Give it to me straight doc, I can take it - First WIP
Corvyn
Posts: 17
in Art Studio
Hey folks. Been playing with Daz for a couple of weeks now, and I've got something to show for it. Posting it because I know I don't have the same eye that community veterans have. Any feedback is appreciated, and please be honest.
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Comments
I'd say you've got a good eye for posing the characters.
You've got a couple of minor details that are a bit off. The woman's right foot isn't touching the ground at all. The man on the left (the beach bum looking one) - his right foot appears to be digging into the ground.
Other than that, I'd say you're off to a good start.
Weclome to the obsession! I agree with Tabasco Jack looks really good and just needs those two minor adjustments. If you get the chance come over to the newbie contest thread. If you aren't comfortable jumping in right away you can still learn a ton following along. And there are lots of nice people over there as well. Here is the current thread but there are a bunch of threads from previous months as well with lots of great info. http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/110451/sept-2016-new-user-contest-depth-of-field-wip-thread/p1
My next piece of advice is start practicing with lighting.
It looks like you're using either just scene lighting or maybe sun/sky. Try experimenting with 3 point lighting. Dreamlight has a series of free videos available in the Daz store named Great Art Now. Even though it's for an older version, and 3DL, the concepts are the same - a Primary Key light, a dimmer Fill light, and a Rim light from behind.
Great stuff! Thanks for the feedback. One thing I've noticed about the "Send to Floor" CTRL+D feature is that, when rendered, it puts the character just above the ground to where it looks like it's floating. So I was able to work around that: for all the characters I did CTRL+D, then put a negative for the Y parameter. So if CTRL+D sets Y to 6.56, I make it -6.56. Not sure if that's a bug or a feature, but it worked for all of them except the 2 mentioned.
Lighting - I didn't add any lighting at all, and I rendered it with iRay on a transparent background. I figure one step at a time. I'll find those 3-point lighting tutorials and look through them. Thanks for the tip.
I'd love to find a way to make the ground solid, or any object solid for that matter. It would make things much easier. But as I understand it, physics is not native to DAZ Studio. Oh well.
For context, I picked up DAZ because I run tabletop RPG's and I wanted to make visual aids for the PC's and NPC's. This particular rendering is for my Vampire: The Requiem game. They are the ruling family of kindred (vampires) in my game. On the far left is Julian, the eldest and family patriarch. A Roman general and philosopher in life, he was made kindred in 363 AD. Much story ensues, including sleeping for a 1000 years, and recently awoke a few years ago. It took some adjustment, but he's starting to become fond of modern American customs. He loves the beach, and finds tank tops & baggy board shorts to be socially acceptable to his tastes (pants are for barbarians, after all).
Anyways, big long rant aside, point is each character has a story. I and my players have been running games and telling stories about this crew for about 4 years now, so there's a lot of "snapshots" I have in my head that I want to make. Used to be we could scour DeviantArt and find other peoples' artwork to represent characters. But now I want to make my own. So that's why I'm here.
Thanks again for the feedback!
Like everyone else, I think you have a great start! Welcome to DAZland!
Along with the errors my cohorts mentioned, I'll add these:
Man in suit has one hand with fingers sticking inside the other hand. That's a great pose other than the hand and those fingers should be a quick fix.
The guy all in black with the kind of biker look has one foot with the toe not touching the ground. This isn't necessarily wrong. It depends on the pose and I can't see what his heel is doing and whether it is floating as well. I suggest you look at it to make sure it is anchored somewhere. His back foot looks anchored at the heel, his toe doesn't look anchored. Again, that isn't an issue as long as it is what you want. It is hard to see behind the girl's shoe and it is possible that part of the toe is anchored to the floor. With that pose most of his weight would be on the back leg so you just need to make sure that most of the shoe is at the floor. That type of shoe probably has a tilt at the toe and is probably fine where I can't see it. Just double check it is doing what you want. It, also, looks like his hair might be clipping a little bit. You might want to play with the hair morphs and see if you can minimize that a little.
