Nice work Serene -- a few minor suggestions:

- If not already, recommend a single light source, a Spotlight, mirror the camera transforms for the light and aim at character slightly above nose level.  Also your lighting used in the image is a bit overexposed on the central face giving it a slightly artificial look.  Can you try moving the light source further away, also I would use Light Geometry of Disc and set both dimensions to 50.  Lastly, I'd love to see a render against a white or near-white background vice grey...grey while neutral, is pretty uncommon in real life so again it reduces your overall realism of this particular image.  Ok lastly again, the facial features still seem very symmetric..overly a bit.. so perhaps raise an eyebrow a tad, skew the nose a tad... 

Anyhow, your pic is great...just curious these make it even more so!

Jeff

I'm sad to say that Lee 8 fell casualty to DAZ's ongoing predilection for overstuffing the Lee and Mei-Lin bundles with overly Asia-centric ethnicy-type content.  Apparently the DAZ designers did too good a job with Lee's stuff this time around and all the contents of his bundles were declared to be unauthorized imports and they, along with a distressed looking Lee 8, were sent to China when he failed to be able to provide documentation proving legal residence in the state of Utah. 
Mei Lin, on the other hand, had just enough time to hook up with the first unattached male Gen 8 character she could get to agree to a marriage of convenience in order to stay in the country.  The delay on her products is because it now all has to be re-branded to reflect her new married name, Mei-Ollie.   

there's some truth in the first sentence.. as if every single Asian person was walking around either as a ninja or a samurai, possibly wearing a rice hat. just as if like i dunno, every central european ran around in lederhosen or folkloric costume ~

as to the rest.. well why don't we swim some more in a sea of cliché. i'm not quite sure if i should frown or laugh...
omg.. Mei-Ollie, the ugliest anime schoolgirl ever. XD

Heh-- Love the Budd RDC's in your last pic.. We used to run them up here as passenger service on branch lines.... Now the subway car in question - wrong trucks - those are freight car roller bearing trucks, not light rial traction motor trucks... and those couplers aren't going to couple anything... Here we have light rail - and it runs on one central street downtown,m that is closed to car traffic.. Outside of downtown its on a separate right of way...

...my fave in San Francisco is Market Street Railroad.  Riding the old streetcars and streamlined PCC cars brings back memories.  There are also several streetcars they've acquired from other nations as well.

@Tynkere - the hair used in my previous version is Paige Hair by PhilW.  More than one product uses the name Paige.  I mean this one.  https://www.daz3d.com/paige-hair-for-genesis-8-females

Here is my next step.  Prop emissive tests.  As per Daybird's and BeeMKay's  instructions (thanks again), I've applied a flecked grayscale map to 4 toruses and inserted them in the color, emissive, and opacity cutout channels of the surfaces tab. All other lights are turned off.  The only light right now comes from the 4 toruses, and those lights are set very low.  Once again, I've got a placeholder G8F.  She is wearing the Andromeda SciFi outfit. 

Heh.  Looks like I just missed hair-doo being on sale.  Added to wishlist-- always another sale... : )

Added pentacle in background?  Don't remember that-- good excuse to watch movie again.  Am learning a lot from you in just how to be organized and plan a scene.

Here's the second version of my image. I have made the back wall darker and managed to lighten the man's right arm and get rid of the light in the mirror. There is no longer much of a shadow on the floor so I could try to change the lighting to improve this.

 

As others have said, looks good in toning down wall & moving spot.

Speaking of moving...  Here's a suggestion for what it's worth.

How much room do you have to the left of your set?  (to the viewers left or behind the dancers)  If moved entire set to the right a little, you might be able to get all of the couple to show in the mirror.  Just a thought. 

Don't flirt with an Amazon...

You really have a knack for different camera angles.  Mine are always pretty tame.

Like how forearm is out of the picture, and fist...  Seems aimed right at the viewer!

"Never flirt with an Amazon... Unless wearing a helmet."  ; )

And here my WiP with the lighting. I'm using the SunSky only here. And pose the sun manually instead of using the time dials.

I didn't know what the time dial was, so just blundered into tweaking on x, y, and z.  : 0 ! 

