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I reallly like the deep tones on this. I 'd suggest that you rotate the skydome to the right until the sunlight skims the front of the cabin, bringing it out of darkness, it will also then cast longer shadows on the diagonal, which will add more variety to the landscape giving you highlights and shadows. And if you drop one of the canoes into the foreground at the water's edge, you'll have a colorful focus for the shot.
Thanks, @FirstBastion! I'll give that a try when I give it another go. :)
Just something I was playing around with. It took a little over a day to render out, but I'm happy with it. I love the new Marquee Letters by @Marshian. The figure is a mix of @DarwinsMishap's Damen and Elijah. I think their morphs play well with each other. I have a 60/40 mix on the body and I have a 90/79 mix on the head. The idea for this popped into my head when I saw the Marquee Letters and I just couldn't resist seeing how close I could get to the picture in my head. I'm actually getting better at doing just that, getting the pictures in my head out through DS. :) I only have a very minimal amount of postwork on this one. I just needed to brighten it up just a tad in Gimp 2.9 Beta.
Hot
Gallery Link
Another one to try if you have it is Animated Ocean. I used it in this Terradome 3 render.
This is awesome!
Hi Knittingmommy. Thanks for posting and tagging me on it. So glad you like this set. How do you like working with the procedural shaders? I can tell from the render that you used the standard high quality props which do take longer to render. I realized this when doing the promos which instigated adding the "FAST" set of props that work better from slight distance (2 meters or more?). The difference is in the bulbs only. All of the scene subsets, like "HOT", use the higher qulity bulbs.
Hi DarwinsMishap! Thank you. I wish I had included that word Awesome in the scene subsets but Amazing is in there. pretty close.
Oh, I like what you've added and the fact that we can make others. I've used this set for a render of Sol which is in the gallery and in my thread. I was very pleased with the shader system, but the only thing I found a little confusing was the naming system for the material zones. After a minute of experimenting to find out what material was where on the props, I got the idea. Well done with this set.
@Marshian Love the set! I don't mind the the longer render times as I'm used to it on my system. I think using the higher quality bulbs in this case worked to my advantage since they were so close to the camera. I love how they turned out with the DOF. I love the detail of the bulbs and that you can actually see the filaments! That's killer good modeling there! I only played around with these a little bit so far, but I like what I see.
As for the procedural shaders, those are nice. I like the color options and they were easy to use. As @DarwinsMishap says in the message above, I had to play with the material zones just a bit to figure out which parts I was changing, but it wasn't bad. Now that I know what the actual names are for the parts I'm changing, it shouldn't take as long next time, not that it took that long this time. I love playing around with stuff. Once I figured it out, I was good to go. I've got a few more ideas circling around in my brain for using them. Next one will be a little more complicated because I'll have to actually put the letters in position instead of using a preset. Looking forward to doing that, though.
Oh, just one quick note, the 'O' in Hot was into the floor slightly when I loaded it. I had to raise it up just a smidge so the floor didn't show through inside the bottom part of the 'O' in the render. It didn't take much of a move. I haven't tried it on an actual physical floor yet. The draw ground in DS doesn't always put the floor right at ground level when it's on auto sometimes, I think. There are times when I just have to use manual. Luckily, in this case, it was close enough that I just had to move the one letter just a smidge. It wasn't noticeable until I was doing the render with the HDR/draw ground setting turned on.
Keep it up! I love your stuff!
Thanks for stopping into my little corner of the world. :)
Ah, thanks! {{blush}}
Yes I see, good it wasn't much trouble. I have to remember to use the surface selector tool to show me what zones are where especially on models that have 20+ zones like the HMS Victory Ship. Four zones per prop seemed like enough variety. Both the mat zone names and the unusual tiling were a result of a batch export after the model building stage. Because of this route I was able to put time into other features.
I really enjoy seeing what other artists do with my work, found the render of Sol here. Good to see the customization of the surfaces...tied them into the color scheme of the character.
Thank you! I'm going to tweak it a bit more, since I want that to be part of the actual product promos. That was my tester.
