Sept 2016 New User Contest "Depth of Field" (WIP Thread)

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Comments

  • dawnblade said:

    Finally came up with something.  Took a LONG time to render but my laptop doesn't have the same speed as my pc.  I'm pretty happy with this, I wish I could have had her looking directly down the arrow and looking into the camera but no matter what I tried the bow was in the way.  And I wanted her looking directly in the camera, like she sees you but its not going to stop her from shooting at whatever she is aiming at.

    I really like what you have done here, Ice Dragon Art. I agree with @Kismet2012 that you have framed the Dark Elf well! I've always like the Elven outfit, but I just wish it came with more than one pose with the bow, because I've run into that problem with the bow being in the way too.

    As I'm looking at the arrow in her bow, is it different than the arrows in her quiver? I don't have DS running now, so I can't pull the name of the material. The green arrows in her quiver I think are the default color. It looks like when you applied a different material to her outfit you might have also changed the arrow in the bow, but not the arrows in her quiver? It's hard to tell so I could be wrong.

    Anyway, nice work!

    Thank you!  I just used the default materials on everything but I will check the arrow feathers.

    Unlight865 I really like the angle and the view of the second one that is coming from behind the orc's back on the boat.  That one really caught my attention and told a story for me.

     

  • sueya said:

    I have altered my first image following your advice. Further feedback is welcome.

    His expression is very well done!  You can tell he is NOT happy with her.

  • FrankTheTankFrankTheTank Posts: 1,185
    edited January 2018

      

    Post edited by FrankTheTank on
  • Here's my postwork update. I know its lacking something, but I can't figure out what.

    His pants are too clean...He needs to be a bit more dirty I think.  Doesn't have to be a lot but I think that's the one thing that stands out as off to me. 

  • dawnbladedawnblade Posts: 1,723

    Here's my postwork update. I know its lacking something, but I can't figure out what.

    You have put a lot of work into this, @DvoraszeniaStudios and it shows! I like the special effects on the android. Just a thought that the sidewalk is well lit up, and the light is falling on the gunner's left leg and arms but not his face. It would be great to see the gleam in his eyes as he's taking care of business.

  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001

    Here's my postwork update. I know its lacking something, but I can't figure out what.

    Smoke...you have the muzzle flash, but no smoke.  Lit cigar (?)...no smoke.  Sparking roboterrordroid...no smoke (they don't run on electricity, you know...but smoke.  Let the smoke out and they die.)

  • frank0314frank0314 Posts: 14,139

    If you don't have anything that you can use for smoke you can also try one of Deviney smoke brushes

  • dawnbladedawnblade Posts: 1,723
    frank0314 said:

    If you don't have anything that you can use for smoke you can also try one of Deviney smoke brushes

    DvoraszeniaStudios: There is also a free Photoshop sample set--which can be used in Gimp--of Ron's brushes that MN-150374 told me about in an earlier post. It includes smoke! It also includes a pdf tutorial, which is how I learned to use brushes in Gimp. Put the brushes in the ".gimp-2.8\brushes" folder under your user profile (assuming default installation with a PC).

  • I've been trying to use DoF for a while, and today discovered fibonacci-spiral composition. So I figured I'd try using both for this. What improvements would you guys recommend?

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  • FrankTheTankFrankTheTank Posts: 1,185
    edited January 2018

      

    Post edited by FrankTheTank on
  • FastKattFastKatt Posts: 23
    edited September 2016

    I think I'm pretty much happy with the lighting as is, might knock down the exposure that's about it. Thoughts?

    Get rid of the confetti-effect, maybe?   ( Ok ok, I'm regularly having trouble with that, too blush )


    FastKatt said:

    Updated. @ewcarman, thank you for the great ideas!

    Nice smiley - which fire were you using and did you need to tweak it to look like this?


     

    Some updates from me - no new buildings yet, but I made an (slightly unfinished) emission-map for the dragon, moved some water nearby, and added a ship (Drakkar) and a Troll (Troll for Genesis) onboard, as well as some lightning (Orestes Electromancy, non-Iray version)...

    Also improved the fire by adding a more transparent geometry-shell - though I'd prefer a gradient-transmap when I get to it...

    Oh, and the ground and water are still from the castle-creator - admittedly it's too linear for a river, I'll propably better look for a replacement.

     

    Please give some feedback smiley . ( especially on the different camera views - and no, not all of them have DoF yet; also, I'm not sure as of which to use as entry... - maybe C30 and C27 ? )

    (p.s.: Am currently re-rendering Camera 27, it seems it wasn't frozen, but just slowed down to a crawl...)

    p.p.s: On the last 2 pics you can see my trouble with the "confetti" - at 0% progress (last pic) the renders sometimes look better then at 100% (second-last pic) - any idea why that is so?

     

    [edit: Just put the non-reduced versions of the pics into the attachements.]

