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@ Linwelly, You said: "There is one thing I wonder, the floor is very glossy which was a surprised compined with a sort of stone that usually is a bit rough. Did you want it to be so glossy? if not you can check out the glossyness and reflective settings in the surface tab of the floor shader."
I can't locate the the Surface Tab, also I can't figure out how to get that what you said.
@Halcon_Bluesky of course you don't "have" to change anything if it's according to your liking and yes working with limited resources is always a bit of a challenge.
But this program offers a lot of things you can do with what you got and if you wish to change this or anything else of the surfaces you need to select the item in the scene tab and then you find the surfaces tab here
this is a different shader, it's just an example for you
Beginner Entry
Title: "Look what I found!"
Software Daz Studio 4.21
Background Scene:
https://www.daz3d.com/water-spring
Characters:
https://www.daz3d.com/karyssa-8
https://www.daz3d.com/sase-welda-for-topsy-8
Hairs:
https://www.daz3d.com/lun-and-lun-hair-for-genesis-81-female
https://www.daz3d.com/braided-band-hair-for-genesis-8-females
Outfits:
https://www.daz3d.com/sy-dforce-rags-for-genesis-8-females
https://www.daz3d.com/fantasy-adventure-outfit-for-genesis-8-females
Free Item:
Viking-Axe from other site
This is my first time posting a render. I started using Daz in October. Please let me know your thoughts, and if I should have included any more information. Thanks!
Magic Writing
Intermediate entry; feedback welcome!
@ Linwelly, I have done a new revision, here is a V4.
The glossy surface has been reduced, I believe is more natural.
I hope there is no need to do a V5.
@Halcon Bluesky looking much better yes. But this really all is only if you want to change things, we're just making suggestions or help if there are questions
nice work with the glowing glyphs @aprilshowers2056 and I like how her eyes are glowing as well a bit. For the crystal the light looks a bit overblown?
welcome to you as well to the new users challenge, that's looking very good already!
here are some thoughts, the light looks like most of it is coming from the camera auto lamp, for a more natural light setting you could switch that lamp off on the camera and instead add some HDRI dome or the sun sky or maybe add some spot lights or emissive places from the sides 45° away from the camera.
Again this is only if you want to change the effect.
The question is, Is the top on the actor on the left supposed to be like that, or is there some poke-through going on? I have not seen that outfit, so I don't know.
Thanks for the welcome. @Linwelly, I agree the light was harsh. I used a distant light as I was having troubles with fireflies in the dark areas of the pond. I did find a darker HDRI that seemed to light the area ok with a better effect I think. Still a bit dark but without the noise. @AgitatedRiot, good catch! I did not notice the top deforming as it did at the angle I was rendering the shot. I pulled the top out and that seems to have fixed the issue. The gnome is intended to be in rags and dirty, kind of like a scavenger/treasure hunter. She is showing her latest find to her elf friend. Please let me know your thoughts on the new render. Thanks again!
Thanks for the feedback @Linwelly. I've reduced the luminance on the staff's crystal
yes I like it better this way @aprilshovers_2056 but out of curiosity, how would it look if instead of making the crystal surface glowy you put a point light inside the crystal?
Unfortunately, lights don't show up at all if I put them inside the crystal (even when reducing the crystal's opacity and using a really bright light)
that's a pity
Title: Samurai Santa
Legend tells of a Samurai, dressed in white and red, that would go town to town giving gifts and bringing happiness and joy. The people would rejoice and prepare for his arrival every year. No one knew who he was or where he came from. The children called him Santa-san and would try to stay up all night waiting for his arrival.
Those who were not good, and preyed upon the innocent, received a far more sinister consequence from his appearance... according to legend.
Intermediate entry. Zero post work. All was done in Daz Studio.
Hi everyone,
I wanted to put in some comments on other people's work, but take everything as suggestions from someone still learning and not as you need to change based on the suggestion.
@Daedalus-7 - Great job as always. Nice to see you making the first entry again. You do a very good job of making her realistic and it really looks like she is on the beach. The shadows match quite well, but I see why @AgitatedRiot pointed out the face. It doesn't look like the shadows hit hard, but rather there is something distracting in the composition with how the shadow falls on her face. I love the contrast, especially how the light hits her stomach, but I'm not sure what it is about the face. Maybe it's the hair and it seems a little too spread out on the right side? I wish I could tuck it behind her right ear. It's good to look at the shapes in the negative space to make sure they are interesting, but take my comments with a grain of salt (or sand). :)
@Halcon Bluesky - Great job on your first time and I think you've already made some great improvements.
