2014 Holiday Season Carrara Challenge (#14) - WINNERS ANNOUNCED - WIP Thread

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  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,158
    edited December 1969

    Here is an update, which I will be calling Winter Tales are Here.

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  • Bunyip02Bunyip02 Posts: 8,565
    edited December 1969

    Update from me.
    Main model is now complete, just got a few weapons, crew, shaders to do, then onto the landscape.

    Everyone keep up the great work.

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  • VarselVarsel Posts: 574
    edited December 1969

    Here's the setup for my second entry.
    It's quite simple, just a girl in the foreground, with a big mountain in the back.
    The snowflakes are vertex models, replicated on a shaped vertex model, witch is made invisible in the render.

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  • FenricFenric Posts: 351
    edited December 1969

    Well, I'm going to have to wrap this up or I won't get it submitted. Here's the required "no postwork" version.

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  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    Fenric said:
    Well, I'm going to have to wrap this up or I won't get it submitted. Here's the required "no postwork" version.

    I was hoping you would finish it!

    That fox looks great!

  • FenricFenric Posts: 351
    edited December 1969

    Oops... missed a requirement: Setup screenshot

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  • chickenmanchickenman Posts: 1,202
    edited December 1969

    Here is the next WIP.
    Still working on lighting as the eyes are black.
    Still looking at final positions of everything.

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  • Bunyip02Bunyip02 Posts: 8,565
    edited December 1969

    Is there an "actual time" or "about that time" when the Challenge closes ?

    Just checking as I had some medical stuff that needed sorting out Monday & Tuesday, and may require a short hospital visit today (and if there is an emergency at the hospital it could be a very long wait ).

    If the "24th day" is needed by the powers that be for the challenge to do "Christmas duties on the home front" - then put the Christmas duties first before me !!!!!

    Regards, Bunyip

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 2014

    Here is the next WIP.
    Still working on lighting as the eyes are black.
    Still looking at final positions of everything.

    If it is a Genesis Genesis 2 figure, I believe I read somewhere that for some reason, sometimes a multiplier gets stuck in one of the eye shader. There may also have been another issue, but I don't remember what it is.

    The most common cause of black eyes before fists ( ;-) ) or Genesis, was using the Skylight or Indirect Light and not enabling the Light Through Transparency option in the GI settings. So basically, the standard renderer options near the top of the screen needed the Light Through Transparency option enabled, and the GI option, about mid-way down the screen also needed to be enabled.

    Very nice work so far! I am fast becoming a fan of Chicken Man.

    Post edited by evilproducer on
  • AntaraAntara Posts: 444
    edited December 1969

    First of all, an announcement:

    In case any of you plan to be waiting for Santa while finishing your entries, I plan to be accepting entries until 11:59PM PST tomorrow.

    (That is one hour later than midnight in DAZ time.)

    So you have until

    DECEMBER 24, 2014 11:59PM PST

    Still more than a day to go! :)

    Happy Holidays! and Happy Rendering! :)

  • AntaraAntara Posts: 444
    edited December 1969

    Bunyip02 said:
    Is there an "actual time" or "about that time" when the Challenge closes ?

    Just checking as I had some medical stuff that needed sorting out Monday & Tuesday, and may require a short hospital visit today (and if there is an emergency at the hospital it could be a very long wait ).

    If the "24th day" is needed by the powers that be for the challenge to do "Christmas duties on the home front" - then put the Christmas duties first before me !!!!!

    Regards, Bunyip

    I hope you are feeling well.
    I posted above the official clothing time for the challenge. Would that give you enough time? Which time zone are you in?

    I love your ship concept. I can't wait to see it in the full render.

    Feel well and Happy Holidays!

  • AntaraAntara Posts: 444
    edited December 1969

    diomede64 said:
    Here is an update, which I will be calling Winter Tales are Here.

    I love, love, love this scene and concept!!! It's one of those things I wish I had thought of myself. It feels like childhood memories. And you snuck it up on us so unexpectedly. Well played, sir, well played! :)

    Are you a fellow New Yorker? :)

  • AntaraAntara Posts: 444
    edited December 1969

    Varsel said:
    Here's the setup for my second entry.
    It's quite simple, just a girl in the foreground, with a big mountain in the back.
    The snowflakes are vertex models, replicated on a shaped vertex model, witch is made invisible in the render.

