How were these flames produced

lilweep

alienarea said:

Drogo Nazhur said:

 

It's most likely postwork, but you can get very good results with https://www.daz3d.com/morphing-flames

those look bad though... Sometimes i wonder if people have eyes.   I think there are better 3d flame options available.  The flames in Strangefate's fireplaces look okayyy.

Doing effects like flames etc is easy in photoshop.  Just google a "Flame Black Background" image and then add the layer with Screen Blending Mode.  That's basically it.

Dont think there's much point doing in 3D unless you can make it look better than 2D.  I think some kind of combination of both to get the environmental lighting would be effective.

Misselthwaite

If you really wanted to be a Daz purist, you could always take the texture, create an opacity map and apply it to a plane, and make it emissive... there's always more than one way to skin a cat.  (Sorry, cat!!!)

Sevrin

WendyLuvsCatz said:

I do think at least one no postwork render is important for selling 3D models!

I otherwise don't understand why people even argue about it.

And here I thought you'd been on the internet long enough to know better...

Personally I tend to stick to compositing and colour correction, and the odd pokethrough fix.   Once you know a little bit about post work, you know what kind of things you have to do in the render and what you can address in other ways.  My current rending will spit out 10 layers, and that gives me a lot of options.

As far as people doing the heck they want, that's fine as long as they understand their options.

Misselthwaite

Sevrin said:

WendyLuvsCatz said:

I do think at least one no postwork render is important for selling 3D models!

I otherwise don't understand why people even argue about it.

And here I thought you'd been on the internet long enough to know better...

Personally I tend to stick to compositing and colour correction, and the odd pokethrough fix.   Once you know a little bit about post work, you know what kind of things you have to do in the render and what you can address in other ways.  My current rending will spit out 10 layers, and that gives me a lot of options.

As far as people doing the heck they want, that's fine as long as they understand their options.

See, I'd have no idea what to do with 10 layers from a render... :-D

Sevrin

Misselthwaite said:

Sevrin said:

WendyLuvsCatz said:

I do think at least one no postwork render is important for selling 3D models!

I otherwise don't understand why people even argue about it.

And here I thought you'd been on the internet long enough to know better...

Personally I tend to stick to compositing and colour correction, and the odd pokethrough fix.   Once you know a little bit about post work, you know what kind of things you have to do in the render and what you can address in other ways.  My current rending will spit out 10 layers, and that gives me a lot of options.

As far as people doing the heck they want, that's fine as long as they understand their options.

See, I'd have no idea what to do with 10 layers from a render... :-D

1. Beauty canvas - That's just the main render, or just a 32-bit version of what you normally get from your render.  That's for reference in this case, but I probably won't use it in the final image
2. Environment lighting canvas
3. Left Spot
4. Right Spot
5. Lights from inside the restaurant
6. Character
7. Hair
8. Clothing
9. Jewelry
10. Depth - probably won't use

And that's 10 for a scene with 1 character.  It's an evening scene, and it's a lot easier to get the lighting right in post work than in Iray.  Plus you can use a lot of light, and then just tone it down.  If the render is really simple, often I'll just do a beauty canvas and an environment canvas, and then  subtract the environment canvas from the beauty canvas to get the scene lighting.  Sometimes you get nice results from changing the balance of lighting. 

A lot of photographers would kill to be able to have their cameras produce perfect masks of hair and other details like we can get with canvases.   There are all kinds of tutorial for every major image editing program on how to do image editing and retouching.  It's much more straightforward than learning Iray.

FSMCDesigns

Sevrin said:

Misselthwaite said:

Sevrin said:

WendyLuvsCatz said:

I do think at least one no postwork render is important for selling 3D models!

I otherwise don't understand why people even argue about it.

And here I thought you'd been on the internet long enough to know better...

Personally I tend to stick to compositing and colour correction, and the odd pokethrough fix.   Once you know a little bit about post work, you know what kind of things you have to do in the render and what you can address in other ways.  My current rending will spit out 10 layers, and that gives me a lot of options.

As far as people doing the heck they want, that's fine as long as they understand their options.

