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Thank you for the indepth comments, L'Adair. :)
Image2 : I rarely use bloom, so it could be a Ps filter. I've been working on other things since, so the specifics of that image have gone <--so bad at recalling anything right now! lol It was fun to make and I may return to it on a larger scale as it's a character ref for a book I should be writing.
Image1: Tbh, I don't know why she's there, either. I love centaurs, but I never know what to do with them! I think I've fallen again into the trap of pondering book cover or narrative, mixed it, and come away with neither. I originally fell into Daz with the idea of using it for cover work (and became addicted!).
This is the second picture in a series. The first one (I linked it in the post) does have the Polybius cabinet in it. In this one, he's break-danced his way closer to the exit.
Orly?? That's great news!
Oh and Edith: If I want stronger shadows in an image, but I want the light to be as it is, what stuff do I mess with to up the contrast?
@dpetra5562,
Welcome to the challenges.
This is a really simple image, and there's nothing wrong with that. A lot of professional portrait work has only one figure as the subject with a backdrop. You can make this portrait more powerful, though, simply by turning her neck and head toward the camera. Then adjust the eyes up/down and side-to-side so she's looking at the camera. You'll find those two settings in Parameters > Pose Controls > Head > Eyes. You can tweak other settings for the mouth, cheeks, brows, nose, etc., and give her a hint of an expression, too.
The image could use a stronger Depth of Field, too. Are you using the Depth of Field setting of your camera? Or are you rendering from the Perspective View?
If from the Perspective View, do you need any help adding a DOF camera?
Same here. My fledgling career as an author got derailed. I'm having so much more fun creating 3D art.
Use your storytellling ability to let the scene tell a story. As with writing, allow the character to tell you what they're going to do. (It's weird, I guess, but the characters "talk" to me, and I follow their lead…) But back to the challenge…
So as one writer turned Daz Studio addict to another, I "challenge" you to rework either image, (or something similar to either one,) in the HD format, 16:9 ratio. That should pull your mindset away from book covers, and give you the room to include both a protaganist and an antagonist in the scene. (The challenge is optional, of course. Just trying to inspire you to think "scene" instead of "cover".)
You can try tweaking settings in Render Settings > Tone Mapping. Start by increasing the Crush Blacks setting. That shouldn't affect the light areas. Though it may not be what you're looking for…
How many of you here shoot in a 'general area' and then think about the crop/rotation later after seeing the end of the postwork? Issue like this always give me some OCD (losing some resolution, stepping back can cause camera warp, etc)
Hope to hear some evaluation on the crop.
Uncropped, different postwork.
Okay, so here's my next entry. I actually did this one for the PC September challenge, so a bit of an explainations is in order. This is my interpretation of the Stairs in the Woods phenomenon, made famous by a guy on Reddit. These randomly appearing staircases are not of our world, and you do best to pretend you don't see them. Don't approach them, and certainly never touch them, because they seem to function as teleportation pads of a sort. In one story, the stairs were described as looking like a graphic glitch, which is the impression I've tried to replicate.
I chose to put the stairs in the centre of the DOF, and have the inquisitive guy (it's Ryan) be slightly out of focus. He's not the subject of this picture, the stairs are. They're meant to stick out like a sore thumb, like a splinter. Does this work, you think?
There's a previous version here, which I stopped because it was just meh. Everything looked so flat. In the new version, I put in a distant light with a faint yellow tint which I turned at approximately the same angle as the HDRI sunlight. The shadows came out looking deeper and darker, which I feel adds a lot more depth to the scene. I wanted the shrub (which I actually didn't see until I turned on the final Level of Detail, so happy accident there) to cast dramatic shadows onto the stairs, but with the light at this angle that wasn't going to happen. However, I like how the shrub came out so much darker the second time around. The stairs almost seem to glow behind it, whispering "Step onboard..!"
Okay, enough with the rambling. I just wanted to explain my thought process. Now I'm back to bed for a couple of hours, to pity myself for having a cold.
I had never heard of the Stairs in the Woods phenomenon before. Regardless, I like the concept.
