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Played around with the lighting.
I often struggle with this composition stuff but I'm trying to make an attempt at doing it right :)
Am I close ???
I would say that you are getting there. Image 2 is your current camera window. Red dots are the sweet spots. Image 5 I cut off 100 pixels off the left and right sides and 50 pixels off the top. Red dots are the sweet spots. I would square up the steps so that they run parallel to the image edge. I could have taken off another 50 pixels from the top and it would be real close. I would say from that information that all you would need to do is pull in tighter on your subject and you should have something you like.
Try to avoid too static a composition with lots of straight horizontal and vertical lines. Architecture is often certainly this, so utilize diagonals with the characters to tell a story. The little duck can cock his head as if he's telling his teddy the story. The teddy can be positioned as if he's listening. More diagonals by offsetting the position of the hands to avoid symmetry. Focus on the important elements of your story. You might even think about simplifying your background with an environment that doesn't have so many busy patterns. The scale of these patterns tend to make the duck rather large. Is that the scale you were going for or is the duck a small creature? All things to think about. I also placed the figures in a close triangle to help bring the viewer to this cozy little scene.
Good start. This contest is all about learning and you're getting some good pointers from Lonnie. Mine are about enhancing the story aspect. Now it's time for you to think about it all and see how you want to present your story. Keep going. :)
Thank-you for all the advice so far. Here's a next version as I work on digesting and incorporating all the new learnings. I've added some stuff to the floor, changed the lighting in a couple of places and tweaked the camera position. I'm still trying to figure out levels, but from some of the articles it sounds like something I should be paying more attention to.
As always, any and all constructive feedback welcomed. I really appreciate the time the experienced artists put into helping teach slow learners like me.
One question for the 'real' artists: do you spend a lot of time redoing and agonizing over all of these composition rules, or do they just flow naturally for you?
Hi smurph9, to answer your question about how much time is spent on composition. I guess for me it depends. I did not start out as an artist. My first love is engineering. So I have no structured training in the arts, only a smidge of talent and this great big itch to make something amazing. That being said before I started to dabble in 3D I was a sculptor. I spent years going to informal classes learning the tools of how to create an object of art. I can say that in the beginning it was a struggle, this art thing does not come easy for me. So the composition guidelines are a godsend and as I did projects and participated in critiques, things did get easier. Do I still struggle, yes. Am I still learning, absolutely but not as much as when I first started on this path. Coming into this thread and looking at what you all have done has helped me learn lots more about making a picture. It is always easier to make comments then it is to create. I appreciate you all for allowing me to make comments.
Okay, so I took your image, smurph9, and I figured out what "rule" best fit your current composition. I found that the rule of squares was the best fit. Image 10 is your image with the guideline aligned as I think you had intended with your mystery machine being the focus of the image. I did lighten your image up for illustration purposes so that people could see what the overlay was demonstrating. From the image we can see that there are more opportunities for creating flow and our points of interest, ie, the intersections of the red blue and black lines are at points that are not very interesting. You can still work with this by repositioning or adding some other elements.
But I took the liberty in Image 11 to show the overlay if you move the focus way from your machine and move it to the two figures on the left. Pretty girls and big mean orks are so much more interesting then a cool mystery machine. ;-) When I did that, I know right away I would want to move the rats over to the rock and make them be observers of the whole situation, sitting them right where the red line crosses the rock and positioning them as if they are having a discussion about crazy humanoid creatures. I would also give the elf an expression, say of surprise or anger. With that I would have her right hand and arm in the position of reaching for an arrow and her left hand holding the bow. I would have the ork looking down the hall that they just came through to justify why his weapon is not at the ready and why he is almost bumping into the elf. I would move the torch to the left, right where the red and black line intersect, so that I can give a reason for the spot light pointing at the elf I added to move the focus from the machine to the elf. I would also pull the camera in on the scene so that I replicate the dimensions of the black rectangle I used in the overlay. Image 13 is your image cropped to the new perspective with the overlay centering around the elf's eyes. Image 14 is an approximation of what the new lighting would look like in the new scene.
