I just figured out a cool trick for getting my characters to look at the camera.
Make a new primitive sphere about 15cm size will do.Place the sphere inside the camera using the "Perspective" view to make sure it is behind the "lens".This will give you a good starting point.
Now, Select your characters "Right Eye" in the "Scene" pane.With that selected go to the "Parameters" pane and select "Misc".You should now have an "Point At" option.Click it to open the menu of stuff in the scene.Select the sphere you just made from the list and click accept.
Repeat this for the "Left Eye"
Switch the view back to your camera.
Now you can move the sphere around and your character's eyes will follow :) .You can even have the eyes pointed at different objects just incase you need to have her looking up and down at the same time.
Here is my second WIP for this month called Regentrude. She is kind of a raingoddess from a story by Theodor Storm, you can read it in German here http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/die-regentrude-3478/1. It's traditional lore but I'm not even sure if this kind of image is allowed to the contest, if not I will not enter it but as this is something I planned to do anyway I would like to keep it in the WIP discussion for some feedback, if that's possible.
So there are still some obvious problems like that sleve ist weird (will remove it) and there is a tile border on my rain panel through the image, I need to adjust the eyes to look at something, all easily solved.
My real problem is to make noticable, that she has wet hair or at least some droplets in the hair. I even tried to make waterdrops which look awesome when rendered from close up, but in this size they are reduced to some weird looking white specs. So if there are Ideas out the please let me know. Thanks in advance.
My real problem is to make noticable, that she has wet hair or at least some droplets in the hair. I even tried to make waterdrops which look awesome when rendered from close up, but in this size they are reduced to some weird looking white specs. So if there are Ideas out the please let me know. Thanks in advance.
There is a lot of space between her hair and her neck. I would think wet hair would have less volume. Perhaps making it squeeze a little tighter around her head would give the impression that there is extra weight there - assuming the hair morphs that way. I don't know if you can use the LIE to add a glossy layer to the hair to make it look wetter? I just learned that the LIE even exists and have only done a little playing, so I don't know if that is even possible.
Not much help in the store. Most wet hair is straight and pulled back.
Found this link in the forums. They had some ideas but didn't seem to come to a conclusion.
- I have no idea how to make hair look wet (possibly increase the glossines in some way?) but I would focus more on making the skin and lips look wet. She is standing in the pouring rain yet her skin, epecially her face, seems to me as if it wasn´t raining.
- Next thing I would do, is composition. I would definitely zoom in on her face because:
The little bit of a thumb we can see is absolutely unnecessary and distracts the viewer.
There is also no need to have it there, we don´t see whats going on with her hand so why would we need to see a bit of her thumb.
- Another thing is that I´d get rid of the big portion of the background and that can be solved by zooming in as I have already mentioned.
Especially I´d get rid of the empty grassy ground.
Again, nothing happening there, not even some sort of a decoration that would compliment the portrait so why fill in the canvas with so much "blank" space when you can focus on the lady and her face instead? : )
The background architecture and the fog-like environment is rather nice. I´d keep it that way.
Also may I ask, what are your light sources and what is the renderer?
I just figured out a cool trick for getting my characters to look at the camera.
Make a new primitive sphere about 15cm size will do.Place the sphere inside the camera using the "Perspective" view to make sure it is behind the "lens".This will give you a good starting point.
Now, Select your characters "Right Eye" in the "Scene" pane.With that selected go to the "Parameters" pane and select "Misc".You should now have an "Point At" option.Click it to open the menu of stuff in the scene.Select the sphere you just made from the list and click accept.
Repeat this for the "Left Eye"
Switch the view back to your camera.
Now you can move the sphere around and your character's eyes will follow :) .You can even have the eyes pointed at different objects just incase you need to have her looking up and down at the same time.
I've used your technique of pointing each eye to point at the camera directly without adding the sphere or any other object, this ofcourse ir you want your character to always look at the camera, also you can point the head to face the camera in the same way.
