October, 2021 - Daz 3D New User Challenge - Atmosphere, Ghosts and Special Effects

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Comments

  • Daedalus-7 said:

    @OriginalSamhain Now I'm jealous, that's an awesome image. It reminds of some fantasy artwork and it works well because you are going from Darkness (Top) to Brightness (Bottom) and the expressions on all the monsters is amazing. 

    If there is one thing that can be improved (but this is just nitpicking at this point) is enhancing the girl's eyes in postwork so that they pop out a bit more. 

    Thank you! I'm just messed about with her eyes a little but all it's done is show me that they're a little bit crooked and now it's driving me mad, so I'm leaving it! That's what I get for cutting corners and just pointing her eyes at the camera rather than positioning them manually...  

  • Daedalus-7Daedalus-7 Posts: 198
    edited October 2021

    OriginalSamhain said:

    Thank you! I'm just messed about with her eyes a little but all it's done is show me that they're a little bit crooked and now it's driving me mad, so I'm leaving it! That's what I get for cutting corners and just pointing her eyes at the camera rather than positioning them manually...  

    From my experience having the eyes auto-follow the camera does indeed give that "crooked eyes" look because both eyes are looking "exactly" at the same point. A trick would be to "point at the camera" only one eye, and then manually enter the parameters on the other, but make sure the "side-to-side" value of the second one is not the same, but has about 10 points of difference.

    For the eyes (in postwork and if you want to try it out) a nice trick is to create a Hue/Saturation layer that affects only the eyes [by creating a mask only for the eyes]. From there, you can control its luminosity and color all with some easy to use sliders. 

    Post edited by Daedalus-7 on
  • Daedalus-7Daedalus-7 Posts: 198
    edited October 2021

    @OriginalSamhain I took the liberty of taking your amazing image through my postwork process to give it some more consistent coloring of an older fantasy artwork and to bring the focus more on the girl's face.

    Here is the result, let me know what you think of it:

    Here is your image, for a quick comparison:

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  • Daedalus-7Daedalus-7 Posts: 198
    edited October 2021

    Well, since I'm at it, I made a second entry for the intermediate challange. This one was rendered in Daz and, as usual, has a lot of postwork (because I really enjoy doing it). 

    It's a 4k image, so it's best viewed when seen at least at 1080p +

    Dark Angel

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  • Version B here, giving my character a shield as a form of defence. I hope to make the time to add some rounds deflecting off and/or flying by.  I've got work later so I better try and get some rest.

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  • aprilshowers2065aprilshowers2065 Posts: 736
    edited October 2021

    2nd entry for the Intermediate contest. Feedback appreciated

    Curious

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  • @aprilshowers2065 Now that is so cute.

  • @Shinji Ikari 9th Thank you! laugh

  • Kismet2012Kismet2012 Posts: 4,252

    Daedalus-7 said:

    Well, since I'm at it, I made a second entry for the intermediate challange. This one was rendered in Daz and, as usual, has a lot of postwork (because I really enjoy doing it). 

    It's a 4k image, so it's best viewed when seen at least at 1080p +

    Dark Angel

    A really emotional image.  I really like the monochromatic colour pallete.  I really works.

  • Kismet2012Kismet2012 Posts: 4,252

    Shinji Ikari 9th said:

    Version B here, giving my character a shield as a form of defence. I hope to make the time to add some rounds deflecting off and/or flying by.  I've got work later so I better try and get some rest.

    Ahh work.  Gets in the way of everything but so necessary.

    I like the shield.  It makes sense but I do find your figure hard to see.  Maybe turn down the opactiy a fraction?

  • Kismet2012Kismet2012 Posts: 4,252

    aprilshowers2065 said:

    2nd entry for the Intermediate contest. Feedback appreciated

    Curious

    This is an adorable image.

    My only quibble, and it is getting really nitpicky, is the pig's tail.  At least, I think it is his tail, is going straight up out of the image.

    You did a great job with the weeds.  It couldn't have been easy to have them look like they've been pushed aside by the little pig.

    Nicely done.

  • aprilshowers2065aprilshowers2065 Posts: 736
    edited October 2021

    Thanks @Kismet2012. Yes, that is his tail; I've applied the curl morph so his tail doesn't stick out of the image anymore. Also played around with the bloom filter some more so there's a slightly softer glow around the plant.

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  • Version C here, trying to tweek the shield that I gave my character.  I've tried to lower the opactiy by another factor of 4 from what it was already lowered to.  Looks to me like it helped some.

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  • katywhitekatywhite Posts: 441
    edited October 2021

    Title: Battling the Ice Queen

    Software: Daz 3D

    Challenge: Intermediate

    Feedback much appreciated! Will continue to try toying around with it more on my own but figured this would be a good point to get some critiques!

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  • RexRedRexRed Posts: 1,338
    edited October 2021

    Intermediate Challenge

    Ghost Tales

     

     

     

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  • charlescharles Posts: 847
    edited October 2021

    Here is my ghost...and space girl...and cowboy...and alice...and banana.

    Oh my bad this is the noob challange. Dang it.

     

    https://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#gallery=newest&page=1&image=1179955

    Post edited by charles on
  • Alpha01Alpha01 Posts: 160
    edited October 2021

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  • charlescharles Posts: 847

    aprilshowers2065 said:

    Thanks @Kismet2012. Yes, that is his tail; I've applied the curl morph so his tail doesn't stick out of the image anymore. Also played around with the bloom filter some more so there's a slightly softer glow around the plant.

    If you could add illuminiation of the flower or whatever it is onto the pigs face and eyes it would be much more dramatic.