Looks good.  Only suggestion I might make is blank area to viewers left.  Have you considered changing aspect ratio to crop a bit?  Just a suggestion.

As for soldering irons, use one myself in restoring vintage tape decks, receivers, and amps from 70's.  Lots of fun.  Just don't make a mistake I did once.  Had been using it, found defective part, tossed iron aside and went looking for replacement.  Iron landed on lead to a probe on my scope.  Tektronics is proud of their products.  That little lesson cost me.  Now I make sure scope related stuff safely tucked away.  : )

 

Here's where I am currently: 

Red Gold Blue: The Purification of Old Town

 

I'm not going for complete photorealism with this. I dialed back the blue a bit with the daylight, kept the red light in the foreground, but made sure the light highlighted the central figure. I tried to restore the clouds in the upper right, but the atmospheric effect made it either or (either the clouds or the lightshafts). I could force them anyway, but I'm not certain I want to go there. I may try to do some postwork, but for now, this is what I've got done.

Can definately see more, but not sure.  Ask three people get six opinions.  Kind of liked the earlier version that was darker, but that's just me.

Just curious, but what was the spiral thing from an earlier version?  It's a guide for movement or how the eye scans an image?  I learned composition back in the Pliestocene, so just a grid, or subdivide into triangles.  As said, just curious how it helps?  Any tool that helps you is a good one I guess.  : )

---

I hope that's everyone

Meanwhile...

Putting the *.obj file into the water much easier than I had feared.  The set has several, so interested to see what everyone thinks about it.  Without ripples in water, project going no where.

Also... The more I look at the render, the more I am bothered by Vicky's feet.  This started out with her wearing the shoes, but they looked too large.  Tried posing Vikcy from scratch and (hopefully) successful, but feet flat on ladder rung still looked too long.  (Vicky just has big feet?)  So from a different angle, tried posing with her standing 'tip-toe.'

Now... Is it my imagination, or from the front, does it look like she's not putting any weight on the ladder and kind of floating? 

 

Thanks for reading

--Bruce

 

 

Great reference image from Chohole.  If in doubt test the pose yourself ( if you can ) or find a reference image.

The toes look off to me.  They need to be flatter with the ball of the foot on the ladder ( as Chohole as already said ).  Also, the character's right foot is intersecting with the step of the ladder.

My second scifi set in the Aeridian series is now live in the store.  Here's the blurb:

"Soar above the clouds with your own personal AI-controlled aerial landing pad. Perfect for small vehicles and jetpack-equipped protagonists, or to populate the background of your sci-fi skylines.

Includes both aerial and terrestrial versions of the landing pad, along with a host of modular components, light props, and detailing for you to customize it as you see fit. The aerial platform has articulated wings, and both versions have hideable components and rotating beacons. Pre-made stacks of the terrestrial version let you quickly set up a double, triple, or quadruple high tower. Also included are hologram advertising props if you prefer to use the landing platforms in an oppressive dystopian future city."

Aeridian Aerial Landing Pads & Platforms

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

Bit of trivia about this project.  Initially it was going to be a futuristic jetpack, but I had this idea for the main promo -- I really wanted the girl with the jetpack on a flying platform.  Started working on the platform, and before I knew it, the set had grown to be a viable product in its own right.  Worked out for the best, because someone else released a new jetpack shortly before this went live.

Not coincidently, it fits neatly into the central shaft of the Aeridian Throne Room set.  :)

As with most of my sets, there's also a lot of component parts included.  This is kind of becoming my signature, I suppose.  I love kitbashing stuff myself, so making sure there's enough extra bits for others to do the same is becoming an important aspect of my products now.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this set as much as I enjoyed creating it!

@Tynkere - the hair used in my previous version is Paige Hair by PhilW.  More than one product uses the name Paige.  I mean this one.  https://www.daz3d.com/paige-hair-for-genesis-8-females

Here is my next step.  Prop emissive tests.  As per Daybird's and BeeMKay's  instructions (thanks again), I've applied a flecked grayscale map to 4 toruses and inserted them in the color, emissive, and opacity cutout channels of the surfaces tab. All other lights are turned off.  The only light right now comes from the 4 toruses, and those lights are set very low.  Once again, I've got a placeholder G8F.  She is wearing the Andromeda SciFi outfit. 