    That is a case of simple brilliance right there. I was wondering how you got the snowflakes to look both so random and so gracefully swirling, while looking random.

  • AntaraAntara Posts: 444
    edited December 1969

    Here is the next WIP.
    Still working on lighting as the eyes are black.
    Still looking at final positions of everything.

    I actually like the black eyes. Maybe some highlights and reflections is all that they need.
    And your chickenpeople are adorable!!! Is there a whole story about them? This is shaping up to be a perfect holiday card for the chickenpeople's world.

    Warning about Light Through Transparency in the GI settings: it will slow down your render big time, so you might not have time to finish your entry. I recommend leaving the eyes black and rendering in or painting in the highlights/reflections. OR you can transfer your textures for the eyes into the outer most eye surface shading domain (just make sure it matches your texture UVs) and that will get around the need to turn the Light Through Transparency on.

  • AntaraAntara Posts: 444
    edited December 1969

    Fenric said:
    Well, I'm going to have to wrap this up or I won't get it submitted. Here's the required "no postwork" version.

    Yay! I am so happy you entered! Love the fox's expression and the atmospheric effects in the final entry. The scene turned out very poetic.

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    If Chickenman goes with Skylight, it shouldn't be that big of a time hit. Indirect Light with transparency in an outdoor scene would be a nightmare!

    The other possibility is to use fake GI. If he's using Howie's snow scene as a starting point, it may already have a fake GI rig. I know his other scenes use one.

  • Bunyip02Bunyip02 Posts: 8,565
    edited December 1969

    Antara said:
    Bunyip02 said:
    Is there an "actual time" or "about that time" when the Challenge closes ?

    Just checking as I had some medical stuff that needed sorting out Monday & Tuesday, and may require a short hospital visit today (and if there is an emergency at the hospital it could be a very long wait ).

    If the "24th day" is needed by the powers that be for the challenge to do "Christmas duties on the home front" - then put the Christmas duties first before me !!!!!

    Regards, Bunyip

    I hope you are feeling well.
    I posted above the official clothing time for the challenge. Would that give you enough time? Which time zone are you in?

    I love your ship concept. I can't wait to see it in the full render.

    Feel well and Happy Holidays!

    Hello Antara

    Many thanks for posting the cut-off time, also many thanks for your choice of subject for the challenge.
    My time zone is UTC+10:00.
    Should allow for an entry, will need to do an upgrade to get the scene to fully look how I realized it afterwards.

    Health has been a little down lately.
    If you spot me out of Carrara tinkering with Critter morphs it is a sign health is down a bit and I am
    doing something positive until the health picks up.

    Everyone finish off those entries !!!!!!

  • chickenmanchickenman Posts: 1,202
    edited December 1969

    I was playing with it earlier and found that to fix i was looking at the rendering options and found the only way to get the eyes to look right was to use the light through transparency. I was only doing little test renderings on the eyes.
    I am 4.5 hours in with another 6.5 left until done.
    Then in the morning I will post some of the final render set up and the draft final image.

    We will see how it goes.

  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,158
    edited December 1969

    My bear digging den at first winter snowfall image will not be done in time. If I get a chance, I'll post an update in a week or so. Too many interruptions and distractions this month, but I did complete a quick children's story image, so I keep my participation streak alive.

    I did manage to get some snow sprinkled on the top of the bear's back and shoulders (used a replicator on an object just covering top of bear), but my fix for the leaf translucency means that I have to redo the leaf shaders, and I haven't had the chance to construct the den (I put a bed from the browser in there).

    Can you find the beaver? No time to reconstruct the dam, or get some snow falling.

    Oh well.

    Thanks for a great challenge theme, Antara. Hope you are feeling well. Happy holidays everyone.

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  • AntaraAntara Posts: 444
    edited December 1969

    I'm sorry to hear that, but I am glad you had the time to come up with an entry.

    Do we have a way to contact Stezza?
    There seem to be finished entries in this thread, which haven't been posted to the Entry thread. :( I'd hate to see them unentered into the challenge. :(

  • AntaraAntara Posts: 444
    edited December 2014

    Well, the Entry thread looks wonderful, but so far, not fully populated it seems.

