Post Your Renders - #4: A New Hope
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Look, guys, instead of just playing around with a shader that looks, well, less than awesome, why not try this:
Start from scratch and use your own skills and talents and decide to create an incredible shader on your own.
Just try it. Really.
First, step back and look at the one you have. Really, what does it look like?
To me it looks like a cheap, somewhat translucent, plastic mannequin that has a weird glow that doesn't really belong. Is that what you want, or do you want something that is fascinating and REALLY awesome?
Start with a blank shader, and THINK about what you want to make it incredible. One by one, channel by channel. THINK of a particular material that is fascinating and interesting, and get a photo of it. And think about the particular properties it has, and try to duplicate them. You don't need tutorials, you don't need to copy somebody else's work, you don't need drag and drop solutions. You can do it yourself.
You probably don't want something that is flat and uninteresting, and just looks painted on, right? You want something with a texture you can FEEL when you look at it. You want something with pulsing ENERGY. You want something that interacts with its surroundings. You want something with fascinating complexity.
Decide how you want your audience to feel when they look at it.
Just try it. Really. It will be a lot more fun.
I'm not sure that anything I could create would meet the standards of His Royal Joe-ness. But I'm happy with that.
And that really is, and always has been, the bottom line here.
Sorry for butting in. Carry on....
And that really is, and always has been, the bottom line here.
Sorry for butting in. Carry on....Absolutely the bottom line! Community "Post your Renders" threads are not only set up for 'good' or 'the best' renders. They are set up for having fun with 'any' renders! And it's fun!
Fun is an excellent tool for learning and teaching. It's a proven fact! Unfortunately, they've also had factual evidence that torture and inhumane treatment can also result in a point finding home. Personally, I prefer fun.
But that's just me - and I don't make the rules. ;)
Been working on this one for a few days. I really love the concept of the succubus. They're the definition of forbidden fruit. At the same time, however, they are a devil and their existence is also a tortured one. I imagined this one was once human and now is sad because she will never feel true love again.
Very cool. I really like the reddish tinge to the skin. I'd like just a bit more light on her face (or maybe it is this screen?).
I may fiddle around with her some more eventually. I've just kinda moved on to some other things now. As for the red, I wanted it to have a sunburn tone to it. Everyone knows devils have red skin, but I imagine it's because their skin is actually burned due to the fires of hell. Just another type of constant suffering for them to experience.
Great job. That expression in combination with your explanation definitely has me feeling sorry for her. Nice Render!
I was messing around with Ambient Occlusion, and decided to try it on the Environ Construction Kit - one of the presets. Below is the actual image followed by the AO pass that I enhanced slightly. Looks like a sketch
@Kodiak: Nice job! Good expression.
@Dart: Nice work on environment. The Ambient occlusion pass looks very sketch like! A little adjustment in an image editor and it could look cross hatched or like a black and white pointillist type picture.
I now have pretty much all of DCG's plugins. Another great guy who will work with you. He has been kind enough to not only field questions about "what they heck does this do? no matter what I try it has no effect" but has even provided me with a sample shader doing approximately what I was after. I strongly recommend sending him support questions. I could try and answer, but I'm still wet behind the ears with his.
And even things that are pretty straightforward (such as fake fresnel) have awesome implications that might not be apparent at first blush. To an extent coming up with creative uses for things is part of the whole creative/exploration/fun thing, but it sure doesn't hurt to have pointers at things to try.
For example: there's a whole set of things that can be accomplished using DCG's calculated illumination with threshold or toon as a mixer. Throw in fake fresnel and some noise shaders and your cooking with gasoline :)
If I wasn't trying to get a hair sim "right" I'd do a quick test for an idea of got about using color gradients. Naively, I always thought of them as gradients instead of their use as a look up table -- until I started tearing apart some of Tim Payne's shaders. If you have any interest in shaders and haven't looked at his work it is a must.