Heh.  Looks like I just missed hair-doo being on sale.  Added to wishlist-- always another sale... : )

Added pentacle in background?  Don't remember that-- good excuse to watch movie again.  Am learning a lot from you in just how to be organized and plan a scene.

Here's the second version of my image. I have made the back wall darker and managed to lighten the man's right arm and get rid of the light in the mirror. There is no longer much of a shadow on the floor so I could try to change the lighting to improve this.

 

As others have said, looks good in toning down wall & moving spot.

Speaking of moving...  Here's a suggestion for what it's worth.

How much room do you have to the left of your set?  (to the viewers left or behind the dancers)  If moved entire set to the right a little, you might be able to get all of the couple to show in the mirror.  Just a thought. 

Don't flirt with an Amazon...

You really have a knack for different camera angles.  Mine are always pretty tame.

Like how forearm is out of the picture, and fist...  Seems aimed right at the viewer!

"Never flirt with an Amazon... Unless wearing a helmet."  ; )

And here my WiP with the lighting. I'm using the SunSky only here. And pose the sun manually instead of using the time dials.

I didn't know what the time dial was, so just blundered into tweaking on x, y, and z.  : 0 ! 

Looks good.  Only suggestion I might make is blank area to viewers left.  Have you considered changing aspect ratio to crop a bit?  Just a suggestion.

As for soldering irons, use one myself in restoring vintage tape decks, receivers, and amps from 70's.  Lots of fun.  Just don't make a mistake I did once.  Had been using it, found defective part, tossed iron aside and went looking for replacement.  Iron landed on lead to a probe on my scope.  Tektronics is proud of their products.  That little lesson cost me.  Now I make sure scope related stuff safely tucked away.  : )

Here's where I am currently: 

Red Gold Blue: The Purification of Old Town

 

I'm not going for complete photorealism with this. I dialed back the blue a bit with the daylight, kept the red light in the foreground, but made sure the light highlighted the central figure. I tried to restore the clouds in the upper right, but the atmospheric effect made it either or (either the clouds or the lightshafts). I could force them anyway, but I'm not certain I want to go there. I may try to do some postwork, but for now, this is what I've got done.

Can definately see more, but not sure.  Ask three people get six opinions.  Kind of liked the earlier version that was darker, but that's just me.

Just curious, but what was the spiral thing from an earlier version?  It's a guide for movement or how the eye scans an image?  I learned composition back in the Pliestocene, so just a grid, or subdivide into triangles.  As said, just curious how it helps?  Any tool that helps you is a good one I guess.  : )

I hope that's everyone

Meanwhile...

Putting the *.obj file into the water much easier than I had feared.  The set has several, so interested to see what everyone thinks about it.  Without ripples in water, project going no where.

Also... The more I look at the render, the more I am bothered by Vicky's feet.  This started out with her wearing the shoes, but they looked too large.  Tried posing Vikcy from scratch and (hopefully) successful, but feet flat on ladder rung still looked too long.  (Vicky just has big feet?)  So from a different angle, tried posing with her standing 'tip-toe.'

Now... Is it my imagination, or from the front, does it look like she's not putting any weight on the ladder and kind of floating? 

Thanks for reading

--Bruce

---
Edit: weeding out old imgur files.  PM missing links.

FYI. It appears that the 30% discount is not working (4/9/18 - 7:24pm central time).  Waiting for fix before purchasing.

Waiting on this too to combo with a couple of other items for better discounts!

Whoops!  I hope it cleared up.

Here's where I am currently: 

Red Gold Blue: The Purification of Old Town

 

I'm not going for complete photorealism with this. I dialed back the blue a bit with the daylight, kept the red light in the foreground, but made sure the light highlighted the central figure. I tried to restore the clouds in the upper right, but the atmospheric effect made it either or (either the clouds or the lightshafts). I could force them anyway, but I'm not certain I want to go there. I may try to do some postwork, but for now, this is what I've got done.

If I had to choose between God Rays and clouds the God Rays win. 