I think the stairs would look more like a "Matrix" glitch if some of the prop was semi-transparent and the "grid of the mesh" were semi-visible. Several ideas for how to do that are now swirling through my brain…
To me, "Ryan" looks like he's walking toward the stairs in a trance. If that's your intent, perhaps another character trying to hold him back, grabbing his arm or whatever, would convey the character is in some danger if he continues forward. If not, then he needs to show a bit more curiosity and caution in his body language. (Imagine yourself in the situation. How would you approach the stairs? Try to mimic that pose in your character.)
Like you, I think the bush in the foreground being dark looks better, but I find that one branch hanging between the camera and the top step distracting. If possible, try rotating the bush so the branch isn't all the way across the steps.
As for the DOF, I think it could be stronger. It might also help to change the Frame Width and Focal Length, (Parameters > Camera > Camera, the same place you found the Depth of Field On/Off setting,) to create a more "wide angle lens" effect. I also think "Ryan" should be a bit closer to the camera, too, so he is more blurred. Where he is standing now, it just feels to me like he's out of focus, even though he's the same distance from the camera as the stairs.
I know that all sounds like a lot, but it's mostly subtle changes. (Except for the stairs, and I'm not even sure how one would get the effect I'm thinking of!)
I think you've nailed it with the lighing on the stairs. If you increase the DOF, you might need more light on the forest in the background, so it doesn't become solid black, but other than that possibility, I think the overall lighting is perfect.
An attempt at L'Adair's challenge to me (so not a part of the DOF challenge) to not book cover. I cheated and it's not 16:9. That's still beyond me to get right. The lighting was a bit of a nightmare and render noise...lingers. I think I'll try again later when I'm not in the middle of making covers! lol Yes, I have a one track brain. ;-)
I don't think that's necessary, because in the stories the stairs are described as solid, very real objects. If I remember correctly, the guy who described them as a "glitch" was talking more about how random and out of place they looked. They went nowhere, and attached to nothing. I just took it a bit further, by using what's actually a fitted rug, to make it look strange and surreal.
Probably the way he's doing, walking slowly with a fairly rigid posture. I move very stiffly when I'm nervous, but then, I'm not normal.
Awww, I liked that branch.
I'll see if the shrub turns. It should, because everything in this set has its own geometry. (Unlike the invisible forest from that other time. Oh, and BTW, same thing happened again, yesterday. I managed to make a model go invisible in preview mode, and the scene was just her and a HDRI. Still no idea!)
I'll increase the frame-width, and see how that looks. The DOF is already pretty shallow, at something like 14. I don't quite get why it's so deep, at such a low value, as close to the camera as it is. The camera is exactly where it seems to be, this isn't zoomed in. Maybe, if I moved the camera physically closer, so the DOF-frame would shrink, and then pulled the view back to how it is now, with the Frame Width...
I could turn the lightsources (HDRI and distant light) so they point a bit more towards the trees in the back, but that's going to change the light in the foreground as well. Truth be told, I'm still not great with lighting, and since you said you like it how it is, I don't really want to change the direction of the light. Would spotlights do the trick, if I scoot them across the pond and set the spread-angle really wide? Am I tripping blueberries and talking nonsense?
Right now I have another render cooking, and although I HATE IT I'm determined that this time I'll let the darn thing finish. The stairs scene actually doesn't need too much time, so I'm trying to formulate a plan here, while the slow-cooker is going.
Buddies. This is Babina and the DAZ horse, with a standard background, then taken into Photoshop for color grading and a texture. I had a bit of difficulty getting the camera to do exactly what I wanted for DOF, but it turned out all right anyway. Still learning!!!
Nice one. Looks almost like a painting to me.
@TigerAnne,
As I know nothing about Stairs in the Woods phenomenon, the idea I had stemmed from the "graphic glitch" description. If they should be solid, then there's obviously no need to change them. (Yay!)
You can rotate the bush so branch it is still across the stairs, but leaving a bit of a gap between the edge of the stairs and the tip of the branch, instead of visually cutting the top off the stairs. It may even look like the tree is point to the stairs…
To increase the DOF effect without changing how the image is framed, just adjust the f/Stop to a smaller value.
