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Nice job, @knittingmommy!
Fantastic job, @Knittingmommy! I'm really impressed with what you've come up with!
You've done an excellent job on these.
@TabascoJack Thanks so much. I had a blast and I don't plan to stop. I have some really wickedly cool ideas for some shaders that I really want to try out.
@DarwinsMishap Thank you!
I have a bunch of great ideas for some nail art shaders now that I know what I'm doing. I love fancy nail art, but I don't really do well with playing with templates, yet, as that's a skill I'm still working on. I'd rather not have to paint each nail on a template, too. If I can do the shaders like I want, I can get really creative with nail art and not have to touch the templates. I've seen some really wild art that I'd love to put on my digital models. :) Of course, I'll share lots of pictures of the process, too.
Wow, this is really nice, KM! Beautiful rich colors, and they do indeed look like what they are supposed to.
Thank you, Dracorn. That makes me very happy to hear. :)
I'm working on this image. It was supposed to be a reflections theme for Llola's Render a Month thread, but I don't think there are enough reflections happening. I really like how this has finally come together. The only problem is I noticed that the shadows are all wrong because one of the spotlights I have on the girl is casting shadows behind her which look really great until you realize that the sun is coming from behind her and the shadows should be going in the OTHER direction. I'll have to play with my lighting and see if I can get shadows going in the right direction while still having my lighting on the girl which I happen to like.
I like that. :) The 'spotlight' on her does it have the shadows on by chance?
Yeah, spotlights in Iray, the shadows are always on. I have a couple of ideas, but I'll have to work it out tomorrow. It's bedtime here.
This looks really nice. The fabric appears so satiny. I think that's the word I want.
Lighting is always a pain sometimes. Good luck though! I hope you get it figured out. :)
I changed my lighting around a bit and ended up using a suggestions from @Barbult on using a Ghost Light by @KindredArts instead of the spotlight. So, I set that up this morning and, so far, the render looks really good.
I love those ghost lights. They sure make lighting in Iray so much easier!
Yep, I think they saved my render. Unfortunately, I now need to figure out what to do about that blood splatter!
Oh, just thought about how I can fix the blood splatter. I'll have to try it out and do a spot render! Yikes! this is ending up way more complicated than I thought when I first started this image. Of course, the whole image has morphed into something I wasn't expecting. I started with a totally different plan in mind!
For the girl on the peer...
I don't know if the planks are lit by the sun light source, but if they are, you could do another render without the girl and then combine the two images in Photoshop/ GIMP and mask out everything but the girl in the current image and thereby eliminate the shadow. (Probably easier to mask out the girl and then invert the mask.
I tried that and by the time I added the blood pool and fixed a few other things I was better off just rendering again which is what I ended up doing. Thanks, though, it was a great suggestion. I'm doing a little bit of post now and then I'll post to my gallery and here in just a little bit.
Well, I kind of fell asleep while waiting for a spot render to finish because my freaking lamp was floating! I hate when that happens. I did wake up just now to finish my postwork on my image and it's now uploaded to my gallery. Would love to hear if I managed to achieve that creepy factor I was trying to get.
That blood pool really had me flummoxed as to how I was going to do it because when I did it in post it was on top of the shadows. I could not figure out how to make it look good in Gimp. I finally took my blood pool and exported it from Gimp as a transparency and put it on a plane. Made a copy in black and white for an opacity map and put the plane, with my blood pool, on the dock where I wanted it. Rendered it and the shadows are now on top of my blood pool where they belong.
Iray Ghost Light Kit by @KindredArts really saved this image. I just replaced my spotlight in front of the girl with a ghost light and used the same color as my spotlight so it virtually looks the same as the original, but no shadows on the ground! Yay! Then, I moved my spotlight behind the girl so the shadows were all going in the right direction.
I didn't end up doing very much post. The first version ended up a little too bright for the mood when I did the post before so I tried to keep it to a minimum with this one. I used the detail extractor in the NIK Collection just a little bit to bring out some of the details that were kind of lost in the dark. Overall, I think it turned out pretty good. I like creepy images, I collect a lot of creepy stuff in the store, I just don't know if I do creepy images that well myself. This is the first creepy image I've done where I think I did okay with it.
Murder on the Lake
Gallery Link
Edit: added a sentence about the post and added gallery link and image name.
I am not much for creepy myself, but I think you did an excellent job on the image. :)
I would say that that is pretty creepy!
Thanks, Liana and Sonja. Creepy is exactly what I was going for so I'm glad it worked. It ended up being a little frustrating at the end trying to get it together, but I think it was worth it and I'm really happy with my final results. It's already doing well in the gallery. That was a little bit of a shock, waking up and seeing so many likes on it already. It was one of those images that I wasn't too sure anyone but me would like.