I've used the point at camera in the eyes in my new render, I've also changed the baby and mother cloths, I hope this one lookes better.
Here is my second WIP for this month called Regentrude. She is kind of a raingoddess from a story by Theodor Storm, you can read it in German here http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/die-regentrude-3478/1. It's traditional lore but I'm not even sure if this kind of image is allowed to the contest, if not I will not enter it but as this is something I planned to do anyway I would like to keep it in the WIP discussion for some feedback, if that's possible.
So there are still some obvious problems like that sleve ist weird (will remove it) and there is a tile border on my rain panel through the image, I need to adjust the eyes to look at something, all easily solved.
My real problem is to make noticable, that she has wet hair or at least some droplets in the hair. I even tried to make waterdrops which look awesome when rendered from close up, but in this size they are reduced to some weird looking white specs. So if there are Ideas out the please let me know. Thanks in advance.
Maybe this can help,,,
When I want to make a wet look I add a top coat.Select the hair and on the surface tab,make sure you using the PBR Metalicity/Roughness "Base Mixing".
scroll down to "Top Coat Weight" and set it to 1.0.This will activate several other options.
Set "Top Coat Roughness" to something between .05 and .30. ( Low is wet, high is dry )
you can add a bump map to the "Top Coat Bump" channel if you would like to add some bump to your wet look
This also works on skin too. :) (the example render is only 60 iterations in iray)
I just figured out a cool trick for getting my characters to look at the camera.
Make a new primitive sphere about 15cm size will do.Place the sphere inside the camera using the "Perspective" view to make sure it is behind the "lens".This will give you a good starting point.
Now, Select your characters "Right Eye" in the "Scene" pane.With that selected go to the "Parameters" pane and select "Misc".You should now have an "Point At" option.Click it to open the menu of stuff in the scene.Select the sphere you just made from the list and click accept.
Repeat this for the "Left Eye"
Switch the view back to your camera.
Now you can move the sphere around and your character's eyes will follow :) .You can even have the eyes pointed at different objects just incase you need to have her looking up and down at the same time.
I've used your technique of pointing each eye to point at the camera directly without adding the sphere or any other object, this ofcourse ir you want your character to always look at the camera, also you can point the head to face the camera in the same way.
I've used the point at camera in the eyes in my new render, I've also changed the baby and mother cloths, I hope this one lookes better.
Your render is maturing very well.I think you did a great job with the posing.
My next WIP for this month. I spent a great deal of time moving and tweaking lights also added a hair light from above. Its getting close to what i want but not quite there yet. I also spent a great deal of time tweaking the models breasts i didnt like how the shadows played on her left arm. Now i have an anomoly on the top of her leg near her hand, i am pretty sure its the BG plate thats emmisive creating a reflection gonna try to work on a remedy for that if all else fails i will just move her hand a little bit to cover it up.
I just figured out a cool trick for getting my characters to look at the camera.
Make a new primitive sphere about 15cm size will do.Place the sphere inside the camera using the "Perspective" view to make sure it is behind the "lens".This will give you a good starting point.
Now, Select your characters "Right Eye" in the "Scene" pane.With that selected go to the "Parameters" pane and select "Misc".You should now have an "Point At" option.Click it to open the menu of stuff in the scene.Select the sphere you just made from the list and click accept.
Repeat this for the "Left Eye"
Switch the view back to your camera.
Now you can move the sphere around and your character's eyes will follow :) .You can even have the eyes pointed at different objects just incase you need to have her looking up and down at the same time.
I've used your technique of pointing each eye to point at the camera directly without adding the sphere or any other object, this ofcourse ir you want your character to always look at the camera, also you can point the head to face the camera in the same way.
I've used the point at camera in the eyes in my new render, I've also changed the baby and mother cloths, I hope this one lookes better.
This is starting to look really cool i like the color scheme and expressions alot.
