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I've got something in the works too, but the mash-up process is quite involved, so I'm balancing making a good pic vs keeping track of all the terrible things I'm doing to your Neighborhood Yard set.
I might even include a secondary post-work piece as I want to try out some hand drawn linework in there too.
Cheers
@Firstbastion : *g* I haven't understand it in that way, don't worry :)
There's an idea I've got, let's see if I can do it...
Women? *hmmm* :D LOL - Totte, maybee you've given me an idea... the bridge could also be a runway *hm* another idea... Lets see...
@ First Bastion was wondering why ur store wasn't on sale for MM! Wanted to pick up
a few things!! :ohh:
That's true - seems to be a chronic condition with them. I think a Mix and Mash render with a hot guy in it would be much better - that is my next project. :cheese:
Not too many hot women renders submitted into any of my contest in years past, let alone hot guys, the only submission I can remember that was sultry hot, was in 2010 by Mafaja, with V4 taking a dip in the Old Waterhole. It triggered a nudity tag on the thread even. It won one of the prizes though. So, hot guys and/or gals renders welcome. :coolsmile:
Slow week. Not surprising since every contest I've run through the years has had at least some lull time.
On to the Monday morning Weekly Winner.
Totte - Baptism by Fire
Your tutorial on unlocking and tearing apart the “HighCliffCrossing” , "WalkAcrossWater", " StormSewerRunOff" , and reassembled it together into a new environment, met the criteria for a “How to” coupled together with a vast historical view. Lots of good learning here. The pdf info offered plenty of screen shots and lots of interesting tips!
Send me a PM of your product choice and I’ll get DAZ to add it to your account. It might be a holiday today so tomorrow..
Well Done Totte!
Thank you FirstBastion, PM on the way!
What Really Happens at Night
Here's my hot fantasy guy fighting a troll.
Used First Bastion's Neighbor's Yard and Rocky Flats - Grassy Stone
The third week’s “how-to” prize has been awarded. Congrats again, Totte. Enjoy the Spiral Descent Cave Entrance.
On with Week Four.
Sorry, but this is too fun, just love it!
Three blonds and a raft
Three blond women saw on television a program about Thor Heyerdahl and how the Polynesians sailed in rafts and discovered uncharted islands, like Hawaii. They decided that they also wanted to discover unchartered lands, like Hawaii, and they built a raft and set sail....
First Bastion sets used:
Neighbourhood Yard
Horse Show
Unfinished basement
Walk Across Water
Breaking Waves
Howto: pdf-file here
Peeks in... :gulp:
First Entry
Title: Dungeon Encounter
First Bastion Products: Gallerie Bastion Spacious Interior, Spiral Descent Cave Entrance, Cliff and Climb, The Hidden Waterfalls, A Walk Across Water
Render: Poser Pro 2012
Post Work: Paint Shop Pro X5, HitFilm Ultimate
The Tutorial, The making of Dungeon Encounter
Figure 1 shows the wire frame view of the scene with each First Bastion product pointed out as to where it is used in the scene. As you can see with 9 Gen 4 figures plus clothing, props and scenery this is a rather ambitious scene to work with and render. this tutorial will show how anyone can manage large scenes easily even on a lower power computer.
In Figure 2 I show how the grouping tool is used to select polygons on an object. Click the grouping tool in Poser and then simply select the polygons you want to be in the group. You can click and drag across polygons to select several polygons at a time. This will save you a lot of time as you work. If you select unwanted polygons simply hold the control key and click the unwanted polygons to deselect them.
Creating a new prop from a group. Once you have all the polygons you want selected you can click either create prop or spawn prop to create a new prop consisting of the selected polygons. I then like to move my new prop to the center of the scene and save it to my library for later use. I had already done this with several parts of the Gallerie Bastion Spacious Interior for last years contest. This was a huge advantage as now I can use the bits and pieces to construct a whole new environment rather than loading the full set every time. I also created props from the Hidden Waterfall river plane to use as the water for this scene, and the portion of the Walk Across Water bridge.