I am still in the dark ages in the off-site plugin department. For example, I own every one of Fenric's plugins from the Daz store, except MDD which I'm not seeing a use for - but none from his own store, none from Inagoni, and none from DCG. That's horrible and it must change soon. I'd far rather have all of them. They make me drool as I peruse their descriptions.
You can get some of Inagoni's from the Daz store. There's also the shoestring shaders (which I don't have) and probably others.
Here's a little exercise I've been doing to simulate GI and test Dryjack's awesome fantasy houses. I probably won't do much beyond this at the moment except try and fine tune my lights. My goal is to build a village square type scene with maybe a faire grounds/tournament grounds. The terrain is just a place holder.
To speed up the render I disabled the bump, since I was mostly interested in getting the lighting right for the shadows.
Edited to add: The only post work I did was to add a DOF, and to put the image into a forum friendly size. No levels or other corrections.
Inagoni's stuff is reasonably priced - I'd check it out. One word though -- unless I'm missing some key concept -- the Shaper tool strikes me as utterly useless. The crown jewel is Archi-Tools and Veloute can do some interesting shaders. Holly Wetcircuit seems to wield some powerful shader magic with Primivol.
I realize this comment doesn't apply to your particular image, and you were only adjusting lighting, and it was probably just a quick test render, but for others out there who might be considering DOF in their images, here's a comment for consideration.
If you apply DOF inappropriately, in situations where a real world camera wouldn't exhibit any DOF blurring, the viewer might misinterpret your image. For example, if you apply visible DOF blurring in an image that is, in the real world, taken on a bright sunny day using a wide angle lens, it might confuse the viewer and they might misinterpret the image as a photo of a miniature.
The reason is that DOF blurring generally occurs when the camera lens is either at a high zoom setting, or it is a low light situation where the aperature is wide open, or the camera is very close to the subject (like in a macro shot). So if you have an image with none of these situations, the viewer tends to force an answer to this apparent contradiction and looks for a logical solution. And in this case what makes most sense is that the camera is very close because it is photographing a miniature scene. But if the blurring doesn't really correspond to what you'd expect in a miniature scene either, the viewer tends to dismiss the image.
It's especially evident if you focus in on the windmill thing. Having the DOF blurring occur so radically in such a short distance forces the viewer to misinterpret.
Now I'm sure the experts here will disagree with me, and that's fine because, honestly, I usually just make stuff up, so feel free to contradict any of it and you'll probably be right.
I realize this comment doesn't apply to your particular image, and you were only adjusting lighting, and it was probably just a quick test render, but for others out there who might be considering DOF in their images, here's a comment for consideration.
If you apply DOF inappropriately, in situations where a real world camera wouldn't exhibit any DOF blurring, the viewer might misinterpret your image. For example, if you apply visible DOF blurring in an image that is, in the real world, taken on a bright sunny day using a wide angle lens, it might confuse the viewer and they might misinterpret the image as a photo of a miniature.
The reason is that DOF blurring generally occurs when the camera lens is either at a high zoom setting, or it is a low light situation where the aperature is wide open, or the camera is very close to the subject (like in a macro shot). So if you have an image with none of these situations, the viewer tends to force an answer to this apparent contradiction and looks for a logical solution. And in this case what makes most sense is that the camera is very close because it is photographing a miniature scene. But if the blurring doesn't really correspond to what you'd expect in a miniature scene either, the viewer tends to dismiss the image.
It's especially evident if you focus in on the windmill thing. Having the DOF blurring occur so radically in such a short distance forces the viewer to misinterpret.
Now I'm sure the experts here will disagree with me, and that's fine because, honestly, I usually just make stuff up, so feel free to contradict any of it and you'll probably be right.
Let everyone see one of your 'pro' Carrara renders so there can be a goal to shoot for.
Another excellent point.
Ignore any comments that aren't accompanied by awesome renders. Words to live by.
Thanks for that.
And to show I can produce renders that will even pass the discerning scrutiny of the experts in this forum, I am (hesitatingly) posted this image that I'm sure will be a 10 on your scale of awesomeness.
