April 2018 - Daz 3D New User Challenge - Open Render Challenge

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Comments

  • ewcarmanewcarman Posts: 180

    Really nicely done.  My only quibble...and it is getting really nitpicky...is her hair.  Since her head is tilted the hair on the right side of her head ( can just see some strands below the hat ) should be hanging down away from her face slightly. If the hair is doing that already ( camera angles can make it diffcult to tell sometimes ) then please disregard.

     

    I love nitpicking! I am a sucker for the details. 

    I am attaching the newer version now. I am not happy with the hair. I decided to run some dforce on it. At first I was just going to move the hair behind the ears and even remove the wisps on the sides but it didn't look right to me. The issue I ran into with leaving the bangs is that moving them to the correct position on the left would have blocked the face and on the right farthest from camera (character right side of face) I simply couldnt get it to look right. That was when I tried dforce. I didn't like the result and thought I had removed the modifier and decided to just leave the wisps and move the bangs behind the ears. I put it back in the oven and went about my morning and came back to discover that some dforce trickerie was still in effect. I will mess with it more at some point.

     

    ewcarman said:

    This is truly a great render. One thing that drew my attention was the shoes. I know there is a little strap on the back that will help to keep the shoe up against the foot, but if there was a way to add just the smallest of spaces between the heel and the shoe, I think it would add to the realism as such a strap is likely to have some give to it. This is such a small thing, it is likely not worth fussing too much over, but wanted to mention in case it helped.

    The other thing with the shoe is where the edge sinks into the floor by the big toe. This is giving the indication of compression of the sole - which is good - but the sole is still pretty straight and flat and that makes it look more like it is sinking in the floor. This is really going to be difficult, but if you were able to add a deformer and give the slightest of bend to that edge, I think you will have sold the shoes. I wish I could give you tips on using the deformer, but truthfully I have a horrible time getting them to work properly. I've managed a few things, but there's usually a lot of colorful metaphores accompanying my attempt. You might even cheat and just lower the floor a hair to fix the impression. But if you can figure out how to give that a little bend - that would amazing.

    Best of luck!

    Thanks for mentioning this. It was something I noticed but had not addressed. I ended up using 4 deformers, 2 on each sandal to cause them to sit better. I think I am happy but may tweak again. As I mentioned above, I love detail, so thank you for mentioning this and describing what didn't sit right with their position!

    As a side, I rotated her chair as it was triggering my OCD with the legs being off centered.

    Nicely done. Some wavy-ness in the sole really helps to sell the shoe as real and under stress from the bend and foot pressure. You even got it to sit off of the heel a bit. Nice.

    Good luck with the hair!

  • NovbreNovbre Posts: 83
    edited April 2018

    I have been away from Daz for a while, so I am doing some portraits of some FF14 guildies as a way to get back into things and play with all the bells and whistles in Daz 4.10.  This one is my daughters miqo'te character Vakarta.

     

    Post edited by Novbre on
  • daybirddaybird Posts: 655

    Impressive new entries. I'm far away from doing such great renders, but it's cool, to see what is all possible with daz.surprise

    As far as my work is concerned... the render was a desaster. sad

    The plane with the ghostlight was slightly visible, position of a few actors not right, some strange light effects now are there and two or three clippings must be corrected, so another render is neccesary.

  • HighElfHighElf Posts: 366

    @ewcarman I'm impressed by this. I'm interested in the skin texture and shader preset you are using. Are they vanilla by the figure?

     

    @novbre Awesome, I totally love the precious figures but I have never thought of using them outside an comic style environment. And the mithra/mi'qote is nicely done. 

    I for myself have learned this month, that I need more time to become more experienced with DAZ.

  • ewcarmanewcarman Posts: 180
    HighElf said:

    @ewcarman I'm impressed by this. I'm interested in the skin texture and shader preset you are using. Are they vanilla by the figure?

    It is an impressive image, but it belongs to @shaneseymourstudio.Hopefully they can respond to your question.

  • HighElf said:

    @ewcarman I'm impressed by this. I'm interested in the skin texture and shader preset you are using. Are they vanilla by the figure?

     

    @novbre Awesome, I totally love the precious figures but I have never thought of using them outside an comic style environment. And the mithra/mi'qote is nicely done. 

