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Good catch, she looks much more natural now. I had to look at your origianl again to see what was going on. That would have been one awkward archer! ...and I finally found that third snake!
Thanks. And yay!
Almost There!
Intermediate Instances
Got a little carried away with this! The forward half of the boat has duplicate groups, to allow some tweaks to pose and textures. The stern has instances repeated from the duplicate groups to give a little more variety. Had quite a few tweaks to do to get the rowing position, in order to get the oars through the holes into something resembling a rowing stroke. (I also realise that it may not be possible for people to actually see that - but I know...) Not entirely happy with the water, but I want to get on with something else and maybe come back later.
Alien landscape. I used a -lot- of instances and duplicates with the plants. The sky and planet are my own creation
@Linwelly
Thanks for the suggestions!
So...he's actually touching the ground not sure where his shadow is. I'm using sun-sky for the lighting, I changed the time to 7:30pm so something inbetween the two lighting I did before and I tried a different angle to see if it woud help. As you can see the shadows show up for the the Pings but not for Pounce for whatever reason. I added some grass instances too to try to help connect him to the ground better. And I moved the Pings a bit to see if they look more like they are moving after him. I also added some light source near him but I couldn't think of any reason there would be one unless he was carrying a lantern but I liked him clutching the cake with both paws so the lantern ended up on teh ground...maybe he dropped it in his hurry to get away from the Dessert Zombies. I actually turned up the shadow intesnity from 1 to 2 as well but I'm not sure if that did anything (or what that is actually supposed to do - I thought it might make the shadows darker based on the name?)
@katywhitehis shadow is.
I like the new light setting and the dropped lantern helps telling the rush he's in. The motion from the others is better visible now as well. The added grass helps a lot to connect, still I'm puzzled what is going on with the ground. Since you mention using sunlight, this is not HDRI ground but a real ground (with HDRI I don't manage to get figures located properly on the ground, but that's not it here) I never used ground shadow intensity, so I have to test what it actually does, but I would have expected the same as you. Could it be that the ground is mostly a flat plane with that grassy groud image on it? Then maybe try to add or increase bump/normal for it (displacement is not as efficient in iray), If there are not maps for that you can make a bump map from the groundtexture by turning it into a greyscale image in a photomanipulation program and save as bump map.
Princess in the Tower
Intermediate Challenge
I have been slowly constructing a cityscape for use in this challenge, but until now had not been inspired for an actual shot. It isn't finished, but is far enough along that I feel its ready for some feedback. This city is entirely made of instances of hidden objects (below grade, if you will), including the bridge, which was modified from the original mesh (GIS skyway) to look more like a suspension bridge, then carefully instanced in different groups to stretch across the span. In order to get a more 'realistic' depth of field everything is scaled 'correctly'. The bridge stretches almost 2km across the water and the city is 2-3 km deep. I lost count of the number of instances honestly, between 3 sets (2 building sets and a roadway set) but upwards of 2-300 overall.
One of challenges I've found though is setting a focal distance and fstop that shows the foreground character in detail, and still shows the city in some (if slightly out of focus) detail. I think I've found a good setting, but would appreciate some advice. Setting it too high I find the city looks too toylike.
I plan to render some traffic billboards to stretch across the skyline. I'm also not fully sold on the doorway. It's set open/close parameter doesn't allow for a good camera angle, and while like the bokeh effect it does obscure a little more than I really want. I might explore unlocking the rotation and reversing it to open outward.
Thank you!
Tirick
All Must Kneel
Beginner Challenge - Composition
This is my second entry for the month. The other is for the intermediate. Can I do both? I am a newbie, but I could not find a rule saying I could not do both. I meet the eligibility rules for the Beginner challenge. If not, hey, here is a scene I made :-)
Created in DAZ. Background lighting was adjusted in Photoshop Elements 2020 (took 23 hours to render just the background or I would have attempted to fix it in DAZ).
Criticism is welcome.
Assets Used:
Palace
The Brute 8 Pro Bundle (The Brute 8, Shield from Gladiator Outfit, Untamed Poses, Death Shadow outfit - used on the Drow, MRL flat top Hair and Beard - Used on the Drow)
Jingle and Belle for Topsy 8 and Genesis 8 Female (Belle used)
Dark Fantasy Weapons for Genesis 3 and 8 Female (both weapons seen)
Dokkalfar the Dark Elf for Genesis 8 Male
101 Expression Library with Dials for the Genesis 8 Male
101 Expression Library with Dials for the Genesis 8 Female
Perrin Hair for Genesis 3 & 8 Female
Shadow Thief Outfit for Genesis 8 Female
Dark Prince Outfit for Genesis 8 Male (On The Brute)
Skies of Economy Redux - Volume 1
Facial Hair and Short Hair for Genesis 8 Male (On the Brute)
Sorry about going quiet this month, but I started messing around in Minecraft last weekend, and have been rather distracted.
Edit, I did get the idea of trying to recreate a room from my largest so far using primitaves and instancing, so who knows.
