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I'm paranoid about posting links. Have gotten into trouble, so... I don't always do it.
Getting there.
What lights are you using? Because, yes, you need a specular highlight in there
Playing with DOF, LAMH, and iray hair. Oh, and it's supposed to be a portrait, too. Not sure if the girl helps or hinders at this point.
IG Full Spectrum Lighting. I've treid everything I can but can't get any specular in the eyes. I shifted some lights around and, in my opinion, improved the light/shadows (this render is only at 2%). I am hesitant to add anything else that might add more light to the face.
You can always try to add the highlights in postwork. Maybe you can try again to do it with Daz Studio in your second entry.
Overall, it has improved drastically. I have strong feelings on emitter lights in general that I am going to remain mum about in this area other than to state that they can be quite difficult to work with when it comes to getting the right highlights in the eyes.
I will say this about emitter lights: they can be VERY slow and require more iterations.
I want to recommend Painter's Lights to everyone here...it is by far the most universal set of lights i have ever owned. I have never gone back, over and over, to a set like I have with Painter's Lights. I am a DIY guy for the most part, but... not so much anymore with these.
I don't feel qualified to make many remarks on this, KM... its just so far outside my wheelhouse (and attempting to put aside my strong feelings about the vendor who created these is proving difficult); but it is right there on the edge of utterly adorable. I might feel differently if I didn't have this prejudice about the vendor.
Two things, I guess, stick out for me: eyes and hair. For this type of render, aren't the specular highlights in the eyes typically exaggerated? You have little to none (there's that big gleam in the boy's sclera). The girl's hair is fine, but I would tone done the specular on the boy's hair. It has a nice anistropic spread to it, but its too broad. Increase the roughness to shrink it a bit, I think.
I like the bubbles :)
This is a great start. I like the backlighting, but maybe you can experiment with toning it down a bit. the mane above the girls head looks almost on fire - which could be cool, but doesn't seem like what you are going for.
wow, nice start. RIght now, the girl hinders because of the framing. She's too big a part of the image to be so awkardly cropped at the edge of the frame. We at least need to see, I think, the back of her head in frame. Could use a little more open space at the top of the frame for the horse, too.
Thanks for all your help on this. I'm going to call this one done and move on. I'll try a different light setup on the next one and see if I can get better results.
Thanks, I appreciate the input. The more I work on this the more I actually kind of like the lighting I went with so I may keep it. I still plan to play with it a bit more as one never knows what might work better. That being said, I tend to agree with you on the hair and the eyes and no matter which lighting I use, I'll have to see about decreasing that spot of light on the hair and I'll have to see about getting more light reflection in those eyes. I haven't worked with this figure enough to work out the intricacies of render it yet. It's getting there, but definitely needs more work. I kind of know what your wheelhouse is so I'm happy that you think they are "on the edge of utterly adorable".
Hello all,
and some amazing renders this month. Seems like portraits are very popular. Anyways, here's my take of one of my favourite scenes in literature ( or movies ), and it's of course the face-off between BigG and BigB. It's a calculated risk, since everyone probably has their own vision how it should look like, but here's mine.
Image's name is "You shall not pass".
I tried to go for an expression like "Dude, stay on your side of the bridge, 'coz if you try to say hello to my little friends, I'm not going down alone". Heh, be gentle
Dang that's a good start you have here. Personaly my favorite moment is when Aragon has been crowned king and when he gets to the hobits he tells them "My friends, you bow to no one." and then leads the crowd in bowing to the four in question. The look on their faces, expesialy Frodo's was priceless.
I knocked this out last night. Version i has him reciving a scar, and changing his head shape.
Thanks so much Barbult for the link!!
I am Trying to give the Hat to someone Dracorn
and she is looking at that little someone 
Yep, that's one of my favourites also, but the books are full of epic scenes. It's just amazing how well that story has stood the test of time. Even the bad guys like Saruman are still working....and we're talking about books that were published some 60 years ago. There's lots of things today's writers could learn from that. Oh well, but I quess we better stop here, before we turn this thread into LOTR
Thanks for this tip, @evilded777! The Look at Camera pose will come in very handy.