Thanks a lot, Ewcarman, Toyen and Icecrmn, those are very useful hints
Ewcarman: I had tried around with the hair to get it closer, but didn't happen with the available morphs and adjustments, from my experiments with the LIE that will not be the tool of choice, that would make do to add some wetness to the skin though, I used it for the dirt on my travelers portrait. I will go check out that thread and see what ideas they come up with (didn't find a search function yet in the new forums design)
Toyen, you are perfectly right with the composition, I already had another camera position which is closing in as you suggest, but after yesterdays trial with getting the rain look the way i wanted it I was so happy i posted it the was I rendered it ;-) . As for the renderer and the lights I used 3d-light (no iray for me for now my card is too weak) I have one distant light (80% with a sligh yellow tint), one spotlight (40% I think, and a grey-blue tint) and a spot light with specularity only at 120% has a very sight blue tint as well. Then there is one panel with the the rain (on an opacity map) and one with the haze between the camera and the lady.
Icecrmn, ok Top coat is new to me, looks promising. I might come back with questions to you and I hope that works in 3delight as well, I guess I now have plans for the evening ;-).
I just figured out a cool trick for getting my characters to look at the camera.
Make a new primitive sphere about 15cm size will do.Place the sphere inside the camera using the "Perspective" view to make sure it is behind the "lens".This will give you a good starting point.
Now, Select your characters "Right Eye" in the "Scene" pane.With that selected go to the "Parameters" pane and select "Misc".You should now have an "Point At" option.Click it to open the menu of stuff in the scene.Select the sphere you just made from the list and click accept.
Repeat this for the "Left Eye"
Switch the view back to your camera.
Now you can move the sphere around and your character's eyes will follow :) .You can even have the eyes pointed at different objects just incase you need to have her looking up and down at the same time.
I've used your technique of pointing each eye to point at the camera directly without adding the sphere or any other object, this ofcourse ir you want your character to always look at the camera, also you can point the head to face the camera in the same way.
I've used the point at camera in the eyes in my new render, I've also changed the baby and mother cloths, I hope this one lookes better.
This is really coming together nicely, there is interaction between them and still the react to the camera, the new colour in the clothes work in your favor as well. One more suggestion: the hair of the mother has a sheen to it that makes it look a bit too much from one piece, I'm not absolutely sure what will help you there so you might have to try some different things like change the glossiness or what material type is selected for the hair
My next WIP for this month. I spent a great deal of time moving and tweaking lights also added a hair light from above. Its getting close to what i want but not quite there yet. I also spent a great deal of time tweaking the models breasts i didnt like how the shadows played on her left arm. Now i have an anomoly on the top of her leg near her hand, i am pretty sure its the BG plate thats emmisive creating a reflection gonna try to work on a remedy for that if all else fails i will just move her hand a little bit to cover it up.
Daniel
Principally I like what you did with the lights but I see why you are not completely happy with that, What I would suggest is that you choose one major light source and use the full shadow, maybe a little softened up. for all other light sources either turn the shadow off (thats trial and error, sometimes that comes out weird, or reduce the amount of the shadow to a very minimal value and soften it up big time, maybe that remedies the light effect on her leg as well.
I just figured out a cool trick for getting my characters to look at the camera.
Make a new primitive sphere about 15cm size will do.Place the sphere inside the camera using the "Perspective" view to make sure it is behind the "lens".This will give you a good starting point.
Now, Select your characters "Right Eye" in the "Scene" pane.With that selected go to the "Parameters" pane and select "Misc".You should now have an "Point At" option.Click it to open the menu of stuff in the scene.Select the sphere you just made from the list and click accept.
Repeat this for the "Left Eye"
Switch the view back to your camera.
Now you can move the sphere around and your character's eyes will follow :) .You can even have the eyes pointed at different objects just incase you need to have her looking up and down at the same time.
I've used your technique of pointing each eye to point at the camera directly without adding the sphere or any other object, this ofcourse ir you want your character to always look at the camera, also you can point the head to face the camera in the same way.