See, I'd have no idea what to do with 10 layers from a render... :-D

1. Beauty canvas - That's just the main render, or just a 32-bit version of what you normally get from your render.  That's for reference in this case, but I probably won't use it in the final image
2. Environment lighting canvas
3. Left Spot
4. Right Spot
5. Lights from inside the restaurant
6. Character
7. Hair
8. Clothing
9. Jewelry
10. Depth - probably won't use

And that's 10 for a scene with 1 character.  It's an evening scene, and it's a lot easier to get the lighting right in post work than in Iray.  Plus you can use a lot of light, and then just tone it down.  If the render is really simple, often I'll just do a beauty canvas and an environment canvas, and then  subtract the environment canvas from the beauty canvas to get the scene lighting.  Sometimes you get nice results from changing the balance of lighting. 

A lot of photographers would kill to be able to have their cameras produce perfect masks of hair and other details like we can get with canvases.   There are all kinds of tutorial for every major image editing program on how to do image editing and retouching.  It's much more straightforward than learning Iray.

My question is why? Why not add all the elements and then render?

Cybersox

Sevrin said:

WendyLuvsCatz said:

I do think at least one no postwork render is important for selling 3D models!

I otherwise don't understand why people even argue about it.

And here I thought you'd been on the internet long enough to know better...

Personally I tend to stick to compositing and colour correction, and the odd pokethrough fix.   Once you know a little bit about post work, you know what kind of things you have to do in the render and what you can address in other ways.  My current rending will spit out 10 layers, and that gives me a lot of options.

As far as people doing the heck they want, that's fine as long as they understand their options.

The thing is, by a lot of people's standards, compositing and color correcting from 10 layers of elements sounds like extremely heavy postwork.  Personally, I can't remember doing a render in recent memory that didn't involve at least five adjustment layers worth of tweaking in photoshop.  It's all a matter of what produces the image that satisfies you (or your client.) :)

Cybersox

Sevrin said:

 

A lot of photographers would kill to be able to have their cameras produce perfect masks of hair and other details like we can get with canvases.   There are all kinds of tutorial for every major image editing program on how to do image editing and retouching.  It's much more straightforward than learning Iray.

So true, although each new release of Photoshop gets closer and closer.  The latest upgrade to Select Subject in PS 2020 is pretty darn spiffy.  

Misselthwaite

Sevrin said:

Misselthwaite said:

See, I'd have no idea what to do with 10 layers from a render... :-D

1. Beauty canvas - That's just the main render, or just a 32-bit version of what you normally get from your render.  That's for reference in this case, but I probably won't use it in the final image
2. Environment lighting canvas
3. Left Spot
4. Right Spot
5. Lights from inside the restaurant
6. Character
7. Hair
8. Clothing
9. Jewelry
10. Depth - probably won't use

And that's 10 for a scene with 1 character.  It's an evening scene, and it's a lot easier to get the lighting right in post work than in Iray.  Plus you can use a lot of light, and then just tone it down.  If the render is really simple, often I'll just do a beauty canvas and an environment canvas, and then  subtract the environment canvas from the beauty canvas to get the scene lighting.  Sometimes you get nice results from changing the balance of lighting. 

A lot of photographers would kill to be able to have their cameras produce perfect masks of hair and other details like we can get with canvases.   There are all kinds of tutorial for every major image editing program on how to do image editing and retouching.  It's much more straightforward than learning Iray.

I love how everyone has vastly different workflows!  Admittedly, I use 3DL, not Iray, but the real difference is tweaking inside Daz or outside, and how much?  Or does 3DL not make these sorts of canvasses?  I know I don't use Photoshop the way it's supposed to be used; I treat it like a glorified paintbrush, mostly... although having a dozen layers of experimentation is not unusual for me.

NylonGirl

So did we figure out how those flames were produced?

Serene Night

Oh man, has the postwork vs. non postwork battle started up again?

ColemanRugh

Beautiful work of art

Pixel8ted

So did we figure out how those flames were produced?

I think everyone agrees it's postwork.

I think most likely this is postwork in Photoshop. I'm fairly confident the flames are made with brushes  on their own layer (s) with a glow layer style applied to the flame layer (s). I also believe the woman is on her own layer and with an outer glow layer style applied. There are surely a few other things going on but the flames and outline being the majority would give you a starting point. 

Edit: Looking at this again, it looks more to be an inner glow layer style applied to the woman rather than an outer glow layer style.