My background is in photography, and to me, an f/Stop of 14 doesn't sound shallow at all. I have photos I've taken of flowers where I set the f/Stop as low as the lens allowed, (5.6 on my general purpose lens, lower on the long lens,) to isolate the flower from the background. I use f/Stop of 8.0 most of the time, unless I'm doing closeup or landscape pictures. f/Stop 22 or higher is what I use for landscapes. But I'm not convinced the cameras in Daz Studio correlate exactly. And we have a lot more leeway in DS; the f/Stop is not contstained to a few predetermined settings.
If you do adjust for a shallower DOF and the background gets too dark, use a ghost light (GL) above that area, shining down at a slight angle away from the camera. If the GL is the width of the forest in the frame, (it doesn't need to be tall,) a relatively low luminance should work fine, (10-50 Kcd/m^2) and you don't have to make any changes to the existing lighting. You can even use the color temperature of the GL to subtly affect the color of the trees.
I can relate.
Just one question… How'd it feel to get away from the book cover mindset? (The results look great, btw.)
Thanks! :)
Erm...I made two covers straight after...
"Burn."
I couldn't resist fussing around with DOF and Posing and came up with this so I'll put in a second image.
The Gymnast
I was wondering if anyone is using lense thickness with DoF? I have a render baking and it appears to have better depth because of a setting of 1000 on the lense thickness. Though I'd have to do a render without to compare. Or...I could just be seeing things ;-)
well I know the event has already happened, but since I wasn't able to find the props I need I just sort of mashed them up in blender, could probs put a tiny bit more work, but I think it works.
Whelp. My computer works again and where does my mind go? Ginormous, complicated scenes. One of these days my computer's going to melt.
Anywho, I started playing with MICK; in particular the Great Hall preset with an eye towards a contrasted fore- and background. One small problem: the Great Hall is big. Like, really big.
So, this is the result when most of it is invisible. (The vendor promised the potion would wear of in 24-48 hours. It's been 3 weeks!)
Time to see what the lighting looks like with the rest of the hall visible. If it fits in VRAM.
Hi friend, this seems like a sweet idea for your naruto run.
That is awesome Ruris. LMAO.
My entry for this month
Full size here : https://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#images/860231/
I've seen this, not sure how I could incorpirate it into my scene though, since my runners are already hanging pretty low
Guess what, L'Adair... the shrubs don't turn. Or they do, but... several shrubs are the same object, so they turn on a central axis. Instead I pulled the stairs back a little, so more of the top step is clear of the branch. Ryan is scratching his chin, wondering what he's seeing. He's too daft to be properly scared, though. Now the stairs are pretty much the only thing in focus, he he.
LOL… so mission NOT accomplished!
I haven't used the Lens settings, except for Lens Distortion Type: Spherical. But now I feel like I have to test your results, see if my own DOF images improve by increasing the lens thickness!
@AZDigitalArtist, this looks really good. With all the postwork, though, it's hard to see where you started. I'd love to see the pre-postworked version…
@Kimonolady, I like this a lot. I could "nit-pick" a few things, but overall, this really draws me in. I can't help but wonder what's going through her mind… is she about to set the place on fire, or is she just playing with her ability as she ponders a big decision? It feels like a scene from a movie.
@ariochsnowpaw, Technically, this is a very interesting image, drawing the viewer into her face. I like the combination of determination and the "I must smile for the judges" look on her face.
What throws me off, though, is the lack of other people in the scene. Is she just practicing? Where's her spotter? If she's performing, where's the crowd? For 3D, a crowd would be hard on the computer resources, even populated sparsely using instances. But a single person to one side, fully prepared to catch her if need be should work. They don't need to be fully in the frame, and they should probably be out of focus from the DOF. The image could be wider to accommodate the secondary figure, putting the gymnast off-center.
As an alternative to adding other people in the scene, you could try reducing the light on the set, making the seating less prominent, while increasing the light on the figure, so there's a lot more contrast between the gymnast and the background. Maybe increase the strength of the DOF as well.
Regardless, this is still a compelling image. I'm certainly rooting for the gymnast to pull off this routine.
I think your render had a better turn out than the actual event!
This does work. The troops in the foreground are in focus, while the figures in the desert are not. The sand looks much better in this version than the first attempt, and having several runners with different poses and clothing sells the crowd aspect.