That really is a gorgeous render KM! And I loved what DarwinsMishaps did with the Sol render as well. The letters look like so much fun and I wish I could figure out how to get them into a medieval fantasy setting lol. I am wishlisting them for now, I may be able to use them in some sci fi renders. I amnot able to buy very much at the moment but am wishlisting for future purchases.
Yeah, unless you're doing a Medieval Reinactment in a modern setting, getting those marquee letters in there might be kind of tough! Thanks for the comments. That was a fun piece to do. :)
@DarwinsMishap's render of Sol with the marquee letters looks great. I just about hit the floor when I saw we were doing somewhat similar renders. I like how he did the letters for her name. That was cool!
So, I have the honor of helping to test out @DarwinsMishap's Solange character. I have to say she's a beautiful character and it's been fun playing with her. I have a LOT of test renders of her but this is the first actual render all set up where she is wearing clothing. I spent a lot of time tracking down just the right dress and when I found it had nothing but issues from the textures to the opacity map. So, in the end, I couldn't use it for this image. I might try to go in later and see if I can find figure out a way to use the opacity map with a fabric shader that I like. For the moment, the dress in this image was my second choice. With all of the options for female clothing in the store, I don't know why we don't have that many really good backless evening dresses!
I'm not sure if I'll put her in my gallery now or wait until she's in the store. I'll decide that after I have a few more shareable renders. Anyway, here she is. It was as close as I could get to the picture I had in my head when I first saw her amazing back tattoo. It isn't exact. So, frustrating that I can't always replicate what I see in my head yet. No postwork on this at all.
Love the way her skirt compliments her tattoos
Yeah, I do love that, too. I tried to get the bottoms of the shoes color coordinated, too, but I just couldn't get the colors to match so I had to settle on having them black. Overall, I'm quite pleased with how it turned out.
Really, it's a great render. Love this.
I'm glad you like it. :)
Here is another render with Sol. This one has a different makeup and natural nails. Just a quick one I set up before taking the boys to karate class tonight. There are a couple of mistakes that I might go back and fix, later, that I didn't notice when I was setting it up real quick. I used the default BOSS Lights set. I think I changed the backdrop, though. I haven't worked with the other presets much. Still learning what it has in there. Not bad for a quick render, well quick for my system anyway.
I made a conscious decision not to dive into texturing in blender. Given that I'm building stuff with DS in mind or rendering in Daz, I didn't see the need to complicate things. I've managed to pick up a fair amount from reading web sites and playing around in that I have a good feel as to the technical aspects of texturing. It's the artistic portion that I still need to practice with.
Yeah, Blender's node system is really complicated. Making shader presets inside DS is so much easier because I don't have to actually go into the shader mixer. So far, I like what I've managed to make so far. I'm still playing with it. I have to finish my homework for the making shaders in ds webinar I took. The bonus session is on Saturday and I haven't finished yet. Still working on one or two shaders. Making shaders is fun when you don't have to worry about the actual bricks.
There are times when I really hate waiting for renders to finish. How long is long enough? In Iray, I usually have it set to go until it reaches a convergence of 98% which is the default. I'm not exactly sure what convergence is or why it's important. However, there are lots of times when my render looks done way before convergence is reached. Some renders look really good at 1500 or so iterations. Some look better at 2000+ iterations. I've had a few that actually needed to go past the limits and I actually turned off limits to help it get there!
So, just how do you know when to stop those renders? Do you just let it go and wait forever, impatiently at times? Do you stop it once all the grain is gone and it's so clear you can hear your characters shouting "Stop us already you idiot!"? How do you know exactly when to pull the plug on those renders? Inquiring minds want to know!
I have this render I set up for @Saphirewild using @DarwinsMishap's new girl Solange in the Kadis Armor. It took forever to set up. I'm a picky putz at times. It had to be great and daring and have suspense! I wanted something epic! Okay, maybe I go a little bit overboard at times, too. But, you get where I'm going, right? Anyway, after a long time setting it up, I want it to be done! I want to show it off, I want to move on to another great render! Forget the fact that I'm almost ready for bed and I won't actually have time to set up another render!