 

nicstt

The Blurst of Times said:

People ought to learn PhotoShop, GIMP, or some other post-work tool. Just look at the Gallery, and look at the ones who get the most likes.

The hobby just isn't complete without some ability to refine a render and generate a complete piece of art.

People 'should' ideally learn the tools that help them do what they are after.

... However, if they don't want to, then there is no should.

nicstt

FSMCDesigns said:

Sevrin said:

Misselthwaite said:

Sevrin said:

WendyLuvsCatz said:

I do think at least one no postwork render is important for selling 3D models!

I otherwise don't understand why people even argue about it.

And here I thought you'd been on the internet long enough to know better...

Personally I tend to stick to compositing and colour correction, and the odd pokethrough fix.   Once you know a little bit about post work, you know what kind of things you have to do in the render and what you can address in other ways.  My current rending will spit out 10 layers, and that gives me a lot of options.

As far as people doing the heck they want, that's fine as long as they understand their options.

See, I'd have no idea what to do with 10 layers from a render... :-D

1. Beauty canvas - That's just the main render, or just a 32-bit version of what you normally get from your render.  That's for reference in this case, but I probably won't use it in the final image
2. Environment lighting canvas
3. Left Spot
4. Right Spot
5. Lights from inside the restaurant
6. Character
7. Hair
8. Clothing
9. Jewelry
10. Depth - probably won't use

And that's 10 for a scene with 1 character.  It's an evening scene, and it's a lot easier to get the lighting right in post work than in Iray.  Plus you can use a lot of light, and then just tone it down.  If the render is really simple, often I'll just do a beauty canvas and an environment canvas, and then  subtract the environment canvas from the beauty canvas to get the scene lighting.  Sometimes you get nice results from changing the balance of lighting. 

A lot of photographers would kill to be able to have their cameras produce perfect masks of hair and other details like we can get with canvases.   There are all kinds of tutorial for every major image editing program on how to do image editing and retouching.  It's much more straightforward than learning Iray.

My question is why? Why not add all the elements and then render?

Why?

Control. As an artist, the more control we have over the various processes, the 'easier' it will be to get the result we are after.

All software has features; as individuals we decide if there are a benefit or not. So, in canvases server no purpose for you, don't use.

If you add all elements and render, you are stuck with that, unless you can separate out objects and/or materials in post-processing; I can if required do so in Blender.

 

McGyver

NylonGirl said:

So did we figure out how those flames were produced?

My guess was postwork(brushes and outer glow effect)... but it also could have been magic, an optical illusion or it's really just mass hysteria and nothing was done to the picture at all.

I'm betting the mass hysteria option, because if it was magical, why didn't they make the flames come out of our screen or something like that...

If it was an optical illusion, I'm pretty sure we'd all have to hold our monitors at a similar angle in a desert or somewhere really hot so light passing through the water vapor in the air would create the effect... similar to how it does, for example, when you drink too much and think you are surrounded by otters from the IRS demanding you pay back taxes but it's really just chipmunks from the DMV reminding you to renew your driver's license...

So that just leaves U.F.O.s or mass hysteria which is the most likely option since the topic seems to have changed already from the original question of how the image was made, to the subject of postwork VS no postwork vs godzilla... I personally am rooting for godzilla in this case because I like his take on most of the current topics and the way he took on Ghidorah in the past, I think he'd make a great leader during this pandemic and that's why I'm supporting the Big G... Godzilla... not Ghidorah... that also starts with a "G", so sorry that was kinda confusing... but yeah, I definitely think "what have we got to lose?"... how much worse could it be? A giant radioactive prehistoric monster that breathes radioactive fire and accidentally stomps everything in sight while he's battling his foes could actually be good for us... 

It can't be ufos because xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (redacted for national security) xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx so therefore xxxxxxxxxxxxx and xxxxxxxxxx peanut butter xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx sexy walrus in a tutu xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx granola xxxxxxxxxxx next Tuesday... so that's definitely making mass hysteria seem the most likely.

Which is why my final answer is, for $500...  "Who was Lewis and Clark's barber" ... 

Did I win? Did I make it to final jeopardy?

Helloooooo... Mr. Trebek?... 

This show sucks... I'm changing the channel...

