Couple things, figured I ask first before making a product request.

Sometimes I want to convert a camera into the virtual viewport...viewer...the default viewing port that exists BEFORE you make a camera. Does that make sense?

So instead of choosing to create a new camera from the current view, I want to do the opposite and change a Camera into the default viewer.

------------------

Related as I wonder if it's possible to create a script that moves the active port a certain distance from an object. In your camera control doo-hickey you can press the [+] sort of thing and get a better focus on an object in the scene. BUT! If I want to jump large distances, I'd like to be able to select an object in the scene and run this script and have THE DEFAULT VIEWER move a certain distance (of the scripts choosing) from the object. Maybe with orientation presets. A certain distance from its central axis. Or always floor level pointing up...

-----------

Or a script that can CREATE A NEW CAMERA pointing at an object, and also a certain distance away from that object.

I know I can make a camera myself and use the align tools to move it about and then look through that camera, but I want to move the Daz default viwer about.

Any ideas?

Okay, so I went dark for a bit while working on this or that challenge or contest. And then I had to deal with the guilt of winning. But I'm back and I will attempt to document here my attempts at improving my skill and my art for the sake of those who come after--and also because I tend to forget how or why I did this or that after a while. Anyway, enough of all that. 

First, I want to share an image I did with a little post-work. I posted it over in the Sci-Fi Celebration thread, but the crickets over there let me know they are the same crickets who hang out at the RRRR contest. ::wink:: That's about as funny as I get. Anyway. I still like it. I've considered sharing the how of this, but since it doesn't seem to be very well liked, it might not be worth doing. Several who see it probably know exactly what I did anyway.

Visitration

I'm going to copy my post from the second place winner of the Riversoft Art contest to elaborate a bit upon my technique because it occurs to me that some might not be familiar with what I did, or why.

The Dance

Riversoft Art Product Used: Pose Randomizer

Accompanying Text (the winning factor):

When Pose Randomizer (hereafter refered to as PR) was first released, I saw the potential in such a great product and purchased it immediately. Even though I'm still very noobish, I knew right away how and why I would use it, and here I've demonstrated that use in my entry. When doing any sort of dance scene, nothing suggests failure to my eye faster than a group of dancers all posed perfectly in sync without realistic variations. Just look at the images in this link from the March New User Posing Challenge, but doing all that posing is hard, tedious work. After 4 or 5 meticulous figure posings, time becomes a serious limiting factor, as can system resources on one's computer. PR to the rescue! 

I've had a scene like this in my head for some time, but I was working toward having enough knowledge and skill to do it some justice. PR enabled me to focus on everything but the minutia of attempting to pose so many dancers with just enough variation to approach verisimilitude. In putting my entry together for this contest, I deliberately chose to minimize my resources to highlight the way Riversoft's product really shines. So, apart from cameras, lighting, and stage, inspired partly by this image, I've really only used two outfits (Hanami Outfit and Troubadour), two hairs (Fraser for G2M and Anjou for G3F), and two figures (G2M and G3F), with different textures to help make the illusion a little more believable. I think it turned out great, and Riversoft Art made it achievable with a lot less time and labor--and, I think to a much better end, than would otherwise have been possible.

After creating my first female character with base pose, clothing, and hair, I duplicated node hierarchies to make seven identical ladies. Since I needed variety across the forms, I couldn't simply use instancing. I then used another merchant's product to randomize the morphs for each figure to help them look more like individuals. I changed textures for the clothing and hair, and carefully crafted some variety into the hair strands. I went to my first lady, brought up the PR script to vary her pose, selected a lower percentage, and applied. At this point, my old computer was moving more slowly with so many figures on stage at once. Rather than needing to play with each body part on every figure over a long and painful process, it was as simple as point and click. Check the preview before applying. Approve. Wait only a moment. Choose next figure. Point and click. I did the same thing with the males and applied variation in pose for each figure after using shift-y to mirror the original pose. In the end, I only needed to make a very few adjustments to compensate for places where limbs clipped clothes or the stage slightly. The only alteration I made to any pose after hair and slight post-pose corrections was to aim the lead ballerina's eyes at the camera.