Working with lots of figures in a scene. I have found the easiest way to work with large numbers of figures in a complex scene is to create each character in its own scene as an individual and save it to the library. I already have a rough idea of what my scene is going to look like so i can add expressions and basic poses to the figures on their own with nothing else cluttering up the work area. Rough poses can be tweaked later when the figures are added to the full scene.
Figure 3 shows a new feature in Poser 9 and Poser Pro 2012, Grouping Objects. I have found these to be really useful. When I created my characters for this scene I created a grouping object and renamed to to what figure it was for. Then using the Hierarchy Editor I dragged all of the items pertaining to that character into its Grouping Object. The Figure, his clothes, props etc are all controlled by the Grouping Object now. If I want to make him invisible i can just click off invisibility for the Grouping Object and all the clothing, hair and props are instantly invisible as well. This is useful because I often render a scene in bits and pieces and combine it all in a 2D image editor later. This saves render times and allows me to pack a lot more stuff into a scene. Also I can group several characters together and they will all be controlled by the Grouping Object. If say I want 2 characters fighting each other with swords but i am not sure exactly where i want them in the scene, i can move the Grouping Object and everything connected to the Grouping Object moves together. By naming the Grouping Objects it also helps you keep track of things in your scene.
Figure 4 shows the Material Room. Because the default textures for Gallerie Bastion Spacious Interior really did not fit the scene I had in mind, I decided to make a new seamless tile texture with Filter Forge to use on the walls and columns and another one for the floors. Using the U and V scale settings I adjusted how the seamless texture was applied to the props to get a better look. If needed you can also adjust the U and V offset.
By rendering each character separately and saving them as PNG files with a transparent background it allows me to add post work elements between characters. In this scene I used HitFilm Ultimate to create the fire and lightning effects that were added later. In the scene as rendered i used point lights to provide the glow from the magic and fire effects that would be added later.
I hope you find this tutorial helpful in setting up your scenes.
hmmm the forum seems to have scrambled the order of the tutorial images, good thing i labeled them
The way the forums image upload works each subsequent image stacks on the previous. Still, was able to follow the tutorial with the numbers you provided.
I got to say one thing that catches the eye immediately in this image is the water, it has just the right amount of turbulence that would be produced with an approaching figure agitating it. Did you do anything with the transparency or reflection settings?
yeah i figured the forums would stack the images, but it scrambled the order from the way I uploaded them, i tried it 3 different times and each time they show up in a different order than how i uploaded them, oh well.
yeah I added a green diffusion to the water, amped up the displacement, turned down the refraction ( less realistic but saves render time ), and adjusted the reflection slightly. The water is the river plane from Hidden Water Fall, the plane was large enough that I could move it around to get just the right look. It really looked kool on the other side of the bridge but i needed to put the orcs in the way :(
I also set the alternate specularity on the rocks from Spiral Decent to anisotropic to give them a more wet look
yayyyy, i got the image order right, only took 6 tries lol
When I was putting together the Hidden Waterfalls in Sept.2010, I took a road trip on the Niagara Escarpment of Southwestern Ontario, and snap about 700 pics of waterfalls over the course of a couple days, including the rivers and upstreams above and below the different falls. Then merged some of them into the texture set for that particular environment. I know, totally too much information, but hey, I like what you did with it.
Title: The Bridge on the River Wye
Using: High Cliff Crossing
Built and rendered in DAZ Studio 4.5 and minor postwork in Photoshop Elements 9
Title: The Bridge on the River Wye (with apologies to David Lean) - For non-Brits, the River Wye is located in the English/Welsh borderlands.
Rather than building a new bridge, I imagined a scene involving men repairing an old bridge as Community Service (not very likely I suppose, but the closest thing to "forced labour" today).
Steps in the construction were:
1. I loaded FirstBastion's High Cliff Crossing - I'm using the lights that this scene comes with, plus a couple of extras.
