Sept 2015 New User Contest (WIP-THREAD)

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Comments

  • XangthXangth Posts: 127

    Wow everyone has some nice stuff going on. Here is my next render with a few things changed and added. The render is in Bryce 7 with depth of field set for 0.01. I added an extra light source behind the charactors. I also worked on the haid textures and added displacement to the hair, cats fur and ground amd added a little more plants to the background.

     

     

    jungle_jane5.jpg
    1274 x 705 - 162K
  • XangthXangth Posts: 127
    edited September 2015

    Wow everyone has some nice stuff going on. Here is my next render with a few things changed and added. The render is in Bryce 7 with depth of field set for 0.01. I added an extra light source behind the charactors. I also worked on the hair textures and added displacement to the hair, cats fur and ground and added a little more plants to the background.

     

    Post edited by Xangth on
  • LinwellyLinwelly Posts: 5,947
    Limun said:
    Joe Webb said:
    Limun said:
    Thanks for answer, 

    ok, i understand about DOF , but i dont understand this part "Other than that there is little to add, maybe think about a different format, either you go for a repetition of the selfie format or you go for contrast and make it a landscape."

    The rendering settings with the preset dimensions for the render. Actually I agree, it might look a little better if the dimensions where rectangular, like the phone screen. Either upright, portrait, or longways, landscape. The square is fine, but maybe it could be a little bit better rectangular.

     

    Linwelly said:
    Limun said:
    Linwelly said:
    Limun said:

    and here is mine wip , not finished yet - any TIP?

    btw , i started to work for amazon.it so i dont have so much time anymore :(

    Nice idea! I think I would reduce the DOF a little bit so that the woman holding the handy is a tad less blurry.  Other than that there is little to add, maybe think about a different format, either you go for a repetition of the selfie format or you go for contrast and make it a landscape.

    Thanks for answer, 

    ok, i understand about DOF , but i dont understand this part "Other than that there is little to add, maybe think about a different format, either you go for a repetition of the selfie format or you go for contrast and make it a landscape."

    In the render settings under the topic general you can change the format of the picture you take. As you used a render for the phone screen in a different format I was under the impression that you found that formatting option already. You will see a white frame with the actual frame you selected.

    ahaa , thanks , what do you sugest something like eg. 1650x1000 or you mean eg. 1000x1650 ?

    Yes that would be the pixel size, that would translate to a 1,65:1 in the aspect ratio or vice versa, the square is 1:1 (then you still can say I want 400x400 pixel in the square or 800x800, or any other number)

    Other formats would look like 3:4 or 5:4. there are preset aspect rations in the Dimension preset field but when you turn that ro Custom you can fill any numers you like in the aspect ratio. pixes Size changes accordingly but can be adapted.

    for yor render here the preset golden ratio portrait would be fitting if you choose the protrait option. If you go for landscape I think I would even go to the golden ratio landscape. But its something you should test.

    Best way to test is to turn the third grid on (yellow lines the divide your render in 9 equal parts). the places you want to make most interesting in your render you should try to have where the lines cross
     

  • KA1KA1 Posts: 1,012

    Okay, so I've been working on my 2nd for this months competition (after diverging from the Goblin Mafia attempt!!) - my first render I had the glass on the car switched off to define the characters, this one I put the glass back in and actually quite liked the vintage style film grain effect it seemed to have on the characters so stuck with it!

    Getaway.jpg
    1440 x 1080 - 2M
  • I like that one as well, a great render.

    I would like to make one small suggestin about the driver.    I think it might look more dramatic if she was holding on to the wheel with both hands in a more firghtened manner.   Just a suggestion, but I really like the image.

  • KA1KA1 Posts: 1,012

    I like that one as well, a great render.

    I would like to make one small suggestin about the driver.    I think it might look more dramatic if she was holding on to the wheel with both hands in a more firghtened manner.   Just a suggestion, but I really like the image.

    I strated to thing along these lines too after the first 17hours of rendering!! The irony is, she is actually holding on with both hands at the 3 and 9'o'clock positions, the car is just turning sharp left with two wheels just off the floor. Still so much to learn with composition, am pleased with my progress and all the lovely helpful folks on here that help with that progress :) 

  • isidornisidorn Posts: 1,601

    Great one KA1! The only thing I have a problem with is one of the things I mentioned for the goblin mafia - the muzzle flash. I just can't buy that one. It looks too much like a firework going off.

    As for the driver I think she looks more angry than afraid, and I like that :)

  • KA1KA1 Posts: 1,012
    isidorn said:

    Great one KA1! The only thing I have a problem with is one of the things I mentioned for the goblin mafia - the muzzle flash. I just can't buy that one. It looks too much like a firework going off.