    I for myself have learned this month, that I need more time to become more experienced with DAZ.

    @HighElf This was Minami HD and using NGS 2 shader. The mats were what Minami came with.

  • HighElfHighElf Posts: 366

    Jeiks. Cudos. Didn't see that this was a quote. Chapeu @shaneseymourstudio. And thanks for the infos. :)

  • cathan01_wwg1wgacathan01_wwg1wga Posts: 361
    edited April 2018

    Thanks to Wanderer, Gallows and Kismet2020 for the comments and suggestions. My problem is I can't go back and make changes easily because so much clean up and tightening is done in postwork, which I think I have a bit more affinity for than setting up in Daz Studio. Everyone else has better lighting and staging of their subjects in Daz Studio and better grasp for Iray. Especially shaneseymourstudio: very realistic lighting, staging and skin textures makes your render look like a photograph rather than just a 3d render. I credit you guys and online tutorials for teaching me more about Daz's inner workings.

    Forgot to list title of the book I used for the unicorn body pose. Ken Hultgren's The Art of Animal Drawing: Construction, Action Analysis, Caricature. Really good resource for drawing dynamic animal poses.

    P.S.: Sorry for taking so long to respond. Week and weekend were busier than I anticipated. I came in a couple times with the intention to respond, but had to run out unexpectedly. 

    Post edited by cathan01_wwg1wga on
  • daybirddaybird Posts: 655

    Mhh I'm once again struggle with the lights.

    It seems, that I have put the lumen of the fire to high and now all in the background has an yellish touch.

    Also the rim light causes some strange effects in the amazone hair and on the bench feets.

    I have the dumb feeling, the more I work on this scene, the more worse I make all. :(

    amazone test 4.png
    1000 x 563 - 1M
  • NoswenNoswen Posts: 358
    edited April 2018

    A late start again from me for my initial idea render, lots of work still to come for this character.

    Filbert Duel WIP 1.jpg
    800 x 800 - 132K
    Post edited by Noswen on
  • WandererWanderer Posts: 957

    Sorry for being busy the past few days. 

    @shaneseymourstudio - Just in case I didn't praise this image highly enough the first time around, you've got absolutely stunning skin, and as @daybird pointed out, a lot of fine details that really push your image over the top.

    @Novbre - Interesting duo here. Not familiar with miqo'te, but I like her. Those critters are adorable, and I think the combination of the cute critter and the girl with scar works.

    @cathan01_6e39852 - Thank you for sharing that resource. 

    @daybird - I don't know if I agree you make it worse, but I totally know that feeling. There are things I definitely like about this version. Maybe alter the fire just a bit, but I can clearly make out a lot of the details you were wanting to capture before. I don't know everything you've tried, but maybe an HDRI outside with light coming in a window could help illuminate the interior better? I find I play with the environment intensity a lot under the render settings. It's hard because the renders take a long time, so you have to sacrifice a lot for each iteration. Maybe, if it would help you to figure out the lighting, you could try saving a subset of your scene with just building, lighting, and cameras, load that in a new scene and use very low resolution or even primitive figures as placeholders while you work out the lighting in general--like, you could keep the figures in scene that are most difficult to capture properly, but everything else could go, just until you figure out your lighting settings. Then you just take that knowledge back into your full scene for your next full render time. You probably knew all this already, but I'm just hoping that maybe I can offer some insight on how I sometimes try things to make it easier.

    @Noswen - Good to see your character brought to life here. Keep going!

  • DangerDetectiveDangerDetective Posts: 30
    edited April 2018

    Wow, so many great renders offered by everyone this month. I’m very impressed by the submissions from @Wanderer, @Diomede, @cathan01_6e39852829, @daybird , @Tynkere . I’d offer constructive criticisms but I don’t know what I would change or how to make them better. Hopefully as I learn more about Daz, I’ll be able to offer those kinds of suggestions in the future. But, for the time being I’ll just point out things I like.  

     

    My Daz time has been very limited the last few weeks. I didn’t want to miss this month’s challenge, so to speed things up, I decided to borrow from my setting from last month. As a result, I’m revisiting the wrestling ring. Using some of what I learned from the lighting and posing challenges, I decided to do an experiment in simulating movement in a single frame. If it’s not obvious at first glance, the movement in the scene is traveling from the right side of the image to the left.