2. I added a water plane - I used the one from Fantasy Castle Grounds. I had to move it up on the y-axis and rotate it around both the x- and z-axes to make it fit the valley like a reasonably realistic river. I also adjusted the opacity as too much detail of the ground was showing through.
3. To fill the scene a little more, I added a pub at one end of the bridge - I used Dryjack's freebie Medieval House 2 for this . I sank it into the ground so the front door was at an appropriate level, but had to remove the loose rocks from High Cliff Crossing to fit the building in. The pub sign is a prop from the Medieval Tavern set. I adapted the building textures to match the "local stone" by tiling the bridge stonework texture to fit and adding suitable wood textures from Pimp My Prop and a slate texture downloaded from CGTextures. The outside table is from Garden Escape Bridge and the umbrella from Carnival Picnic Tables.
4. Next I added scaffolding to the bridge using components from The Construction Site and ladder from Medieval Barn, retextured with Real Metals for DAZ Studio shaders.
5. I added some Genesis figures as the labourers (jumpsuits are from Cool Sports, shoes from Town and Country and hard hats adapted from Future Cop helmets) and their supervisor (clothing from Town and Country).
6. Finally I put in a backdrop - the skybox from Flipmode's Easy Environments Mountain Trail.
7. Rendered in DS4.5 (3Delight).
8. Postworked in Photoshop Elements 9 to add some foam to waves and along the river banks with Ron Deviney's Water brushes.
Title: The Backyard Horse Show
Items Used: The Neighbor's Yard and Horse Show Jumping Props
Software used: Daz Studio 4.5 and Photoshop CS5
The "How To" follows in another post.
The "Backyard Horse Show" How To
FirstBastian Products Used: The Neighbor's Yard and Horse Show Jumping Props
Software Used: Daz Studio 4.5 and Photoshop CS5
STEP 1: ASSEMBLE THE SCENE IN DAZ STUDIO - In Daz Studio, load The Neighbor's Yard preset. Add in some plants and makeshift jumps around the yard. For the jumps I used found items from many different packages. Add two little girls -- one jumping one of the fences, and one watching, and dress them. Add a horse and rider with tack and riding clothes. Also add the brick wall obstacle from Horse Show Jumping Props. (Hide the ground for the brick wall obstacle.) The jumping horse and the jumping girl should be lined up so that the girl is directly behind the horse, facing the same direction. You don't have to position them exactly right now, just make sure they are turned in the correct directions for rendering. The scene should look something like Figure 1 below.
STEP 2: RENDER THE BACKYARD - Hide the people and their clothes, the horse and its tack, the brick wall and the ladder jump (with the crate and ice chest "wings"). Render the neighbor's yard with the rest of the makeshift jumps, plants and other props. The scene should look something like Figure 2 before rendering.
STEP 3: RENDER PEOPLE, HORSE AND JUMPS - Now hide all of the neighbor's yard items, plants and makeshift jumps. Show the brick wall obstacle, the horse and rider and the jumping and watching girls. Place a shadow catcher plane under them so that when you render the items separately they will have shadows and "fit" into the scene correctly. (For more on shadow catchers, see Carnite's YouTube tutorials: Shader Mixer - Catching Shadows Part 1 and Part 2.) The result should look something like Figure 3 below.
Now hide everything except the shadow catcher plane and the brick wall obstacle. Render the scene.
Hide the brick wall obstacle and show the ladder jump. Render the scene.
Hide the ladder jump and show the horse, rider, riding clothes and horse tack. Render the scene.
Hide the horse, rider, riding clothes and tack and show the jumping girl and her clothes. Render the scene.
Finally, hide the jumping girl and her clothes and show the watching girl and her clothes. Render the scene.