1. Image: Are You There?

2. I used Now-Crowd Billboards - Modern City Life and Look At Me Pose Control

3. Description

• The idea behind this image is isolated humanity trying to attract the attention of the center of its universe. There was no way my computer was going to handle more than a few characters in an image like this. Billboards to the rescue!
• I selected two "hailing" billboards from the Modern City Life set, put them inside primitive spheres, and scattered them with UltraScatter. I wanted to change the orientation of each billboard to face the central orb. I used Instances to Objects to turn my sphere/billboard instances into objects, so I could manipulate them individually.
• I was hoping I could use the Look at That feature of Look At Me Pose Control to orient the billboards, but billboards are not figures with heads and eyes, so that didn't pan out. No problem, the Now-Crowd Change Billboard Angle Script let me orient each billboard much faster than I expected. The Live Preview made it easy to determine what angle I wanted to use for each one. Then I followed up with the Now-Crowd Orient Billboard Script to adjust all the billboards to the final render camera angle. I used the time and sanity saving feature of Now-Crowd Orient Billboard Script to select all the billboards in my scene without me having to go through the scene hierarchy and select all of them manually.
• I decided I had two much human repetition with just two billboards, so that inspired me to make a couple billboards of my own with a "hailing" pose. I used female characters for my billboards. I decided to make one of my billboard women look up. Look at Me Pose Control facilitated that nicely, because it can move the head, the eyes, and the eye lids in a coordinated way. I just positioned a camera at an angle looking down on the character, and used Look at Camera.
• The way the Now-Crowd billboards are created made it easy to substitute my own rendered billboard image and mask into the surfaces pane to change out the billboard. (I didn't even have to go as far as making true billboard props for my billboard images.) Being able to substitute the billboard diffuse and opacity images at the last minute turned out to be very useful, because I certainly didn't want to start over back at the UltraScatter phase of creating this image! All I had to do was look at the name of the image in the diffuse channel and see what horizontal and vertical angles were used. Then I just dragged and dropped my own billboard image with the same angles into the diffuse surface channel. Then I did the same for the mask in the opacity channel.

4. I am not a PA

FYI. It appears that the 30% discount is not working (4/9/18 - 7:24pm central time).  Waiting for fix before purchasing.

Waiting on this too to combo with a couple of other items for better discounts!

FYI. It appears that the 30% discount is not working (4/9/18 - 7:24pm central time).  Waiting for fix before purchasing.

Here's where I am currently: 

Red Gold Blue: The Purification of Old Town

 

I'm not going for complete photorealism with this. I dialed back the blue a bit with the daylight, kept the red light in the foreground, but made sure the light highlighted the central figure. I tried to restore the clouds in the upper right, but the atmospheric effect made it either or (either the clouds or the lightshafts). I could force them anyway, but I'm not certain I want to go there. I may try to do some postwork, but for now, this is what I've got done.

I'm really jealous man.

This God Rays and the atmospheric is something I cant do with my old system. I quit such renders always after 17-20h, because they have only reached  6-7% until then.

The light, pose and colors looking great and I think the need no just a little adjustment. I think the Woman should be the main figure, but the dark contrast from the robot right of her, pulls my eyes to him. So she needs more light or he less contrast I think.

I also think you use the Golden Spiral and to be consequent you could try to arrange the scarf on the line of her. 
Not sure about this idea...maybe that look unnatural but you could try it in a fast 3DL test render.

Here's where I am currently: 

Red Gold Blue: The Purification of Old Town

I'm not going for complete photorealism with this. I dialed back the blue a bit with the daylight, kept the red light in the foreground, but made sure the light highlighted the central figure. I tried to restore the clouds in the upper right, but the atmospheric effect made it either or (either the clouds or the lightshafts). I could force them anyway, but I'm not certain I want to go there. I may try to do some postwork, but for now, this is what I've got done.

You know some people are gonna' tease you about the "year".  Just a friendly "heads up".

As for 1930s type buildings, CyberTenko offers one, probably the most iconic aprat from the Empire State building and the Chrysler Building.  The central tower from Fritz Lang's "Metropolis".  However, beyond it being a recognized "entertainment property" recreation, the structure seems insanely huge for a newspaper headquarters, well, at least in my admittedly biased opinion.  You, on the other hand, may consider it perfect.