Hey KM! I really didn't want to shill my wares in your thread, but i think it came out great regardless, very well done! Glad the lights came in handy ;)
@KindredArts Ah, shill alll you want! I have most of them anyway! I think there are only two left that I haven't picked up yet.
I just picked up the Iray Decal Kit. I have to say, it looks like it might have been easier to use that than to go through everything I ended up doing with that stupid blood pool. My frustration level would probably have been a lot lower if I'd had access to that yesterday!
I haven't actually loaded up DS today, yet, so I haven't had a chance to take a look at it and play. I start testing another product for the next couple of days so I might not get to play with it for a couple of days. :( I will get it installed today and take a quick look, though, and read through the tutorial while I have test renders going on in the background.
One of these days, you're going to have to let me be a tester on one of your projects! That would be very cool!
PS Thank you! :)
I'll definitely keep you in mind for testing KM. I have quite a few volunteers for testing and i always feel guilty when i have to ditch a product half way through or pull a 180 when it isn't working right. If you can put up with that, you're very welcome to do some test runs.
Anyhoo, hope you enjoy the kit and good luck with the testing! i'll keep popping my head in :)
@KindredArts Ah, sounds like me on some of my projects! I think I could handle that. Anytime, just let me know. No pressure, though.
Hey, KM. There's lots of things I like about this. The girl's pose indicates a state of shock. Whether that is from guilt or the power in her hand to do harm is anybody's guess. It's a great image and would make a fantastic book cover.
There are some little white points in the water on the right that don't make sense. Just a little cleanup.
Secondly, the lamps don't seem to be shedding much light - maybe that's intentional. But I don't see any light on the girl's legs from the lamp in the front. Maybe it's because the light is directly behind her, but I'm not seeing any rim lighting on her either.
It's a personal preference, but she's a little too dark to me. I know there is supposed to be the creepy effect, but I am really having a hard time seeing any detail on her at all.
I only saw the blood on the dock because you mentioned it. If you shift the girl to the right just slightly, the blood will come out of her shadow and line up with the knife a little more.
I'd be happy to test as well Kindred Arts although I am sure you have plenty already. I picked up the decals as well, and I can't even begin to tell you how much I love your ghost lights.
Edited to ask, do you have a thread on those ghost lights? I know Novica put together a bunch of presets.
Those white spots in the water are reflections from the lights on the Folly. I think if I were to turn it into a book cover which I am thinking about, that it will definitely need to be brighter because printing will darken it. I think if I could get a happy medium between the first on which was overdone and the last one which I like then it could be a great cover. I think shifting the camera a little so the lights on the water make more sense would be a good starting point. The lamp doesn't give off much light. I'll probably have to play with it more. No rim lighting exactly. I have a spotlight behind here which is where most of the light is coming from otherwise she would be completely in the dark. There just isn't that much light from the HDR because all of the light is in the distance where the sunset actually is. The only reason there was any light on her front was because of the ghost lights. That allowed me to have a lot of light on the girl without adding any shadows where I didn't want them. I'm happy with what I managed to do with it so far. If I decide to rework it for a cover, I'll definitely have to make some major changes so that it fits a cover better. I do think it would make a great cover with some work and I'll be posting it to the Book Cover thread to get some opinions on how to maximize the changes to that end.
Thanks for letting me know what you think. I always value your opinion. As I said, I don't usually do creepy. I'm just not good at setting it up yet. This was the closest I've come to doing creepy well.
Sonja, here is a link to @KindredArt's Iray Ghost Light thread. It's a few pages back now. Lot's of good info in the thread.
edit: grammar and spelling fix
Thank you! I did a google search even and couldn't find it lol.
For awhile I couldn't see the blood that you spoke about, but then I zoomed in. It also appears that she is holding a knife. I didn't notice that at first either. But it does lend to the creepiness. It might have more impact, if it was more visible. But then what do I know. Still it's a nice effort. I like the lighting coming from the back. I haven't been able to to that yet. Or to control the light where just half a characters face is visible.
@KevinH I agree for the most part with that. Which is another reason I haven't been very successful with creepy images. It is so hard to find that right balance between too much light and not enough when trying to do dark and creepy images. This is the closest I've gotten to the good creepy so I'm proud of it. It could definitely be better. I'll be playing with this some more in the future and fine tuning it. It actually hasn't done too badly in the gallery which kind of surprised me. Pleasantly, but still a surprise.
Overall, I like the colors that I have going on and I like how the lighting focuses on the girl and the other elements are not in your face obvious, but, as you said, you have to go to full size to see them. Those are things I would have to change if I decide to turn this into a cover. As it is now, it would make a horrible cover and an even worse thumbnail. People need to be able to see some of those elements even when the cover is shrunk down to a thumbnail size.