Lighting is important! And, the hardest part to learn. You'll still be learning new things and ideas when you've been at this for two years. Ask me how I know that one! One piece of advice is to always look at light sets when you get them and pick them apart. Try to figure out by looking through the light to see what they are aiming at and what colors and settings they are using. You can look through lights just like you can cameras depending on the type of light. Otherwise, find the light and click on it in your scene while in perspective view and click on the little box that will take you directly to an item and figure out where in the scene that light is in relation to everything else. There are some really good free light sets over on ShareCG and a couple over at Rendo. If you have a chance to buy a quality light set from the DAZ store, jump on it. I highly recommend getting a very good basic light set and studying it. The advantage to this is that you have a click and go light set to use while you are studying it. You can't go wrong getting sets from InaneGlory and/or the sets he does with DestinysGarden. Their photo studio sets are great. They have sets for both 3Delight and Iray depending on your render engine preference. If I had to guess, I'd say you are using Iray! Don't forget you can use HDRI lighting, too. Great for ambient light in a setting and there are tons of free ones out there.
I've gotten some light sets by Colm Jackson and highly recommend those, too. They work great and are easy to set up. Also, look at ForbiddenWhispers and Khory, too. DimensionTheory has a great set of iRadience lights that get plugged into the environment map that is definitely worth having, especially for test renders when you are setting things up. I have one of those set as my default instead of the one that comes with DAZ. It's much better, IMO. There are lots of light sets available, but I haven't tried them. We have some awesome vendors here and I haven't tried them all. I do have several by other vendors not mentioned on my wishlist. Just start with the free ones and see what you can do then start with just one good basic set from one of the vendors, not necessarily and one I've mentioned, and you should be set.
For 3Delight, my favorite go to light set has been Gleam by Cake One. I don't do 3Delight much, but I keep trying and that is the best one I've found, but my library of 3Delight lighting isn't very large and I do have some older lights on my wishlist to get and try out. With Iray so prevalent now, it is harder to figure out the best 3Delight sets to get. Maybe some of those brilliant people who work in 3Delight more can give better advice on for any lights you think you might want to purchase or where to find some good free ones. Again, start looking at ShareCG as it has a lot of great free stuff for DAZ users. But, start with the free sets and get your feet wet. You don't want to spend to much money until you figure out how things work what you can do with it. Then, you can go crazy in the store.
Good luck!
edit: fixed typo for clarity
There is a lot of RPG people around here with similar intentions, so you will be in good company.
Knitting has given you excellent advice and like she said <ou made a really godd start. I would like to point out the new user contest http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/110451/sept-2016-new-user-contest-depth-of-field-wip-thread/p1 which covers a different topic each month, with people coming in and giving advice, plus you can win a price. so to wins in one go
hi. i would give a little feed back and hope it would be useful to you.
i think eyeballing to adjust y translation, keeping the character on the ground is the savest way. i like using power pose to select body parts, although it doesn't show every bone of the body especially for G3, but still you can click to the nearest one so you don't have to find them so hard in scene tab.
the other thing i would like to share with you is the hands poses really draw the line of the overall look being natural or artificial. for instance, aside of the character in suit is having his left hand fingers stuck in his right hand. here the right hand is exactly like the ground. it's not a solid object. or else the left hand fingers putting on the right hand, the fingers naturally don't bend that way. but at last it's always the thumb may need to be adjusted to make perfect. thumbs almost only bend fully while holding fist or grabbing stuffs. you may take a look of your own hands and play around with the angle of twisting, and Up&Down of the thumbs. G3 got a huge improvment about the thumb bones.
right thigh of this character may be twisted outward as well, to make his stand be more convincing.
the scale of the 2 characters wearing black may be having too long legs? making too many characters in a short period would make your sense of scale wrapped.
other minor thing would be like there is a little bit of poke through of the long hair guy leather pants at his right shin.
the cowboy boots make your character looks he's flowing that's totally not your mistake or stuffs but if you need to get around it, beside putting the models perfectly touching the surface of the ground. sometimes you may adjust the angle of the light to make shadows stick to your character too so it looks like it's on the ground even if it is flowing up.
lastly, some presets would not be 100% accurate like the high heel pose. i personally think high heel is really kinda hard to tweak to have foot perfectly align onto the ground. i think it's because of fitting the shoes to resize as the character's foot size, the heel would not scale longer or short to match i suppose? but i really dunno.
i like this render. it catches my eyes. the expressions of the characters look natural and tell me about what kind of character he/she is, which is the best thing i like. it builds connection to the viewer.