Sorry, I won't link it as D*Z will no doubt "zap" the shortcut to a competing store.  But you should be able to find it easily enough.

Sincerely,

Bill

@Shinji - I like it a lot better. Looking pretty good.

@Diomede - Thanks for the advice. I might come back and take it. Here is my next iteration - which pretty much ended up the opposite of what you suggested. However, I like it so I'm going to keep it even if I move on from this version to something better. For that reason, I stuck my name on it. I'm not sure what I like about it, but I do like it. I like your references a lot. That's really cool stuff. Please tell me if you think I still need to switch to more character central lighting.

Now, does anyone else (besides me) like it? If my instincts are not shared by others, I don't mind changing it because it is so early. Please give feedback if you don't mind. I'd still like to improve.

I did modify her pose a bit.

I am going to disagree with Wanderer.  I like the red lighting but find the overall blue hue a bit much and I miss the clouds you had in the roof opening.  Maybe something between your first image and this one?

Hi,

I was hoping that this would be fixed by 1 p.m. Central. Some of the MM items recognize the additional 10% if you own Ollie 8 Pro but the more recent MM items do not. I've attached an example. Maybe they are still working on it...

Trish

@Shinji - I like it a lot better. Looking pretty good.

@Diomede - Thanks for the advice. I might come back and take it. Here is my next iteration - which pretty much ended up the opposite of what you suggested. However, I like it so I'm going to keep it even if I move on from this version to something better. For that reason, I stuck my name on it. I'm not sure what I like about it, but I do like it. I like your references a lot. That's really cool stuff. Please tell me if you think I still need to switch to more character central lighting.

Now, does anyone else (besides me) like it? If my instincts are not shared by others, I don't mind changing it because it is so early. Please give feedback if you don't mind. I'd still like to improve.

I did modify her pose a bit.

It would be a great service to encourage new users of DAZ if there were a script available that would load unzipped content into the DAZ My Library (not the plain "My Library") so that the ugly grey blocks don't appear subsequently in renders. It is very discouraging to decide to buy a product where the confusing dsf / duf files are not placed in the correct folders and all one can render is those blocks, or white plastic skin.

I would like to stress It is NOT CLEAR how to transfer folders successfully all the time from the uncompressed zip file to the My DAZ Library folder. I have watched ALL the video tutorials on this subject on Youtube. There is an assumption that all Vendors make the same folder hierarchy, but it sadly isn't so.

The zip file must be uncompressed. This may be assumed to be understood, but I think there is room for confusion. In my old Windows 7, the Windows folks in their wisdom took away the ability to unzip folders with a native program so I had to find one to accomplish that task. Windows 10 restored that ability. 

First of all where is that folder I must transfer to? I found mine in User's "Public Documents" in Windows 10, but I have no idea why there is even a Public Documents folder since I don't share on a cloud, etc. So there's that. Has to be the User folder, not the one you think is on your hard drive. This is never made clear in the tutorials. Then the User folder is some weird abbreviation. I made a shortcut so I don't have to remember what the heck it is called and keep the shortcut on the desktop. I extract the zip file to my desktop. It makes a folder, or folders, and those are what I will work with to transfer to My DAZ Library. 

Next, what exactly is in the zip file? I am amazed at how many levels of folders one must drill down through, to get to the Vendor folder, because that is what should be transferred to DAZ MY Library. Sometimes, more often than not,  because there are redundant folders called Runtime, and sometimes 4 times deep, that the Runtime gets put in a different place in the User Name/DAZ My Library. When that happens, you can't tell where the heck the folders actually ended up without a lot of searching. You will know this by the pop-up message "can't find this or that texture file"

I have begun to search down to the vendor name folder in the unzipped folder, and copy that from the unzip to the Library, because that is how the Library works, through the Vendor name in the main or central Runtime folder that  will list by Vendors, not products. So you have to know the Vendor name and whatever the heck abbreviation they may have used. This is one of the biggest stumbling blocks. 

The best advice I got was from this forum. Basically: The files that are labeled with the extension ".dsf" MUST BE in the Data folder, or the ugly grey blocks render. I have most success doing that myself directly. Then I just load the textures manually into my Surfaces panel since the Vendors will often have 2 or more texture files that maddeningly are not consistent, (arms in one file, torso in another), so jump around from one to the other until I've found and loaded the textures I want. Then I save all my hard work as a preset, so I don't have to do it again. 

