Carrara Challenge #56 - "Let There Be Light."

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Comments

  • ed3D said: And more WIPs

    image

    I like the mindcraft look, makes the composition more fun!

  • Sci Fi Funk on Youtube said: 2ND ENTRY - Currently a WIP.

    image

    Looking interesting - lots of great detail. Can't wait to see the figures added!

  • Sci Fi FunkSci Fi Funk Posts: 1,197
    edited January 2021

    Oh no! My Render machines C drive has gone kaput. 

    I had literally just finished rendering a WIP of one of the characters to show you (a mornings work), and it froze, then went blue screen of death. Now the drive is not found in the bios. 

    Ugh. If I can't recover by when the Entry thread starts up then I'll enter the non-character version, but hopefully after re-build on a new drive the .car file was on the D drive and we are back in business.

    A real shame - I was pleased with the first background character. I used a number of kit bashing hacks to create it. Oh well.

    [EDIT] I've downloaded the EASE US DATA RECOVERY program which found missing / corrupt boot files. It's late now so will try it tomorrow - here's hopin' [/EDIT]

    Post edited by Sci Fi Funk on
  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,103

    Stezza said:

    heart   I'm loving this thread   heart

     

    that's all I can say  yes

    Ditto!
  • sorry to hear that Scififunk broken heart hope you can recover everything 

  • WendyLuvsCatz said:

    sorry to hear that Scififunk broken heart hope you can recover everything 

    +1

    Sometimes a good computer shop can help.

  • Sci Fi FunkSci Fi Funk Posts: 1,197

    @WendyLuvsCatz  @UnifiedBrain - thanks guys will be back in action ASAP.

    Meanwhile folks keep those entries coming. Light is an excellent theme to work with. 

  • VyusurVyusur Posts: 2,235

    UnifiedBrain said

    Vyusur, terrific reflections and lens flare.  Was the ocean and sky an HDRI?

    Thank you! Yes it was a HDRI for the background and for the fill light. I also used one bulb to soften the shadows.

  • VyusurVyusur Posts: 2,235

    Bunyip02 said:

    Vyusur - superb composition in watching the sunset !

    Thank you for your kind words!

  • ed3Ded3D Posts: 1,949

    Sci Fi Funk on Youtube said:

    @ed3D - I'll be interested to see what you have in store with the lighting for this laying in bed image. Composition coming along nicely.

    thanks very much  _ 

  • ed3Ded3D Posts: 1,949

    FENgari said:

    ed3D said: And more WIPs

    I like the mindcraft look, makes the composition more fun!

    Thanks so much ~~

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,921

    WendyLuvsCatz said:

    Headwax said:

    WendyLuvsCatz said:

    for crepuscular rays one can use fog too

    I used the DCG plugin one for this

     

    video not an entry, an old example 

     

    choice stuff Wendy - care to give us a few clues as morsels as to how you did that? :)

    nothing complicated, just plonked the fog into the room and played  with the parameters (it has a few more than original Carrara fog)

    Thanks Wendy - good to know w- ill try plonking next :)

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,921

    Sci Fi Funk on Youtube said:

    Oh no! My Render machines C drive has gone kaput. 

    I had literally just finished rendering a WIP of one of the characters to show you (a mornings work), and it froze, then went blue screen of death. Now the drive is not found in the bios. 

    Ugh. If I can't recover by when the Entry thread starts up then I'll enter the non-character version, but hopefully after re-build on a new drive the .car file was on the D drive and we are back in business.

    A real shame - I was pleased with the first background character. I used a number of kit bashing hacks to create it. Oh well.

    [EDIT] I've downloaded the EASE US DATA RECOVERY program which found missing / corrupt boot files. It's late now so will try it tomorrow - here's hopin' [/EDIT]

     

    ahh good luck !!

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,921

    UnifiedBrain said:

    Headwax said:

    ha ha excellent :) l ove the caption as much as the movie excerpt you posted "Die humans, die!"

    a fine piece of humour shows a fine brain :)

    Thanks, HW!  Glad that your Mom is out of the hospital.

     

    pleasure, thanks for the well wishes - hopefully I'll get to play with the Carrara scen I started last week soon

    FENgari that's a classy work "The Last Thing I saw"

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,921

    Freelight  that scene is what it's all about - superb exmple of Carrara render - congrats

    @/Mystiarra  - I'd forgotten about Luminance - is it still available - nice recall find - wind in the hair is spuerbula ... er superbula

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,921
    edited February 2021

    Sci Fi Funk on Youtube said:

    @Headwax (late reply) - thank you for your welcome.

