Ice Dragon Art WIP's

Novica

Edit-  never mind! I will have to say I don't like this converter though. Hand wasn't even touching the leg (and this pose has been tested with other converters, etc.) 

 

 

IceDragonArt

There is some tweaking  depending on how far back the generation is.  Mostly hands and feet.  For me, its worth the fiddling as I have a couple thousand poses I can now use.  And I fiddle with the ones that do work perfectly anyway.

Novica

I'm comparing it to other converters, and it was just Genesis 3 to Genesis 8. Zev0's converters have been the closest, but of course, the others are free so tweaking is to be expected.(Edit- and Zev0's need tweaking too.)   I'm in awe of any script writer frankly! 

IceDragonArt

You and me both! I also use others but this one,was really fast. Given the size of my library it worked well for me. And for free, it may help stretch dollarsfor someone.

IceDragonArt

 Gorgeous textures for these tulips.  And who can resist such a pretty foal?

IceDragonArt

I really like the effects I got with this one.  You would think I would remember to write down what I did.... Fortunately, when I save the PSD file, I save it with all of the layers intact so if I have to, I can go back and look. I recently learned a bit more about color look ups and ESP files which is what I used to get the purple and gold colors.

Stormlyght

IceDragonArt said:

 Gorgeous textures for these tulips.  And who can resist such a pretty foal?

What a beautiful portrait! Are those tulips from Hivewire?

Trish

Stormlyght

IceDragonArt said:

I really like the effects I got with this one.  You would think I would remember to write down what I did.... Fortunately, when I save the PSD file, I save it with all of the layers intact so if I have to, I can go back and look. I recently learned a bit more about color look ups and ESP files which is what I used to get the purple and gold colors.

I love the painterly effect you have going on in this image 

Trish

IceDragonArt

Stormlyght said:

IceDragonArt said:

 Gorgeous textures for these tulips.  And who can resist such a pretty foal?

What a beautiful portrait! Are those tulips from Hivewire?

Trish

They are indeed from Hivewire.  Lisa's Botanicals, with Napalm Arsenal's textures.  That girl has some mad painting skills, her textures are always stunningly vibrant and detailed.

Wanderer

IceDragonArt said:

@Wanderer - I am perfectly okay with being addressed as IceDragon, Dragon or any other variation thereof as well as my given name lol.  I'm never certain what the etiquette is as far as that goes, I never know if its okay to use a given name if you know it or if one should stick to the forum handle.  I, personally, don't mind either way.

And yes, I do have a couple ideas.  Put the door that will be the base on the bottom layer (after you save the original or lock the original one to the very bottom of the stack.  Then stack whatever textures you are going to use for your effect. Put masks on all of those layers.  That way, you can paint away (and repaint any mistakes ) using black and white (and its non destructive so mistakes are much easier to fix) different sections of the textures to get the effect you want.  You can set those masks to a lower opacity as well if you don't want to erase the bits entirely.  Also, play with the modes! A lot of times you can get some really great transparent effects when trying out the different modes like screen, mulitpy etc.  ( I sometimes will go through the entire list for each texture, you just never know whats going to really look good).  Also I can highly recommend a couple of you tube channels that I watch on a regular basis and learn from every time.  Even the tutorials on simple stuff, I will watch if I haven't seen it before because there are always different ways to do things and sometimes, one way works better on one piece and another workd better on something else)  So this guy Nemanja Sekulic is really good and very easy to follow.  Also PixImperfect is very good.  And Phlearn .  That should give you a place to start and then you can follow the rabbit trails of suggested videos after that lol.

Thank you so much. Sorry I just now got back here to read this or I would've said something sooner. I really appreciate your advice and those links. I will be checking them out. The mask bit is something I need to learn anyway, so this gives me an excuse. Thank you again.

