left arm is back propping her up just like you have the right arm. You could even have her kicking her legs a bit as this would likely lift her feet off the floor. If she's more exposed, this would open her up a bit and add more interest to her as a character in the scene.
Well, these are just suggestions to do with as you please (or ignore completely) and I have to say you have really made some good progress with this image. I look forward to seeing what's next.
Best Regards,
Eric
So I thought I'd give it another run but with a different (sort of reversed) story. In this rendition the focal point is the Blue Borg rather than the girl, and instead of a hiding female character there are 2 females oblivious to the fact that there are Borgs invading their home. Their gazes travel somewhere off-screen, perhaps to a television set, while the red half-human Borg has her sight locked on the blue Borg who is entering the household using some "other-worldly" powers, as her body/bodysuit mesh together in a bright luminescent fashion.
Thank you @rcbcgreenpanzer. At some point I accidentally deleted the tree and grass I had in the scene. I put the tree back but kinda forgot about the grass. Her leg turned out to be poking through her dress so had to endure a number of crashes to get dForce to fix that. I also turned the fighters head a bit and positioned his hair back a little to get more of his face in the shot. I built some more foreground element as well. Sooooo many details that really matter. Anyways here's version 3.
@sueya...it is so much fun to watch your images grow. The step by step development is amazing. I agree with @ewcarmen. The figure on the left has a nicely animated expression but she seems stiff. A slight bend to her leg and leaning her toward the other girl instead of her being leaned back would make her positioning seem more conspiratorial like theyr're having a fun conversation. It would make me feel more like I want to hear what they're gossiping about...lol. A towel draped on the back table or the foot of the lounge would help complete the 'clutter' to give more visual interest although depending on your hardware getting dForce to drop a towel can make your computer kinda crashy (does mine at least).
@testingtesterson35. The render quality you put out is incredible. You must have one beast of a machine! You have your borgs nicely on the thirds and you also have a nice golden mean spiral from the blue borg wrapping around to the Red borg. The open space light flooring leads the eye into the scene well so the elements of composition are very well put together. I did find that my eye travels through the scene and follows the Red Borg gaze line back to the Blue Borg but then the Blue doesn't seem to be focused on anything and following its gaze line leads me out of the picture. It might be improved if the Blue seemed more intent on it's 'victim'. I'm not really sure how you adjust the eyes of a borg so might need to tilt the head a little. The scene definitely builds a nice suspense...2 seconds form now there is gonna be screaming, chaos, and general mayhem.
@ariochsnowpaw I think my machine is about average among the Daz/3D population, but who knows-it's an msi laptop-gtx1070, no multiple GPUs or anything crazy i'm just pushing it to the limit with these renders LOL (waiting for one of these fans to burn out any day now). I can deal with the wait on the renders, I just wish it had more memory to speed up lag on the actual workflow prior to rendering. For now I sometimes use "Scene Optimizer" and also dial down all the sub-d meshlevels to get the work done then crank everything back up for the actual rendering...then pass out or go to work while the machine works :). Thank you for catching that detail of the blue borg's eye-line, i need to correct that.
With regard to your render, it's looking great...the scenery/trees, pillars, gestural postures of the figures against the staggered steps of the foreground and staggered layers of the background/grass/horizon all compliment each other well. The only thing I noticed was (similar to what you noticed on mine :) the face of the character in black is rather calm and subdued. Perhaps you'd like to spice up his expression in similar fashion as the female figure-whose facial expression looks excellent btw...or did you intend for it to be that way?
@ariochsnowpaw On second thought-ok you caught me... the actual machine i'm using is this beast i built :-P ...i wish
https://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#images/715621/
O.o...I want one too!!!!
I totally blew it on the expression...intitially his face wasn't really visible so I didn't muck with the expression. What kinda murderous assasin doesn't at least have an evil grin as he plunges his blade into the final guard standing between him and the poor innocent queen. Will definitely need to fix that.
I tried to create a battle scene, but I'm not really satisfied with her.
One problem are the laser beams, they are too much and and to big, but this is the problem with my scatter tool.
What I do with the main model, also happens to the instances. I think, I should use more different main models with and without laser beams, but that slows my system extremly.
But the main problem to me is, it look not real. I tried to apply some bump maps on the ship in the foreground, to let it look bigger...but I think i'm not good in this.^^
Any ideas are welcome.
