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Thinking about it some more, I figured some people may be interested in seeing the "effect" render used to obtain the final "glowing fairy" effect above. I am including it for reference purposes.
Bird Bath
I have made many renders today trying to produce what I think is good looking water with reflection. Not an easy task. Let me know what you think of this one.
A second wip. Any thoughts - on either this or my first one? Thanks for your time!
Obelisk
Water is tricky in Daz Studio. Its one of the reasons I like Bryce for certain effects. Bryce has a good library of various water effects for surfaces.
kreartenit and TobiasG I think you are both doing really well with water in DS.
I know it can be difficult. I am so used to Bryce, where basic water settings are actually built in, and water is so much easier to make look good straight out of the box.
I am really hoping that more people will try to make water in DS (or even Carrara or Poser)
The reflections are fairly good, but at this camera angle I'm seeing the "typical" problem I feel Daz Studio has with water. The geometry of this particular water object is flat even though it has a "bump map" or "displacement map" simulating waves. At this angle the flatness of the geometry becomes more obvious. Potentially this may be mitigated some by raising the camera angle higher from the surface of the water, but other than getting a water object which has actual geometry, I'm not sure how to fully fix this issue.
The other issue is that a typical sky dome in Daz Studio is usually too close to successfully portray a flat surface stretching toward a horizon. This is usually mitigated by inserting some closer objects/terrain to break up the horizon. Another way to mitigate this is to keep the water object bounded before the horizon by a terrain feature like a shore line (as above in kreartenit's bird bath image). A third fix may be to make sure the horizon is not captured in the camera angle, but that limits the use of your sky map as an image feature (except potentially as a reflection on your water surface).
This contest is certainly proving that Daz Studio and good water effects requires some careful planning and a good water object to work with.
p.s. I should add the overall composition and lighting are good, it's just the way Daz Studio water works which is causing my issues mentioned above.
Something like that?
Yep, just like that. hehe. Very well done. I even think the lighting is better in this image. I will also add that it is a good representation of reflections on water geometry. I would be happy with this image at this stage. Also noticing a good use of "depth of field" to help extend the horizon further out.
That is a super improvement. Well done.
Thank you both! :)
That is a super improvement. Well done. I'm usually afraid of doing large pieces of water in Daz Studio, but TobiasG has nailed it pretty well here.
I made the waves with a deformer, which I modified using the D-Form tab (Edit Spline). That, combined with the Displacement map, seems to work out OK.
I'm going to have to learn that trick. So much more to learn, hehe.
Since TobiasG has done such a good job, I'm forced to up my game a bit with Burning Ship created in Daz Studio today just for this competition. I'm replacing my mirror "Reading is Fundamental" entry into the contest so I still have both a Daz Studio and Bryce entry to show off. As TobiasG has noted earlier, it helps when the render has a story to tell, and I think this story could be an interesting one.
This is the earlier WIP for "Burning Ship" so you have an idea of the kinds of tweaks and refinements I usually do after the initial "staging" render. In this case I was fairly happy with the initial render composition, so I mainly just adjusted the ship position some, and fiddled with the light set-up a significant amount. I think there is a definite improvement between the two shots based on those adjustments.
Mainly I increased the back lighting intensity, and added in a fill light to relieve the harsh shadows from the distant light. I also tweaked the positioning of the ambient light setup.
Another render with the camera panned back to show more of the scene. My problem with this composition is that the nature of the sky dome tends to stand out without doing some further adjustments (say adding some depth of field blur to the distance).
This is a render used to "break the illusion" I've created with "Burning Ship". Yep, those are Jepe's well done, but two dimensional "Flame Z" plates used to create the burning ship effect. They need to be "square" to the camera angle to work properly. The water is also the native water which comes with the excellent "Viking Village" set. It is good "still mountain lake"/"still harbor" variety water. I can't take credit for it, only composing the render to take good advantage of it.
You can likely also note that the lighting is specific to the framed image in the contest render. Taken out to this level, the lighting is not adequate to the task of displaying the village well.
I think the shadows on the face in version 2 are bit too dark. While the lighting as such is, imo, better, the face of the girl is too little visible, I think.
The boat could also, perhaps, be lowered a tad - is it just me, or is it sitting too much on top of the water?
Centered the camera, worked on the fog, and moved the sky farther away.
The second post is actually the initial "set up render" while the first post is the "contest version". I've been looking at the level of the fill light and internally debating whether it was too high in intensity. It does make the Girl 6 figure "pop" at the cost of making her look isolated from the overall image to a degree. Internal debates about amount of "pop" versus "natural" lighting are continuous with me. I'll try lowing the fill light a notch, and see if I can get it looking even better. I'll post the results here, and let the debate commence, hehe.
The second post is actually the initial "set up render" while the first post is the "contest version". I've been looking at the level of the fill light and internally debating whether it was too high in intensity. It does make the Girl 6 figure "pop" at the cost of making her look isolated from the overall image to a degree. Internal debates about amount of "pop" versus "natural" lighting are continuous with me. I'll try lowing the fill light a notch, and see if I can get it looking even better. I'll post the results here, and let the debate commence, hehe.
This is the adjusted render with a change in fill light angle and lowering of fill light intensity. I like how it looks. What does everyone else think? (The contest render is included for comparison)
Which leads us to further tweaks and refinements. Expression and camera angle are tweaked in this example.
Then we get around to tweaking finger posing for the firearms, and the application of some "depth of field" with the camera to blend the sky dome image with the physical objects in the scene better. All of this is an example of the kinds of iterative refinements which can be performed on an image. Tiny details in some cases, but little issues which tend to catch my eye.
Which leads to variations on the theme. Repositioning the Girl 6 figure, the fill light, and the camera to see if anything more interesting results.
If you need more drama, then add another figure and up the amount of peril. Seems like someone set that boat fire, and is trying to slip away while Girl 6 is distracted and has her back turned.
You need to number these, I hardly know how to comment on a specific one ;)
If you hover your mouse for a moment over the images, then you can discover that the file names are numbered in order of render sequence. The higher the number, the more recent the render. I hope that helps, hehe.
Mainly I'm trying to demonstrate a bit of my iterative process when refining an image. Sometimes it's little tweaks to settings in lights or camera. Other times it is exploring different variations on the basic composition including making adjustments to figures, incorporating new elements, or trying different perspectives to see if something more interesting to me develops. Very rarely is a render done in one or two attempts with Daz Studio for me. Bryce I can pretty much, drop, shoot, and walk away with something that "works" for my intended purpose, but I find that Daz has a different level of flexibility which encourages experimentation.
Looking good. Maybe try adding a little refraction to the water
Looking good. Maybe try adding a little refraction to the water
Certainly willing to go back and try some. In the mean time I've jumped over to working on my "forcefield" effect in my "Reflections of Fear" render. This has been a bit of a bugger to get lit nicely, but I'm pretty near what I was intending now.
Edit: A few more adjustments and I get a result I really like. Certainly more tweaks can be done, but this bottom composition was what I had in mind when I started playing around with this composition.