I'm convinced that this tool saved me a great deal of production time and resulted in greater organic fluidity than I'd likely have achieved myself. Just look at the lead's toes and compare them across all seven ladies (okay, sorry, a few are hidden). That is the kind of subtle difference that arose spontaneously out of using PR. The kind of loving, careful craft required to manually massage that sort of detail out of seven roughly identical figures is highly time dependent and labor intensive, and honestly wears on one's passion for the project. Imagine now doing a scene with 15 or 20 such figures. I can, thanks to Riversoft Art and Pose Randomizer. 

Thank you for reading and looking at my work.

 

Okay, one of the parts that readers might not be familiar with is the duplicate node hierarchies command in Daz Studio. If you want to duplicate an object or figure in your scene without having to go and create something new again, you can go up under edit, go to duplicate, then choose node(s). But if you have a figure with hair, clothes, pose already applied, and you don't want to fool with instancing because you need to alter a few details, you can go below the previous menu item to duplicate node hierarchies, and that will make an exact copy of whatever figure and parented items you have selected in scene. I'm sure there are things about it that I don't know, but I learned how to do this last month while working on the new user challenge. I was able to put this technique to good use in this scene for the reasons I stated above.

Red Gold Blue: The Purification of Old Town

My final version of my first image entered in the April new user challenge. I've gone toward a more unrealistic lighting for a specific reason/inspiration. I'm proud of the heat shimmer effect I achieved on this in Photoshop post-work. I'm glad that @IceDragonArt has encouraged me to do more to familiarize myself with those tools. There are so many really good images this month. It's really humbling to be compared to such great artists as those .

Winter Gives Way to Spring

My final version of the second image I did for the new user challenge. I was very much inspired by the works of @IceDragonArt to create this. 

My 2 Freebie Entries for the "April Showers Bring... " Challenge:

Entry 1:

Risk of Romance

Free List:

1. HDRI Rathaus

2. Gwennili Hair for G3F by kayleyss (color altered by me in shader settings)

3. Translucent White Plastic Shader (applied to outside surface of umbrella with settings tweaked by me. Translucency Weight: 1/Glossy Roughness .09/Refraction Weight: 1/Refraction Index: 1.06)

4. Her top from wilmaps. 

5. His top from wilmaps.

6. Armani Hair for G3M from Genesis 3 Starter Essentials.

Paid:
1.Umbrella: Yamaki Victory Lane (uber shader conversion and clear plastic shader in free item list)

2. i13 Romance & Rescue Pose Collection couple poses used as a base with several modifications 

3. Creative Water 3d Splashes by OoT

4. Ultrascatter Advanced Instancing by HowieFarkes (used to apply 2000 instances of water droplets modeled by me and almost 600 splashes from the Out of Touch resource listed)

5. Iray Rain by KindredArts  Rain and puddle system which worked spectacularly with the HDRI's from the resourse listed above, but some HDRI's are better than others for this.

No Count:
G3F (Uber Iray Base conversion with settings tweaked slightly by me)
G3M (Uber Iray Base conversion with settings tweaked slightly by me)
Water Drops modeled by me in Anim8or (shader applied from OoT water asset above)
Uber Iray Shader (applied to both characters and umbrella)
Primitive Cylinder (used to patch the place in the umbrella where the ribs did not come together at central pole) 
Primitive Plane (used to create lighting enhancement using Uber Iray Base shader with settings tweaked by me)

And my second entry:

Lovecraftian Horror

Free:
1: Urban Streets of Tomorrow by sfman here. 
2. HDRI Zwinger Night from HDRIHaven:  (environment intensity turned way down)
3. Lightning Bolt JPG (applied to plane with emissive output)
4. His Shirt (DSC Shirt) - From DS Creative Magazine, v 24, p 23.
5. Wristwatch Prop.
6. Umbrella 

Paid:
Cthulhu by Luthbel
Iray Rain by KindredArts
Ultrascatter
Creative Water 3D Watersplashes 
Mec4D PBS Shaders V2  for Iray (shaders for watch and umbrella)

No Count:
G3M
Water drop on tip of umbrella spoke modeled by me in Anim8or with shader applied from OOT's resource above

I wanted to talk about my process in some of these, but I actually was so far behind that now I've said all this, I'm not sure anyone would still be reading at this point anyway. Oh well. If anyone has any suggestions about how I might improve any of these, while it's too late for the challenges, I'd still love to hear the opinions of others. If you did read all of that, thank you.