    Your 4 x entries at the start of the thread will be among the top contenders I am sure. Your use of the film noir technique is very good with the last of the pictures the strongest (for my taste), also the sky and stretched lens in picture 3 makes that picture a cut above - the lens (I'm guessing, or are some elements "bent" for effect?) is being used to give the picture a sense of speed . Great stuff indeed.

     

    thanks SciFi ah I am sorry they are old ones I dug up - that bent effect from memory is by placing a disrted lense in front of the carrara camera 

     

    tertific use of soft focus on The Pit in your render 

     

    I made a video as an experiment many years ago seeing how closely carrara emulated optic of prescription lenses - including astigamtic distortion

    put in fast forward if you watch it !

    Post edited by Headwax on
  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,921

    Vyusur said:

    "Watching the Sunset"

    Octane render, no postwork. Vlad was used as starring.

     

    wow Veronika - great lighting, love the reflections and even the contrapuntal pose - excuse spelling :)

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,921

    Diomede said:

    Keep up the great work everyone.  Here is another classic cinematic effect.

    Spotlight aimed at white cube.  Used spline modeler to make the crude logo to cast the shadow.  Enabled light cone for the spotlight;

    Hopefully more time to comment in a few days or so.

     

    ha ha you beat me to it, I was going to do a cut out spider to make a shadow on a poor scared kid - still might do :)

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,921

    ed3D said:

    ~  And   more   WIPs

     

    I'm starting to smile at this and it isnt even finsihed yet :)

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,921

    heres a couple of very old vids with different lighting effects -  most of the stuff modelled by me

    this first one is the best ...is not safe for work - used Carnegie motion thingos for the pole dancer - beware poke through is all I can say

     

    mainly cone lighting

     

     

    various lighting

     

    more stuff

     

  • StezzaStezza Posts: 7,757
    edited February 2021

    a basic setup

    with infinite plane with water shader applied, atmosphere is realistic sky with both a moon and sun light  set in position for an eclipse and just the one basic light set at around a strength of 150

    Shrimp boat from Renderosity store and gulls from DZFire here at Daz.

    Bright Eyes

     
     
    Eclipse.png
    800 x 600 - 754K
    Post edited by Stezza on
  • Sci Fi FunkSci Fi Funk Posts: 1,197

    @Headwax - re: focus - thanks - and it should make more sense when the foreground character is added.

    re: distorted lense in front of the carrara camera - WHAT A CLEVER IDEA! I watched the video. I had guessed it was some kind of lens effect but to place a distorted lens in front of the camera - I've got to try that when I can.

    I've got a new hard drive now, re-building the old PC with a new Drive, lots of problems to overcome, hope to be back in the game soon.

    @Stezza - Great pic! - What intregues me the most is the grainy effect you've achieved on presumably a carrara native render. Was that achieved with a plane in front of the camera which is say 97% transparent? I used to do something similar for Z-plane effects in the background, but I'd never thought of doing that in the foreground. Or is it a completetly different technique? Anyway compoisition with the sea gulls, and sea is excellent, and the overall colouration of the light is very good. Lens flare helps as well. A lovely pic. 

  • VyusurVyusur Posts: 2,235

    Headwax said:

    Vyusur said:

    "Watching the Sunset"

    Octane render, no postwork. Vlad was used as starring.

     

    wow Veronika - great lighting, love the reflections and even the contrapuntal pose - excuse spelling :)

    Andrew, thank you so much for your kind words! These poses are characteristic of the dancers. They are characterized by good isolation of some parts of the body from others. This is achieved by long training sessions. By the way, the prototype for my figure was a real-life dancer.

  • Sci Fi FunkSci Fi Funk Posts: 1,197
    edited February 2021

    I'm back!

    Had to rebuild the PC from a new Hard Drive. Painful. 

    So here is a WIP of one of the background characters. From a lighting point of view very much a WIP - there is a small plane above him emitting white light, which looks better from the original camera view point, but even close up allows the face detail to be seen more easily. Sadly that is lost in the main shot as there are not enough pixels for it to truely show through (I think - or maybe some light trick can fudge that).

    Anway It's a Lorez masked hero, with the face mask semi hidden and with his top ears kit bashed down, a (Willander?) hooded cloak (kitbashed with lower section scrunched up so you cant see it), a Hockey Face mask for M4 with the eyes widened.