STEP 4: ASSEMBLE RENDERS IN PHOTOSHOP - At this point you should have six renders. Load all of the rendered images into Photoshop and copy and paste them into a single image. The layer order should be:
1. Jumping girl
2. Standing girl
3. Horse and rider
4. Makeshift ladder jump
5. Brick wall obstacle
6. Neighbor's yard
Arrange the figures so that the standing girl is off to the side watching. The jumping girl is about to jump the ladder jump, the ladder jump is directly in front of the brick wall obstacle and the horse is jumping both the ladder jump and the brick wall. The result should look something like Figure 4 below.
STEP 5: PERFORM GENERAL POSTWORK - Make any postwork changes you desire. I added the horse's mane CWRW's mane and tail pack. I also touched up the rider's boots, hat and hair to fix poke through and other problems.
I also erased the horse's hind end because I wanted it to appear to be jumping out of the jumping girl's "core". Use the Puppet Warp tool to reshape the horse's trunk so that it emanates from someplace near the girl. It doesn't have to be exact.
Once the horse and rider are complete, merge the horse and rider to a single layer.
"Ghost" the horse and rider and brick wall obstacle by creating copies of each and setting the blending mode of one layer to Screen and the other to Linear Light. Set the opacity of the Linear Light layers to about 25%.
The result should look something like Figure 5 below.
STEP 6: ADD PURPLE HAZE - Using one of the smoke brushes from Obsidian Dawn's Sparkle and Smoke brushes (found at www.obsidiandawn.com ) create a purple haze on a new layer just above the Neighbor's Yard layer, as shown in Figure 6 below.
STEP 7: ADD YELLOW GLOW - Create a yellow glow on a new layer above the Horse and rider layer. The glow should emanate from the jumping girl and obscure the cutaway part of the horse so that the horse appears to be jumping out of the glow as shown in Figure 7 below.
STEP 8: ADD FINAL SPARKLES - Finally, using several of the sparkle brushes create various sparkles around the horse and rider. Change the blending mode of the sparkle layers to Overlay. The final image should resemble Figure 8 below.
Monday morning Weekly Winner.
Warmblood - Backyard Horse Show
Ambitious image this week. It's always a challenge to convey an idea, in this case the little girl dreaming to be horse jumping. Juxtaposing the show jumping props with the yard works and meets the criteria for a “How to” coupled together with a good explanation of the PS layers and FX. The tutorial info offered plenty of screen shots and lots of interesting tips! Lots of good learning here.
Send me a PM of your product choice and I’ll get DAZ to add it to your account. Please also include you email, because DAZ asks for it as part of the prize allocation process to assure the product in placed in the correct account.
Well Done Warmblood
Congrats warmblood!
Congratulations!!!
Thank you, FirstBastion, Totte and Sedor. ! I'm thrilled that my entry seems to convey what I hoped it would. Making the image was lots of fun in part because I used to run those backyard horse shows all of the time when I was young. We were able to create some pretty impressive fences made out of lawn chairs, trash cans, bed head boards and what ever else we could pull out of the garage. The courses were tricky and the fences got pretty high, too--some well over 3 feet tall.
Oh-oh. Guys, I just took another look at the backyard. I was so focused on those little pony girls that I didn't even see the epic battle going on just up the hill! (Hope you don't mind, Luci45!)
Something to make the numbers. An older pic of mine re-visited and re-rendered originally designed for the stonemason competition but run afoul of technical and time issues. It uses elements of the rocky flats set though it's hard to tell under the snow shader. I had more complicated and interesting ideas for some other renders but they are not being realised as I had hoped so probably won't be finished.
The Commissar:
The fourth week’s “how-to” prize has been awarded. Congrats Warmblood. Enjoy the High Cliff Crossing.
On with Week Five, which should be the final week of the "how-to" competitions, before the grand finale week. So plenty of time if someone wants to impart some wisdom through a tutorial, and gain some brand spanking new content in process.
Wow, and that was happening right next door too! ;-) How funny. No problem - I know the Backyards just seem to call for some imaginative kids doing something.
Nice tutorial and image. You always do awesome work.
The Portal,
Used elements from the Spiral Descent and Old Waterhole sets.