    As for the driver I think she looks more angry than afraid, and I like that :)

    I was going for angry, she succeeded her sanity roll ;)

  • IceCrMnIceCrMn Posts: 2,129
    Xangth said:

    Wow everyone has some nice stuff going on. Here is my next render with a few things changed and added. The render is in Bryce 7 with depth of field set for 0.01. I added an extra light source behind the charactors. I also worked on the hair textures and added displacement to the hair, cats fur and ground and added a little more plants to the background.

     

    I like what you got going here.

    Her dagger is bent :(   in Studio, this can be fixed by removing the "fit-to" and just moving it into position manually.Then you can parent it to her hip by dragging it in the scene tab to her hip and dropping it there.

    I'm not sure how bryce does DOF, but if you could narrow the field of focus to just in front and just behind her, that would give it a better effect in my opinion, and add more depth to the image.

  • IceCrMnIceCrMn Posts: 2,129

    I think it would be cool to see the car teetering up on two wheels in the mad dash to escape the giant monster trying to eat them :)

     

    KA1 said:

    I like that one as well, a great render.

    I would like to make one small suggestin about the driver.    I think it might look more dramatic if she was holding on to the wheel with both hands in a more firghtened manner.   Just a suggestion, but I really like the image.

    I strated to thing along these lines too after the first 17hours of rendering!! The irony is, she is actually holding on with both hands at the 3 and 9'o'clock positions, the car is just turning sharp left with two wheels just off the floor. Still so much to learn with composition, am pleased with my progress and all the lovely helpful folks on here that help with that progress :) 

     

  • KA1KA1 Posts: 1,012
    icecrmn said:

    I think it would be cool to see the car teetering up on two wheels in the mad dash to escape the giant monster trying to eat them :)

     

     

    I'll have another go at that, I wasn't getting a camera angle I liked initially though :/ 

  • IceCrMnIceCrMn Posts: 2,129
    KA1 said:
    icecrmn said:

    I think it would be cool to see the car teetering up on two wheels in the mad dash to escape the giant monster trying to eat them :)

     

     

    I'll have another go at that, I wasn't getting a camera angle I liked initially though :/ 

    You should keep the camera you like :)

    I like the old movie film style.

  • icecrmn said:
    Xangth said:

    Wow everyone has some nice stuff going on. Here is my next render with a few things changed and added. The render is in Bryce 7 with depth of field set for 0.01. I added an extra light source behind the charactors. I also worked on the hair textures and added displacement to the hair, cats fur and ground and added a little more plants to the background.

     

    I like what you got going here.

    Her dagger is bent :(   in Studio, this can be fixed by removing the "fit-to" and just moving it into position manually.Then you can parent it to her hip by dragging it in the scene tab to her hip and dropping it there.

    I'm not sure how bryce does DOF, but if you could narrow the field of focus to just in front and just behind her, that would give it a better effect in my opinion, and add more depth to the image.

    I agree, its a much better image in this format.

    Is the dagger bent or is it just curved? I assumed it was just curved and thats the angle we are seeing it? I do agree the DOF could be a little stronger. I am impressed you're doing it in Bryce. I've gone through a number of tutorials and still can't get a decent image out of it yet.

  • KA1 said:

    Okay, so I've been working on my 2nd for this months competition (after diverging from the Goblin Mafia attempt!!) - my first render I had the glass on the car switched off to define the characters, this one I put the glass back in and actually quite liked the vintage style film grain effect it seemed to have on the characters so stuck with it!

    Very nice. I like that effect the glass gives too. Its a strong image, but maybe it could stand get closer to the Rule of Thirds; the faces fall just outside of that thirds zone. I use the Thirds option in the studio viewport, and I set up a "golden ratio" layered filed that I dump my images into, to see where things might make sense. I took the liberty of putting your image in, since I'm waiting for my second entry to render. If her face is most important, then maybe move the camera angle a little to catch that red zone. You can get away with not getting the guy aligned in a zone, since the action in the scene is pretty powerful.

    Screen Shot 2015-09-16 at 1.01.47 PM.jpg
    1920 x 1080 - 402K
  • KA1KA1 Posts: 1,012
    edited September 2015
    Joe Webb said:
    KA1 said:

    Okay, so I've been working on my 2nd for this months competition (after dioverging from the Goblin Mafia attempt!!) - my first render I had the glass on the car switched off to define the characters, this one I put the glass back in and actually quite liked the vintage style film grain effect it seemed to have on the characters so stuck with it!

    Very nice. I like that effect the glass gives too. Its a strong image, but maybe it could stand get closer to the Rule of Thirds; the faces fall just outside of that thirds zone. I use the Thirds option in the studio viewport, and I set up a "golden ratio" layered filed that I dump my images into, to see where things might make sense. I took the liberty of putting your image in, since I'm waiting for my second entry to render. If her face is most important, then maybe move the camera angle a little to catch that red zone. You can get away with not getting the guy aligned in a zone, since the action in the scene is pretty powerful.