@daybird - I think that's actually looking very promising. What you might try is setting everything except the lasers and the backdrop to 'Not Visible in Render'. Then you could render the lasers as a separate layer and composit them back in with PS or GIMP. That would give you more control over the opacity so they won't seem as dominating in the scene. To make the ship seem a little more realistic you could try applying a grunge map to it. Comapring it to the earlier image I think the bump map has improved the complexity of the ships hull nicely. If you want to soften that deatail a little you could make a copy of your bump map...take it into PS or GIMP and put just a tiny (very tiny) bit of blur on it so the details on the hull aren't quite as sharp. I actually think it looks great the way it is and improving the lasers might actually get you where you want to be. From a composition standpoint it's looking good!
@daybird I think that is looking pretty good. What I see lacking is some glow and light transmission from the beams, both incoming and out going. Those are light sources and would reflect on the hull and, if wanted, glow against the dark areas. (I know WIP
).
ariochsnowpaw is correct about rendering the beams as a separate layer, (beams only nothing else) much more control, gaussian blur and opacity adjustments to your taste. You can ad more layers and try a tiny bit of offset to build up the part you want.
@ariochsnowpaw Nice scene taking shape. agree on the expression. I like how the light is hitting the assassin's blade, have you tried playing that up more? Might make the character stand out more from the background if desired.
This was inspired by the painting "Pacific", by Alex Colville. A memorable scene in the Michael Mann film Heat, also inspired by "Pacific" was an inspiration as well.
Having the character, the pistol, and the view the main subjects made composition a challenge. This was also my first work with serious use of d-Force.
I don't think this sets as broad of a stage as Pacific but hope it raises enough questions to be interesting. Is she a deadly assassin or a well to do detective? Shaking off a bad day or quietly celebrating a good one?
I used a wrap around set up so without reflections, the viewer can see the characters face and still share the view with her, though from a different angle. I am pretty happy with how it turned out but I do wonder if this is too quiet, if what might have had impact with oil on canvas in 1967 (Pacific), or on the big screen in 1995 (Heat) will still work on the internet in 2019?
Version 4
I have altered the pose of the girl on the left as suggested. I have also added a gym bag as I couldn't get dForce to work on a towel without crashing.
I promise to get another version of my render out with some expression on my murderous thug. I had turned the blade to get a little more reflection off of it but I think @dtrscbrutal is right. It really needs to flash so I will try different material settings or if all else fails will set it to emissive (Cry Havoc and unleash the dogs of Emissive!).
Now for the obligatory attempts to be helpful (so hard when everyone is making such cool stuff that I could not have even conceived of)....
@Fisherman_B. You really blow me away with almost everything you do. Incredible talent. I have to agree with others that the texture of the plinth need some tiling. I'd also love to see it with some DOF and just a little darker overall. The skin on the model has a lot of specularity so maybe fussing with that would help make her a little less shiny. The composition is really good. The canvas is divided into triangle nicely and the columns in the back create strong leading lines that pull you deeply into it. I think it's ready to rock-n-roll with the addition of some atmosphere.
@dtrscbrutal. This is an epic scene. I have to admit that I was not familiar with the original art (google is awesome...sometimes). My biggest critique is that I did not see the gun. I actually had to go back and look for it. I think this is a really promising start so I'm gonna pick on it a lot becuase I think it can be developed into something I'd want to look at again and again.
Composition & Lighting - (see attached pics) You aren't really set up in the thirds well. There is a great Golden mean spiral but it's only on the gun coming around to her eyes. The dead space to left leads you to her eyes but then out of the scene which is why I missed the gun. There is a ceiling light behind her that provides a potential focal point but is crowded into the heavy right side of the compostion. I see a lot of ways that you could go. I think that a sconce type lighting shining down on the gun would help bring it into the foreground no matter what other choices you make. You could crop out the dead space to the left and do more of a 5:4 ratio but that would give you less of that exapnsive view you were looking for. Alternately you could see if that ceiling light can move and take it to the third on the left so that the eye grabs it as you look at the scene and pulls you in to the woman...and then, with a little cast light down to the gun. I would also try to get the wine glass in her hand to be a little more vibrant.
That being said in the way of trying to inspire improvements....I really love the story it tells...I want to know the rest of the story. It's very evocative of a mystery and you just know that it will go somewhere.
@ariochsnowpaw thanks for your input, some good insight there. I am glad you like the scene.
I like to show the secondary light sources in my art so it had not occurred to me to try and go overhead with the lights in the foreground. That is a brilliant idea, light the foreground off scene and carry it into view. Now my head is filled with visions of skylights and recessed lighting.