Dude you guys and gals rock. Much thanks for the detailed feedback. And thanks for the suggestion about the contest. I've posted a couple WIP pics showing my D&D character. As for this group photo, I've made quite a few tweaks as suggested: fixed Greyson's hands, fixed everybody's feet, shortened Greyson and Josiah so their legs didn't look so long, shortened Evie and Julian so their height was proportional to the others, twisted Greyson's right thigh to make it look more believable, and added a 3-point lighting rig.
So who are these folks? These are the principle members of the House Black, a cyclical dynasty of ruling-class of vampires in London.
On the left is Julian, whose summary is above. - "True is the lord with a taste for terrible wine."
Next is Greyson Black, Julian's eldest childe, the Prince of the city, and the acting Head of House. Strategist, bean-counter, and ruthless bastard. - "Victory is not enough. You want nothing left of your enemy but their skill nailed to a fencepost so everyone understands the price of crossing you."
The girl in the center is Evelyn Black, Julian's youngest childe, a former Hunter, and 3rd in the dynastic line of the house. Analyst, level-headed Mother Hen. "You get so excited, my little muffin."
The man in black is Josiah Calderas, Greyson's childe, a con-artist, and 2nd in the dynastic line of the house. Tactician, charlatain, and silver-tongued smartass. - "'He who feeds the pig also holds the knife over it when it's fattened."
The guy on the far right is Garrick Wolfe, a close friend of Josiah's, and Enforcer for the house. Primal in every sense, lover and fighter. - "It's not my night to die, I haven't loved them all yet!"
That definitely looks much better. Nice work! I don't do any tabletop RPG, the descriptions of your characters are interesting. :)
Much better! If you join in on the newbie thread you will get to know a lot of very quickly lol. Its very cool because there are different levels of newness but we all work pretty well together and always learn something. I've been here a year this month and still learn a HUGE amount of stuff in the newbie challenges. Its shortened my learning curve by a really large amount.
I love these characters. I think you did a great job on representing people with real personalities.
Looking good!
You have a good eye.
I see the slight variations in eyebrow and other asymmetric nuances, but I had to go back and look for them because they help sell the scene without stealing it. You've deftly avoided the PoserFace Syndrome[TM] that stymies so many of us for so long in the early stages of learning. (I finally settled on the rule-of-thumb of dialing everything until the expressions look unmistakable to me, and then immediately cutting the dials back by at least 50% for starters.)
As for the little hand and foot boo-boos, they'll sneak up on you for the rest of your life. I am utterly obsessive about getting those right, and I still routinely manage to get all the way through a project and then notice one that's a little off. My comments to my dogs as I restart the render are not always in the best of taste.
looking awesome i like it :)
Well it's been over a month since I posted that first render. I loved all the feedback the first time around, and now I'm back for more (glutton for punishment, I guess).
First big change was adding an environment and better lights (learned about emissive primatives and 3-point lighting). Tried to apply rule of thirds composition as well. As for the characters, I've made some significant changes to some of them. I wasn't happy with Evie's overall look... she just seemed too cartoonish. So I reworked her. Re-worked Josiah as well.
I also added the 2 missing house members; "Handsome Jack" Drake (3rd from right, unrelated House Enforcer, former pirate) and Lavinia (far right, Josiah's childe and "The G-ddamn Princess... not A, THE").
Jack and Josiah have been brothers in arms since their mortal days on the high seas. Circumstances drove them apart during the Imperial Age, but they were reunited in the early 2000's when Jack was captured by the Knights and hauled before the Prince under suspicion of murdering a Primogen council member. Thanks to Josiah's influence with Prince Greyson, Jack was declared innocent (Greyson never liked that Primogen anyway). Unlife has a sense of humor, it seems, as Jack had become an infamous figurehead within the Carthian Movement; a group which espouses democracy, liberty, and personal freedom, whose ultimate goal is the destruction of the oppressive Invictus House system and neo-feudal class system. How long can Jack keep his alliances secret, and what will happen when each side learns of the other?