     

    Title: “What goes up…”

    Software: Daz Studio, Photoshop CS3, Filter Forge 6  

     

     

     

     

    What Goes Up2.jpg
    1000 x 667 - 326K
    Post edited by DangerDetective on
  • DangerDetectiveDangerDetective Posts: 30
    edited April 2018

    Here's a 2nd submission for the month. Just more of the same pose, composition, and lighting testing.

     

    Title: "Pain in the Neck"

    Software: Daz Studio, Photoshop CS3

     

    Pain in the Neck.jpg
    1800 x 1200 - 909K
    Post edited by DangerDetective on
  • WandererWanderer Posts: 957

    @Night678winG - Interesting technique. My only suggestion at this point is to consider placing the first poses to the right in a base layer, and building upward from there. I only say that because I'm thrown by the flying/falling person's arm going behind the other person and by the lights clipping through her legs. I like your image otherwise. Glad to see you around again. Hope to see more of you.

  • @Wanderer Good eye, I knew something was off but after looking at the image for so long I couldn't see the inconsistency with the arm not properly intersecting with the head. I'll have to revisit it. Thanks for the feedback. My intention was to have the transition images be partially transparent to give the illusion of a moment that had already passed, and the opaque figures symbolize the present moment. It's possible I just tried to do too much in one frame.

  • can we submit if we are new to DAZ Studio and Hexagon ?

  • daybirddaybird Posts: 655
    seegsons said:

    can we submit if we are new to DAZ Studio and Hexagon ?

    Hi and welcome seegsons,

    YES YOU CAN! ;)

    Especially for beginners this is the right thread to do the first steps in DAZ Studio.So don't be afraid to post entries. There is no better way to learn, how to make things better than to post your work and discuss with others about it.

    I think, for Hexagon you should post your questions in another thread, where you may get better help.

    https://www.daz3d.com/forums/categories/hexagon-discussion

    Not that we don't wanna help you, but I think this thread is more focused on working with DAZ, but feel free to ask questions.

  • NoswenNoswen Posts: 358
    edited April 2018

    @Night678winG: Great picture! smiley

    @seegsons: As daybird said, absolutely. This is the perfect place to be posting.

    @Wanderer: Thanks, working on it, but seeing the time running out, my fault for getting distracted angel

    Here is the next bit of the iteration, mainly sorting out the clothing and rotating the dome to get the lighting falling more to my liking. Also had to change the hair on the second character to remove the unexpected balding.

    Filbert Duel WIP 2.jpg
    800 x 800 - 122K
    Post edited by Noswen on
  • WandererWanderer Posts: 957

    @Noswen - Clothing looks much better - nice improvements... might be good to have more light coming from the magic spot,  but I think it's looking much better already -- and hey, just do what you can. It's good to have you here. 

    @seegsons - Come on in! The more, the merrier. And welcome.

  • ArtsyDragonArtsyDragon Posts: 682

    My first submission. Have been away on work.

    This is Taryk. He is one of the characters in a graphic novel I am working on with a friend.

     

    Taryk_v02c.jpg
    1500 x 1200 - 665K
  • NoswenNoswen Posts: 358
    illysArt said:

    My first submission. Have been away on work.

    This is Taryk. He is one of the characters in a graphic novel I am working on with a friend.

     

    Looking pretty good smiley

  • daybirddaybird Posts: 655
    Wanderer said:

     

    @daybird - I don't know if I agree you make it worse, but I totally know that feeling. There are things I definitely like about this version. Maybe alter the fire just a bit, but I can clearly make out a lot of the details you were wanting to capture before. I don't know everything you've tried, but maybe an HDRI outside with light coming in a window could help illuminate the interior better? I find I play with the environment intensity a lot under the render settings. It's hard because the renders take a long time, so you have to sacrifice a lot for each iteration. Maybe, if it would help you to figure out the lighting, you could try saving a subset of your scene with just building, lighting, and cameras, load that in a new scene and use very low resolution or even primitive figures as placeholders while you work out the lighting in general--like, you could keep the figures in scene that are most difficult to capture properly, but everything else could go, just until you figure out your lighting settings. Then you just take that knowledge back into your full scene for your next full render time. You probably knew all this already, but I'm just hoping that maybe I can offer some insight on how I sometimes try things to make it easier.