Remember these are suggestions. In the end this is your art and you are in charge of creating it. I am completely at ease if the choice is not to use any of the suggestions. Looking forward to seeing what you do.
Thanks Cris. I agree totally with the advice you have given. We can talk about composition and follow the rules to the "T" and still not have that image with the "it". "It" being that certain something that makes you respond to the art, by saying oh wow. It is good to focus on certain aspects of creating an image but we must not forget all of the other elements that go into making an image. Love your ideas Cris.
I love the concept and posing and the overall mood, plus the fog effect looks great. The lighting looks a little flat to me--as far as realism goes that's probably to be expected in an atmospheric scene like this one, but for the sake of aesthetics I think there's some room for improvement...I'd think about adding some eerie colored lights, and/or some specular-only lights to bring out the details in the textures. Do your lights have shadows enabled? I'd recommend going with Raytraced shadows with a high Shadow Softness value. As far as the composition is concerned, I'd suggest playing around with the camera angle and framing, keeping in mind the rule of thirds.
Very nice start overall...looking forward to seeing more!
Thank you very much for the feedback. Trying to realise however proves a challenge. I originally used two light sources with raytraced shadows and the softness at 45% (I guess tha is a hight value?). I spent hours pushig lights from left to right an back again only to delete them again and starting all over. I learned the rendering time increases exponentially with every light you add.
Here ist a question that might have been answered somewhere in the forums already but I coudn't find it: whenever I try using uberenvironment light my renders resolve do rectangles of bltochy colour. Why does that happen and how to avoid it?
Ok here ist the result of my light pushig exercise: I added two lights to enlighten the girl on the lillypad and another for the submerged girl. Plus I put a blue (I guess thats called ambient) one in.
I'm still insecure about the camera positioning. I hat had larger render made with more environment around which i liked very much but would be out of contest limits. When I have the 800x600 frame I somehow feel the need to get closer with the camera.
Thanks again, this really is a learning experience
That is some awesome advice :D and it really has brought the scene to life I am making some adjustments now including using a different book that isn't static open like the one I used.
Title: The Walled Garden
Rendered in DAZ 4.7 Pro
Any comments welcome. This feels a little stark to me.
Thank-you Cris, Scott and Dolly-girl for taking the time to provide such great help [thus far], not just to me but the others. Just flipping through the versions of these and seeing the changes based on your recommendations is very cool.
*face-palm*, um, clearly the Orc and Elf were the main characters all along, and the box that started it all is merely the object of their attention. They both had to fight through a maze populated with R.O.U.S. (Rodents of Unusual Size) to discover this without a guide; I only had to fight through numerous iterations in Daz Studio but at least I had you-all as my guides. And fewer rats.
There are still a few improvements left to go. I liked the back-light on the Orc a version ago, even though it was an accident (the light for the orc was mis-aligned)...will try to get that back without ruining everything. Also may increase the lighting on the [now] main subject, and reduce it on the box to be more obvious with my intention. I've shifted the focus and depth of field a bit to try and do this, but not sure yet whether I want to do that more or less.
What about colour (or color as you'd spell it here in the US) to help separate things? Should I change the goblin's hair to a different colour to keep 'red' as a color (ok, spell-checker, you win) for the cluster of main characters? Is that worth doing? Is it over-kill? Or perhaps I misunderstood one of the articles I read, and that's not even a thing.
Über-question: Is there a sense that I should pick a couple of composition constructs and nail them, rather than try to incorporate them all as much as possible into every image? Or are they additive and the more the better? Before this contest I'd only ever been aware of the rule of 3rd's...and this is like the scales have been peeled from my eyes and I'm suddenly wanting to [ham-fistedly] use them all. But does that create a higher-order clutter that at some point decreases the aesthetic? Or am I thinking like Salieri when he chided Mozart for "too many notes."