@apprentice - I really like this image. The smoke and the bloom on the lights along with DOF really enhance the image. The one area I think could use some improvements is the pose on widow 's mouth. It looks a little unnatural to me.
@Pentarian - Welcome to the fun! Maybe you can check the position of the feet on the gnome on the left to make sure it's lined up with the ground? The shadows make it hard to tell if they are above the ground plane. I also think it might be cooler to have her looking up at the other elf?
@aprilshowers2065 - Great render! I like how the staff crystal glows and the letters with magic. I see you lowered the lumicity in the second post, but I think it's important you match the brightness of the letters and the staff so they both look about the same. I'd also like to see the creature's head not turned to the side too much. Maybe have it peeking up at the light?
@marconft6 - Great story and image. Wow, how did you do that?
So here is my entry for this month - "Open Render Challenge" / Intermediate Challenge.
Background on this render: My profile image was supposed to be a placeholder until I had a cool render I could replace it with, I just never got around to replacing it. For this "Open" entry I thought it would be fun to do a 3D render of the sketch I used in my profile. If I ever find the original photograph that I sketched the girl from, it would probably look nothing like her. Still, it was fun to try and create something from a sketch I did long ago.
I've spent hours on it already playing with what I had in my library to try and replicate the image. Please think of the image as "inspired" from my sketch and not an exact replica! I used G9 morphs and poses to get the face right, but maybe it's not long enough? To start the character off I used a bit of V9 shape dialed in to make her more feminie than the generic G9 character (and used skin MAT01). Additional notes: I did not have any hair that parts on the right side in my library, so I used a couple of different hairs to try and get the look from the image. This is probably where I need to do a bit more work. I tried to make the "fur" match the flower colour.
Suggestions and advice on how to make it better and a more interesting profile image are welcome.
Thanks!
Edit: Now that I've posted it I see so many other things I can and maybe should change! oh well, consider this my first draft!
@shimrian Honestly, I was messing around with some textures and was trying to push the limits on some things. Sometimes it works out. Sometimes it's a disaster.
Your image is incredible. I need to get better at all the little details and subtleties. I'm working on a few images now that can hopefully address this weakness.
this is pretty impressive, would you maybe share the process? I think there is a thing or two to learn out of this
Unfortunately, I don't think this will be particularly exciting. I wanted to do something Christmasy, and in looking through the products, I have a bunch of Samurai stuff. Samurai Santa came to mind... the alliteration helped.
After placing the individual and clothing in the scene, I added the castle, but the castle just looked way too busy. In attempts to simplify the castle, I stumbled across a toon shader. As someone that is a big fan of anime, it immediately resonated with me.
From there, I selected a specific shader. This shader looks nothing like what you see in this image; however, the amount of parameters you could change was incredibly high. Since I do have a lot of free time, I worked through every option to see what changed and how.
I was able to whittle it down to a few options, which made this really awesome diagonal design. From there, I stripped the color completely. The ability to change the colors also let me change the Samurai coloring (or reverse coloring when necessary). This still added the unique diagonal stroke marks. For an example, one of the changes I made to the parameters was altering a value that could go from 0 to infinity. The standard value was 1.0. I changed it to 0.01. Almost bare minimum.
After seeing how awesome this shader worked, building the scene was easy. I went with a Japanese layering style. Instead of adding in atmospheric effects, I strategically placed large planes with different cutout opacities to create depth. Every other item I added to the scene that wasn't a plane, I added the shader and stripped the coloring. I made the entire image seem like it was made in the same style.
To be honest, this is the coolest thing I've made so far. I love this image and hope to make something even better next time.
Excellent render thanks for sharing the process.
+1 thanks for sharing!
Title : "Genesis 9 on the beach"
Intermediate Challenge
Softwares used : Daz3D and Nik Collection postwork
@Shimrian Thanks for the comments. I did a little work with the feet and changed her head positioning. I also tried a different HDRI and switched off the DOF and am better pleased with the lighting. Hope everyone has a great holiday! I like everyone's work here!
Edit: Fixed a clipping issue.
