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Second this! Probably the one tool I use in all my renders. The rule of thirds is fairly easy to get by eyeball but the golden spiral and rectangle as well as the slanted sections can add a new feel to your images.
Also learn to use the Depth of Field on the cameras as well as the Focal Length and f/Stop settings. With DoF you can achieve the same effect of putting fog in the background to add depth but without the added render time of the actual fog.
I think you could soften that last scene a lot by adjusting the DoF to put all of the background stuff out of focus. Then, and this is just a personal preference here, I'd adjust the color of the lighting to something warmer and maybe tone the intensity down a bit. A good starting point for a nice golden sunlight tone is something like 255,216,197.
Made a note of that golden sunlight tone, thanks for that!
...again I'm not a fan of blurring the background after putting a lot of work into setting it up. Using the atmospheric cameras at low or distant settings to add a sense of depth, that's different for the details are still there and not "muddied".
When I develop a scene, I visualise it as if it were on a canvas rather than through a camera lens. Again I only fooled around with photography a bit, so I never got fully into the "nuts & bolts" of it. For my purposes, if the subject was framed properly, the exposure meter said it was good, that was it. Basically I approached it from a journalist's, POV, get the good shot and it's "money". I did a bit of experimentation with "push processing" (basically "pushing" the film speed by setting it higher than the film''s normal rating) to do "available light" photography back in college and worked with special films for different light sources, but that was the extent of any "artistic" endeavours with a camera.
Since digital photography has pretty much taken over (and film is pretty much on its way out) I haven't pulled out my old manual SLR in years. I even have an old video camera that is now a dust collector.
As to the "sun" in that scene, I already did adjust it's colour to add a bit or warmth to the setting, however the AO was so "cool" with all the green and blue elements, it didn't have much of an effect like it would have just using distant lights with no AO.
Have you also considered using pwSurface2 to get a different look for surfaces plus use AO per suface instead of UE?
...don't have it. Another one of those tools that when it came out pretty much had "render crash' written all over it as I was still working in 32 bit with limited memory resources.
I think you can definitely get some warmth and life out of UE2 by using warmer image maps or even just warmer single colors.
I'm including the below image as an example (and also of the area lights). I used UE2 with the "HDR Studio" preset that is included with DS, which is a gently varying brown/orange/reddish map, 80% intensity. (Could have achieved something pretty similar with just setting it to a muted orange, no HDR map) Then, very close to the figure (roughly 1-2 ft) off her right shoulder I have an uber area light, white, with 600% intensity, 64 samples, and falloff turned on with default settings.
There is also a raytraced distant light opposite, off her left shoulder, set to red, 125% intensity.
Adding a pic of the setup, in the actual render the opacity on the Area Light is zero to make it invisible, but i made it visible for reference.
Odd I used it a lot even when I was on a 32 bit system, along with most other shaders.
Like the tone of that one Storypilot just the right glow.
...even pwSurface1 would crash on my system. Just one tool that I purchased which has not seen much use because of this. The only pwTools that I could use back then were Ghost, Catch, and Toon.
Thank you, scorpio64dragon.
Lighting was one of my biggest struggles. It seemed like nothing I did would help. All my images seemed muddy even using UE2. It took some experimentation and a concerted effort to get better at this. One thing I realized is I had to try different things to get there. I found that even if I'm not totally happy with the result there's something I can take forward to adopting to my own style. Not to say I have a style yet but I'm still learning so that's okay with me.
Here's some of the "breakthroughs" that helped me get better (in my opinion). You may have already learned these.
1. Lighting. To me, this can make a break an image. It can be flat or it can pop. Mine were flat and relatively uninteresting. The reason my images were flat is I wasn't using enough light in the right ways. Dreamlight talks about the 7-point setup which seems to get good results (key, fill, rim, background, bounce, ambient, overall). I generally use key, fill, ambient (UE2) and bounce. Bounce can make a subtle but huge difference. Useful getting light into hard to reach places like under the chin. I generally use UE2 set to 50% intensity with Occlusion with soft shadows, tinted to tone of the image (warm, cool, neutral) and rely on the rest of my lights for the other roles.
2. Exposure. I realized I was underexposing my scenes. I now render them brighter than what I want for a final result and adjust it in post by altering the brightness and color. It's easier to adjust in post if it's slightly overly bright rather than overly dark. The other reason I underexposed was my monitor brightness setting was too high so they looked okay until I viewed them on another computer.
