A simple Render from a newbie! Looking for feedback.

wmiller314

I only started playing around with this a month ago and haven't had much time to work on anything. I did this render recently and I think it's pretty good, but I'd like feedback from the more experienced artists on what I could have done better. Thanks. 

Love to all!

mavante

I wouldn't claim to be "more experienced," but I think it's great. Good pose, lighting, and composition. Very nicely done.

 

watchdog79

I like the pose and the interlocked hands.

 

What I would recommend is either lifting the rear portion of the skirt above the seat of the chair, given that the skirt model allows it, or changing the view angle a bit so that one won't be able t osee directly below the chair and see the skirt going through it, showing what seems ot be a part of the chair itself (grey horizontal stripe under the seat).

Hylas

Indeed not bad at all!

The soles are clipping through the floor slightly.

The skirt is doing funky things, you can solve that with dForce. But one month in, I was still soooo far away from figuring out the very basics, let alone dForce... just to give it some perspective :)

Thyranq

I think you're off to a great start! 

I'm by no means perfect, or "great", but I'll gladly try and help someone out

A little bit of tweaking with the pose for the feet to get them to lay naturally on the floor, and, as others mentioned, the skirt needs a bit of adjustment - but that's not something I'd have fully figured out after a month either, so considering your time spent with this hobby, you're doing awesome! Very nice shadowing on the floor from the chair, a great natural looking pose & expression, and very good composition. Looks as if you've even used a touch of depth of field on it, so great work!

I'd have maybe applied a metal shader (or manutally adjusted the surface - but that's beyond what I'd be doing a month in) on the frame of the chair to give it a bit more shine and get it to pop a bit more, but that depends on whether or not YOU'D want it to look that way, as they don't HAVE to be glossy.

Lighting wise I think it's pretty solid. Again, this is dependant on what you were going for in the image, but a strong back light to accentuate the figure could help, and more intensity on the key light/less intensity on the fill lights could help to highlight certain areas and/or provide some more depth. But again, that depends on the look that you were going for. The lighting is overall mostly pretty even, which can be a great look as well, it just depends on whether or not you wanted it to be that way. You've got some nice shadowing in some areas, though, so it is still providing some visual interest.

Keep at it! The more you fiddle, the more you learn, and the more capable and confident you'll become!

nonesuch00

I also think it's good but personally don't like the skirt drooping below the chair seat. You (maybe) can dForce drape it to wind up such that it drapes onto the chair and she winds up sitting on it. That's something new to try & learn if you like.

wmiller314

Thanks for all the great feedback everyone! You are all so helpful. I'm going to try working on the skirt a little and thanks for bringing my attention to her little feet. I didn't even notice her shoes were through the floor. Haha. I tried dforcing the skirt, but I got some really funky results. I'm going to have to spend some time figureing that out. Maybe if I tweek this I'll post an update.

 

Thanks again for all the helpful suggestions. I'm also going to look into metal shaders I guess. 

L'Adair

@wmiller314, As others have said, for only one month with Daz Studio, your image is really nice.

I've got a bit of experience with that outfit, and I recall that big buckle was an issue with a sitting pose. (Funny enough, my image has a girl sitting in the same chair! The image is Detention, if you want to take a peek.)

To get that skirt to drape correctly, you're going to need to use the Animated Timeline. I'll give you some pointers, if you like. A quick solution, though, would be to remove the skirt and put her in a pair of shorts. (If you have any in your product library.)

I'd like to invite you to drop by the New User Contests and Events forum and specifically the monthly challenges. These are not really contests, but focused challenges where other users give feedback on the images. It's a great way to learn how Daz Studio works, even if you only "lurk." February's challenge is on lighting. (We're trying something new this year, with both beginner and intermediate challenges. Some of the users who went through last year are trying both, but feel free to ignore the intermediate topics.)

And I encourage you to add more images to this thread. You can use the edit feature to rename the thread to reflect the latest image, too. From experience, I can tell you it's easier to manage one thread with lots of images rather than one thread per image. And with it all in one place, both you and your visitors can easily see how your art is growing. (And based on the first image, I suspect you'll be growing at a fast pace!)

Welcome to the crazy, and addictive, world of Daz Studio and 3D art!

chris-2599934

Another possible approach with the skirt would be to make a second render (or spot render - see below) where she isn't wearing a skirt at all. Then combine the two images in Photoshop or similar, using the no-skirt image in the area below the chair. It's not ideal, because we really ought to be able to see the back of the skirt lying on top of the chair, but it's an improvement on what you have now.

I'm guessing that you're using the iray "draw floor" function to put the shadows on the floor, and that it's also clipping the shoes somewhat. A way to stop that is to create a plane primitive lying flat on the floor, then look up frombelow it to see if anything pokes through. You can then adjust the pose so the shoes just touch the floor. Hide or delete the plane before you render!

When making a second render to patch part of the image, you don't need to waste time renderinf the whole image. Select the Spot Render tool, open the Tool Options tab and select "new window," then drag around the part of the picture you want to render. It will render just that bit, and you can overlay the result over the main render in Photoshop.

Thyranq

chris-2599934 said:

When making a second render to patch part of the image, you don't need to waste time renderinf the whole image. Select the Spot Render tool, open the Tool Options tab and select "new window," then drag around the part of the picture you want to render. It will render just that bit, and you can overlay the result over the main render in Photoshop.

I've been using DAZ Studio for over 10 years, and I did not know you could do this lol

Would have saved me a lot of time over the years haha

That's what I love about this - there's always something to learn, no matter how long you've been at it! Thanks for the tip!

wmiller314

Wow! Thanks so much for the advice everybody. This has been super helpful. I started playing around with dforce but that is going to take some time to master. 

@L'Adair, I entered a simple render into the monthly newbie challenge. Thanks for the invite. I'm sure I won't win but it is fun to be a part. There are so many great artists here.