Another Plant Modeler Reminder - Using Ramified and Hybrid Tree Shapes

I keep forgetting how to control the advanced tree shapes so I am repeating it here.  In the plant modeler expert tab, the default tree shape is "centered", which has a central vertical trunk.  The options for ramifed and hybrid allow the ability to split the trunk for a more spread tree.  By default, the number of generations of sub branches is very small and does not respond to just increasing the number of generations.  To get the additional generations of sub branches, you also have to go to the tree shape tab, where the drop down menu is disabled.  Increase the ramified threshold to get the additional generations of sub branches.  If the plant modeling room display doesn't show you the changes, check the display to see if it is set to show you all the branches and full detal mesh.

My first entry (time will tell if I am able to submit more):

"April Showers Bring... " 

Risk of Romance

Free List:

1. HDRI Rathaus

2. Gwennili Hair for G3F by kayleyss (color altered by me in shader settings)

3. Translucent White Plastic Shader (applied to outside surface of umbrella with settings tweaked by me. Translucency Weight: 1/Glossy Roughness .09/Refraction Weight: 1/Refraction Index: 1.06)

4. Her top from wilmaps. 

5. His top from wilmaps.

6. Armani Hair for G3M from Genesis 3 Starter Essentials.

Paid:
1.Umbrella: Yamaki Victory Lane (uber shader conversion and clear plastic shader in free item list)

2. i13 Romance & Rescue Pose Collection couple poses used as a base with several modifications 

3. Creative Water 3d Splashes by OoT

4. Ultrascatter Advanced Instancing by HowieFarkes (used to apply 2000 instances of water droplets modeled by me and almost 600 splashes from the Out of Touch resource listed)

5. Iray Rain by KindredArts  Rain and puddle system which worked spectacularly with the HDRI's from the resourse listed above, but some HDRI's are better than others for this.

No Count:
G3F (Uber Iray Base conversion with settings tweaked slightly by me)
G3M (Uber Iray Base conversion with settings tweaked slightly by me)
Water Drops modeled by me in Anim8or (shader applied from OoT water asset above)
Uber Iray Shader (applied to both characters and umbrella)
Primitive Cylinder (used to patch the place in the umbrella where the ribs did not come together at central pole) 
Primitive Plane (used to create lighting enhancement using Uber Iray Base shader with settings tweaked by me)

My first entry (time will tell if I am able to submit more):

"April Showers Bring... " 

 

Risk of Romance

 

Free List:

1. HDRI Rathaus

2. Gwennili Hair for G3F by kayleyss (color altered by me in shader settings)

3. Translucent White Plastic Shader (applied to outside surface of umbrella with settings tweaked by me. Translucency Weight: 1/Glossy Roughness .09/Refraction Weight: 1/Refraction Index: 1.06)

4. Her top from wilmaps. 

5. His top from wilmaps.

6. Armani Hair for G3M from Genesis 3 Starter Essentials.

 

Paid:
1.Umbrella: Yamaki Victory Lane (uber shader conversion and clear plastic shader in free item list)

2. i13 Romance & Rescue Pose Collection couple poses used as a base with several modifications 

3. Creative Water 3d Splashes by OoT

4. Ultrascatter Advanced Instancing by HowieFarkes (used to apply 2000 instances of water droplets modeled by me and almost 600 splashes from the Out of Touch resource listed)

5. Iray Rain by KindredArts  Rain and puddle system which worked spectacularly with the HDRI's from the resourse listed above, but some HDRI's are better than others for this.

No Count:
G3F (Uber Iray Base conversion with settings tweaked slightly by me)
G3M (Uber Iray Base conversion with settings tweaked slightly by me)
Water Drops modeled by me in Anim8or (shader applied from OoT water asset above)
Uber Iray Shader (applied to both characters and umbrella)
Primitive Cylinder (used to patch the place in the umbrella where the ribs did not come together at central pole) 
Primitive Plane (used to create lighting enhancement using Uber Iray Base shader with settings tweaked by me)

butting in here to help Saphirewild a bit, as she's busy with RL in the moment

All Links Checked Out     Plz Move To Entries Thread

To expand on what nonesuch00 said, you can set gravity to zero so the material floats in mid-air, then use a gentle wind to push it toward the wall.