I've used the point at camera in the eyes in my new render, I've also changed the baby and mother cloths, I hope this one lookes better.
This is really coming together nicely, there is interaction between them and still the react to the camera, the new colour in the clothes work in your favor as well. One more suggestion: the hair of the mother has a sheen to it that makes it look a bit too much from one piece, I'm not absolutely sure what will help you there so you might have to try some different things like change the glossiness or what material type is selected for the hair
Thanks Linwelly, actually I've shown my doughter the previous one and she commented on the clothes so I've changed all clothes of the baby first, then I changed mother shirt as well, to give them a match.
About the hair, I'll defenatly do something about it.
Here is my second WIP for this month called Regentrude. She is kind of a raingoddess from a story by Theodor Storm, you can read it in German here http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/die-regentrude-3478/1. It's traditional lore but I'm not even sure if this kind of image is allowed to the contest, if not I will not enter it but as this is something I planned to do anyway I would like to keep it in the WIP discussion for some feedback, if that's possible.
So there are still some obvious problems like that sleve ist weird (will remove it) and there is a tile border on my rain panel through the image, I need to adjust the eyes to look at something, all easily solved.
My real problem is to make noticable, that she has wet hair or at least some droplets in the hair. I even tried to make waterdrops which look awesome when rendered from close up, but in this size they are reduced to some weird looking white specs. So if there are Ideas out the please let me know. Thanks in advance.
Hey Linwelly,
Just a quick note - if you can't enter her in the contest and want feedback, feel free to jump into the Book Cover thread we've got going in the Art Studio. Even though it's technically not a book cover, you're still taking your inspiration from a story. It's basically fan art. But anyone's welcome to drop into the thread if they have images that are fan art, story inspired, or working on layout that requires a mixture of image and text, anything of that nature - and of course, book covers too.
I'm jumping back in here because I had to get some stuff done for the books, so let me catch up, but I just wanted to throw out there, if you look back at the examples I posted for Icecrmn with using the G2F iray skin shader and making sure the original texture is there - you get a wet glossy skin look if that will help. What hair are you using on her?
Nice Gallows! But what is the white line between the irises and his lower eyelid. Did something not get hit with a shader or is the texture made like that? That's the only thing that really jumped out at me.
My next WIP for this month. I spent a great deal of time moving and tweaking lights also added a hair light from above. Its getting close to what i want but not quite there yet. I also spent a great deal of time tweaking the models breasts i didnt like how the shadows played on her left arm. Now i have an anomoly on the top of her leg near her hand, i am pretty sure its the BG plate thats emmisive creating a reflection gonna try to work on a remedy for that if all else fails i will just move her hand a little bit to cover it up.
Daniel
Principally I like what you did with the lights but I see why you are not completely happy with that, What I would suggest is that you choose one major light source and use the full shadow, maybe a little softened up. for all other light sources either turn the shadow off (thats trial and error, sometimes that comes out weird, or reduce the amount of the shadow to a very minimal value and soften it up big time, maybe that remedies the light effect on her leg as well.
Not really possible since its an Iray render to turn shadows on or off or make them behave the way you want. It is unbiased rendering shadows are where shadows are. I know you can cheat in 3delight but Iray you cant because shadows behave like they do in the real world. Thanks for the advice none the less i will keep plugging away.
My next WIP for this month. I spent a great deal of time moving and tweaking lights also added a hair light from above. Its getting close to what i want but not quite there yet. I also spent a great deal of time tweaking the models breasts i didnt like how the shadows played on her left arm. Now i have an anomoly on the top of her leg near her hand, i am pretty sure its the BG plate thats emmisive creating a reflection gonna try to work on a remedy for that if all else fails i will just move her hand a little bit to cover it up.
Daniel
Principally I like what you did with the lights but I see why you are not completely happy with that, What I would suggest is that you choose one major light source and use the full shadow, maybe a little softened up. for all other light sources either turn the shadow off (thats trial and error, sometimes that comes out weird, or reduce the amount of the shadow to a very minimal value and soften it up big time, maybe that remedies the light effect on her leg as well.