Here is what I have. Good thing is that i have got light good and learned to use Wireframe view to set up scene, but still my computer is limitied and I had to drop 2 figures to avoid crashes. I still didn't fit hair into the hat, I tried with morphs and this is best i could do so i am hoping to use that morphing tool again for that. Also i had problem with hair shader freebie I downloaded during DAZ Hoildays. I used it but it gives that look, but i hoped better result. And for composition i mostly used rule of thirds, but will try to read more and to see if i can do better.
What an amazingly helpful forum. Who knew it was not too late for this old dog to learn new tricks (he said presuming that 1/2 of this has actually sunk in yet).
I've fixed the backlight, and tweaked a few things that were bugging me (no one was picky enough to point out that the goblin's boot was slightly below floor level). The mouse pretending to be a rat face-palming in the foreground represents me, and how I've felt through this...and I've added a cog that's fallen off the 'device' to symbolize my being done with it as the driver of my image.
Thank-you all for all the help. I'm still very much receptive to feedback, but may put this down for a bit as I'm getting that "I'm done" feeling.
After another few hours of tweaking lights I dumped the blue ambient light. It seemed to me to distract from the interesting action. As an alternative I added a pointlight under the hand of the submerged girl. And I changed the camera anlge so the that head of the submerged girl is better placed on the right lower point in the thirds rule.
At the moment I'm quiet happy with the result and I have the need to get some distance to the scene.
Comments and hints are still appreciated very much.
@Kismet: I really like the version of Yeager with the reduced red lights. he's much more the focus of attention there.
Overall I'm really impressed the way the renders have evolved- It's fun to see and so much to learn.
You can try to close into the main elements of your story. Make the scene more intimate. The swan family will be what pulls in a lot of people, so use them as a focal point.
Also look at the pond example, here. Notice the rim on the ground at the waterline. The greenery will not only clump at the edges, but there will usually be a great variety of vegetation.
The bridge was looking a bit out of scale with so little around it. By cropping most of it, it still has scale, but it also begins to blend in a bit more by not looking so isolated in the scene. Also not the reflections in the water. You may want to bring some of that reflectiveness to yours.
Well I've made some adjustments but it's still rendering in luxrender.
Linwelly, you made some good choices on the move of the camera and the lighting of your image. Your image has some nice emotions going on in it. So I am not sure if you are saying that you are done with your image or that you still want to work more on depth. I am going to assume that you are done so these suggestions are just ideas to keep in your pocket until next time. I am going to take your image, do some research and see what happens.
One of the things I do before I start an image is to look at images that have the effect I want to work on. First, I do a google image search using foggy as my criteria. I then look at the pictures and for every image I liked I would ask myself why do you like this one? Was it because of the contrast, the use of color, the depth of field. I would also observe how fog is captured. Is it a continuous presence in the image or does it fade in and out across the picture. Sometimes I save out a picture but most of the times I just leave the search results up and as I work on the image I will go back to the results to see how I am doing. So doing my search I found that I liked more of a contrast between the subject matter and the fog with a hint of true color in evidence. So I also like that fog can become thin or thick and that the fog that is closest to me is not as grey as the fog that is further away from me. And armed with this information, I took your image and did some postwork magic. I gave your image a hard light layer to give more contract to the picture and I added a frame of very light grey fog around the edge. I think with these changes that I have pulled the viewer's eye towards the main focus which is the girl under the water by creating more detail of the girl and inverting what the viewer's eye will be drawn to, which in this case are the dark areas and not the light areas.
