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I remember when you were doing Kaori in 3DL. I have to say, I really like the Iray version. You did a great job with that. :)
Dark Brothers (Black Lions)
I wanted to do a black lion - so I took the textures from the Hivewire Lion into Photoshop and modified them. I came up with a tawny-black lion which I really like. It's got lots of character.
So here's the render with minimal postwork. Let me know what you think.
As usual, click on the thumbnail for a larger version.
I think you did an amzing job on the textures @dracorn I know I for one would love to use this special lion textures for the Daz version big cats (Lions LE) if that was possible.
I really love this black lion. Very well done!
Unfortunately, that won't work because:
1) These are the Hivewire Lions and
2) These are not my textures and I can't sell them or give them away. There is no merchant resource. I just modified the textures. However, I can tell you how I did it.
How I Modified the Hivewire Lion Textures to Make Black Lions
1) Save the lion texture to a new folder. Open it in Photoshop or Gimp.
2) Desaturate the texture to black and white.
3) Darken the texture and increase the contrast.
At this point, you will have a pure black lion if you repeat these steps for the mane as well. You will need to manually load the textures on the surfaces tab.
To Create the Tawny Black Lion
1) Create a new layer and add the tawny texture above the black layer. Adjust the opacity down until you can see the black layer (it will just darken).
2) Using the Eraser, remove all the parts of the tawny texture that you don't want to show. This step requires patience, and adjusting the opacity and fill of a soft round brush. I kept the muzzle, tops of the paws and the belly slightly tawny. Set the opacity of the tawny texture so that it shows as much as you want.
3) Nose - I masked and copied the nose from the tawny lion and put that in a layer above the other two.
4) I used the same method to take the paw pads from the black leopard and add them in.
5) I used the same method for the mane - made it black and set a tawny layer over it, then erased the parts I didn't want. The hardest part was the ruff around the face - I had to do that a few times in order to get it to blend with the face fur.
I kept the tawny eyes and used the White Lion's whiskers.
Enduring
This is one of my book characters, Queen Aelonae of the Sayleshi, the snow elves of Sheltisca. Click to open for more detail.
The most challenging aspect of this render was the reflection in the sphere, as the background is a photo and there was nothing for the sphere to reflect. I used an HDR for the clouds, and MountainScapes Backdrops Volume 2: Snow Edition for the mountains in the background. I had to bring it close so that the bottom edge didn't show. It wasn't large enough so I had to use two of them, with one flipped and matched together. This, however, made an obvious join.
To fix that, I took one of the other photos from MountainScapes into Photoshop, cut out a section and make the mask match. Thus I was able to bring in a third MountainScapes object with the portion of a mountain, with a little color added so it would match.
Detail of the Globe:
It wasn't until after I completed all of this that I just didn't like her hair. She's supposed to be platinum blonde, but there was just too much gold. I lightened her hair in D/S and did a render of Aelonae without the background. In Photoshop, I set this into its own layer and used an eraser to remove most of the face. It had rendered darker because I turned Draw Dome off, so the eraser brought up light from the layer below it. Additionally, I did some hair painting to lighten it in the shadows.
Before lightening:
After lightening:
Thanks for the walkthrough on the lion!
I do like the lighter blonde look on her. Great job on the globe!
@dracorn thank you for sharing your process with the snow elve's hair and the globe. I also like the lighter hair on Queen Aelonae.
Trish
I'm really starting to mess with things in Photoshop, as well as the surfaces. I'm getting a handle on what the Iray surfaces do and how to manipulate them, especially when it comes to converting older content.
Now, if I could do so well with the lighting...
I find lighting is the biggest thing for me to get through as well @dracorn!!
Nice job! I agree lighting is always a challenge. That was an interesting bit about the globe. I'll have to remember that.
Trying to catch up on my "standart threads. I love your conversion of the lion ot a black lion! but the reflection globe is just pure awesomeness!
Thanks, everyone! When you solve some weird problem, it's great to post it on your art page - I learn lots of cool stuff that way!
Domina
Here's a render I had in my gallery but did not post it here.
This is Domina for V4 converted to Iray and Genesis 8. She's a spooky, holocaust character who looks really great as an alien. Click on the thumbnail for a larger version.
I usually post a render diary, but as I just finished another render, I'm being lazy here. - Sorry.
Render Diary - Queen of the Dark
Here's the Queen. She is G3F Narkissa with no character modifications. The outfit is Keeper of the Sun, straight out of the box. Medusa Hair is an old V4 item that had to be converted to Iray and underwent some modifications to get it to look good.
Glowy Fingernails - I used Annodized Shaders for Iray and added a little bit of emissive light.
Summoner's Hell Horse, converted to Iray. I did some significant playing around with the surfaces, using his highlights map as the specular and adding it in various places - Glossy Weight, Metallic Flakes, Bump and Displacement. I popped the map for the glowing eyes into emissive.