  • charlescharles Posts: 847
    edited October 2021

    katywhite said:

    Title: Battling the Ice Queen

    Software: Daz 3D

    Challenge: Intermediate

    Feedback much appreciated! Will continue to try toying around with it more on my own but figured this would be a good point to get some critiques!

     

    Ad a fan of D&D for what 35 years now I like it. The ground is the biggest issue however. I would smooth the seams out using mesh grabber, dform or if you want to tackle taking into blender or zbrush for scultiping would be the best option.

    I'ld also do some lighting adjustments. Maybe making the zpped middle character glow some that would illuminate those around it from the center more. Maybe darkening the sky to give more shadows for contrast and putting a light behind the ice crystals could make this much more dramatic.

    I'ld also probably move the shiled on the far right a bit so it doesn't give the appearance that the woman paladin is holding onto it, the dep of field is shallow so at first I thought she was holding 2 shields.

     

    Post edited by charles on
  • charlescharles Posts: 847

    RexRed said:

    Intermediate Challenge

    Ghost Tales

     

     

     

    I like how you have the foot just barely sticking out and it's a cold dead foot. Nice. 

  • Alpha01Alpha01 Posts: 160
    edited October 2021

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  • Alpha01Alpha01 Posts: 160
    edited October 2021

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  • charlescharles Posts: 847

    Alpha01 said:

    Think I have the picture at a point where I am happy with it.

    Night Terrors

     

    This composition is much better. I dig the candle source.

    However if I may make a suggestion...The girl looks like she's sleeping on bed made of concrete, also is she suppose to sleep above the covers? If you put her under covers it will give more realism and sense of being trapped/constrained. Tackling deformation and bedding and seating isn't really that hard but I see this type of thing over and over again by even seasoned artists who don't want to take the effort to do it. But it's really simple but depends on the quality of the bed, if it's a really low poly bed it won't work, it would need to be sudivided.  You would just add a dform to it, scale the deform and center it on her center of body mass, scale it the direction of body length and then switch to the manipulator part and push it down slowly, but then also scale it down a tab which will give the effect of the sheets receding into the cavities. You want just the edges of the body to clip through bedding to make it look right and not make it very deep.

    If you want to add her under covers, then you have to remove the cover sheet, it's either it's own object which you can hide or you may have to select the material and hide it in Surfaces and turn opacity to 0. You would want to use a duvet that is two layer, not a flat plane, flat planes don't really make that great of blankets even if subdivided a lot, they have no thickness.  A dforce duvet will give the illusion of thickness of a quilt or comforter, the best one I've found is from this asset European Style Apartment | Daz 3D, which is a great package and worth getting for many reasons, but if not then just use a dforce sheet or make one from a plane (make sure it's highly subdivided like 80x80 or even 200x200), it won't be as good but still better than nothing. Either try and copy the texture of the hidden sheet to the duvet or add some new shader to it. Adjust the duvet above the sleeping girl, hide the ghost, click on simulation tab and turn off Start Bones From Memorized Pose. The click Simulate.

    If you made your own sheet for this instead of using the Duvet you need to add Dforce to it first before simulating. click on the sheet to where it's selected, select the Simulation tab, click on the hamburger (top left 3 horizontal lines) for simulation pane you should have an option for dforce then Add Dforce Modifier: Dynamic Surface, add that.

    You will probably have to run the simulation several times to get the bedding sheets how you want them. 

     

  • Alpha01Alpha01 Posts: 160
    edited October 2021

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  • charlescharles Posts: 847

    Alpha01 said:

    Hi Charles.

    I agree with you 100%.

    I have been away from Daz artwork for some four-five years now, been busy with home DIY projects and repairs, when I came back everything changed and some stuff doesnt work any more on my computer and some stuff just vanished from my contents.

    I am still (two weeks on) rummaging through everything in "Lost and Found" and re-learning Daz again from scratch, plus I am running Daz on a 10 year old computer now, AMD Phenom 3.3Ghz CPU and two dual crossfire AMD HD6990 in quad core GPU. Some of the renders work and some renders just show clashes.  I can run 3Delight engine fine but anything Dforce modified/Dynamic surfaces or running the IRay engine renders.....

    Well lets say by the time it takes my computer to render in IRay, I could build a new house wink 

    It would be nice to buy the European Style Apartment but $40 spend is not a justifiable purchase at the moment,

    Dont get me wrong!, I am not trying to make excuses, I do appreciate the feed back and I will look into trying to make my own dforce cloth but for this picture "You got to work with what you got!"

    If it bothers anyone, I can remove it ?

    I wouldn't remove it, it's pretty cool. I gave a workaround for not having that dforce duvet by using creating a simple plane with lots of subdivided segments.

     But more precisely, Create->Primitive / Then select Plane, size leave at 1, dvisions 100 to 200.

  • Alpha01Alpha01 Posts: 160
    edited October 2021

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  • charlescharles Posts: 847

    Alpha01 said:

    Night Terror

    Very cool 

  • aprilshowers2065aprilshowers2065 Posts: 736
    edited October 2021

    @charles, thanks for the suggestion. I increased the illumination on the plant and lowered the environmental lighting slightly so you can see more of the glow on the piggy's face.

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  • charlescharles Posts: 847

    aprilshowers2065 said:

    @charles, thanks for the suggestion. I increased the illumination on the plant and lowered the environmental lighting slightly so you can see more of the glow on the piggy's face.

    Yeah that looks better.  

  • Version D here adding some flame props in the background after she'd used her fireballs on some foes who tried to get in her way.  If you look carefully at her hands you'll see that she's charging another pair to set loose on the next foe(s) she encounters.

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