And Version 4
Changing the material on the swords really helped. I think my black knight looks a little more fierce now...like he might have had to work for this victory.
ok fellow Dazians Here's my thrid attempt. Some one said the second image didn't make to much sense for him to be in that running pose with no context so I went back with the first pose and tweeked it a little. People also said that his hair wasn't matching with the grass blowing. Unfortunately with the planet edesa scene I wasn't sure if there was a way to tweek the grass so I turned the actor and the moved his hair bangs to give a sense of the breeze. I also added a friendly companion so the image didn't seem so static. I placed the actor along the rule of thirds line, but I'm not sure if them being clumped in the corner like that is working out. I orginally had more space to the right of the image but for some reason in the render it cut it out. Do you think it would have been better balanced with more space on the right side or does it work well with them clumped like that? the over all balance seems to work but I'm not sure how I feel about that open space to the left with only grass. I feel if I add anything more the picture will get to cluttered. I feel the main actors form a nice "circle" from the horn tip to the arm, reaching for the mane which hooks back up though his spear. and it kind of points you to the grass and plant life in the background. I "think" there is balance between the grassy patch and the plain face of his wolf pet, but I'd really like some input on it. Not sure If ill have time to do another touch up before contest ends but I'll try. Please feel free to give me input.
Thank you all,
Sincerely
Jacob.
@vpaintersue - HOLY RENDER COW! My computer would've melted down like chernobyl if I tried lighting like that.
It is an enchanting image and I love it...
but....(cuz i'm a buthead)
not locked into the thirds and I really, honestly believe it would be better in the thirds (see attached image, of course)
her fingers are going into the orb and if they wrapped around it that would look better
and her hair disappears into her ears so if it is poseable I'd pull it out to waft over them
and that is my extent of critique on something I'm pretty sure I could not event get a bad render on before my machine choked, sputtered, died, and my creative muse slit her wrists in frustration.
Very nice render.
Thanks. I will try those changes after work. Some work was done in photoshop and it took a few separate renders to get it there.
@sueya Really improving that scene! If you are not using the wall lights I would suggest cropping them out of frame.
@vpaintersue Very nice image! I like the poses and expressions. The "soft realism" style adds a lot to this scene.
I think ariochsnowpaw has some good insight. I view the rule of thirds more as a guideline than rule but really think using it with your image would add more intimacy with the characters.
This being a magical/fantasy type scene you have lots of elbow room for realism so just ignore this part if it is how you want it. The lighting of the two characters seems a little uneven and inconsistent to me.
The character on the right looks like her lace top is hovering a bit at the shoulders. Does the left character's top allow adjusting the ties to hang down at the front?
@ariochsnowpaw Much improved on the expression.
@cheetahka_cee5351f0f Great set and characters! That does look a bit lopsided to me. Perhaps split the difference and put the right thirds line between the figures, or use the wolf to bridge the center third and lead into the main character? If the latter I would suggest a rising line, angle the wolf low to high into the taller main figure and go vertical with his weapon on the far right.
Nice choice of individuals :D And I like "alien" the colour palette you chose.
Why did you choose to cut of the feet of you two character? I think this is a bit unlucky and with a little zoom out you could remedy this.
With their movement and view to the other side there is still a nice ballance in the image, so it is perfectly fine to have "empty space" on the other side, maybe let them look not as much up but really into the upper left corner.
Well done so far!
@ariochsnowpaw you can resize you image with the image editor, make sure wideth and hight is locked to keep the relation, max size should be 800
now you have chosen a difficult topic as you want to show drama ;) The view that we have now on your drama is that which you would have like in a theatre, wich is a fine point to start with. But you need to make more clear what exactly is happening. I take it blue knight is trying to help the damsel in distress whalt black guy is attacking. Blue guy doen't do so well. has been struck down by black guy. Now if he wants to defend the lady why is he turnign away from the bad guy? Maybe make him falfway falling backwards up the stairs while still trying to keep the sword up against the black one. the other hand clasping his side?
Somethign else I would like to you to consider is getting closer to the scene either by moving all figures closer together and the camera as well or you choose to take the point of view from one of your characters eg, setting the caera next to the lady showing her a bit from behind and the side but viewing on the fight scene. try to experiment with that to see what you like.
I like the posing of your girls it looks very natural.
To you I would like to suggest a different camera angle as well. try coming in from the other sider so we see the girl sitting upright more from the front as well or you might want to come close to the sitting girl looking over her shoulder to the other one, try adding some depth of field as well