January 2016 New User 3D Art contest “Composition” (WIP Thread)

NeilV_1NeilV_1 Posts: 442

New User's Contest - January 2016

 

Sponsored by DAZ 3D and Elliandra

 

Are you new to the 3D World? Are you at the beginning stages of learning 3D rendering? Have you been around for a little bit but feel you could benefit from some feedback or instruction? Have you been around awhile and would like to help other members start their creative journey? Well then come and join the fun as we host our newest contest...

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"Composition"

 

This contest is a general render contest with the focus being on how you compose your image. We're providing you with lots of great links on Composition from a variety of sources. Composition is key to pulling a viewer into your image and leading their eye to where you want them to see things. It's a fundamental skill that we, as artists, not only need to learn, but will continue to hone over the years. Read about and look at the examples, in these articles, for how composition works and how artists, from the Masters to people like you and me, put these compositional guidelines to use to make our pieces more appealing and invite the viewer to look around your image as you intended.


General Composition Rules:
http://design.tutsplus.com/articles/5-fundamental-skills-every-artist-should-master--psd-28054


The Golden Ratio:
https://holycrop.wordpress.com/tag/golden-spiral/
http://www.thephoblographer.com/2011/04/08/an-introduction-to-golden-spiral-composition-method/#.VGKnLFPF_C4
http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/golden-ratio-in-moden-designs/


Some Tools for DS and Bryce:
Golden Rules Camera Prop v1.5 by Jaderail http://www.sharecg.com/v/67783/browse/21/DAZ-Studio/Golden-Rules-Camera-Prop-v1.5
Golden Rules Composition Helpers for Bryce by David Brinnen Horo http://www.daz3d.com/golden-rules-composition-helpers-for-bryce


Artists, filmmakers and photographers share similar traits in how we present our work, so you will find that a study of the art of photography will help, which is why you see various links to photographic articles included.

Photography Composition:
http://digital-photography-school.com/5-elements-of-composition-in-photography/
http://digital-photography-school.com/5-more-elements-of-composition-in-photography/


Color can be used as a compositional element, especially when you have color contrast. Here are some fundamentals on color:

Color Fundamentals:
http://www.tigercolor.com/color-lab/color-theory/color-theory-intro.htm

Other Types of Contrast:
http://www.neilblevins.com/cg_education/composition_contrasts/composition_contrasts.htm
http://photoinf.com/General/NAVY/Contrast_and_Framing.htm


Examples of Composition:
http://www.cybercollege.com/comp_ex.htm
http://www.cybercollege.com/comp_ex2.htm
http://www.pinterest.com/dawnshiree/rules-of-composition/


I will be checking in as will the rest of the Community Volunteers to try and help with anything you all may need.


For a list of the current contest rules, please see this thread : Contest Rules
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Closing Date: January 31st 2016

Post edited by Chohole on
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Comments

  • TreeDeeTreeDee Posts: 70

    Happy New Year all!! Am looking forward to this months contest... lots to read here. Good rendering to all and I hope everyone has a fantastic and successful 2016 :)

  • IceDragonArtIceDragonArt Posts: 12,548

    Happy New Year!  Another interesting concept to deal with.  Will be settling down to check out the links in just a little bit I think.

  • I'm not sure if composition is going easy or tough.  In some ways it should be easy because it leaves renders open to wide interpretations and one could do just about any render.  However, that could also be tough because there are so many choices of stories to tell, how do you pick one?

    I'm leaning toward putting together the scene from one of my as yet unfinished books, but I'm not sure yet.  I'll have to stew over the ideas some and see what I can manage to get those creative juices flowing.

    Happy New Year, Everyone!!

  • IceDragonArtIceDragonArt Posts: 12,548

    Yes, decisions decisions lol.

     

  • IceDragonArtIceDragonArt Posts: 12,548
    edited January 2016

    Okay I started this last night.  Still have lots of stuff to add this is bare bones.  BUT I wanted to try Iray (which for some reason totally baffles me despite the fact that I am reading everything I can find on it). Right now, I need help with the ligting.  I understand that its real world lighting and I know how to make things emmisive but I cannot get enough light in to the scene no matter what I do. There is a chandelier in the scene in the middle that you can't see which also has emissive lighting but its not doing much.  I have no idea how make this scene bright enough to see everything.  And I made the fireplace emmisive but now it doesn't look like fire it just looks like an orange glow.