Not really possible since its an Iray render to turn shadows on or off or make them behave the way you want. It is unbiased rendering shadows are where shadows are. I know you can cheat in 3delight but Iray you cant because shadows behave like they do in the real world. Thanks for the advice none the less i will keep plugging away.
Daniel
Ah, sorry for you, but a little glad that not everything is gold that is iray, sometimes to have your studio settings is rather helpful. So with Iray I'm out of the game to help you, hope you find a solution though
I have been trying to play around with different settings to get the wetness good, but hmpf not happy, so here is an intermediate step with some changes to the hair first. I put a d-former to get it closer to the head on the sides an a tiny bit bown to create some wight. then I pushed both specularitys up und the ambient on black to 100%. The top coat is unfortunately not available in 3dlight and my essays on using a top coat shader were... rather unsucessfull.
I've done some minor changes (Hair and surrounding Grass), I hope I've done it right now, this month contest is really interesting and I've learned a lot of new things in DAZ espectially with characters, clothes, and pose.
I belive that there is alot of other things to learn in future, I hope next month contest gives us a new challenge.
Wish you all good luck.
I'm going to upload this in the entry thread soon.
I have been trying to play around with different settings to get the wetness good, but hmpf not happy, so here is an intermediate step with some changes to the hair first. I put a d-former to get it closer to the head on the sides an a tiny bit bown to create some wight. then I pushed both specularitys up und the ambient on black to 100%. The top coat is unfortunately not available in 3dlight and my essays on using a top coat shader were... rather unsucessfull.
Hi Linwelly, I used Victoria 4 and V4 wet map in this render as sample, I'm not sure what character you are using in your scene, but if you have Victoria 4 I think you can somhow achive your goal, here is the link to this product http://www.daz3d.com/victoria-4-wet-maps, as I can see it's almost similar to the link you've asked about, and below is a quick render with IRay.
I'm have no clue about the hair, sorry I can't help you with it but by searching the DAZ store there is some ready wet hairs you may use if you're willing to spend some money
I have been trying to play around with different settings to get the wetness good, but hmpf not happy, so here is an intermediate step with some changes to the hair first. I put a d-former to get it closer to the head on the sides an a tiny bit bown to create some wight. then I pushed both specularitys up und the ambient on black to 100%. The top coat is unfortunately not available in 3dlight and my essays on using a top coat shader were... rather unsucessfull.
Hi Linwelly, I used Victoria 4 and V4 wet map in this render as sample, I'm not sure what character you are using in your scene, but if you have Victoria 4 I think you can somhow achive your goal, here is the link to this product http://www.daz3d.com/victoria-4-wet-maps, as I can see it's almost similar to the link you've asked about, and below is a quick render with IRay.
I'm have no clue about the hair, sorry I can't help you with it but by searching the DAZ store there is some ready wet hairs you may use if you're willing to spend some money
I have been trying to play around with different settings to get the wetness good, but hmpf not happy, so here is an intermediate step with some changes to the hair first. I put a d-former to get it closer to the head on the sides an a tiny bit bown to create some wight. then I pushed both specularitys up und the ambient on black to 100%. The top coat is unfortunately not available in 3dlight and my essays on using a top coat shader were... rather unsucessfull.
Hi Linwelly, I used Victoria 4 and V4 wet map in this render as sample, I'm not sure what character you are using in your scene, but if you have Victoria 4 I think you can somhow achive your goal, here is the link to this product http://www.daz3d.com/victoria-4-wet-maps, as I can see it's almost similar to the link you've asked about, and below is a quick render with IRay.
I'm have no clue about the hair, sorry I can't help you with it but by searching the DAZ store there is some ready wet hairs you may use if you're willing to spend some money
And here is another same render but with 3Dlight, I think this one shows the wet skin more.
I hope I'm helpful to you with these samples Lenwilly.