Since this is a Poser figure, there were some problems with the cloth and chain movement in Daz Studio which caused distortions. I fixed those in Photoshop.
Even though the Hell Horse is a free product, Summoner's site is a store, so the Daz people may not like it if I post a link. Search for "Freedom of Art" - it's in the Freebies Public section.
Summoner has some great freebies at ShareCG:
http://www.sharecg.com/pf/full_uploads.php?pf_user_name=summoner65&division_id=0&s=dd&pn=1
The rock for the cliff for the horse to stand on. I added metallic flakes for some really nice shine.
The first light setting. I used iRadiance Light Probe HDR Lights #43 soft light with Draw Dome turned off, and liked the muted purple/gold look. However, it make the tattered cloth of the Hell Horse look brown instead of blue.
So I played around with the surfaces - I had initially used RSSY 3Delight to Iray Converter to make the conversion, and found that the Top Coat was reflecting too much of the iRadiance lights. I ditched that setting and added the Rim Light Rig Iray and a Linear Pointlight to light the face and hand for some special effects I wanted to use. The background is a free photo from Pixabay, added in Photoshop. The final render had no background.
Here's the distortion caused by moving the fabric back. I fixed that in Photoshop with the Clone Stamp tool. There was also a break in the middle of the lower chain (bet if I didn't mention it, you probably wouldn't have noticed). I fixed that by copying a section of chain, pasting that in a new layer and positioning it over the broken chain which I had painted over.
For postwork, I used Ron's brushes almost exclusively (Diveny Rocks!): Ron's Lightning, Ron's Glitter (using the same blue/white/purple style from Ron's Lighting), Ron's Light Fusion for the magical effects. I applied Ron's Fog to the background, as well as some cloud brushes with lowered opacity, and a little erasing to soften the edges - I wanted a blanket of fog look.
I also painted highlights on the Hell Horse's armor using a soft round brush, and added highlights to the cliff with the same brush using the styles from Ron's Lightning again.
I'm becomming more of a Photoshop painter rather than an effect user.
Before Post Work:
FINAL After Postwork
Wow that looks awesome!
I dusted off one of my Genesis 1 characters with the intent to update him to G8M... but after converting him to Iray with Anagenesis, he looks really good. I love his face and doubt I will be able to reproduce it. Maybe I should leave him as is.
Here he is updated in costume - I do need some decent fur shaders. I'm using Backlit hair shaders for both hair and Unshaven 2. I need to figure out what to do about those eyebrows, though. Not sure if I can backwards-convert G8M eyebrows. G2M had some fibermesh brows, but they don't look as good and there's not much you can do with the shape.
Wow he does look good!
The Crown
I picked up a really complicated Photoshop action and wanted to give it a try. I used it on a stock photo and really liked the effects - I think I should have written down the changes I made as it ran, because the effects are different on my render - but I still like them.
I started with Imari for G3F. I really like this character and made no changes to her. I like her face and she has so much detail in the skin - pores, lines, etc. and of course the Vitiligo. She's wearing a prop I found free somewhere. It's a very old prop, I suspect was created in the Victoria 2 or 3 days. I gave it a nice Iray stone texture which created this lovely banded effect. I used Boss Pro Lights.
The pose looks good from this angle but there is collision all over the place because of its extreme nature.
Here she is with just a plain background: [Click on the thumbnails for larger versions]
After the Photoshop action, plus some additional messing around.
She looks amazing @dracorn the postwork really gave her life!!!
Thanks, Saph!
WOA! My Queen of the Dark render was chosen as Staff Pick of the Week over at Rendo!
https://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/?thread_id=2927445&page_number=1#msg4336738
Way Cool!
Great look with that action. Something else I need to work on is trying out all the actions I picked up at the last giant sale lol
And congrats on the staff pick!
Cograts @dracorn!!
I haven't noticed this thread for a while but glad I did today, these recent renders are amazing, especially love the reflection detail for the globe on Enduring!
And congratulations on getting a render picked
Thank you so much for the look-see and compliments! I appreciate them.
Psylock's Crazy Pose
So I came across an article the other day in which the complaint was how superhero women are twisted into these impossible poses in order to maximize their busts and booty and show them off at the same time. Psylock was a particularly twisted pretzel. So what is UP with that leg pose?!
Well - let's just see how flexible Vicki is. And the result is not exact, but not bad.
Here's the funny part - how ridiculous she looks from a different angle. Notice how I had to push the breasts far to the right in an unrealistic swing - I increased a limit to do it.
Look at those legs. Wow. That looks seriously uncomfortable - but - I didn't need to increase the limit in order to pose them. It was the neck and head that required limits be adjusted.
LOL!!! Don't try this at home