Or if you like making things too difficult, set gravity to zero, rotate the room around a central point, then inertia will 'push' the dforce objects toward the wall as the room rotates around the center point. Kind of like those space stations that rotate to simulate gravity in sci-fi movies.

Or just turn the room sideways.

My first entry (time will tell if I am able to submit more):

"April Showers Bring... " 

Risk of Romance

Free List:

1. HDRI Rathaus

2. Gwennili Hair for G3F by kayleyss (color altered by me in shader settings)

3. Translucent White Plastic Shader (applied to outside surface of umbrella with settings tweaked by me. Translucency Weight: 1/Glossy Roughness .09/Refraction Weight: 1/Refraction Index: 1.06)

4. Her top from wilmaps. 

5. His top from wilmaps.

6. Armani Hair for G3M from Genesis 3 Starter Essentials.

Paid:
1.Umbrella: Yamaki Victory Lane (uber shader conversion and clear plastic shader in free item list)

2. i13 Romance & Rescue Pose Collection couple poses used as a base with several modifications 

3. Creative Water 3d Splashes by OoT

4. Ultrascatter Advanced Instancing by HowieFarkes (used to apply 2000 instances of water droplets modeled by me and almost 600 splashes from the Out of Touch resource listed)

5. Iray Rain by KindredArts  Rain and puddle system which worked spectacularly with the HDRI's from the resourse listed above, but some HDRI's are better than others for this.

No Count:
G3F (Uber Iray Base conversion with settings tweaked slightly by me)
G3M (Uber Iray Base conversion with settings tweaked slightly by me)
Water Drops modeled by me in Anim8or (shader applied from OoT water asset above)
Uber Iray Shader (applied to both characters and umbrella)
Primitive Cylinder (used to patch the place in the umbrella where the ribs did not come together at central pole) 
Primitive Plane (used to create lighting enhancement using Uber Iray Base shader with settings tweaked by me)

Another from me - its two renders combined - the first was mainly caustic lighting and I threw in a Primivol fog. The central kid was in a big glass speher and I shaded that with Digital Carvers' glass shaders but it wasn't showing the kid clearly enough, so I rendered him out again and used Fenric's tree duplicate to get another two kids...

Lots of post-work and I used an object pass to isolate the three kids so I could work on them. Used Ron's brushes and a cloud pic I took.

 

Love the image Head Wax, very interesting colour palet.

​Selina

thank you Selina - the orange working with the blue is one we often fall into :)

Jamahoney,

I agree and I have plans for what I call some "still life" images using Bryce. Slowly, I am getting back into creating CG imagery again but one thing I have to do first is arrange an extra cooling setup for my desktop because it is going to start getting very hot out here in the desert soon, and I don't want my desktop computer to burn out while rendering.

In this new dump I am living in there is only a swamp cooler and no central air conditioning which I had at my last place.  One of my cousins lives south of me, near the Salton Sea in Southern California, and it has reached 119 degrees there in the summer.

On the other side of the U.S., right here, right now, it's only 41f.  And since it's 4:00 pm, I doubt it will get any warmer.  At least it isn't snowing.  ​  Although, snow was expected in the western and central part of the state.

Dana

You should not use the drivers from Nvidia directly. Compiling them is tricky at best (and has to be redone every time Ubuntu delivers a fresh kernel version). Since you are using plain Ubuntu, you should instead use the Nvidia drivers from the Ubuntu repositories. (Which you did using apt-get, so that should work fine. 390.xx is also the most current driver, so that should also work fine.)

That's a general point actually. While most Windows users are 'trained' to find and DL their software and drivers from many sources, on Linux it's usually wiser to use the repositories for your distribution. The software there is already fine tuned to your particular flavor of Linux (if such a thing is necessary) and updates come from a central source in a timely fashion.
If you need newer versions of a software, it's usually better to see if there are 3rd party repositories you trust that provide them for your distrbution. (Pretty common for Ubuntu/Debian.)