    Please check whether you are forgetting to post an entry -- it's time! and I definitely have seen more WIPs here than there are finished images in the Entry thread!

    I've been busy with my second entry. (Couldn't fall asleep last night and decided to do something positive - borrowing great attitude from Bunyip02 - thank you for sharing it, Bunyip02!)

    EvilProducer, Thank you for the lights! And thank you for posting the link in this thread - I might have missed it otherwise. They are very useful. I've modified them a bit and used them in my image.

    The cloth is a terrain with image-based fabric folds combined with some hand painted originally imaged based layer and a zero edges filter.

    The lighting is SkyLight at 100% with a custom variation of an HDRI image from www.hdrlabs.com/ at 200% brightness. Plus severely reduced in brightness and range bulbs on EP's light string. I am actually using both light strings, but the other has the bulbs removed and I am using it to pose the cord on which I am replicating the glittery strips to make the festive garland.

    I am using some of HowieFarkes Fir and Spruce branches, but I wasn't too happy with them at closeup scale, so I made my own: I modelled the base branch similar to Howie's (used some parts of his mesh, with my own extrusions, extension and added geometry. I gave my base branch 4 shading domains - basic, middle branches, branch ends and branch tips. And then I copied one of the needles he uses for his branches and replicated it on 3 of my shading domains (all except the very tips) with the needle used at different starting scale and with different counters for the replicators.

    Some ornaments are these:
    Christmas Tree Ornaments http://www.daz3d.com/christmas-tree-ornaments

    And the rest of the objects are severely modified freebies from big sites like TurboSquid, Archive3D and others, I don't really remember all the origins - I've had the 3DS files for ages, but only got to open and mess with them now.

    Still tinkering with the lights, but almost ready to set it rendering in full size.

    Any comments before I start the final render? :)

    I hope everyone is enjoying the Holidays, and don't forget to post your entry into the ENTRY thread!!!

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    Post edited by Antara on
  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 2014

    Very nice! I can't wait to see the full size render. Using the cord for the tinsel garland was inspired!

    Glad you found the lights useful. How were they to manipulate?

    Post edited by evilproducer on
  • chickenmanchickenman Posts: 1,202
    edited December 2014

    Here are the last two renders I have done.
    Both with light through transparency.

    The first one has just the sun light
    And the second has an extra distant light added.

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    Post edited by chickenman on
  • chickenmanchickenman Posts: 1,202
    edited December 2014

    Here are some further set up pictures
    Fur on the cuff in the modeling room.
    Fur Shader
    over all showing the replicators
    and a low backed off shot to show the mountains
    and last is the replicator

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    Post edited by chickenman on
  • Bunyip02Bunyip02 Posts: 8,565
    edited December 1969

    Antara & Chickenman

    Very nice work, love both of them !!!!!!

    Update from me:-

    Still got lottttssss of work to do but will do a quick render and enter it so that at least it has been submitted.
    Added the characters yesterday, but with my low-end computer specs it got very sloooooooowwwwwwwww.
    As such will need to leave them out for this render. Added a DAZ3D render for the curious.

    Also had to turn the computer off for a while yesterday as we had a large electrical storm go through.

    WIP screenie before I hit the render button.

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  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    Hi Chickenman! I really like the first one. The lighting looks natural and it has a cold feeling to it.

    What look are you trying for in the second one? I think the second light is washing out the image a bit. If you are trying to provide some reflected light or some other effect, you may wish to lower the intensity a bit.

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    Bunyip02 said:
    Antara & Chickenman

    Very nice work, love both of them !!!!!!

    Update from me:-

    Still got lottttssss of work to do but will do a quick render and enter it so that at least it has been submitted.
    Added the characters yesterday, but with my low-end computer specs it got very sloooooooowwwwwwwww.
    As such will need to leave them out for this render. Added a DAZ3D render for the curious.

    Also had to turn the computer off for a while yesterday as we had a large electrical storm go through.

    WIP screenie before I hit the render button.

    Nice work! So, what do you think is slowing the render down? The added figures would add load time and maybe system overhead, but unless you're using SSS in the shaders, the render time hit shouldn't be that bad. What kind of render settings are you using? Maybe that is the issue.

  • Bunyip02Bunyip02 Posts: 8,565
    edited December 1969

    Bunyip02 said:
    Antara & Chickenman

    Very nice work, love both of them !!!!!!