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    Post edited by Chohole on
  • Sonja, first, I've found that actually putting a fire prop in the fireplace and then turning the flames of that emissive is the best way to go.  I don't know if you can separate out the parts of the campfire you used in one of your contest entries.  But if not, there are a couple of good campfire props and I know at least one of them I use, I can split it apart and and the wood and the flames are separate from the stones which probably wouldn't look great in a fireplace.  Let me know if you want me to track down which fire prop I use if you don't have one.  I'm pretty sure it is one of the ones in the PC+ category for 1.99 so you may have picked it up from one of the sales.

    Second, what settings do you have on your lights.  It might help to know where your settings are starting to help you fix your lighting issue.  I'll try to track down a couple of lighting references I save to my hard drive and come back and add the links.  I know I saved a couple of pdfs that had real world lighting for different lighting temps and emission profiles which should help.

    Like you, I'm planning on trying out the render engine I understand the least.  I'm horrible with 3Delight so I will be asking all of you experts tons of questions once I get started.

  • Kismet2012Kismet2012 Posts: 4,252

    Sonja.  What camera settings are you using?  You may need to adjust the Tone Mapping from the default setting of 100 to 400.  When you do that you will see the f/stop and another setting change automatically.  In Iray the camera settings work very similar to a digital camera.

  • IceDragonArtIceDragonArt Posts: 12,548

    Okay I looked at the tone mapping and it doesn't give me an option to change a setting it just says on or off?  And under that are all the things for the cameras in this order

    Exposure Value 17.29

    Shutter speed 256

    fstop 25

    cm2 setting 1

    vignetting 0

    White Point Scale 1

    Light settings are

    Thin Walled on

    Emmision temp 100,000

    2 side on

    luminence 5000

  • IceDragonArtIceDragonArt Posts: 12,548

    I am pretty sure that my campfire has a separeate flame.  I have jepe's flames as well which might work too.  The funny thing is the fireplace is  broken down into 5 separate parts and the only part

    I made emmisive is the flame.  But it turned square.  I am going to try just making the coals emmissive and see if that changes anything and if not will try adding on of the other props

     

  • Kismet2012Kismet2012 Posts: 4,252
    edited January 2016

    Okay I looked at the tone mapping and it doesn't give me an option to change a setting it just says on or off?  And under that are all the things for the cameras in this order

    Exposure Value 17.29

    Shutter speed 256

    fstop 25

    cm2 setting 1

    vignetting 0

    White Point Scale 1

    Light settings are

    Thin Walled on

    Emmision temp 100,000

    2 side on

    luminence 5000

    Sorry Sonja.  The Tone Mapping Settings are found under Render Settings.  I was rendering in 3DL at the time and should have looked it up before posting.

    It is the Film ISO you want to change from 100 to 400.

     

     

     

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    Post edited by Kismet2012 on
  • isidornisidorn Posts: 1,601

    I made emmisive is the flame.  But it turned square. 

    I had that happen once when I tried to convert a flame to Iray. I guess it's kind of like the flame is painted onto a piece of invisible card board and when you apply the shader on it it makes that invisible card board visible too. I hope that made some sense.

  • LinwellyLinwelly Posts: 5,947
    edited January 2016
    isidorn said:

    I made emmisive is the flame.  But it turned square. 

    I had that happen once when I tried to convert a flame to Iray. I guess it's kind of like the flame is painted onto a piece of invisible card board and when you apply the shader on it it makes that invisible card board visible too. I hope that made some sense.

    What you can try to do (though that is something I only can say for 3dligh for sure), is to reapply the transparency map for the opacity after you used the new shader. If you apply a shader to an object it will go for the whole object which in case of fires etc often is s plane or several planes put together and the settings for the opacity will get lost. So you need to tell it again where to be transparent.

    Post edited by Linwelly on
  • IceDragonArtIceDragonArt Posts: 12,548

    Thank you!  I have another render going its definitely improved.  Still having issues with the fire.  I will post the render when its done, (probably tomorrow night as I am off the main computer tonight and on the laptop while the render is going) so that you can see what I mean.  Is there anyway to turn the emissive off once you put it on an object?