Wanderer

IceDragonArt said:

So, I came across this link in a thread over in the Commons on Genesis.  Its a pose converter that is free on ShareCG - Daz3d Pose Converter 

OMG!  This thing converted all of my poses for Genesis, Genesis2, and Genesis 3 to Genesis 8 in less than 5 minutes.  And I didn't have to convert them up, they went straight from Genesis to Genesis 8, Genesis 2 to Genesis 8 etc.  And they work very very well.  I do generally have to ifx the fingers on the early generations and make some very minor adjustments, I know have a couple hundred pose sets for my G8's that I did not have before and that required very very little effort on my part to convert.  AND it converts backwards as well!

Maybe this is a dumb expression, but that thingy is awesome sauce. I cannot wait to try it.

IceDragonArt

No worries, I always assume people are busy lol.

Just keep in mind that the farther back you go in generations, the more tweaking may be needed, especially the hands and feet.  But since I adjust everything anyway, I am perfectly okay with that lol

Knittingmommy

I love the foal portrait. Those tulips look great. As for your girl with the painterly effects. Wow! Those are some nice effects. :)

IceDragonArt

Knittingmommy said:

I love the foal portrait. Those tulips look great. As for your girl with the painterly effects. Wow! Those are some nice effects. :)

Thanks!  I got the inspiration from the background I used.  It was very much a painterly look.  I'm surprised I pulled it off as well as I did lol.

Worlds_Edge

Your tulips render is gorgeous.  Lovely colors.

IceDragonArt

Thank you @Worlds_edge!

Wanderer

Your work, as always, is incredible. Here I am again, sounding like a broken record... or scratched CD... or is that dropped Ipod now? I'm too old... lol. 

themidget

I agree with @Stormlyght  Secrets for night fun is really good and the painted look is a great finish.

Diomede

Great work with the gold and purple balance in the painterly image.  Hate to reveal my ignorance, but what are ESP files?  In any case, well done!

IceDragonArt

Wanderer said:

Your work, as always, is incredible. Here I am again, sounding like a broken record... or scratched CD... or is that dropped Ipod now? I'm too old... lol. 

@Wanderer I have absotutely no problem with repeating compliments lolol!

 

Diomede said:

Great work with the gold and purple balance in the painterly image.  Hate to reveal my ignorance, but what are ESP files?  In any case, well done!

@Diomede - I'm not quite sure how to describe them.  They are the files that are located in the color lookup adjustmen tab in photoshop.  I just learned about them and what they do a couple weeks ago so I'm still a bit fuzzy on the exact definition lol.

This is some of what I found out about them - Essentially, a lookup table contains instructions for Photoshop to take the original colors in your image and remap them to different, specific colors to create a certain look. Depending on which lookup table you choose, the difference between the original and remapped version of the image can be subtle or very dramatic.

Photoshop instantly remaps the photo's original colors to new colors using the instructions in the lookup table,

 I found this tutorial that explains it really well.  With examples lol  ESP and LUT files are basically te same thing.

IceDragonArt

So, I have to post a link to this coming soon from Marshain thread,  I love his stuff anyway but I was totally blown away by this.  Its, its... I don't even know how to describe how cool this is.  If you love sci fi, you have to check it out.  Just....wow.

IceDragonArt

I thought I would post a couple more before postwork and after postwork. I thoght if anyone is interested I might do a couple more of these with a tip for one part of the postwork on each of them.  So for this one, you can see that the light from the globe is very faint on her skin.  I really wanted it to look much brighter but I couldn't up the intensity an farther in Daz without losing the colors completely.  So in in order to get that glow onto her I added a blank later in photoshop on top and eyedropped the main color.  I took a large soft brush at 100% and painted over everything I wante to have that glow.  Then just change the blending mode to soft light or overlay.

3Diva

IceDragonArt said:

So, I have to post a link to this coming soon from Marshain thread,  I love his stuff anyway but I was totally blown away by this.  Its, its... I don't even know how to describe how cool this is.  If you love sci fi, you have to check it out.  Just....wow.

