Constructive Criticism Welcome
IceDragonArt
Posts: 12,548
Okay this is my third render ever and I am trying to work on my lighting. I don't have a background yet, I will be doing her with a background next but I need the image
to not have a background for the layers in photoshop. I am trying a 3 point light with a spotlight, key light and back light. Any suggestions would be welcome. Spotlight is in front the key light to the left and the back light is opposite the spotlight in the back but a bit lower. The backlight is blue with reduced intensity the key light is a pale yellow and both of them have shadow turned off. The spotlight is the white that is starts at with shadows.
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Hi, Sonja.
Is this an Iray render? If so, turning shadows off has no effect. The lights in DS work double-duty. The same light can be used for either 3Delight or Iray, and it will have settings for both render engines, but 3Delight specific settings are ignored when rendering in Iray and vice-versa.
As for the placement, the lights look good. The play of light and shadows on her face and body make the scene more interesting. Not bad for an early render.
-Anita
Thank you Anita! Yes this was done in Iray. When I tried to do it in 3delight parts of it were missing. So I assumed that I was using something that was specific to Iray and swithched over. Its good to know I can't take those off in Iray.
#4
Cute pic. Good start. Here are some things to think about and some suggestions to try (everything is done quick and dirty just to demo).
1. The first things I tried was adding a blue filter and then I made a copy of your image and used a field blur from photoshop because things loose their sharpness in water. The blue filter helps desaturate the colors a bit.
2. Then I found a water caustics texture and using Photoshop perspective, tried it on the sand and lowered opacity on it.
3. Last, water caustics is great on skin. It gives a little light play on the skin and brings another dynamic to your image. It may look like I painted with a light yellow, but I used a light aqua and the brush I used has less opacity when I stroke lightly on my Wacom tablet.
Always look for reference. I googled figure underwater and you can see some of the things I tried to mimic on your image. Notice the crisscrossing planes of grass by her foot. You can eyedrop color from the grass and paint lines down from those there, a bit, so it doesn't look like they're cards being cut off by the ground mesh. In the foreground, don't be afraid to use taller pieces that even overlap the figure...it adds depth to your image. Now I painted the caustics lines on the figure, but there are ways to add gels to lights (also known as Gobos) that will let you do put a caustics alpha on them and the render will do the work. I haven't seen a tutorial lately, but I'll see if I can find something.
The last image is one of my very first 3D images and, while I used the very first Vickie from Daz, I rendered it in Bryce. The hair and some other things are painted. I used the same seahorse for the bottom half of her.
Hope this helps, I look forward to seeing more of your things. :)
Cris made some excellent points about using post processing techniques to improve your renders.
Now, the thing I see is that you need some kind of focus to your lighting. Given that it's a fantasy scene, I would figure out a way to make the jellyfish glow. Don't make it so bright that the details get washed out, though. The light from the jellyfish would ideally light up parts of your character and the foreground scene in a way to bring more depth to the image. By contrast, the background would be dimmer. However, you still want to separate your figure from the background in a subtle way even on the shadow side, so a carefully placed dim rim light could be used to give a bit of definition to the outlines of the figure away from the light coming from the jellyfish. Whatever you do, don't light up your figure evenly.
Thank you! I found out that the jellyfish come with a glow option lol. so that will help. I tried to use some water caustics on the background but all that happened even with the opacity turned way down was that the background disappeared and went completely transparent. I will be doing post work on this for sure once I have all the little details worked out and will see if I can add a bit of rim light to it as well. Thank you!
Also, I'm not suggesting you need to do this in post, either. You can use color tints on lights and the Gobo's of which I spoke. I did postwork because I only had your initial render to play with. :)
Thank you! Had to leave for a while, real was calling lol. Will defiinitely use this info thank you!
Okay I think this might be it
Yes, that's better. However, the caustics filter you've applied doesn't look right on the background. Your subject should be the focus of the image, but it occupies about 1/4 of the screen space. The ground and plants look like they came out of a 2005 video game, only with more polygons.
Center the subject. Add depth of field to make less important parts of the image take secondary place to your subject. Ask yourself, what do underwater plants look like in photographs? How does light and shadow work underwater? Caustics implies sunlight, but there are no shadows on the ground. Without shadows, objects look disconnected from the environment. Any object on the ground needs ambient occlusion even in the absence of hard shadows.
Keep in mind that CG has the same rules of composition used in photography and painting. The tools may be different, but the results rely on the same principles that have been developed for hundreds of years since the Renaissance.
I will keep working on it. I ended up using a gel light instead of the caustics but am having a hard time adjusting anything with them. Will have to see if shadows are turned off for the lights. although if they are I didn't do it lol. The last one has no postwork done on it all so I wanted to see how far I could get without any postwork. Getting too late to work on it now have to work all day tomorrow so will get back to it maybe tomorrow night. Thanks for the advice I appreciate it!
You are really progressing and that is really great to see. You'll gain more confidence. There are no mistakes, there are only learning opportunities. :) You're taking great advantage of those. Keep it up and keep working on your craft.
Thank you Cris! I really appreciate everyone's input and suggestions. It sure does cut that learing curve just a little bit lol!
Generally speaking, mixing CG renders with digital painting techniques can be a bit more complicated than simply applying the render as a layer. The first issue I see in your image is that the lighting on the tree is different from the dragon. So, the mind's eye says, "something doesn't belong here."
If digital painting is the goal, then you might want to watch some videos in which artists explain their techniques using CG renders to form a basis for their artworks.
Thank you! I am generally better at 2d as I am far more comfortable in photoshop. I was playing around with rays shining around the dragon but haven't gotten it quite right and had to stop as it was getting far too late. Its an interesting thing to merge the two and I know I have a long way to go to get it all right. Thank you for the suggestions I will track some of those videos down as soon as I can.
He still looks like he is floating a bit above the rock as well. Have to work on that some more as well.