Thanks for the feedback @Shimrian. I've played around with the crystal luminance some more and adjusted the little dragon's pose
Rank: Beginner (2nd entry)
Title: Merry Christmas
Major items:
https://www.daz3d.com/michael-9-hd
https://www.daz3d.com/hailey-81
https://www.daz3d.com/snowy-london-street
Supporting items:
https://www.daz3d.com/iray-winter-light-kit
https://www.daz3d.com/dforce-kuj-fashion-coat-suit-for-genesis-9
https://www.daz3d.com/v3d-christmas-gifts-and-tree
and others
PS:
A Merry Christmas to all of you
Lots of great entries!!
marconft6: Fantastic render and style! Thanks for sharing your process.
Shimrian: Love that you recreated your profile image sketch. Lovely render!
I'm going to add to all the beach entries already here with one of my own.
Title: Monochrome Beach Series I-3
Intermediate Entry, DAZ Studio Iray
I wanted to work on a romantic beach series in BW. With this image in the series, I wanted to improve my posing, expressions, weight-bearing adjustments, and try out a dforce wind node on hair.
I started out with a pose that I modified to suit, but the weight-bearing aspects didn't look right. And I wanted things to be more dynamic, with the hair blowing away from the girl. I've put the original tweaked pose and regular dforced hair pic as an attacment for comparison with the updated inline image.
Posing and weight-bearing: I leaned both characters back more and used Auto Shape Enhancer for G8F/M and Muscle Morphs for G8F/M to make the guy lifting the girl more believable. I applied bicep morphs on both characters and back muscle flex morphs on the guy. It made a subtle but meaningful difference I think. If anyone has any suggestions for how to tackle this aspect of posing better or other products that would help, I'm all ears!!
Dforce wind node: I don't have any useful experience with dforce wind nodes, but realized after trying it a few times today and looking it up in the forums, that it doesn't work as is with dforce hairs like this one. I found a helpful forum post about reducing the hair density by 90% and then trying it out. Whatever I got working after that looked good enough to me for this image. I definitely want to practice with dforce wind on hair more. It does really add to the feel and believability of an image. Cheers!
Title: Out of the Glow
2nd Entry, Intermediate, DAZ Studio Iray
I wanted to use the render challenge to get myself to try out some of the less obvious but lovely stuff I amassed in the last six months, and create something colorful and fantastical today.
One product is the Xtreme Reshader, which makes it possible to shift surface texture colors and saturation etc. within DAZ instead of taking textures out into Photoshop to edit them. I used it on the Magic Fields environment here to shift it into a warmer color direction, on the RDNA bird textures from blue/pink to green/yellow, and the lotus props to lighten them up.
I also finally got round to try a couple of Jepe's SFX elements. One surface is behind the character and props, the other in front of her. Those two element planes and particles in the environment are emissive, so I added some bloom to add to the magic.
I also wanted to try using V4 skin textures on G8, so tried that out as well since I seem to have amassed some V4 characters with interesting skins recently in the DAZ+ category sales.
I have a Bokeh HDRI at the back of everything and various spotlights. So all this and bloom on meant that the render was probably never going to finish. I decided to stop it at 10min and 0% to test out what a little bit of postwork would give me. I did a bit of denoising, softening and adjusting levels etc. and I was happy enough with the result to not render any further... There are many more things I'd like to try with this, but that'll keep for another day!
Thank you for the challenges! Wishing everyone a Wonderful New Year!
@Pentarian - Good job on the changes. I feel like the two figures are now interacting with each other and having a conversation.
@apprentice - Great job on the dof in this image. I feel like having the items in front and back of the two people really brings your eyes to them and you did a great job with posing so that they are looking at each other and you can tell they are very happy. :)
@aprilshowers2065 - I like the changes! The letters seem like they are coming from the crystal on the staff now.
@SapphireBlue - I always love your stuff! While your first entry is very nice and I really like the way the wind was used, I have to say that Out of the Glow is my favorite. The texture and the colours of the image work so well together. Also, what hair did you use? I really like it!
Thanks heaps Shimrian!
The hair I used is AprilYSH's fantabulous Calais hair. First time I'm putting it to use I think - I seemingly buy things lightyears faster than I manage to create a render with them... 
I like this image. I haven't used the wind node. Some say it doesn't work well if it's too close to the actor. May I ask what hair you used?