But as you know the rules of the contest are such that these types of enhancements should really be done in your 3D software of choice. Now you ask, how does one do this. I use DAZ Studio so I am going to give pointers for that software. I think that if the ambient light level was dropped down just a bit that would move the girl above water more into shadow. I would want to keep the spot lights presence the same so I might have to increase their levels to compensate for the loss of the ambient light. To get the frame of fog I would add a plane just in front of the camera making the size of the plane be the same as the render window. I would then add a transparency map to the opacity color channel on the plane. To make the transparency map I would take a copy of the rendered image into my graphics program, creating the frame by adding a new layer, using a cloud brush with a color of mid grey, 192 192 192 and plopping clouds around the outer edge of the image. Blur this layer, add a new layer of black behind the cloud layer, bump up the brightness of the cloud layer and hold the contrast. Save out the image and apply to the plane. I usually don't like the results of the first render with the plane in place so I have to go back and play with the trans map until I get the transitions from nothing to something solid just the way I want them. Remembering that DAZ treats a spot totally transparent when the spot has 0, 0, 0 (black) applied to it and totally opaque when the spot has 255, 255, 255 (white) applied to it. So that means that the gradients within the trans map may be too sharp a change and I will have to feather them out some more to get what I want.
Well not sure you will find this of any use but I sure was pleased when I played with your image and found that girl under the water. Your image is a lovely composition.
Oh duck yeah! I think I quacked it :D
You sure did!!!
You sure did!!!
Yep, yep! :)
Here it goes, i made my first correction with morph. Now hair fits to hat. I changed color of the hair and used some other shaders and will have to ask on the forum how to use Lumina Hair MATs. I used for beard LAMH preset but i have problem with it because it doesn't load good after saving scene so i needed to adjust colours again but it seems i made a mistake and now it looks white instead of dark grey.
Okay, still relatively new at 3D Modeling. Here's my first attempt prior to submitting for the contest. I am still a Novice on Lighting and Cameras so please be gentle, but I definitely welcome any thoughts to not only help this render but future renders as well! Thanks!
Welcome poetman75, we try to be gentle here. You know, been there, done that, got the t-shirt kind of thing. I hope because we have been there we remember that. You have a nice handle on your surfaces. I see the use of bump, reflection and secularity. I like the concept as well. Nothing like feeling the joy of going fast fast fast.
So I have applied the rule of thirds to your image and have shown the sweet spots on your image. I think that if you moved your camera to the right to get Joe's face a little closer to the top left red dot and turned his face to the camera I think you will like that image better. I would also add a wicked bad boy expression to Joe to show his joy. I think I would add some lighting behind him to see if I could diminish the light spot reflection seen just right and a little above the top right sweet spot. The spot could be moved as well but then your shadows would change and I don't know if that would be acceptable.
A nice start looking forward to seeing if you play with the image some more.
Hi gulan7, I know that preset. Sorry it is giving you fits. Give me a pm and tell me what it is doing and I will see what I can do to help make it better. I like your setting and the lighting you have set up. I have applied the rule of thirds to your image (Image 4). I see a beginning of a story. With the wizard not close enough to really pull the eye into the image I am left wondering what is going on and because I am still wondering what is going on I can not project beyond the image to what could be. When this happens to me then I go on to a more interesting activity. So I see two things that can happen, move the camera so that we can see your wizard or add some action like some fire breathing dragons or something.
Looking forward to seeing what you do, gulan7.
Welcome poetman75, we try to be gentle here. You know, been there, done that, got the t-shirt kind of thing. I hope because we have been there we remember that. You have a nice handle on your surfaces. I see the use of bump, reflection and secularity. I like the concept as well. Nothing like feeling the joy of going fast fast fast.
So I have applied the rule of thirds to your image and have shown the sweet spots on your image. I think that if you moved your camera to the right to get Joe's face a little closer to the top left red dot and turned his face to the camera I think you will like that image better. I would also add a wicked bad boy expression to Joe to show his joy. I think I would add some lighting behind him to see if I could diminish the light spot reflection seen just right and a little above the top right sweet spot. The spot could be moved as well but then your shadows would change and I don't know if that would be acceptable.
A nice start looking forward to seeing if you play with the image some more.
How does this look?
Linwelly, you made some good choices on the move of the camera and the lighting of your image. Your image has some nice emotions going on in it. So I am not sure if you are saying that you are done with your image or that you still want to work more on depth. I am going to assume that you are done so these suggestions are just ideas to keep in your pocket until next time. I am going to take your image, do some research and see what happens.