    I don't no why, but even when I hide all props and persons, it took nearly 17 min until the first literation will be written and after that, I must wait again 20 minutes, to get a approximat imagination, how the lights will come out.

     

    I think this is me last try for this months. There are still many things I wish they shoult look better, but every render  of this scene takes nearly 18h and after I worked so long on it, I think it's time to do something new..

    Amazone 7.jpg
    1600 x 900 - 648K
  • NoswenNoswen Posts: 358

    @daybird: That's an insane render time, though there are a lot of figures in that scene. Impressive to work on scenes that take so long, I just don't think I could manage to do it myself. Only slight criticism I can see is that the glove looks to be cutting into her arm.

  • NoswenNoswen Posts: 358
    edited April 2018

    Onto version number three.

    Reduced the amount of muscles the character had as it was a little bit too much, and changed the pants as I didn't particularly like them. Also done some re-jigging of the poses a bit and increased the brightness of the magic circle as Wanderer suggested.

    Filbert Duel WIP 3.jpg
    800 x 800 - 117K
    Post edited by Noswen on
  • daybirddaybird Posts: 655
    edited April 2018
    Wanderer said:
    @daybird: That's an insane render time, though there are a lot of figures in that scene. Impressive to work on scenes that take so long, I just don't think I could manage to do it myself. Only slight criticism I can see is that the glove looks to be cutting into her arm.

    @Noswen Arghh...you are right! surprise

    How can I had overlooked this the whole time? Thanks for the note.

    When there is one thing, what I really don't like in my renders, it is clippings and intersections. So I have no choice, as to do a new rendercrying

    For your render...Well done, the pale skin of the two men are a nice contrast to the rest of the scene.

    I also like the light insane mimic of the mage. Only the part of his cloak who points in the face of the victim is a little distracting. It took me a while to realize, that it was a part of his wardrobe.

     

    illysArt said:

    My first submission. Have been away on work.

    This is Taryk. He is one of the characters in a graphic novel I am working on with a friend.

     

    Nice char and background. I think the girls will like him much.

    Maybe you chould rotate the background a little, so that the bright are is behind his head. Until now, his impressive hair mane goes down a bit in the dark area.

    Post edited by daybird on
  • NoswenNoswen Posts: 358

    @daybird: Those overlapping objects are a bane to me as well, I keep a close eye out for them. Now you've pointed out the cloak pointing straight at the victim's face I can't unsee it, I may have to re-pose that a bit laugh

    But what do you mean by light insane mimic?

  • ArtsyDragonArtsyDragon Posts: 682

    @Daybird, something more like this?

     

    Taryk_v02d.jpg
    1500 x 1200 - 683K
  • daybirddaybird Posts: 655
    edited April 2018
    illysArt said:

    @Daybird, something more like this?

     

    Perfect, now the girls will do kills, to get a meeting with him.laugh

     

    @Noswen mhh, how should I explain it. Look at his mimic. There is a special expression in it.

    Joy,enthusiasm and how I said, a little craziness. We can see his emotion, he knows that he soon will defeat his opponent/victim... and we feel, that he get some sort of ecstasy from that. 
    Ok, maybe you hade something total different in mind, as you created this expression, but I find it fits perfect.

    He looks like a arogant snob, who don't care about others and uses his power to supress the people around him.

    Post edited by daybird on
  • Haven't a clue why it was a pain in the rear to get this uploaded, but here's version b of my 4th idea.

    Removed the bars from the window, used a primitive to add a plane of glass, tweeked the lighting, gave the main character a headset, tweeked his ears to work with said headset, and gave him a crewmate who he's planing the next run with.

    april2018-4b.png
    1080 x 872 - 1M
  • NoswenNoswen Posts: 358

    @daybird: It was the word mimic that confused me, never heard it in this context before. And thank you, I spent a lot of time on the expression, even delving into the Shaping tab for it. Wasn't going for snob, but everything else you said is pretty close to what I was aiming for smiley

    @Shinji: Nice looking render, though where the hair overlaps with the window it looks oddly see-through.

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