     

    Thanks for your feedback Joe, I have to admit I didn't pull my golden rules grid up!! I'll definately have a look at that later :)

    Post edited by Chohole on
  • KA1 inspired me to do a second entry, so here is the start - Tomb of the Lich King, a group of D&D adveturers about to take on an undead pot collector. As it is I'm not too happy with it. I think the placement/layout is ok, but not great, and I like the way the light sillouets the archer, but otherwise I'm at a loss with the rest of the lighting.  And maybe the staff and throne - do they look out of place with the realistism of the other elements? Should I open the door a little more to accent the warrior?

    I was going to post work in some sort of magic energy coming from the elf's hands, and probably some smoke and mist to take some of the shine off those foreground pots.

    I tried doing a greater Depth of Field but came out with two problems. Most importantly the render crashed after about 5 hours - would taking out some lights help with that? The other thing was that blur totally abstracted the group in the back, and made the skeleton and the pots next to him look like toys - the tilt-shift effect. Maybe not such a bad thing, but not for this particular image.

    Tomb of the Lich King.jpg
    1618 x 1000 - 376K
  • IceCrMnIceCrMn Posts: 2,129
    Joe Webb said:

    KA1 inspired me to do a second entry, so here is the start - Tomb of the Lich King, a group of D&D adveturers about to take on an undead pot collector. As it is I'm not too happy with it. I think the placement/layout is ok, but not great, and I like the way the light sillouets the archer, but otherwise I'm at a loss with the rest of the lighting.  And maybe the staff and throne - do they look out of place with the realistism of the other elements? Should I open the door a little more to accent the warrior?

    I was going to post work in some sort of magic energy coming from the elf's hands, and probably some smoke and mist to take some of the shine off those foreground pots.

    I tried doing a greater Depth of Field but came out with two problems. Most importantly the render crashed after about 5 hours - would taking out some lights help with that? The other thing was that blur totally abstracted the group in the back, and made the skeleton and the pots next to him look like toys - the tilt-shift effect. Maybe not such a bad thing, but not for this particular image.

    This reminds me of a song from an 80's metal band called "Hall of the mountain King" from Savatage.

  • KA1KA1 Posts: 1,012
    Joe Webb said:

    KA1 inspired me to do a second entry, so here is the start - Tomb of the Lich King, a group of D&D adveturers about to take on an undead pot collector. As it is I'm not too happy with it. I think the placement/layout is ok, but not great, and I like the way the light sillouets the archer, but otherwise I'm at a loss with the rest of the lighting.  And maybe the staff and throne - do they look out of place with the realistism of the other elements? Should I open the door a little more to accent the warrior?

    I was going to post work in some sort of magic energy coming from the elf's hands, and probably some smoke and mist to take some of the shine off those foreground pots.

    I tried doing a greater Depth of Field but came out with two problems. Most importantly the render crashed after about 5 hours - would taking out some lights help with that? The other thing was that blur totally abstracted the group in the back, and made the skeleton and the pots next to him look like toys - the tilt-shift effect. Maybe not such a bad thing, but not for this particular image.

    I'm loving this one Joe. My personal opinion, I like the lighting and the staff and throne fit really well. Do you have any of the Hero FX or Jepe's Graphics packages? They seem to work quite well as an emissive for energy streams (even the Spell Ribbons?) and work incredibly in iRay with a bit of messing around (People have got some pretty decent iRay effects out of Serpios Magic stuff as well..... and are made for 3Delight if thats your renderer of choice) - I've also got some interesting magical results using primitives, DG brocade and lace shaders and Mec4D PBS shaders volume 1 messing around with tiling and different emissive/lighting effects (I understand some do prefer post work, even I do some when required and am slowly learning it as I go along, I often like to try out different "experiments" to see if I can get a good effect in Daz Studio though first!) - To summarise - it's looking awesome.

  • KA1 said:
     

    I'm loving this one Joe. My personal opinion, I like the lighting and the staff and throne fit really well. Do you have any of the Hero FX or Jepe's Graphics packages? They seem to work quite well as an emissive for energy streams (even the Spell Ribbons?) and work incredibly in iRay with a bit of messing around (People have got some pretty decent iRay effects out of Serpios Magic stuff as well..... and are made for 3Delight if thats your renderer of choice) - I've also got some interesting magical results using primitives, DG brocade and lace shaders and Mec4D PBS shaders volume 1 messing around with tiling and different emissive/lighting effects (I understand some do prefer post work, even I do some when required and am slowly learning it as I go along, I often like to try out different "experiments" to see if I can get a good effect in Daz Studio though first!) - To summarise - it's looking awesome.

    Thats very kind of you :)  I've tried different lighting but I'm getting fireflies on the metal pots, the door and the sash on the skeleton. I was thinking a warmer color but I guess fireflies are caused by, among other things, reflected colors being out of range, so I guess my lights, or the materials, or a combination, aren't cooperating.