     

  • Thank you!  I have another render going its definitely improved.  Still having issues with the fire.  I will post the render when its done, (probably tomorrow night as I am off the main computer tonight and on the laptop while the render is going) so that you can see what I mean.  Is there anyway to turn the emissive off once you put it on an object?

     

    Sure, just go to surface settings and turn emission back down to zero.

  • TeofaTeofa Posts: 823
    edited January 2016

    Wasted bandwidth.

     

     

    Post edited by Teofa on
  • TeofaTeofa Posts: 823
    edited January 2016

    Okay I started this last night.  Still have lots of stuff to add this is bare bones.  BUT I wanted to try Iray (which for some reason totally baffles me despite the fact that I am reading everything I can find on it). Right now, I need help with the ligting.  I understand that its real world lighting and I know how to make things emmisive but I cannot get enough light in to the scene no matter what I do. There is a chandelier in the scene in the middle that you can't see which also has emissive lighting but its not doing much.  I have no idea how make this scene bright enough to see everything.  And I made the fireplace emmisive but now it doesn't look like fire it just looks like an orange glow.

    Pardon, but I will make one little comment.  Very rarely do we view things in symmetry, even if the object is, we hardly ever view it from that perfect angle.  I would play with some angles and framing so that the image is not so symmetrical.  Your vertical and horizontal elements are lining up with your image borders (a glaring mistake with the railing in my own image).  Rule of Thirds is not exact conforming to a grid, in my opinion.  I look forward to seeing this lighted. 

    I know the intent of IRAY is "real world" lighting, but few photographers in the real world work indoors without adding more "real world" lighting, and other mediums apply it using thier tools.  Can you add IRA spots and bounce lights?

    Post edited by Teofa on
  • MN-150374MN-150374 Posts: 923
    edited January 2016
    Teofa said:

    Pardon, but I will make one little comment.  Very rarely do we view things in symmetry, even if the object is, we hardly ever view it from that perfect angle.  I would play with some angles and framing so that the image is not so symmetrical.  Your vertical and horizontal elements are lining up with your image borders.  Rule of Thirds is not exact conforming to a grid, in my opinion.  ...

    Agree, the intersections of the Third Guide are more important than the grid lines. It really looks unnatural when edges or angles are following the grid lines parallel.

    Sometimes just a little Z-Rotation of the camera helps to get rid of straight lines, right angles or perfect symmetry.

     

    Happy New Year! Hopefully erveryone had a good start into 2016!

    Post edited by MN-150374 on
  • IceDragonArtIceDragonArt Posts: 12,548
    Teofa said:

    Okay I started this last night.  Still have lots of stuff to add this is bare bones.  BUT I wanted to try Iray (which for some reason totally baffles me despite the fact that I am reading everything I can find on it). Right now, I need help with the ligting.  I understand that its real world lighting and I know how to make things emmisive but I cannot get enough light in to the scene no matter what I do. There is a chandelier in the scene in the middle that you can't see which also has emissive lighting but its not doing much.  I have no idea how make this scene bright enough to see everything.  And I made the fireplace emmisive but now it doesn't look like fire it just looks like an orange glow.

    Pardon, but I will make one little comment.  Very rarely do we view things in symmetry, even if the object is, we hardly ever view it from that perfect angle.  I would play with some angles and framing so that the image is not so symmetrical.  Your vertical and horizontal elements are lining up with your image borders (a glaring mistake with the railing in my own image).  Rule of Thirds is not exact conforming to a grid, in my opinion.  I look forward to seeing this lighted. 

    I know the intent of IRAY is "real world" lighting, but few photographers in the real world work indoors without adding more "real world" lighting, and other mediums apply it using thier tools.  Can you add IRA spots and bounce lights?

    Yes this is just the roughest of drafts.  Since I am very unfamiliar with Iray I wanted to get the lighting as close to right as possible and then will work on the rest of the composition.  Have lots of things to add, move around and a lot of material and texture changes I still want to do.  But I am seriously intimidated by Iray lighting so I figured I would get that out of the way first so I can relax and enjoy putting together the rest of the scene.  Right now, the figure etc are mostly placeholders.