That's  about the simplest explanation that helped me. A script that would just put the darn dsf files into the MAIN DATA Runtime folder would make it easier. I don't know how to write a script, but maybe someone will take pity and write one for newbies and less experience file wranglers. That would remove the ugly grey blocks.

Sounds as if your scene subsets have custom items or imported mesh that has not been saved as assets - if it's unique to a single scene that's fine, but if you are reusing content over multiple scenes it's more efficient to use File>Save As>Support Assets to save a central version of props, figues, and morphs that you created/imported yourself so that the data is on disc only once. You don't need to do this for things that are using stock assets, like a figure with a store character applied, only for things that didn't start in DS format.

Thanks, @Fishtales, I appreciate you dropping by to offer assistance. I actually did use the rule of thirds guides; I just may not have used them well. (that's bad, huh)

I went back into Photoshop and applied each of the guides that I felt highlighted some of the things I got right, as well as what went wrong. I now have  a plan, but I thought I'd share what I've learned and let my pain guide others. Let's have a look:

First, the rule of thirds guides, which I insist I did use, shows that I have the faces of two characters spot on, and the elbow (almost) and knee of central figure touching the other points. Unfortunately, their distance from the campfire makes the faces drop off our radar when viewing too quickly. I had the rule of thirds guides in Daz Studio on to guide me in this much of the process. 

Second, the diamond or diagonal rules essentially reveal interesting points. The central figure is almost nicely framed wholly within that diamond pattern. I could probably get away with this if it weren't for the fire pulling the eye to the lower left. My understanding of this type of framing is that nothing should exist outside of the diamond frame of the central figure to lead the eye away. Clearly, that's broken straight off, but I'm not totally giving up on this because of the golden spiral pattern, which I'll get to. It's kind of nice how the knee and elbow just about mirror each other and one of them is transversed nicely, while the other comes close to a rule. The loincloth runs straight into the bottom central point of the diamond nicely. The left point of the central diamond runs through a lantern, while the girls head and angle are nicely framed along the upper left edge. The firepit does nicely frame the lower left edge, but again, the flames pull our eye away from the figure. I intend, however, to use that to pull in the viewer's interest before I'm done. All of this that looks interestesting is purely by instinct on my part and not planned.

Third, the Golden Ratio shows us some interesting patterns, even if it doesn't properly or wholly frame anything. We find that the lower line runs just along the base of the wagon on the left, grazes past her right hand, travels across the bottom edge of her belt, and then goes on pretty much along the top of her left leg. The fire is framed nicely in the lower left panel. The upper line runs across the middle of the wagon door (the upper half of door is open), over her right shoulder, across her upper chest, then along the underside of her left arm. Again, purely by instinct. 

Fourth, our friend the Golden Spiral, which I've already shared above, and I'll reconnect here just for effect, reveals a nice pattern already taking place. In essence, what we see is that if only the effect weren't broken up by missing portions of the composition - faded by distance, color, or lack of light, we might actually have a decent composition already.  And finally, purely by instinct.

It reminds me somewhat of an image from the promos for @Canary3d's Daz guides: Fourth Image Down. In fact, I'm pretty certain I'm going to buy her product as a result of this.

Now, I hated what I'd achieved with this when I first saved it because it didn't adhere to the rules of composition properly (because it's not just about lines, proportions, and forms, but also color and light, and more). In fact, if it hadn't taken 10 hours to painfully render in Iray on my CPU, I would've instantly closed it without saving. What a shame that would have been because I'd have gone on focusing on my failure and never knowing the bits I may have got right. Now, when I look back at it, when I realize that I did this without anything more than the rule of thirds guides in Daz, I actually feel a lot better about myself, because at least some of my instincts were not wrong. I just lacked the skill, experience, and understanding to bridge the gap between what I had done and what I needed to do. I was ready to abandon this project, but now that I see how close I was, I have to go on. I'll post back when I have something further to share. I hope my ignorance and fumbling shots in the dark help another and save them some grief.