This specular light looks like it will be very helpful in a fresh scene, but it does have a drawback if you already have other lights: it deletes all other lights in your scene! I just tried it with my fire mage and everything went very dark. I never hit Undo faster in my life!
Wow! This is very cool, @mendoman. Is this cave from DMs Cave of Secrets? Only asking because I may have to change the angle in my latest scene.
I believe if you hit CTL and Click, you have the option to ADD the light to the scene rather than replacing all lights which is the bizarre default behavior. So... that's not an issue with that light per se, its just how stuff works.
You are exactly right, @evilded777! Thank you so much.
You have a great premise here, and some interesting elements, but its all very flat. By which I mean that the light seems to fall very evenly on everything. Other than the shadow across his forehead which I completely don't understand, there are no other shadows. I see the big highlights of the torches in the background... but that's about it for highlights. This screams to be dark and moody, but its not...
How are you lighting this and what render engine are you using?
@Mendoman
It's possible the shadow on the forehead might be from the skullcap of the hair. I've run into something similar before. Sometimes a little tweaking of the hair controls will get rid of it, sometimes a little scaling (very little) can get rid of it. I'm sure there's a better way, but that's what I've resorted to in the past. And if it's not that, I'm sure you'll figure it out.
Otherwise I love the idea. I always figured Glamdring to be shiny, but it was over 6000 years old.
Yeah, I hate lights that do that. I think I figured out a way to get it donw with what I have, though. Of course that will mean even more time spent on the lighting!
Did you know that Tolken was a WWI vet, and what he went through was one of the influinces on the story?
I like this guy, his alien face, the coloring, his glowing eyes, the lightsaber.
I sat back and looked at it with my eyes unfocused - I have to say that the fire is oversaturated and too bright. It demands too much and detracts from your figure and his glowing lightsaber. Tone down the bright yellows and bring in the dark oranges - this will give the flames some more depth as well as push them into the background a little.
I pulled this pic off Google images - I think it's a nice example of dark fire.
I tried to go for a look, that Gandalf was surrounded by flames, but I have to admit it's not looking very good. I placed several torches around him, and one bright cold white light above him, to simulate that light ball from his staff ( and to prevent his hair turning yellow from flames color ). That probably causes that shadow on his forehead. It's rendered with iRay and Daz Studio, no post work. But yeah, you are completely right, lightning needs lots of work, before the image is ready.
@ewcarman Yeah, I think Glamdring should be shiny too, but BigG had just done some dungeon crawling, so it got little dirty. Nothing a good cleaning won't fix though
If I get the flames around Gandalf looking good, I might try more shinier sword too, and see how well it could reflect those flames.
@dawnblade Background is from http://www.daz3d.com/cista-sanctus and http://www.daz3d.com/cista-sanctorium texture addon.
Nice image @Rafmer
I like the way you have framed her face and really made her eyes the focus of your image. The minimal use of makeup really gives her a girl-next-door feel and does not distract from her eyes. I like the hightligh on her jawline and the slight DOF that makes the tips of her hair a bit blurred.
Well done.
I made some changes, and here's next version.
I mvoed the camera and angle a little, so viewer can see the bridge and the exit, and I think it makes the image a bit more dramatic. I also changed blade's shader and added DOF to make Gandalf the focus of the image. Also I revamped the lighting, and I think it's better now. All and all, I like this version more than the first one, but I'm still not quite happy yet. I was trying to make some flame reflections from the blade, but didn't quite figure out how to do that. I mean, if I for example add new flame light source, I have to move it pretty close to the blade to get decent reflection. Then that same flame washes out all the shadows from Gandalf, which is not what I want. So I'd like to see some nice flame reflections from the blade, but not eat all the shadows from the main character. So if anybody knows any tricks how that kind of effect could be made, I'd really appreciate it.