Thanks a lot h_habash, Yes I have been looking at the products you suggested. unluckily most wet hair is slick back which I don't want for this one, as she's not taking a shower ;-) your wet skin looks very good, and I have seen before that the V4 material is very good fo that, but alas my Gilr is genesis 2 and with a self dialed skin at that. I have put my question in the relating commercial product thread, so maybe the owner can tell me if my self dialed skin would work with that. In the meantime I keep on experimenting and I guess I made some progress but no new render yet.
Ok step back and punt so to speak. I have scrapped my other project i just couldnt get the results i was after. I don't mind telling you guys. this particular challenge is giving me no end of frustration. I read and watch guide after guide about potrait lighting and i just am all thumbs it seems. Anyway, here is what i am working on now.
Has anyone else had trouble with the photometric spotlights causing a CTD ( Crash To Desktop ) ?
I spent some time looking at portraits and photography setups on google images.So I decided to put together a 3D portrait studio just like the pros use,but I ran into a problem.When I set my spotlights to photometric and click the button to take the photo; Studio will CTD on me. :(
Comments
I just figured out a cool trick for getting my characters to look at the camera.
Make a new primitive sphere about 15cm size will do.Place the sphere inside the camera using the "Perspective" view to make sure it is behind the "lens".This will give you a good starting point.
Now, Select your characters "Right Eye" in the "Scene" pane.With that selected go to the "Parameters" pane and select "Misc".You should now have an "Point At" option.Click it to open the menu of stuff in the scene.Select the sphere you just made from the list and click accept.
Repeat this for the "Left Eye"
Switch the view back to your camera.
Now you can move the sphere around and your character's eyes will follow :) .You can even have the eyes pointed at different objects just incase you need to have her looking up and down at the same time.
if I'm not mistaken,,that's her irises
Here is my second WIP for this month called Regentrude. She is kind of a raingoddess from a story by Theodor Storm, you can read it in German here http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/die-regentrude-3478/1. It's traditional lore but I'm not even sure if this kind of image is allowed to the contest, if not I will not enter it but as this is something I planned to do anyway I would like to keep it in the WIP discussion for some feedback, if that's possible.
So there are still some obvious problems like that sleve ist weird (will remove it) and there is a tile border on my rain panel through the image, I need to adjust the eyes to look at something, all easily solved.
My real problem is to make noticable, that she has wet hair or at least some droplets in the hair. I even tried to make waterdrops which look awesome when rendered from close up, but in this size they are reduced to some weird looking white specs. So if there are Ideas out the please let me know. Thanks in advance.
There is a lot of space between her hair and her neck. I would think wet hair would have less volume. Perhaps making it squeeze a little tighter around her head would give the impression that there is extra weight there - assuming the hair morphs that way. I don't know if you can use the LIE to add a glossy layer to the hair to make it look wetter? I just learned that the LIE even exists and have only done a little playing, so I don't know if that is even possible.
Not much help in the store. Most wet hair is straight and pulled back.
Found this link in the forums. They had some ideas but didn't seem to come to a conclusion.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewthread/29566/
Sorry, not much help. Looking forward to see how you end up solving it.
Hey there Lin!
Here are my thoughts : )
- I have no idea how to make hair look wet (possibly increase the glossines in some way?) but I would focus more on making the skin and lips look wet. She is standing in the pouring rain yet her skin, epecially her face, seems to me as if it wasn´t raining.
- Next thing I would do, is composition. I would definitely zoom in on her face because:
The little bit of a thumb we can see is absolutely unnecessary and distracts the viewer.
There is also no need to have it there, we don´t see whats going on with her hand so why would we need to see a bit of her thumb.
- Another thing is that I´d get rid of the big portion of the background and that can be solved by zooming in as I have already mentioned.
Especially I´d get rid of the empty grassy ground.
Again, nothing happening there, not even some sort of a decoration that would compliment the portrait so why fill in the canvas with so much "blank" space when you can focus on the lady and her face instead? : )
The background architecture and the fog-like environment is rather nice. I´d keep it that way.