I've no idea however how well Ubuntu (and Linux in general) handles the presence of video cards (and drivers) from both Nvidia and AMD. If it detects one card is 'unused' it might well be it keeps it inactive. OTOH I know people have been able to use the the integrated graphics from their Intel CPU's for their screens in order to free the Nvidia for rendering, so it should be possible to have both working.

Nvidia Utils should have installed automatically with your driver, but it won't hurt to check. You might wish to install nvidia-settings and see what it says.

Another ho-hum work of genius.

:)

Thanks for all of those details.

ha ha thanks, sorry about all the typos - I think I was rushing somewhere ... sounds like my life... :)

 

Very imaginative, Namtar!  Great setting.  Always glad to see you entering.

Thank you very much! 

sorry to be not around, I've been spending all my days in the painting studio

 

hjere's another from me - its two renders combined - the first was mainly lighting by cuastic and I threw a Primovol fog in - the central kid was in a big glass speher and I shaded that with Digital Carvers glass shaders but it wasn't showing the kid clearny enough so I rendered hm out again and used Fenric;s tree duplicate to get another two kids ....

 

lots of post work I used an object pass to isolate the three kids so I could work on them in post, used Ron's brushes and a cloud pic I took

 

 

 

 

 

A very complex and beautiful work! 

thank you very much Namtar3d :)

sorry to be not around, I've been spending all my days in the painting studio

 

hjere's another from me - its two renders combined - the first was mainly lighting by cuastic and I threw a Primovol fog in - the central kid was in a big glass speher and I shaded that with Digital Carvers glass shaders but it wasn't showing the kid clearny enough so I rendered hm out again and used Fenric;s tree duplicate to get another two kids ....

 

lots of post work I used an object pass to isolate the three kids so I could work on them in post, used Ron's brushes and a cloud pic I took

 

 

 

 

 

Every time I see your work I'm bowled over.  Just true art, man, and I say that as someone who has no appreciation or understanding of real art (lol, I guess that may denote any compliments from me aren't worth much).  I've been trying to play forum catch up and just watched the video of your methodology that you posted over in the renders thread, wow now I know what headwax looks and sounds like (he has a slight Australian accent for those who don't know :)  )  I'll finally have an actual voice to put to the dry sardonic wit that I appreciate so much in the forums.  Really impressed by the depth of your knowledge of classical artists that I admit I've never heard of (which says nothing about those artists reputations, as I still think Michelangelo, Donatello, Rafael and Leonardo are Ninja Turtles).  Beautiful colors and entrancing theme, very eye catching, great work!

thanks so much, that's very kind!! :) I learnt that if I am going to speak about a work I really need to know what it's called - eg "The Luncheon The Grass by Manet" sounds much better than: 'err, you know the one,  that Manet painting with the naked chick and the two bloked in suites sitting in the grass having a petite something"  Unfortunately I forgot I Had an ugly side while doing the interview ;)

 

Very imaginative, Namtar!  Great setting.  Always glad to see you entering.

Thank you very much! 

sorry to be not around, I've been spending all my days in the painting studio

 

hjere's another from me - its two renders combined - the first was mainly lighting by cuastic and I threw a Primovol fog in - the central kid was in a big glass speher and I shaded that with Digital Carvers glass shaders but it wasn't showing the kid clearny enough so I rendered hm out again and used Fenric;s tree duplicate to get another two kids ....

 

lots of post work I used an object pass to isolate the three kids so I could work on them in post, used Ron's brushes and a cloud pic I took

 

 

 

 

 

A very complex and beautiful work! 

sorry to be not around, I've been spending all my days in the painting studio

 

hjere's another from me - its two renders combined - the first was mainly lighting by cuastic and I threw a Primovol fog in - the central kid was in a big glass speher and I shaded that with Digital Carvers glass shaders but it wasn't showing the kid clearny enough so I rendered hm out again and used Fenric;s tree duplicate to get another two kids ....