Note I used Carrara for the flames coming out of the dragon's mouth, cranked up the ambient to give that ultra realistic photo look, and included a super awesome Angelina lookalike.
BTW, if you can believe it, I used NO POSTWORK in this image. None at all.
If I get the time I'll post a detailed tutorial on how I did it.
Thanks for the comments Joe. I realize it makes it look like a miniature. I recently upgraded my editing software and was playing around a bit with a new feature. Well, new to me anyway. My goal was lighting in Carrara, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to test some of the functions in the lens blur feature while I was at it. I wanted to see how well it worked with the depth pass since there is no AA for it. The windmill's blades are a fine geometry so I was curious if there would be artifacts.
It's a test scene anyway. I want to make a larger set piece as I mentioned in my original post, so this probably won't develop much beyond where it is at the moment, as I'm not entirely happy with the layout. I may have to do a couple more sketches.
You have a lot of good points, and they're worth reading but it's this type of thing that you seem to have to put at the end of nearly every post that turns people off and makes them seem to ignore what you say:
I know you kidding around right ?
And while I'm typing my reply, you have to pour more fuel on the fire....
What fire???
Everyone keeps telling me I should post some awesome renders, so I did. You don't like it?
It was just a quick test render. I was trying to tweak my fire settings, but I'm not done. And it was really my first attempts at making a photo realistic render. Just a test, nothing final.
You guys don't like it? Guess it's back to the drawing board...
The colours! The subtleness of the shadows! Clearly you spent hours refining this to state of perfection that Michaelangelo only dreamed of acheiving.
I will now gouge my eyes out with a spoon because nothing more beautiful will ever fall upon my retinas again!
Evil saideth :
Thanks for the heads upon these. I like how a few bits are bent. Nice to see roofs that are a bit like me...
I'm interested to see your final renders on that scene.
Edit: instead of dof sometimes atmopsheric haze can give a good suggestion of depth - via eg dropping a cloud into the scene
Truly when you complete your masterpiece, Sotheby's Of London will be auctioning it for millions. But you are such a purist you'd probably never sully your fingers with such filthy lucre...
Tonight, I dream of Joe's fire...
Joemama wroteth
Joe, now you have posted this one before so I think that it has lost some of its "awesomeness" through repetition perhaps?
I know I was awed when I first saw it - I don't know why repetition takes the edge off things.
For your points on DOF, as per usual when you are not making emotive or derogatory comments, they are useful and very well considered points. I recently aquired a new Olympus with a Diorama setting - and though not realistic the results give a very interesting twist on DOF. It challenges our perceptions and makes us look twice - not necessarily a bad thing. Something I can see a use for in my 3d work.
Of course Dof as an indicator of spatial depth can be replaced by other monocular clues to depth perception - eg change of hue, saturation, detail size, contrast etc etc - it just depends on what we are looking for.
Thanks, Garstor. I knew you'd recognize what a really good render is.
Ever notice how sometimes when guys want to sound smart they start using real big words? It's true, that happens a lot here. Gone are the "dude, that's flippin' AWESOME", and instead it's "spatial" and "monocular" and stuff.
Nothing wrong with that, just makes me chuckle.
Carry on.
Thanks for the heads upon these. I like how a few bits are bent. Nice to see roofs that are a bit like me...
I'm interested to see your final renders on that scene.
Edit: instead of dof sometimes atmopsheric haze can give a good suggestion of depth - via eg dropping a cloud into the scene
Glad I could point them out. They have an interior room or two. Furniture not included. ;-)
I was holding off on atmosphere to speed the renders. I need to refine the light rig/dome for trees and volumetrics. They seem to take too long to render for my taste.
My friend Joemama wroteth
Ha ha Joe, you crack me up. I wasnt really aware I was using big words but you are right - "monocular" does have nine letters.
Mind you, in a lot of places, a nine letter word wouldn't be considered a "real big word".
Each to their own I suppose.