3. Composition. I spend probably way more time setting up a scene than I should but this is the part I enjoy most. My earlier renders looked unfocused and unbalanced. I couldn't always pin down what wasn't working but I eventually discovered it was my poor composition. Jade's golden rules camera guides are a huge help (thanks Jaderail!) in setting up a good composition. I already knew some of this from photography but until I started using a guide I hadn't noticed that I actually misunderstood the golden ratio. Don't ask me how but I was getting it confused. Suddenly my compositions were noticeably better. Hard to quantify but they just starting looking more pleasing to the eye.
4. Post-work. I always postwork my renders. Adjusting lighting, fixing pokethru, running some simple filters like blurring, burning and dodging to highlight elements, and adding vignettes to draw the eye into the image. None of these require much manual dexterity but can make a huge difference. I do not overpaint since I suck at it, although I would love to learn how to do it.
5. Depth of Field. Holy moly can this make a difference in an image. I felt the same way you do about the background. I spend just as much time populating and composing my backgrounds as I do my foreground so I want it to show. But DoF just helps give the subject more focus. I don't always use it but it can be effective.
These are probably the key things I've learned in the last year or so that have impacted the quality of my renders. At least in my mind they're better. I encourage you to try different things. If you're getting feedback that your images could improve by using DoF then try it out and see even if it isn't exactly the result you're looking for. You might discover something in that technique that does work for you. If you're shooting for a very specific look (painterly) then I suggest asking advice for how you can do that, get some feedback and start experimenting. I've enjoyed seeing your renders, they're always nicely composed and have a great story. Can't wait to see what you do in the future.
Greetings,
Heh. I 'won' one of the theme contest ('There's something you don't see every day') and I didn't even know until I saw it in the newsletter. That was before there was money on the line, though, and the folks in that contest are a lot better now. But at the core, the only time I really enter a contest is when I already have an idea and the contest happens to match it. That said, I'm not relying on contest winnings to fund my hobby. That'd be a painful place to be in, I can definitely understand.
Just to note, my favorite that I've ever seen of yours KK is I'll always be here for you; that hits all the high points, and gets to something I want to talk about...
In that image there's stuff to the sides that is part of the scene. But you 'blurred' it by darkening it because you (rightly) wanted to drive focus to the characters. DoF is important because 'if everything is in focus, nothing is focused on'. One point of DoF is to draw the eye away from the stuff that (while it may have taken a while to set up right!) is not the heart of the image. Sure, the background is necessary, and getting it right or wrong can have a huge impact on the image, but you want it to be the window dressing for the story you're telling at the heart of the image.
Now...my advice is not worth much, I'm not much of an artist...I consider myself an 'illustrator' at best. I've been discovering a few things, like skewing camera angles a little, not making my characters the dead-center of the image and using other means to draw the eye to them, and making characters not be completely lit so that shadow plays a role in the feeling of the scene...all that stuff is counter-intuitive because it means making the scene feel 'imperfect', but that's what ends up making a scene more powerful for me. (See? I've got so far to go that this stuff seems like deep insights to me...)
I have random comments on UE2 lighting being actually better for mouths and making lighting warmer just by tweaking the color on it, but I'm babbling already... If making money on contests isn't working out, try finding fan communities, doing a few free pieces as samples, and offer to charge $15 for a simple commission. The thing is that entering a contest and following their rules just to make $5 is precisely the same as accepting a commission to do a small piece to someone else's spec...and you'll probably make more off the commissions.
You'll find folks who suck to do stuff for, but you'll get more 'wins' than in contests, most likely.
-- Morgan
wow. lot of great tips in this thread. I'm beginning to take notes now. sometimes I eventually manage to do a render that come out great (IMO) but I don't really understand why; especially since I can't repeat that success. however what I'm reading in this thread has got me understanding things better. great tips cthulu-san & Cypherfox. and thanks Kyoto Kid for starting this thread.
...actually, I didn't use DOF but a vignette effect to darken the edges and a slight bit of softglow in postwork on their faces and the window behind. There is also a low intensity linear point light just above their head level with the falloff set to end just past their heads.
I think I've used DOF only once and that was for Lyrra's educational challenge back in the old forums where the "assignment" was to create a product promo like you would see in the Daz store. There it made sense to me as you needed to focus the main product so it stands out to the customer when they first see it. Backgrounds in promos are generally fairly basic as well so as not to divert attention away from the featured product.