Also may I ask, what are your light sources and what is the renderer?
Those are just my thoughts : )
I've used your technique of pointing each eye to point at the camera directly without adding the sphere or any other object, this ofcourse ir you want your character to always look at the camera, also you can point the head to face the camera in the same way.
I've used the point at camera in the eyes in my new render, I've also changed the baby and mother cloths, I hope this one lookes better.
Maybe this can help,,,
When I want to make a wet look I add a top coat.Select the hair and on the surface tab,make sure you using the PBR Metalicity/Roughness "Base Mixing".
scroll down to "Top Coat Weight" and set it to 1.0.This will activate several other options.
Set "Top Coat Roughness" to something between .05 and .30. ( Low is wet, high is dry )
you can add a bump map to the "Top Coat Bump" channel if you would like to add some bump to your wet look
This also works on skin too. :) (the example render is only 60 iterations in iray)
Your render is maturing very well.I think you did a great job with the posing.
My next WIP for this month. I spent a great deal of time moving and tweaking lights also added a hair light from above. Its getting close to what i want but not quite there yet. I also spent a great deal of time tweaking the models breasts i didnt like how the shadows played on her left arm. Now i have an anomoly on the top of her leg near her hand, i am pretty sure its the BG plate thats emmisive creating a reflection gonna try to work on a remedy for that if all else fails i will just move her hand a little bit to cover it up.
Daniel
This is starting to look really cool i like the color scheme and expressions alot.
Thanks icecrmn and Daniel, glad you like it
Thanks a lot, Ewcarman, Toyen and Icecrmn, those are very useful hints
Ewcarman: I had tried around with the hair to get it closer, but didn't happen with the available morphs and adjustments, from my experiments with the LIE that will not be the tool of choice, that would make do to add some wetness to the skin though, I used it for the dirt on my travelers portrait. I will go check out that thread and see what ideas they come up with (didn't find a search function yet in the new forums design)
Toyen, you are perfectly right with the composition, I already had another camera position which is closing in as you suggest, but after yesterdays trial with getting the rain look the way i wanted it I was so happy i posted it the was I rendered it ;-) . As for the renderer and the lights I used 3d-light (no iray for me for now my card is too weak) I have one distant light (80% with a sligh yellow tint), one spotlight (40% I think, and a grey-blue tint) and a spot light with specularity only at 120% has a very sight blue tint as well. Then there is one panel with the the rain (on an opacity map) and one with the haze between the camera and the lady.
Icecrmn, ok Top coat is new to me, looks promising. I might come back with questions to you and I hope that works in 3delight as well, I guess I now have plans for the evening ;-).
So thanks again!
This is really coming together nicely, there is interaction between them and still the react to the camera, the new colour in the clothes work in your favor as well. One more suggestion: the hair of the mother has a sheen to it that makes it look a bit too much from one piece, I'm not absolutely sure what will help you there so you might have to try some different things like change the glossiness or what material type is selected for the hair
Principally I like what you did with the lights but I see why you are not completely happy with that, What I would suggest is that you choose one major light source and use the full shadow, maybe a little softened up. for all other light sources either turn the shadow off (thats trial and error, sometimes that comes out weird, or reduce the amount of the shadow to a very minimal value and soften it up big time, maybe that remedies the light effect on her leg as well.
Thanks Linwelly, actually I've shown my doughter the previous one and she commented on the clothes so I've changed all clothes of the baby first, then I changed mother shirt as well, to give them a match.
About the hair, I'll defenatly do something about it.
Hey Linwelly,
Just a quick note - if you can't enter her in the contest and want feedback, feel free to jump into the Book Cover thread we've got going in the Art Studio. Even though it's technically not a book cover, you're still taking your inspiration from a story. It's basically fan art. But anyone's welcome to drop into the thread if they have images that are fan art, story inspired, or working on layout that requires a mixture of image and text, anything of that nature - and of course, book covers too.