WendyLuvsCatz

actually my guess would be magic 

Ascania

FSMCDesigns said:

Sevrin said:

Misselthwaite said:

Sevrin said:

WendyLuvsCatz said:

I do think at least one no postwork render is important for selling 3D models!

I otherwise don't understand why people even argue about it.

And here I thought you'd been on the internet long enough to know better...

Personally I tend to stick to compositing and colour correction, and the odd pokethrough fix.   Once you know a little bit about post work, you know what kind of things you have to do in the render and what you can address in other ways.  My current rending will spit out 10 layers, and that gives me a lot of options.

As far as people doing the heck they want, that's fine as long as they understand their options.

See, I'd have no idea what to do with 10 layers from a render... :-D

1. Beauty canvas - That's just the main render, or just a 32-bit version of what you normally get from your render.  That's for reference in this case, but I probably won't use it in the final image
2. Environment lighting canvas
3. Left Spot
4. Right Spot
5. Lights from inside the restaurant
6. Character
7. Hair
8. Clothing
9. Jewelry
10. Depth - probably won't use

And that's 10 for a scene with 1 character.  It's an evening scene, and it's a lot easier to get the lighting right in post work than in Iray.  Plus you can use a lot of light, and then just tone it down.  If the render is really simple, often I'll just do a beauty canvas and an environment canvas, and then  subtract the environment canvas from the beauty canvas to get the scene lighting.  Sometimes you get nice results from changing the balance of lighting. 

A lot of photographers would kill to be able to have their cameras produce perfect masks of hair and other details like we can get with canvases.   There are all kinds of tutorial for every major image editing program on how to do image editing and retouching.  It's much more straightforward than learning Iray.

My question is why? Why not add all the elements and then render?

2 - controls the overall visual appearance.

3 - illuminates (and/or tints) ONLY what it is intended for.

4 - same as 3.

5 - background control and not having to compromise on the other lights

6 - makes character problems easier to fix WITHOUT having to re-render the rest of the scene, can save hours

7 - make it look less plasticky, may need different lighting to look natural, makes it easier to fix WITHOUT having to re-render the rest of the scene

8 - make it look less plasticky, may need different lighting to look natural, makes it easier to fix WITHOUT having to re-render the rest of the scene

9 - needs VERY different lighting to look anywhere close to natural

10 - scene mood.

FirstBastion

Postwork is just another tool in an arsenal of artist's tools. Use them when you need 'em.

MelissaGT

The flames pictured are definitely post, but you could probably get some really nice results with this - https://www.daz3d.com/ptf-magic-shaders-and-wearables-for-genesis-3-and-8

I use these all the time and when you start playing with the displacement options, you'd be surprised at what it can do. 

KA1

@McGyver I think you inadvertently hit the nail on the head here, was it postwork? Possibly, but it could also have been Godzilla, Godzilla can create epic flame effects, would explain the radioactive glow too!!

Mattymanx

markgoode77 said:

ALLIEKATBLUE said:

I think people should do whatever the heck they want

Is the correct answer.

I do no postwork, because I haven't learned Photoshop or Gimp.  I will, but not right now - I still have to learn how to do DAZ properly.

I did not do post work in the past and am glad cause it helped me to learn DS better.  Now I do do postwork cause I know its a lot easier then re-rendering a thousand times just to get the colors and lights looking 100%

outrider42

I'm of the mindset that the more post work you do, the more obvious the post work becomes. To be clear I'm not saying you cannot use post work, that would be silly. People can do what they want. But just like a big budget Hollywood movie, the effects become more obvious the more there are. Filming so much green screen has real drawbacks.

The Unreal Engine stage creates better scenes than green screen ever could. And this is in large part due to a very practical effect, not a post effect. The stage casts the background in real time onto the actors, so the light from this gets reflected off the costumes and props on the stage, which grounds the actors and props into the scene much better than a green screen ever could. The stage also has the ability to do green screen while casting a background for reflections at the same time...the best of both.

In a lot of ways a PNG render without a background is a Daz version of green screen. When you add reflections and glowing highlights in Photoshop as a post effect, it is almost impossible to do that in a way that matches what reality would do. That's just, well, reality. It is possible to do something similar in Daz with HDRI and props outside the camera frame.