It looks like it's already out: https://www.daz3d.com/digital-frontier-arena

It definitely has a Tron feel to it. Very cool!! :)

IceDragonArt

Divamakeup said:

IceDragonArt said:

So, I have to post a link to this coming soon from Marshain thread,  I love his stuff anyway but I was totally blown away by this.  Its, its... I don't even know how to describe how cool this is.  If you love sci fi, you have to check it out.  Just....wow.

It looks like it's already out: https://www.daz3d.com/digital-frontier-arena

It definitely has a Tron feel to it. Very cool!! :)

Really?  How did I miss that lol! 

3Diva

IceDragonArt said:

Divamakeup said:

IceDragonArt said:

So, I have to post a link to this coming soon from Marshain thread,  I love his stuff anyway but I was totally blown away by this.  Its, its... I don't even know how to describe how cool this is.  If you love sci fi, you have to check it out.  Just....wow.

It looks like it's already out: https://www.daz3d.com/digital-frontier-arena

It definitely has a Tron feel to it. Very cool!! :)

Really?  How did I miss that lol! 

It's buried under robots on the sales page, so I almost didn't see it either: https://www.daz3d.com/05-13-security-enforcement-droids

themidget

I love the globe picture.  The original render is good but you really bring things to life with your post processing work

IceDragonArt

themidget said:

I love the globe picture.  The original render is good but you really bring things to life with your post processing work

Thank you! Honestly, combining Daz Studio with post work has allowed me to do the art I have always wanted to do.  Plenty more to learn of course, and still a long way to go to get to the level that I really want to get to, but I am just so very excited about this whole process, and the worlds that it has opened up for me.  I am fairly good at sketching and drawing etc. and would probably be far far better by now if I had not basically given it up (like working on it seriously, everyday) when I had my kids.  I am not sorry by any stretch of the imagination that I chose to spend as much time with my kids as I did, but now that they are both grown and pretty much on their own, I am just having so much fun getting back to my first love of fantasy art.  And using 3d and 2d means I can get what's in my head out there so much faster and better.

 

IceDragonArt

This is a Genesis 3 character.  Love the body markings on her. She does come with regular skin as well.  I'm also using a fairly old set of stones, which I cannot for the life of me remember the name of.  If I think of it I will add it.  I thought they worked very well for what I needed them for. I did do some dodge and burn on them in Photoshop to just bring out some of the patterns just a tiny bit more.  I also wanted to mention that I did her hair with Hinkypunk's Hair Salon Shaders, using the glitter option.  Just for the fun of it lol.

There isn't a lot of postwork in this one other than the dodge and burn that I almost always do (lightening the whites of the eyes, and bringing out the highlights and the shadows in the folds of the clothing, the hair etc, is something that I do in 99.5% of every single image).  Just two layers I think for a bit of atmosphere, dusty looking stuff around her feet. And one layer behind the scene for the background as well.

 

IceDragonArt

You get both skin options for the same character as well as human skin.  The eyes also come with.  LOVE these two.

 

mori_mann

IceDragonArt said:

This is a Genesis 3 character.  Love the body markings on her. She does come with regular skin as well.  I'm also using a fairly old set of stones, which I cannot for the life of me remember the name of.  If I think of it I will add it.  I thought they worked very well for what I needed them for. I did do some dodge and burn on them in Photoshop to just bring out some of the patterns just a tiny bit more.  I also wanted to mention that I did her hair with Hinkypunk's Hair Salon Shaders, using the glitter option.  Just for the fun of it lol.

There isn't a lot of postwork in this one other than the dodge and burn that I almost always do (lightening the whites of the eyes, and bringing out the highlights and the shadows in the folds of the clothing, the hair etc, is something that I do in 99.5% of every single image).  Just two layers I think for a bit of atmosphere, dusty looking stuff around her feet. And one layer behind the scene for the background as well.

 

*backs away slowly* She looks liek she means business with that spiky thing.

I think the background is DM's Memorial. If not, my.. memory is leaky ;)