I'm jumping back in here because I had to get some stuff done for the books, so let me catch up, but I just wanted to throw out there, if you look back at the examples I posted for Icecrmn with using the G2F iray skin shader and making sure the original texture is there - you get a wet glossy skin look if that will help. What hair are you using on her?
Okay, off to catch up on some threads.
Nice Gallows! But what is the white line between the irises and his lower eyelid. Did something not get hit with a shader or is the texture made like that? That's the only thing that really jumped out at me.
..and here is mine first WIP rendered at 7% with iRay
I wanted to put my final image to the entries but when I tried to upload it, I got the message "You do not have a permission to upload files"
Anybody knows anything about this?
Not really possible since its an Iray render to turn shadows on or off or make them behave the way you want. It is unbiased rendering shadows are where shadows are. I know you can cheat in 3delight but Iray you cant because shadows behave like they do in the real world. Thanks for the advice none the less i will keep plugging away.
Daniel
Ah, sorry for you, but a little glad that not everything is gold that is iray, sometimes to have your studio settings is rather helpful. So with Iray I'm out of the game to help you, hope you find a solution though
Oh nevermind, it works now : )
I have been trying to play around with different settings to get the wetness good, but hmpf not happy, so here is an intermediate step with some changes to the hair first. I put a d-former to get it closer to the head on the sides an a tiny bit bown to create some wight. then I pushed both specularitys up und the ambient on black to 100%. The top coat is unfortunately not available in 3dlight and my essays on using a top coat shader were... rather unsucessfull.
I've been wondering if anybody has experience with this product http://www.daz3d.com/wet-sweat-rain-for-genesis-2-female-s, maybe I could reduce the workload dramatically with that
I've done some minor changes (Hair and surrounding Grass), I hope I've done it right now, this month contest is really interesting and I've learned a lot of new things in DAZ espectially with characters, clothes, and pose.
I belive that there is alot of other things to learn in future, I hope next month contest gives us a new challenge.
Wish you all good luck.
I'm going to upload this in the entry thread soon.
Hi Linwelly, I used Victoria 4 and V4 wet map in this render as sample, I'm not sure what character you are using in your scene, but if you have Victoria 4 I think you can somhow achive your goal, here is the link to this product http://www.daz3d.com/victoria-4-wet-maps, as I can see it's almost similar to the link you've asked about, and below is a quick render with IRay.
I'm have no clue about the hair, sorry I can't help you with it but by searching the DAZ store there is some ready wet hairs you may use if you're willing to spend some money
http://www.daz3d.com/sea-nymph-hair, http://www.daz3d.com/wet-hair-color-and-movement, http://www.daz3d.com/wet-hair.
And here is another same render but with 3Dlight, I think this one shows the wet skin more.
I hope I'm helpful to you with these samples Lenwilly.
Thanks a lot h_habash, Yes I have been looking at the products you suggested. unluckily most wet hair is slick back which I don't want for this one, as she's not taking a shower ;-) your wet skin looks very good, and I have seen before that the V4 material is very good fo that, but alas my Gilr is genesis 2 and with a self dialed skin at that. I have put my question in the relating commercial product thread, so maybe the owner can tell me if my self dialed skin would work with that. In the meantime I keep on experimenting and I guess I made some progress but no new render yet.
Ok step back and punt so to speak. I have scrapped my other project i just couldnt get the results i was after. I don't mind telling you guys. this particular challenge is giving me no end of frustration. I read and watch guide after guide about potrait lighting and i just am all thumbs it seems. Anyway, here is what i am working on now.
Daniel
Tried to make some adjustments to lighting and the camera angle.
Has anyone else had trouble with the photometric spotlights causing a CTD ( Crash To Desktop ) ?
I spent some time looking at portraits and photography setups on google images.So I decided to put together a 3D portrait studio just like the pros use,but I ran into a problem.When I set my spotlights to photometric and click the button to take the photo; Studio will CTD on me. :(