Princess in the Tower v2
Intermediate Challenge
I made a few alterations. I unlocked the rotation of the balcony door to open the doorway up fully, changed the HDRI to a brighter image with a bit more blue than red and added some sky traffic. The billboard I made for the traffic did not play nicely with the default Iray fog settings so I replaced it with layered TerraDome3 atmospheres. I did end up rendering in two passes however. The foreground is a separate render from the full background and layered for this result.
Thank you,
Tirick
Really like that improvement. Both elements work so much better. I really like what you did with the cityscape.
Wow, this is a massive improvement from your original shot. I love the clarity of the background and the lights. Opening the door s more was also a very nice touch. I can totally relate to the multi-layer composite process. I have to do that on nearly everything. Excellent render!
My entry for the Composition challenge. Heavily inspired by one of the reference images, I wanted to do something with a lot of negative space and heavy contrast. I really like how it turned out but I definitely see room for improvement. I'd love to hear your feedback!
Here's my attempt at what I was thinking of last post. I ended up using over 200 instances of the cube primative used for the main part of the build (225 if I remember right) alone. The lights are another cube primative along with 23 instances of said cube.
Took me the better part of an hour or two to arange everything in the proper settup.
Only things I can think of are to see if rotating the instances in mixes of 90 digrees will do mutch with the repatition of the shadding on the walls/floor/roof. and maybe add a character or two if I keep messing with it. I was curious about if I could pull it off more then anything.
I have rotated some of the flowers to make them look less identical and added a V4 skin with bolder makeup to the Sprite
Second entry...will work on my first one next with your suggestions....
Title: The Discourager of Hesitancy
Caption: This is based on the story, The Discourager of Hesitancy, the sequel to the story, The Lady, or the Tiger? For those who don't know it, this scene is where the prince must identify the woman he married while blindfolded, else he'll be executed by the Discourager. He has to determine who out of a crowd of 40 women. He narrows it down to two, one lady smiling and one frowning. It is at this point this scene takes place.
Software: Daz 3D
Challenge: Intermediate
The instances are the women to create a larger crowd.
Versions C and D are definitely my personal favorites. I think I may like D the best of the two though. Really nice job on all the reworking!
Really nice job on the instancing. I had to really look hard and hunt for them. They were done really well
You made a very large convincing crowd!
The rotations did a lot and it looks very natural. I can't really tell the flowers arent different. So very nice job on that. Rotating is definitely a key thing when it comes to stuff like that (especially with natural elements like flowers and trees) Really nice work!
Rotation would help to break up any texture patterning. That said, there are other ways of doing it as well with materials and shaders (though that is a different contest but you could look for the previous contest on that topic if you wanted to play some) That there is lots of cubes though
I really like this one. Its different and unique and the dead space gives it a very interesting feel and focus. You could potentially pull in a bit closer to them to maybe cut out some of the negative space but I admit I kinda really love it as is. Something about the negative space really draws your eyes and makes it more dramatic.
Really pretty. I really love the full impact of the setting around her. If I was to critique anything it would be to maybe work on her posing just a smidge to get it looking more natural/balanced. That said, posing is a different challenge so not necessary to this challenge to resolve. Just something to do if you were so inclined (more her back hand than anything). I really love everything though. The full scene is quite eye catching and engaging and there is a lot there to look at.
Really nice job on the composition elements. It draws you right into the people and what they are doing (ouch!) I don't think that poor guy kneeling is going to have a very good day AT ALL LOL Really nice job!
Thank you! =)
Thank you! Your advice about the pose is spot on; something about her left hand didn't look right so I took another look at it. I ended up shifting the right hand first, to more properly rest on the railing, which shifted her posture pose a bit. I then moved her left hand to what looks like a more natural resting position. Rendering this in two groups meant I was able to just re-render the foreground and layer, so it was overall a quick fix.
Princess in the Tower v3.5
Intermediate Challenge
Thank you,
Tirick
Minor edit: Making a few adjustments had shifted the outer dress a bit and I didn't notice until I had posted; I've adjusted everything so it drapes a little nicer and there is no pokethrough.
Thank you! I totally take your point about pulling it a little closer, I cropped it just a tiny bit and I really like it, it's still got the same effect but slightly less dead space.
Thank you for your comments, DAZ_ann0314. I appreciate your input!
Wasn't quite sure if #4 for the challenge rules meant that we could have a total of 2 entries or if we could have up to 2 for each level. If it's the latter, than this is for the beginner's challenge (haven't participated in the Composition challenge before), if not, then this one is just for fun! Either way, would love to hear feedback!
Title: Dark Flame
So....I increased the bump map from 20% to 100% and added a Displacement and a normal map...they had the files for all three but for some reason only the bump was actually used. THis is the result. Still no shadow for our furry cake friend. Not sure why that is happening.
Title: After Hours Explanations at the Pussycat Lounge
Software: Daz 4.12.1.118 (iRay), Gimp, Affinity Photo
Challenge: January Beginner (Compositing)
Pretty happy with instancing so thought I would challenge myself to compositing.
Tiny bit of tidying up in GIMP and various bits of processing in Affinity.