     

     

    Thanks, @unLight865smiley I used the fire and logs from "Around the Campfire" by Bluebird 3d. I did tweak it a bit. I needed to get light 360 degrees around the fire, so I took into a modeling software and duplicated the four planes with the fire texture and turned each new plane 180 degrees, After that, I plugged the fire texture into an emission node and adjusted the power until I got the look I wanted. The blurring of the fire is part DoF and part post work.

     

    I agree with @DvoraszeniaStudios comments. Using the second picture, adding more to the village, and having the dragon coming in for an attack run on the troll would be awesome!

    Post edited by FastKatt on
  • Finally came up with something.  Took a LONG time to render but my laptop doesn't have the same speed as my pc.  I'm pretty happy with this, I wish I could have had her looking directly down the arrow and looking into the camera but no matter what I tried the bow was in the way.  And I wanted her looking directly in the camera, like she sees you but its not going to stop her from shooting at whatever she is aiming at.

    Beautiful! The only thing I'd change is the three strands of hair on the right of the render. They look a little unnatural to me because they are so straight and parallel. 

  • FrankTheTankFrankTheTank Posts: 1,185
    edited January 2018

      

    Post edited by FrankTheTank on
  • dawnbladedawnblade Posts: 1,723

    @dawnblade, thanks for the freebie tip! I think I'll buy some of Ron's Brushes also since they're on sale, plus from lurking in some of the other threads, it sounds like it will go to a good cause. 

    Good cause indeed. Thanks for the heads up, @DvoraszeniaStudios. I'll buy some too.

  • FrankTheTankFrankTheTank Posts: 1,185
    edited January 2018

      

    Post edited by FrankTheTank on
  • I find the most interesting image to be the one from the troll's perspective on the boat. So maybe skip the whole house burning thing entirely and just have the dragon swoop down at the troll on the boat. Might be more interesting camera and DOF opportunities that way. So you could leave the burning house, or maybe multiple burning houses in the background, as if the dragon just laid waste to that area, and now the dragon is swooping down on the troll.

    Hm, thanks for the idea smiley - although my idea was the dragon being the air-support for a group of trolls who raid a village ( or the dragon doing the same alone - the troll+boat was more of an afterthought )... Seems I have quite some work left to do to get this over correctly frown .

    Plus there's the point that the rudders don't move the way I'd want them to; and the fact that the waterpit (?) from the castle-creator does fill the role of "river" only in a quite unnatural fashion... Though I like the reflections in the first pic.

     

    I started adding some buildings - but also lost one due to my gfx-driver being stupid and crashing DS... frown

    Also, I'll propably add some smoke to the hous(es)...

     

    P.S.: I guess I should edit my above post to make clearer which images I was talking about - the camera-number is in the filename, but since that is quite cryptic, it propably wasn't a good idea directly referencing it... but then I had a good deal of headache at that point, so concentration didn't work as good as it should...

    The ones I like most actually are the first and third at the moment  - but as the scene evolves, that might change of course. ( The boat in pic#2 is blocking the flames' reflection in the "river", which is why I don't like this picture yet - propably should move the boat around a bit... ) 

     

    P.P.S.: Fun Fact - if you look close enough, you can actually see the troll in the last two pics; he's hiding behind the sail... not very troll-esque, if you ask me... winkangel

     

  • How does one lock the camera so that you can't accidentally move it?  Its not in the camera pane

  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001

    How does one lock the camera so that you can't accidentally move it?  Its not in the camera pane

    I'm not sure you can...but you can make it so that you can select it, except in the Scene tab. 

    In  the Scene tab, click on the the icon under the S column for the camera in question...it is an arrow pointing up to the left with a little check mark next to it.  After clicking on it, there should be an 'x' there instead of the check.  Now the only way to select the camera is to purposefully do so in the Scene tab.

  • fixmypcmikefixmypcmike Posts: 19,585

    Or lock all the transforms in the parameters pane

  • I will give that a try thank you!

  • KnittingmommyKnittingmommy Posts: 8,191
    edited September 2016

    I happened to pick up Noggin's Cow and Noggin's Bull and Calf as well as the texture set yesterday.  I kind of had an idea for my wip.  It looked horrible at first, but I went through the tutorials for 3Delight that Linwelly and MN-150374 had posted to my Laboratory thread.  I don't think I'd be doing near as well in 3Delight without them.

    Anyway, here is one of my ideas for what to do with my wip.  I don't know if I'll keep that one cow as the focus for the DOF or not.  I'm planning to add a couple of cowpokes on horseback to the scene and maybe a saloon girl on that top balcony.  Somewhere, I have a dust tool and I'll locate that and figure out how to use it so the cows are kicking up some dust.  I'm hoping it will help disguise the fact that those are instanced cows and look really similar to the one cow that is separated out.  I'm going to add one or two more real cows with different textures for a little more variety to the scene and fill in some gaps.

    I'd welcome any comments.