Of course, the question is if that look is intentional. Hollywood has trained our brains so much that the fake look might be what we want. Even lights are faked in Hollywood. Nearly every scene will shift the entire light setup just for that specific shot. A lot of people who render feel that their images lack some light, even when they have all their lights in the scene "correct". It doesn't look right in their mind because they expect that Holywood look. Hollywood literally has people holding lights in impossible places to add the light they get. Lighting is a job itself.

But ultimately you find a lot of people who tend to prefer the practical effects over post ones. Like if you set somebody on fire, it usually looks better to to have a stuntman in a protective gear actually get set on fire versus doing the fire in post. The problem for Daz is that Iray is not great at recreating realistic fire. Another issue that could pop up is the translucency of Genesis models. A character with high translucency values will glow abnormally with bright lights behind them because they have no internal structure to block that light.

Cybersox

KA1 said:

@McGyver I think you inadvertently hit the nail on the head here, was it postwork? Possibly, but it could also have been Godzilla, Godzilla can create epic flame effects, would explain the radioactive glow too!!

Don't be ridiculous. Godzilla's flame is blue.

Cybersox

McGyver said:

NylonGirl said:

So did we figure out how those flames were produced?

My guess was postwork(brushes and outer glow effect)... but it also could have been magic, an optical illusion or it's really just mass hysteria and nothing was done to the picture at all.

I'm betting the mass hysteria option, because if it was magical, why didn't they make the flames come out of our screen or something like that...

If it was an optical illusion, I'm pretty sure we'd all have to hold our monitors at a similar angle in a desert or somewhere really hot so light passing through the water vapor in the air would create the effect... similar to how it does, for example, when you drink too much and think you are surrounded by otters from the IRS demanding you pay back taxes but it's really just chipmunks from the DMV reminding you to renew your driver's license...

So that just leaves U.F.O.s or mass hysteria which is the most likely option since the topic seems to have changed already from the original question of how the image was made, to the subject of postwork VS no postwork vs godzilla... I personally am rooting for godzilla in this case because I like his take on most of the current topics and the way he took on Ghidorah in the past, I think he'd make a great leader during this pandemic and that's why I'm supporting the Big G... Godzilla... not Ghidorah... that also starts with a "G", so sorry that was kinda confusing... but yeah, I definitely think "what have we got to lose?"... how much worse could it be? A giant radioactive prehistoric monster that breathes radioactive fire and accidentally stomps everything in sight while he's battling his foes could actually be good for us... 

 

Ghidorah's first name is King, so when he, Godzilla, and Gamera hang out together, they usually go by KG, the Big G and Shelly G.  in other random kaiju news, Hedorah the Smog Monster Isn't really a smog monster .He's actually mostly made of congealed sewage sludge, but the US distributor  balked at at releasing a film called Godzilla versus the Big Pile of SXXX Monster.

FSMCDesigns

Ascania said:

FSMCDesigns said:

Sevrin said:

Misselthwaite said:

Sevrin said:

WendyLuvsCatz said:

I do think at least one no postwork render is important for selling 3D models!

I otherwise don't understand why people even argue about it.

And here I thought you'd been on the internet long enough to know better...

Personally I tend to stick to compositing and colour correction, and the odd pokethrough fix.   Once you know a little bit about post work, you know what kind of things you have to do in the render and what you can address in other ways.  My current rending will spit out 10 layers, and that gives me a lot of options.

As far as people doing the heck they want, that's fine as long as they understand their options.

See, I'd have no idea what to do with 10 layers from a render... :-D

1. Beauty canvas - That's just the main render, or just a 32-bit version of what you normally get from your render.  That's for reference in this case, but I probably won't use it in the final image
2. Environment lighting canvas
3. Left Spot
4. Right Spot
5. Lights from inside the restaurant
6. Character
7. Hair
8. Clothing
9. Jewelry
10. Depth - probably won't use

And that's 10 for a scene with 1 character.  It's an evening scene, and it's a lot easier to get the lighting right in post work than in Iray.  Plus you can use a lot of light, and then just tone it down.  If the render is really simple, often I'll just do a beauty canvas and an environment canvas, and then  subtract the environment canvas from the beauty canvas to get the scene lighting.  Sometimes you get nice results from changing the balance of lighting. 

A lot of photographers would kill to be able to have their cameras produce perfect masks of hair and other details like we can get with canvases.   There are all kinds of tutorial for every major image editing program on how to do image editing and retouching.  It's much more straightforward than learning Iray.