    No texture on the cloak top yet, and the mid-riff should be a jagged pattern where the white meets the red.

    Otherwise "rise" fella "rise".

     

    The pit - Let there be light WIP 3.jpg
    1280 x 698 - 103K
    Post edited by Sci Fi Funk on
  • gamma 2.2, ambient 0

    volumetric clouds, indirect lighting

    realistic sky, sunlight with soft shadows

    a lot of group; fire + bulb.

     

     

    ams in pit1.png
    1920 x 1440 - 4M
  • Bunyip02Bunyip02 Posts: 7,524

    ed3D - keeps getting betterer !

    Headwax - nice vids - hope you get some quality time to work on your entry/entries

    Stezza - lovely boat scene

    Sci Fi Funk - looking great, glad you got your computer back up and running !

    shlomi laszlo - nice work

  • StezzaStezza Posts: 7,757
    edited February 2021

    Sci Fi Funk on Youtube said:

    @Stezza - Great pic! - What intregues me the most is the grainy effect you've achieved on presumably a carrara native render. Was that achieved with a plane in front of the camera which is say 97% transparent? I used to do something similar for Z-plane effects in the background, but I'd never thought of doing that in the foreground. Or is it a completetly different technique? Anyway compoisition with the sea gulls, and sea is excellent, and the overall colouration of the light is very good. Lens flare helps as well. A lovely pic. 

    I do use a plane at times ( secrets out! )

    but the GMIC Carrara plugin can also be used 

    here is an example of a plane in front of the camera using a colour gradient and noise filter with bump knocked up to 250% 

    the noise in the transparency channel is set at around 20% and is duplicated into the colour mixer channels as well

     
     
    example_noise.png
    900 x 1200 - 988K
    Post edited by Stezza on
  • Sci Fi FunkSci Fi Funk Posts: 1,197
    edited February 2021

    @Stezza you complete star! That's great info right there - I hope others are paying attention - or is it just me who is behind the curve?

    I've used a similar technique in the past but with the noise filter, bump and colour gradient you've taken it to new levels for me. Thanks very much.

    In fact those exact techniques should make my background characters look right in entry #2 which I'm working on right now. Can't wait to try it out. Cheers.

    @Bunyip02 - Thanks, I was actually suffering withdrawal symptoms without a Carrara screen in front of me. So it's great to be back.

    Post edited by Sci Fi Funk on
  • Sci Fi FunkSci Fi Funk Posts: 1,197
    edited February 2021

    WIP of ENTRY #2 - Now with background characters.

    With thanks to @Stezza for increasing my knowledge of the semi-transparent plane idea - now with grain effect! I didn't go for a gradient in the end becuase the scene was naturally doing that for me.

    So from a light point of view, there is a giant flower configuration power source underneath them (texture emitter using the same flower texture to shine with), which is driving the Logan's Run Style Carousel participants higher. The plane is giving the appearance of a beam. I went for a plane becuase that way the light source gets to shine naturally around the pit.

    For the kit bashers out there, I made one model (see last WIP), then exported it out as an OBJ 6 times with different poses. I then brought them back in and used duplicate with symetry to get 6 mirrored poses. So I now have 12 fairly unique figures. I changed all the shading domains to point to a single set of shaders to save memory space (otherwise my octane crashed). It was a bit tedious unless someone knows of a quicker way to reassign them - I did it by hand.

    Final thing to do is to add the foreground character.

     

    The pit - Let there be light WIP 4a.jpg
    1280 x 698 - 132K
    Post edited by Sci Fi Funk on
  • Sci Fi FunkSci Fi Funk Posts: 1,197

    ENTRY #2

    "WHEN CAROUSEL SET UP REDUCED TO 30 SECONDS, NOT EVERYONE GOT THE MEMO".

    Explanations of the lights as described in earlier posts, except when I added the foreground character I realised I needed another light so you could see his face. The blending of the new white light and yellow foreground light gives the foreground section more depth and 3D interest - so we got away with it. (For a moment there my idea lay in taters as I realised you couldn't see the expression on the face (with only the one foreground light).

    The blue section that looks like sky in the left hand corner is in fact one of a series of blue lights mounted at the top of the pit (see round the rim for more).

    The gun is kept plain otherwise it's one of the first things you see. I believe that the out of focus carousel participants are the first thing to catch the eye, then the foreground character, then the tunnel, then the gun, then whatever. (hopefully!)

     

     

    The pit - Let there be light FINAL.jpg
    2400 x 1309 - 418K
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