    Unfortunately I don't have any effects elements. I don't even have special brushs, like Ron's Engery, to just paint them in easiy. A friend has Photoshop so I have occasional access to it but otherwise I used Painter, and free brushes are harder to come by for that. Painter comes with special effect brushes so I'll see what I can mock up with those. I've done some experiements with primitives and shaders but I'm no where near where the point they look good yet.

  • KA1KA1 Posts: 1,012

    Working with DOF this month has me on a complete render bender!!! Here's another DOF render.... I need to pick 2 to finalize and enter at some point......

    Stranded.jpg
    1080 x 1440 - 840K
  • daybirddaybird Posts: 654

    I am not sure, if i should post my try, because i have the feeling to be not good enough. :/

  • KA1KA1 Posts: 1,012
    daybird said:

    I am not sure, if i should post my try, because i have the feeling to be not good enough. :/

    Hi Daybird, it's a new user contest, everyone here is very helpful with suggestions and feedback! It's an easy way to learn as you go - I would say definately post, I like you was hesitant initially but once I posted my first one and everyone was so great you'll become part of the family :) Join us, learn and have fun doing it :)

  • LinwellyLinwelly Posts: 5,947

    Welcome daybird, don't be shy, this is a place to learn and to develop your skills and knwoledge. We all started as beginners and had others to learn from.

  • daybirddaybird Posts: 654

    Thx for the kind words. I don't know if i ever reached the level to create good pics.

    The biggest problem i have, is to spend enough time, to learn how to use all the opportunities in DAZ.

    It's frustrating to know how the pic should look and do not find the correct setting.

  • daybirddaybird Posts: 654

    Ok, i try to create a cover. 

    I'm not sure about the background. 

    What bothers me, is this slightly grainy, especially between her eyes.

    Lyk, nothing but trouble..jpg
    1200 x 1600 - 1M
  • isidornisidorn Posts: 1,601

    Daybird, welcome to the crazy madhouse friendly family that is The New User Contest! I found this place about a month ago and have learned lots of useful knowledge here. Still being a total noob I'll leave the technical advice for your render to those who knows what they're talking about and just say that you have no reason to be shy with a render like that.

  • daybird said:

    Ok, i try to create a cover. 

    I'm not sure about the background. 

    What bothers me, is this slightly grainy, especially between her eyes.

    It does look a little 'unfinished' in places.   Was this done using Iray, if so, how long did you let it render?

    It may need more than the default 7200 seconds (2 Hrs).   You can change this in Render Settings > Progressive Rendering > Completion > Max Time.

     

  • Here is an update of Tomb of the Lich King.  I did decide to go with a different angle and get rid of the staff. I was going to use the smoke to mask the graininess around the door and on the pots but it looked too harsh. Then messing with the color levels gave me that coloration so instead of dumping it I put it over the King.

    The foreground pots are pretty abstracted and I used localized bluring to try to mitigate some of that grain. Same for the doorway, but I'm happy with sillouetting on the warrior, less happy with the archer and the kneeling elf. Not sure if all the detail and the smoke makes it too busy.

    Any critique is welcome. I'm either going with my previous scene or this one, but I'm not going to render it again.

    Tomb of the Lich King5a.jpg
    1618 x 1000 - 1M
  • daybird said:

    Ok, i try to create a cover. 

    I'm not sure about the background. 

    What bothers me, is this slightly grainy, especially between her eyes.

    Its a simple, strong design. What JimmyC says is probably the answer. I'd suggest strengthening the Depth of Field and blur out the background elements. I find that decreasing the distance between the Focal Distance and the F/Stop will greatly increase the blur of the background, so use a light touch.

  • LinwellyLinwelly Posts: 5,947
    Joe Webb said:

    Here is an update of Tomb of the Lich King.  I did decide to go with a different angle and get rid of the staff. I was going to use the smoke to mask the graininess around the door and on the pots but it looked too harsh. Then messing with the color levels gave me that coloration so instead of dumping it I put it over the King.

    The foreground pots are pretty abstracted and I used localized bluring to try to mitigate some of that grain. Same for the doorway, but I'm happy with sillouetting on the warrior, less happy with the archer and the kneeling elf. Not sure if all the detail and the smoke makes it too busy.

    Any critique is welcome. I'm either going with my previous scene or this one, but I'm not going to render it again.

    I like this version very much, the DOF is handled great and the smoke thing gives the mystical touch. There is something about that skeletton and/or the light you used for the skeletton. I don't have the skeletton so i don't know if thats even possible but did you give it an expression like a huge grin or is that something it just comes with. Maybe you could reduce the tilt of the head? right now its a bit clownesk. For the lights I would think something in a colder tone /bue grayish for the skeletton would fit better (riding the cliché here).

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