 

lots of post work I used an object pass to isolate the three kids so I could work on them in post, used Ron's brushes and a cloud pic I took

 

 

 

 

 

Every time I see your work I'm bowled over.  Just true art, man, and I say that as someone who has no appreciation or understanding of real art (lol, I guess that may denote any compliments from me aren't worth much).  I've been trying to play forum catch up and just watched the video of your methodology that you posted over in the renders thread, wow now I know what headwax looks and sounds like (he has a slight Australian accent for those who don't know :)  )  I'll finally have an actual voice to put to the dry sardonic wit that I appreciate so much in the forums.  Really impressed by the depth of your knowledge of classical artists that I admit I've never heard of (which says nothing about those artists reputations, as I still think Michelangelo, Donatello, Rafael and Leonardo are Ninja Turtles).  Beautiful colors and entrancing theme, very eye catching, great work!

Sometimes, you just gotta' get inventive.

I assembled this Kaled mutant using DarkSeal's "Pet Slime" as the main body, the eyes (yes, plural, as in 2) froma human mesh, the D*Z Brain prop, and several EasPose rigged tentacle figures.  Then I applied a custom procedual material to blend the separate component.

I used DarkSeal's Slime monster because it has one larger ocular socket and a secomd smaller one a bit lower as well as a mishapened mouth with webbed tendrils.  You see, a lot of casual viewers mistook the creature to be a cylops with one central eye.  True, the Human/Kaled fusion of Dalek Sec had a centrally positioned single eye, but that was not the intent when the puppet for the episode "Dalek" was created.  While not easily discernable with the washed out lighting when the creature revealed itself, it did have a kind of "face".  The right eye was wide opened, it DID have a left eye, or rather, a squinted shut eyelid positioned much lower and a bit smaller.  It also had a mouth, the left side severely drooped as though suffering a troke.  The idea is that this pitiful "thing" is the descendent of a humanoid species and there is still the faint remnants of that form.  The "Slime" figure has all these elements allowing for a bit more screen accurate assembly.

Sincerely,

Bill

Thanks, HW.  Might be even more dangerous to be an American symbol of the nineteenth century industrial workingman.  I think I need his axe included.  Thoughts on a missing heart?

One of the reasons I've returned to this project is because the missing heart is such a central feature of both Metropolis and The Wizard of Oz.

sorry to be not around, I've been spending all my days in the painting studio

hjere's another from me - its two renders combined - the first was mainly lighting by cuastic and I threw a Primovol fog in - the central kid was in a big glass speher and I shaded that with Digital Carvers glass shaders but it wasn't showing the kid clearny enough so I rendered hm out again and used Fenric;s tree duplicate to get another two kids ....

lots of post work I used an object pass to isolate the three kids so I could work on them in post, used Ron's brushes and a cloud pic I took

David and I present,

The Dragon Wraith Tomb.

A stunning, highly detailed Tomb Environment, made with the Dragon Wraith in mind. It comes complete with 1 Central Chamber, 7 additional smaller burial chambers, and 1 entrance. Each chamber, entrance and core load in individually. To add a little 'naturalist' flare, a rock formations prop has been included too.

Full DAZ Studio Iray/3Delight support as standard, with Basic Poser support.

https://www.daz3d.com/dragon-wraith-tomb

Anna & David

I cannot sleep.  I woke up and now I cannot fall back asleep.  Even though it is early I opened my birthday presents from Daddy.  He said to open them up on my birthday.  He did not say that it had to be actual daytime, or not that I can remember.  I got a book called Lady Midnight, a pack of colored pencils, a coloring book, and a dragon blank book.  I can show pictures of that later but it is still early and my roommate is sleeping.

...congratulations on completing your latest round trip about our central stellar primary.

TLDR

@daybird - Your insights are very good. I wanted to say something about how I struggle with lighting dark-skinned figures like that dragon of cathan's, but since I had nothing to offer suggestion-wise I didn't mention it (a weakness of mine I will need to overcome if I'm going to include more variety in my subjects). I like the details you've added. Now, like the guy with the mug, I find myself laughing a little bit when I think about this scene. The skin looks much better in this light, but I agree--it is a shame to lose the highlights in her hair. I wonder if you could add more gloss/reflection in the shader for the hair to return that look you're after under a less harsh lighting? Or perhaps you could consider doing two renders and then a little post-work magic? I know that sometimes when I can't get the lighting I'm after that has helped. Not sure how the two would look together though. You know, I hadn't said this before, but one of the things I like about this is that you actually see in your head what that left hand is doing. Or at least that's the illusion for me. I imagine her grabbing a handful of hair. And you didn't need to put it in frame. I'm thinking maybe the central figure in the background needs better lighting because it's hard for me to see his head/expression. I like the guy's gut hanging out on the right. The assorted responses are good. You can really tell their reactions. Now, please forgive me for the long-winded response to your brief questions.