    My other idea and possibly a second entry is a toon or NPR version.  Not sure how that will work with DOF, but we'll see.  I've been picking up a lot of toon stuff with the sales lately and I managed to get a lot of stuff off my wishlist yesterday with 3D Universe and it would be nice to actually use some of the new stuff. ;)  I think the town would look good as a cartoon type image, just not sure if the DOF will translate well.

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    Post edited by Knittingmommy on
  • Yet another idea. I need to buckle down and pick the ones to focus on.

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  • I gave this a new shot with a background. I didn't like it that much. The lighting doesn't work for me with a background—with the really shallow depth of field, the details are washed out, but hte lighting doesn't look right (it's very studio looking, while anyting in the background looks less so). Is this just too subtle for the contest? Or am I thinking about this in a too limited way and need to try a different approach to the background?

    The attached picture shows the attempt with a background, the original with the camera pulled back a bit, and the pulled back version minus depth of field. Because my computer doesn't have a Nvidia card, all the renders were stopped significantly before completion.

    Background-DoF-None.jpg
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  • How does one lock the camera so that you can't accidentally move it?  Its not in the camera pane

    I wish this were possible. I sometimes duplicate my framing camera so I have a backup incase I forget and move my framing.

  • Yet another idea. I need to buckle down and pick the ones to focus on.

    I like this scene, but I can't tell what you're trying to do with DoF in either render. I think your corridor scene was a more promising scene for it—the narrowness made it easy to isolate the heroes with DoF, where as the bridge is broad enough you'd get captain cheetah and the crewmember both at the same degree of focus, when she's posed in a way that wouldn't suggest focus. Perhaps if you moved her forward in the frame a bit, gave her movements a bit of urgency (and had the captain look at her with some panic), you could use a focus on her in a startling and effective way. The DoF would shift the focus from the center and say, "Hey! Action HERE!" Might be cool, but you'd have to pull the DoF really tight.

  • FrankTheTankFrankTheTank Posts: 1,185
    edited January 2018

      

    Post edited by FrankTheTank on
  • Yet another idea. I need to buckle down and pick the ones to focus on.

    I like this scene, but I can't tell what you're trying to do with DoF in either render. I think your corridor scene was a more promising scene for it—the narrowness made it easy to isolate the heroes with DoF, where as the bridge is broad enough you'd get captain cheetah and the crewmember both at the same degree of focus, when she's posed in a way that wouldn't suggest focus. Perhaps if you moved her forward in the frame a bit, gave her movements a bit of urgency (and had the captain look at her with some panic), you could use a focus on her in a startling and effective way. The DoF would shift the focus from the center and say, "Hey! Action HERE!" Might be cool, but you'd have to pull the DoF really tight.

    In the second bridge render, I was trying to adjust the DoF on the camera. I think that I'm gonna set it aside for now, but wanted to share it just incase.

    As for the corridor, here's my latest.

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  • The textures are much better on this version of the corridor shot. The only tweak I can think of right now is making the carpet (or whatever the red floor surface is) a bit dirty or worn. Actually, I'm not sure why it would be carpet when there's a big metal plate there. Personally (and this is really just a personal observation/preference), I'd made it metal or wall material. Depends on how industrial you want the interior to feel.

    I like the pose of the cheetah woman. It's loose, like you'd expect a cat person to have. 

  • The textures are much better on this version of the corridor shot. The only tweak I can think of right now is making the carpet (or whatever the red floor surface is) a bit dirty or worn. Actually, I'm not sure why it would be carpet when there's a big metal plate there. Personally (and this is really just a personal observation/preference), I'd made it metal or wall material. Depends on how industrial you want the interior to feel.

    I like the pose of the cheetah woman. It's loose, like you'd expect a cat person to have. 

    The floor is stained steel. And thanks about Cheetah, I don't use ladies much in my renders so I don't have that many poses to choose from when I do.

  • I gave this a new shot with a background. I didn't like it that much. The lighting doesn't work for me with a background—with the really shallow depth of field, the details are washed out, but hte lighting doesn't look right (it's very studio looking, while anyting in the background looks less so). Is this just too subtle for the contest? Or am I thinking about this in a too limited way and need to try a different approach to the background?

    The attached picture shows the attempt with a background, the original with the camera pulled back a bit, and the pulled back version minus depth of field. Because my computer doesn't have a Nvidia card, all the renders were stopped significantly before completion.

    I think the background definitely looks better/more natural. With the shallow DoF, you might try putting her closer to the background, or some element(s) thereof.

    Either way, I'd say keep the background.

    As for lighting, I agree it seems too even. You could adjust the brightness of some of the lights (down on one side, up on the other) and/or rotate them (the individual lights, not the arm) so some don't point directly at the model -- this gives a softer effect and a bit of shadow.

    Alternatively you could shift the whole light rig so it doesn't point directly at the model. Try moving it up/down, left/right, rotating it on the X or Z axis. This can have a similar effect of adding some shadow.

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