One of the things I do before I start an image is to look at images that have the effect I want to work on. First, I do a google image search using foggy as my criteria. I then look at the pictures and for every image I liked I would ask myself why do you like this one? Was it because of the contrast, the use of color, the depth of field. I would also observe how fog is captured. Is it a continuous presence in the image or does it fade in and out across the picture. Sometimes I save out a picture but most of the times I just leave the search results up and as I work on the image I will go back to the results to see how I am doing. So doing my search I found that I liked more of a contrast between the subject matter and the fog with a hint of true color in evidence. So I also like that fog can become thin or thick and that the fog that is closest to me is not as grey as the fog that is further away from me. And armed with this information, I took your image and did some postwork magic. I gave your image a hard light layer to give more contract to the picture and I added a frame of very light grey fog around the edge. I think with these changes that I have pulled the viewer's eye towards the main focus which is the girl under the water by creating more detail of the girl and inverting what the viewer's eye will be drawn to, which in this case are the dark areas and not the light areas.
But as you know the rules of the contest are such that these types of enhancements should really be done in your 3D software of choice. Now you ask, how does one do this. I use DAZ Studio so I am going to give pointers for that software. I think that if the ambient light level was dropped down just a bit that would move the girl above water more into shadow. I would want to keep the spot lights presence the same so I might have to increase their levels to compensate for the loss of the ambient light. To get the frame of fog I would add a plane just in front of the camera making the size of the plane be the same as the render window. I would then add a transparency map to the opacity color channel on the plane. To make the transparency map I would take a copy of the rendered image into my graphics program, creating the frame by adding a new layer, using a cloud brush with a color of mid grey, 192 192 192 and plopping clouds around the outer edge of the image. Blur this layer, add a new layer of black behind the cloud layer, bump up the brightness of the cloud layer and hold the contrast. Save out the image and apply to the plane. I usually don't like the results of the first render with the plane in place so I have to go back and play with the trans map until I get the transitions from nothing to something solid just the way I want them. Remembering that DAZ treats a spot totally transparent when the spot has 0, 0, 0 (black) applied to it and totally opaque when the spot has 255, 255, 255 (white) applied to it. So that means that the gradients within the trans map may be too sharp a change and I will have to feather them out some more to get what I want.
Well not sure you will find this of any use but I sure was pleased when I played with your image and found that girl under the water. Your image is a lovely composition.
Thank you for the time you took for my render. There is a lot in there that I will try sooner or later, but I fear that it will take some time (shudders with the thought of diving into the deps of the GIMP one more).
With the actual render I am at the moment not sure if i am done or not. I am still indecided of where to take it further. I quiet like the uncertainty, not showing the submerged girl to clearly, where one can indentify with the girl on the lillypad thinking is it real or am I imagening this. The way you altered the pic is more the pathway to a different world, which is intreaguing as well.
So, yes there is still some time left till the end of this contest. I hope I can decide till then :roll:
Ok I will try to work a bit more on it. Original idea was to be 3 characters, one on the throne and one to the right. But now i have a new idea. But that will have to wait for tomorrow.
Here's a Second Render. I had a lot more trouble getting this below 400KB.
How does this look?
Much better but I would open his eyes and make him look at the camera. I would also bend his head so that his face is parallel with the bike tank. So no bending back just twisting to the side as he is flying by.
Thank you for the time you took for my render. There is a lot in there that I will try sooner or later, but I fear that it will take some time (shudders with the thought of diving into the deps of the GIMP one more).
With the actual render I am at the moment not sure if i am done or not. I am still indecided of where to take it further. I quiet like the uncertainty, not showing the submerged girl to clearly, where one can indentify with the girl on the lillypad thinking is it real or am I imagening this. The way you altered the pic is more the pathway to a different world, which is intreaguing as well.
So, yes there is still some time left till the end of this contest. I hope I can decide till then :roll:
Please feel no pressure Linwelly. It is after all your vision and if you like what you have done then let it be. Good luck.