I like your second entry even more than the first. I'm courious how you put the mushroom in that background picture, or is that melting ice in the right corner a prop?

I like the camera angle and the DoF ( Did you use a focal distance below 22?) and how you light up the mushroom and the little feary. ( Emissive? )

Thank you for your kind comments and interest. First, let me include a cropped shot of my viewport from the camera with headlamp on (note: I've made a new version of this, because I forgot to set the render frame proportions and wanted more light on the fairy. Plus, I moved the camera a bit closer. Hopefully it's an improvement.)

 I did this just to show what I've got going on in this scene.  There is only one tree and only 3 unique light sources if you count the HDR of the sky. The way I achieved the look in the version posted above was to use Ultrascatter instancing (though you don't need that to do something similar, it just takes more work). To create the background, I created a large plane, moved it directly behind the tree, y - positive, and covered it with instances of the tree to fill in sky with detail. I placed my star prop light that I made for the temple image a couple of months ago in the scene, applied a low-level emissive shader to it and hid it under the rocks just to get it out of the way. I then ultrascattered 2-3% sized instances of that star over the surface of a cylinder and hid it from render. I then duplicated the node instance hierarchy of that cylinder and instancing group 2 times. Each of those I reduced the x and z scale from the one before and rotated 45 degrees to give a variety of little lights. This did not give me enough lighting on her, so I mader her a torus halo and instanced the same lights over its surface (again with Ultrascatter). In the end, I warmed her up by making a primitive plane, about her size, stood it facing her, applied emissive shading (temp 2000, lumens 100). I then pushed it's cutout opacity to nearly zero (something like .000001, which some say it doesn't need to go that low, but at only .001 I swear I saw fireflies in a render from the hidden object). This gives you light from a surface while hiding that surface from the render. In this new version, I added one more primitive near her face with a brighter lumen level to attempt to bring out her features more. Maybe it's better. Maybe not.

As for the "ice," well, that's kind of a trick of the eye. I've used 3 strategies to create the weather in this image. The rain system by Kindred Arts generated the rainfall with very little overhead. I chose a light rain to make it like the change in seasons - somewhere between ice melting off and misty rain. I just had to make sure the grid-based props didn't cut through the mushroom. I then added a couple of splashes from Out of Touch's 3d Water set. (Who knew they did something besides hair and hot clothes?) One of those is that "ice" melting in the foreground, helped along by a touch of bloom (just a touch) and DoF. The other strategy I used was not as expertly done. I modeled drops in Anim8or, then applied a water shader from SickleYield, and used Ultrascatter to spread over just the cap of the mushroom. I've debated redoing it. The smooth "stone" in front of the fairy is actually the original droplet used for instancing, but it is colored by the rocks around it so I went with it. I like that it's an illusion, too.

As for focal length, I did not touch it. I used the auto-framing feature built into the viewport. So in this case, I set an object in the center of the shot, about the same distance from the camera as the thing I'm wanting in focus, select that object (in this case a hidden sphere primitive), then click the little framing tool (I forget its name) in the corner of the viewport (looks like a focus target with a plus inside a square). That sets the focal distance automatically, which was all I needed to achieve this look. So in camera settings, Depth of Field is on and Focal Distance is set for me (in this case at 408.54). The only warning I would offer is that when you click that autoframe button, it moves the camera. If I then use undo it moves the camera back, but I think it keeps the focal distance (I could be wrong). I may have just lucked into it. I'm the first to admit I'm taking stabs in the dark. I figure I'd share all this so that if someone is trying something maybe it'll give them missing pieces of the puzzle for what they are trying to do. Thanks for humoring me.