My question is why? Why not add all the elements and then render?

2 - controls the overall visual appearance.

3 - illuminates (and/or tints) ONLY what it is intended for.

4 - same as 3.

5 - background control and not having to compromise on the other lights

6 - makes character problems easier to fix WITHOUT having to re-render the rest of the scene, can save hours

7 - make it look less plasticky, may need different lighting to look natural, makes it easier to fix WITHOUT having to re-render the rest of the scene

8 - make it look less plasticky, may need different lighting to look natural, makes it easier to fix WITHOUT having to re-render the rest of the scene

9 - needs VERY different lighting to look anywhere close to natural

10 - scene mood.

I can appreciate that some have this workflow, I was curious as to why since that is complete overkill "to me" when I can do most of that and prefer to do most of that inside DS in preview mode.

It's funny, I do some commercial imagery for 2 book publishers, so hope they never ask about my workflow if that is the expectation, LOL

Misselthwaite

I think the only expectation, in that sense, would be the look of the finished project for yourself or your contract.  How you get there is usually what makes people's eyes glaze over in conversation :-)

The Blurst of Times

FSMCDesigns said:

Ascania said:

FSMCDesigns said:

Sevrin said:

Misselthwaite said:

Sevrin said:

WendyLuvsCatz said:

I do think at least one no postwork render is important for selling 3D models!

I otherwise don't understand why people even argue about it.

And here I thought you'd been on the internet long enough to know better...

Personally I tend to stick to compositing and colour correction, and the odd pokethrough fix.   Once you know a little bit about post work, you know what kind of things you have to do in the render and what you can address in other ways.  My current rending will spit out 10 layers, and that gives me a lot of options.

As far as people doing the heck they want, that's fine as long as they understand their options.

See, I'd have no idea what to do with 10 layers from a render... :-D

1. Beauty canvas - That's just the main render, or just a 32-bit version of what you normally get from your render.  That's for reference in this case, but I probably won't use it in the final image
2. Environment lighting canvas
3. Left Spot
4. Right Spot
5. Lights from inside the restaurant
6. Character
7. Hair
8. Clothing
9. Jewelry
10. Depth - probably won't use

And that's 10 for a scene with 1 character.  It's an evening scene, and it's a lot easier to get the lighting right in post work than in Iray.  Plus you can use a lot of light, and then just tone it down.  If the render is really simple, often I'll just do a beauty canvas and an environment canvas, and then  subtract the environment canvas from the beauty canvas to get the scene lighting.  Sometimes you get nice results from changing the balance of lighting. 

A lot of photographers would kill to be able to have their cameras produce perfect masks of hair and other details like we can get with canvases.   There are all kinds of tutorial for every major image editing program on how to do image editing and retouching.  It's much more straightforward than learning Iray.

My question is why? Why not add all the elements and then render?

2 - controls the overall visual appearance.

3 - illuminates (and/or tints) ONLY what it is intended for.

4 - same as 3.

5 - background control and not having to compromise on the other lights

6 - makes character problems easier to fix WITHOUT having to re-render the rest of the scene, can save hours

7 - make it look less plasticky, may need different lighting to look natural, makes it easier to fix WITHOUT having to re-render the rest of the scene

8 - make it look less plasticky, may need different lighting to look natural, makes it easier to fix WITHOUT having to re-render the rest of the scene

9 - needs VERY different lighting to look anywhere close to natural

10 - scene mood.

I can appreciate that some have this workflow, I was curious as to why since that is complete overkill "to me" when I can do most of that and prefer to do most of that inside DS in preview mode.

It's funny, I do some commercial imagery for 2 book publishers, so hope they never ask about my workflow if that is the expectation, LOL

It's faster (for me) to create a couple layers with effects than it is to balance every piece of light and shadow pre-render. It might look complicated to block out different layers for different effects, but it really isn't complicated for me.

For instance, a night-time/low-light image. It's just faster for me to do this in PS/GIMP rather than to try to render out an image with limited light sources in Daz.

Of course, everyone's workflow is different for sure.

As long as you get to that final polished image in your mind's eye, it doesn't matter how you get there.

Nothing we do is "real", anyway.

Sevrin

One way to get flames is to say "You're doing it wrong".