I just use the basic GI option(not IBL) and use a direct light for the main light/shadows..most of my stuff is exteriors so its a good solution,if i was doing interiors I'd probably use area lights,I actualy find it renders just as fast as any other lighting,it's certainly better(& cleaner) than waiting on 20 odd shadow mapped lights to do their thing,I do my main promos with a setting of 256 samples,most important though is to adjust the spread distance,I think it's 1000 by default which is way too wide,and if there's a skydome in the scene I adjust the bias to avoid the grid lines on the skydome
I can see that. I do actually remember getting a lot of good and relatively quick renders with GI, but I've been doing a lot of experiments with it lately that have taken a lot of oversampling to fix. It doesn't seem that the GI is an actual real global illumination, but it does produce a nice bounce splash. I found that by turning up the trace distance you can accentuate the effect, but that's when the render times and the noise really start to get out of hand. So I guess it's time to go back to treating it as that thing to "enhance traditional lighting scenes". Thanks for your thoughts.
@ Vaskania: Thanks, I've read that many times. I get just about everything I need from it, but I'd very much like to know exactly what GI mode does. I know it bounces light, and I know you can get more bounce by upping the trace distance, but that seems to be a bit of an unorthodox usage. It is strange that we don't have a real GI in DS yet. 3Delight has supported it for some time and even has pretty good SSS GI now.
...well, not sure what I am doing wrong. Did a similar setup, followed the instructions in the tutorial, and nothing, Cranked the intensity up to 4,000 and still no success. Also flipped the disk 180° on the x axis to make sure I had the light emitting side facing the character but still nothing.
Hmm, well that's puzzling. Is it fairly close to your subject? Here's a cap of my settings for that light, maybe see if something catches your eye that differs.
Or if you can post a shot of your setup, I can see if I see anything.
(and mine is 600% because of how close the light is, if it was further back, I'd have it higher, like where you are at with the 4000%)
I just noticed the shadow of the skeleton in the smoke to the right of the character. Didn't see that the first time you posted it. o_O
...well I deleted it and treid again. this time I left the disk horizontal and moved it to the middle of the character to ee thich side was the right one. Then afterwards manually oriented it on the x axis instead of just typing in the angle and this time it worked. Odd as I would think a 180° flip on the same axis would put the correct side towards the character. As the scene is in a fairly darkened setting (not pitch black) I have to now figure out the right intensity (or distance from the eh character) so she isn't too brightly lit. to bad they didn't have some way of "tagging" which side becomes the light emitter.
Another thing I wish Daz would do is have some means of determining a standard scale of linear measure from the camera for this sort of thing. I mean,what is "80" and "120" (the default falloff settings used in the tutorial)? is that Feet? Inches? Yards? Metres?
Not fond of the trial and error method, especially when it wastes a lot of time having to perform test renders.
...went back to take a look myself. interesting. Does Daz have X-Ray lights I don't know about?
lol Not that I know of. Wonder if it's there on purpose or something he didn't realize was happening either.
No wonder. I would turn their visibility settings off and thought they just never worked right.
Glad you got the light working, Kyoto Kid. Yeah the falloff controls are a challenge. I try to avoid using them when I can, and just use the intensity and distance to get the look I want. The falloff controls can be used to get some specific effects, but for me it just increases the number of variables to try to get right.
Heh, x-ray lights.... or v4 skeleton blurred over post work smoke. ;-P
Well there went the mystery. lol
Well there went the mystery. lol
oops, forget i said anything.
it's a specter of death that might be only in your mind..... :)
Greetings,
Sorry, I should have been more specific...I knew you used the AoA vignette effect as you mentioned it on dA; my point was just that DoF is another tool in the toolbox, like vignette, to draw the viewers attention to the important part of the scene, or give a sense of depth that is hard to achieve with other means.Just a quick note...
My point got lost in my overabundant prose. :)
-- Morgan
...was a bit of a bother to get down at first but the nice part about it you have control over the light scatter so you can ad a bit of light to bring say a character out more without also illuminating anything near them.
Ended up with the light disk about a yard (as best as I can eyeball it since Daz doesn't use RL units of measure for distance relationships) from the character at 75% intensity with a fallof of 80 start 120 end.
Thank you for the assistance.