  • I was thinking to use fibonacci 

     

     

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  • LinwellyLinwelly Posts: 5,947

    I was thinking to use fibonacci 

     

     

    Hi lucas, I took the liberty to lay a fibonaccy spiral on your image, not sure if you meant it like this but from the lights I gathered this was your idea. While I like the concept the of your render the basic idea of the coposition with a fibonacci is to hafe the most interesting part right in the centre of the spiral, while the action or whatever else flows along the like of the spiral leading the eye of the beholder.. (couldn't resist) to its centre. So what I would try is to move your lady so that the head centers in the spiral, her arms and legs, the movement becoming part of the spiral. As well try to let the sprial fill your render, or find a reason to make a frame whithin the render.

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  • Joe WebbJoe Webb Posts: 837

    I was able to knock this image together pretty fast, since I haven't had much time to work on images. I submitted this to the PC image contest, but I was lucky that it mostly fell into place for a composition image.

    I know basically what I wanted in the image - a girl in the promoted outfit and a little devil figure. I thought the Portals doorway would match the outfit, with the cool detail, and so I had a place to stick the devil. I don't have many smaller pieces to put in an image, so I put in the free bench from Outside lunch spot. Then a cat on it since it looked empty. Then the birds were a natural counterpoint to the cat.

    I did a quick render, and stuck the image in that fibannaci spiral frame to see what I had and I was pretty close already. The cat and bird lined up great. I move the other bird around until I had it at the center of the spiral. I wasn't sure with the girl since I didn't want her having a bus stop sign popping out of her head, so I moved her a little over.

     

    Yeah, that sounds legit.jpg
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  • Thx for the tips. Maybe I will chance the lights into spots or something. 

    januaritest.jpg
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  • HitManWAHitManWA Posts: 152
    edited January 2016

    Need to rerender and make some adjustments but here is a first go at it. The right hand and part of the cape need adjustment for starters.

     

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    Post edited by HitManWA on
  • MBAIRDMBAIRD Posts: 22

    It's me again, back after a couple of months. Very interested in this months theme and still feeling compelled to work in 'scope' ratio (2.35:1). so, here is a first pass on something I put together over the last couple of days. Open for any comments. (BTW I did notice i'm shooting 'off the top of the set) on the upper right. i'll fix that.)

    Jan Comp test render A.jpg
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  • TeofaTeofa Posts: 823
    edited January 2016

    I'll toss this image up.  Working title is "Nothing Personal"  The background diffuse needs adjusted.

      And this as regards the "golden ratio", because I totally agree.  http://www.fastcodesign.com/3044877/the-golden-ratio-designs-biggest-myth


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    Post edited by Teofa on
  • Here's what I knocked out last night as an idea.

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  • HitManWAHitManWA Posts: 152
    edited January 2016

    Corrected a few things. Worked on the pose, tried to get the archery tech right based on what I could find on the net. :/ Changed the angle some too, to try and utilize the rule of thirds better.

     

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    Post edited by HitManWA on
  • TeofaTeofa Posts: 823
    edited January 2016
    HitManWA said:

     

    HitManWA said:

    Corrected a few things. Worked on the pose, tried to get the archery tech right based on what I could find on the net. :/ Changed the angle some too, to try and utilize the rule of thirds better.

     

    Some traditional forms use the style as depicted in the pose preset.  Go with whichever style is more aesthetic to you.  Bigger concern with the pose on the Dark Sisterhood set is the strabismus effect somehow introduced using it.

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    Post edited by Teofa on
  • TeofaTeofa Posts: 823

    Here's what I knocked out last night as an idea.

    I think rotating the set, not the figures, so that the "thing" doesn't have that column growing out of its head would be nice, and would also set it in contrast to the plainer wall background.

     

  • TeofaTeofa Posts: 823
    edited January 2016

    Trying to get the feel of the fading focus of a doomed rebel. Never attempted this. I'll go with "Nothing Personal" as title.  (Prior to my eye surgery

    my focus was getting past this point lol)

    Nothing Personal.jpg
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    Post edited by Teofa on
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