Tell me how you know when the freaking thing is done!!!!
I'm not sure what to respond. If it looks good and meets the expectations of what you're going to use it for, by all means, stop it. My second entry I made for the weekly PC+ contest that just ended, I stopped at, I think it was, 13% converged after 12-13 hours (again, not completely sure about the number) rendering time as I just couldn't see what could be improved and letting it run all the way to the 98% converged treshold that I had set would take days. But if it's bedtime anyway, I say just let it render over night as you won't be doing anything else anyway. More rendering time will hardly make it look worse.
Most of my full sized promos I wait until it's at 90-95% and stop it. The insets I can let go to about 80-85%.
Much the same as DarwinsMishap. If I'm busy on the Mac, I might let the render run to completion. But otherwise, I'll stop it any time from around 85%. I've usually got a whole stack of renders to do, and time is . . . y'know. But I do hate promos especially that look unintentionally grainy.
Thanks, guys. That information is useful. I'll keep that in mind next time. I tend to get a little loopy and cranky and impatient at almost 2 am. In the end, I decided to let it render out and I finally headed to bed at around 3 am. I even managed to actually get into the bed by 4 am this morning! I can't believe I'm actually up now! Geez, I'm not a morning person. Who in their right mind would get up this early?! Certainly not me on purpose. Well, my husband does which is why I'm sort of up. He has to go do that job thing that earns us money so I can spend some of it here occasionally. We have this thing called kisses goodbye which usually I don't remember because I'm asleep at the time. However, sometimes I wake up which is why I'm here rambling. However, since I am up, I checked on my render which was finally DONE! Thank goodness!!! Have I ever mentioned that I can be very impatient sometimes?
No one will probably like it. That happens when I really like a piece that I think is spectacular. And, while I'm not saying this spectacular or what did I say in the previous post? Oh, yeah, epic. I do think it's pretty good. While I don't think @DarwinsMishap will be submitting any of my images as promos to DAZ, I do like to try and do as much as I can inside DAZ because, one, I still suck at postwork most times and, two, I rather enjoy seeing how far I can push my DS skills to get a great promo type image without any postwork. And, since DAZ likes to limit post on promos, I figure trying to get everything done inside DS isn't a bad thing at times. It can only improve my skills. Hopefully. So, here is an image requested by @Saphirewild on DM's thread. No postwork. I'm calling it Slaying the Dragon. Can you figure out why?
Okay. Back to bed. I need more sleep! Four hours just doesn't cut it.
I'm hardly qualified to critique, but I like that, the pose especially. (I'm useless at poses!) And "heavy costume jewellry" is probably not a huge disadvantage against a dragon which is more likely to cook you than skewer you . . . ;)
Slaying the Dragon looks AWESOME! Wow! Great work, KM!
I think it looks really good!
I have mine set to 95% convergence and I stop it when I think it looks good and there isn't any grain in the darkest parts of the render. Although, if its during the week, I usually set it up and if its taking longer than I like I stop it til bedtime then just let it run overnight. I'm very impatient as well, although I somehow managed to buy a pc that actually works very well for studio with a nvidea card ( I bought it for gaming purposes, before I knew about Daz).
Thanks! :) Ah, well, I do have to admit that is one of the poses that came with the armor. I just mucked with the camera until I got the angle I liked to really highlight the pose. I only had to make a slight repositioning of the belt. While I happen to love posing and doing my own poses, that pose that @Strangefate did just happened to work and was exactly what I wanted for this render.
Thanks, Diva! :)
Thank you, Sonja. And, thanks for the info on how long you let your renders go.
There are times when I'm never sure if the art I do is as good as I think it is. Just because I like it doesn't mean other will like it. And, I admit that, sometimes, I have strange tastes and maybe a weird sense of humor.
As for stopping renders, I seem to have this fear of stopping a render too early even when it looks done. It's like I think the computer knows better than me or can see things I can't. Given that logic, I have these thoughts that, if I stop it too early, I might miss out on something even better than what I have. I really do need to get over that mindset, I think.