I really hope that in Studio5 they add falloff and barn doors for the normal Daz spotlights as well (or incorporate the UberSpots into the programme).
DS uses centimetres - so 80/120 would bracket the metre mark. A yard would be about 90 cm.
If anyone wants a quick tutorial on using DOF in d/s...I made one here: http://rawart3d.deviantart.com/art/DS4-DOF-303265572
Rawn
your crystal ball works better than my depth perception. I was just asking for this yesterday.
thanks!
In most competition, among people with fairly equal talents, people with better tools will prevail. And honestly, this is as much about using tools as it is art, with a few exceptions.
My only experience with contests here is New Users, and tbh the first one I did left me so sour that I left these forums for a long time.
I learned a lot. It was a good experience in that way.
However, the winner, "New" user, had a forum registry date of 2005 if I recall right, used props, mats, shaders that he had made.. and was selling. It was a "no postwork" contest.. yet he admitted to a "bit" of postwork and tbh the image looked postworked to an extreme. In a contest where most "NEW" users were struggling with native adjustments to whatever software they were using (also part of the rules), the winner was using a plethora of different systems.
New User? Rules? Part of the learning experience of that contest is the wip thread, New Users helping each other, learning, sharing. The winner of that contest never posted a wip, never shared, never participated and instead dropped his pro render in the last day of the contest.
I did not expect to place. There were some pretty nice renders too. Instead, the winner broke the rules, was in no way a "new user" and didn't participate in the shared spirit of learning at all.
So, I have an issue with leniency, if you set a contest for a certain group, with certain rules... use them. I felt that the judges picked the most professional render entered, with no other consideration of the intent or the rules of the contest. The winner should not have even been there.
Rather than post then about how I felt, I just walked away from these forums. I never blamed the people who put on the contest, but the judging was seriously flawed. I judged horse shows for 20 some years, and no matter where or what class I judged, the first step was knowing the rules.
...while I've occasionally joked about going back to the Beginners Challenge I never would. That is really sad, and not very encouraging for newcomers who this challenge is supposed to benefit.
In last month's DCC (Daz Creative Contests) over on DA there was an entry which primarily employed C4D that ended up as one of the finalists. The only real "Daz" component were the figures and basic poses used, while, the scene itself was set up, modelled and even rendered in C4D (and thus really stands out from the rest of the submissions). Granted, it didn't win but still to make the finalists list when a lot of other really good (and better than my) submissions were not selected just seemed a bit discouraging.
This individual has a couple works submitted in this month's challenge as well which made me almost consider pulling mine in protest. These pieces are more appropriate for a contest or gallery at say CGSociety, CG Arena, C4D Cafe or any of the other Pro software oriented groups on DA.
Now I'd have no issue if say an item like a prop in the scene was modelled in Hexagon, Wings, or even Blender, or the scene was rendered using Luxus or Reality (since Daz Studio or Poser are still the applications where all the composition is done). However, to perform the majority of the work using a completely different application than the ones the group was formed to support is IMO a bit outside of the spirit of the challenge.
I see this as being similar to the contestant Standfast mentions about above who obviously had advanced skill (particularly if they were creating and selling shaders) but entered (and won) a challenge meant for beginners. In the sporting world we call this "sandbagging".
In the DCC's description it mentions that the purpose is devoted to artwork created with Daz Studio and Poser. There are enough groups and galleries out there for those who use the Pro software where we are not welcome.
-----
On another note:
One of the challenges where contestants are required to follow specific rules (or the work will not be accepted) is the monthly Freebie one.
The short version:
Usually no less than ten freebies (more points for more freebies so you are encouraged to be resourceful)
All freebies used must have a working link to them.
Only a limited number of "Paid For" items allowed.
No Postwork
The work must fit within the monthly theme.
In spite of these hard and fast rules, it tends to be one of the more popular challenges here in the forums.
I really enjoy the freebie challenge, mainly because it's just that - a challenge. I usually check out the theme and then spend a few days playing around with ideas for it while following the discussion to see if I can come up with an idea for a render. Once I have an idea of what I want to do then the real fun begins as I start sifting through my freebies runtime and prowling the web to see if I can come up with the stuff to make that idea work.
For me it's probably one of the most creative challenges out there. It'd be much easier to come up with an idea to fit the them and then just run off and buy everything needed to make that idea work. It's much tougher to go through all of the various freebies and pull a piece from here and something else from there and make them work together to tell the story you're trying to tell.