Josiah embraced Lavinia in 1890. By kindred terms, she's the youngest (childe of Josiah, grandchilde of Greyson, great-grandchilde of Julian). Shortly after Julian awakened in 2006, he seduced and embraced Evie, a 3rd generation Hunter. This technically places Evie on the same level as Greyson, meaning she has more claim to House assets, and is above Lavinia in dynastic inheritance. However, the fact remains that Lavinia has over 100 years of unlife under her belt, and her power, influence and experience in the Danae Macabre outshines Evie's mere decade. Lavinia is older, more powerful and has more contacts, and resources. Evie has the House Patriarch's favor, and her skills hunting and killing monsters have earned her quite a few boons from some very powerful allies. How long can Lavinia grit her fangs and play nice, and what will the fallout be if they ever come to blows?
Anyways, here's the most recent image I made. Let me know what you think.
Is it a partial render? It still looks a little grainy when you blow it up to full size. Unless that grain is intentional, it really needs to render a little longer. Push up your render time. You did a much better job on the feet this time, except the guy in the back on the left is floating a little. Check his feet. The guy in the suit, front middle, is the first one that gets focused on, I think. He is where I centered on pretty much. As primary focus, he needs to be perfect or it throws the whole shot off. Check his left foot. The sole on that heel looks like is in the floor just slightly. Make sure it isn't. If it is, I think you can just bend the foot up just a few millimeters and it will look better.
Conversely, the guy behind him, all in black, needs just the opposite. His left leg is weight bearing in that pose and yet the sole of front part of the foot looks like it is floating. Double check that. The heel looks fine so bending his foot just slightly should work. He looks like he has a slight poke through on that leg as well in the inner thigh area.
The girl in the dress. Check that her feet aren't clipping into each other. In that pose, it is hard to tell from this angle as the heels are so close. If not, that's good. If yes, just sliding one of the legs to the side should fix it. I'm more concerned with her hands. They just look a little stiff. See if you can curl her fingers on the outer hand just slightly so they look as if they are starting to cup her other hand and don't look quite so stiff.
Overall, I like the characters and I like what you did with the scene. It is always hard for me to figure out the rule of thirds when it comes to setting up group shots so I have no idea if you did that well or not. I like how your shot is set up, though. I like that each of the poses are different and seem to help show the personality of the character they are paired with. You don't have them all in a line and perfect. They just look like a group that was wrangled in for a quick snapshot and almost everyone looks relaxed.
Great stuff! Thanks for the feedback. It's funny, once someone else points it out, it becomes glaringly obvious. I'll re-up when it's done.
So this render has run for about 9 hours. I turned my max samples up to 8,000 and my max time up to 259200. Fixed a few things, gave the guy in the center and the girl on the right different eyes (supposed to be blue and green, respectively), and set the exposure value from 13 to 12. Yet I'm still see the graininess. Any tips?
Edit: Pic was 19mb and I couldn't upload it here, so I put it up on my DeviantArt page.
Actually, I think I answered my own question... the camera. DOF was on, and I hadn't done anything with it. Re-rendering and letting it sit overnight.
Hey why not out up a link to your dA page?
This one I feel good about. Fixed the camera to reduce the graininess. Render time was about 10 hours.
Oh, and my DeviantArt is http://thecorvyn.deviantart.com
I'll be frank- I do not like the two black outfits together, putting the girl on the end (our left) would be a better choice than the third man from the left. Standing next to the man in the center, all detail is lost. You need to either lighten up one of those suits/outfits in Diffuse, or put more lighting on those two. It's one big black blob. Otherwise, you're moving right along and doing quite nicely!
Thanks for the feedback! I've got the characters ordered how I want them, but I've been debating changing Josiah's outfit (3rd in from the left) for other reasons. I see what you're saying, though, and that'll be the way to go.
And it is done. I'll call this one finished.
Yes, I think that one is quite nice! The dude with the beard cracks me up!
Great job ! fantastic characters.
Looks great!