    Update from me:-

    Still got lottttssss of work to do but will do a quick render and enter it so that at least it has been submitted.
    Added the characters yesterday, but with my low-end computer specs it got very sloooooooowwwwwwwww.
    As such will need to leave them out for this render. Added a DAZ3D render for the curious.

    Also had to turn the computer off for a while yesterday as we had a large electrical storm go through.

    WIP screenie before I hit the render button.

    Nice work! So, what do you think is slowing the render down? The added figures would add load time and maybe system overhead, but unless you're using SSS in the shaders, the render time hit shouldn't be that bad. What kind of render settings are you using? Maybe that is the issue.

    Thanks for the thumbs up EP.

    When I bought the figure in I applied Ringo's Gen2 skin, made the scene go very slow, adjusted to wireframe view but then the computer decided it did not like the slow-down and dropped Carrara out. Was initially looking at about 5 crew figures for the scene.

    I suspect that the main culprit is my computer settings.

    Sometimes the Anti-Virus kicks in along with another Windows program and if the computer is doing an automatic update it drops me out of what-ever program I am running or slows down a great deal, regardless of what the program is.
    Have checked the memory settings, looks like I need to upgrade my RAM for the graphics I am doing.
    Either that or go off-grid and turn a heap of things off when I am doing my graphics.

    Render is currently at 30.2% with 46:08 minutes left, slowed down a bit when it hit the ice terrain, will see how it looks when done.
    If okay I will submit it, otherwise will do a quick fix for whatever needs doing.

  • AntaraAntara Posts: 444
    edited December 1969

    Very nice! I can't wait to see the full size render. Using the cord for the tinsel garland was inspired!

    Glad you found the lights useful. How were they to manipulate?

    Well, to be honest, I decided to use the lights initially only for the rigged cord :red: ... Because I needed the garland that I could position quickly without needing to rig it myself. And your set worked perfectly for that. So perfectly that when I thought my branches looked too boring and wanted to brighten them up, I decided to use the second string of your lights to do it :) Worked like a charm. I think if I needed to place them with much greater precision, I could have gotten frustrated (maybe I wasn't doing it right - I was using IK for overall shape and then rotating some bones when I needed to hammer things into a position more precisely), but for a rough placement they work perfectly.

    The big render is almost done - takes about 2 hours. And I discovered a poke through on it -- all the way at the bottom. Will have to fix in post. I'm not waiting another 2 hours just for the tiny fix.

    Here are the last two renders I have done.
    Both with light through transparency.

    The first one has just the sun light
    And the second has an extra distant light added.

    Love the lighting in your final entry. You've done a great job with the chickenpeople and the dynamic fur! Beautiful scene!

    Antara & Chickenman

    Very nice work, love both of them !!!!!!

    Update from me:-

    Still got lottttssss of work to do but will do a quick render and enter it so that at least it has been submitted.
    Added the characters yesterday, but with my low-end computer specs it got very sloooooooowwwwwwwww.
    As such will need to leave them out for this render. Added a DAZ3D render for the curious.

    Also had to turn the computer off for a while yesterday as we had a large electrical storm go through.

    WIP screenie before I hit the render button.

    Thank you! And I am glad to see you are back! :)
    The ship is so wonderful in itself that I'm not sure it needs figures at all. I'm not sure they'd be very visible, since we cannot make real billboards here (within Forum image limits). But I think your dragon ship will look majestic amidst some snowy mountains. I am looking forward to your final render.

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 2014

    Regarding figures on the ship, I'm with Antara. I don't think they would be that visible.

    I know it is to late for this challenge, but to help make something seem larger, looking at it from a lower angle can make it seem larger. It could be as subtle or as extreme of a camera angle as you want.

    Looking even slightly up would also hide the deck, which can eliminate the need for figures.

    Now, having said that about the figures not being needed, putting something in the scene that the viewer can relate to in size also helps. Everybody has seen other people, so they are great shorthand for setting up a scene and establishing scale. However, the things that people commonly use can also be used to suggest scale without needing a figure. So, if your ship has visible portholes or windows, that can help. Maybe a rope ladder or something like that would work as well.

    Just a couple examples of using low angles to suggest a larger scale.

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    Post edited by evilproducer on
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