Come learn the art of 3D computer generated art and animation. This blog deals with the lessons learned and the art created by Robert G. Male using DazStudio from Daz3D.
Also covered are the ancillary software, tools, techniques, and processes needed both before and after rendering in the 3D software.
R.M.T.P. Co. is a
company dedicated to quality
Web products without all of
the unnecessary hype. Our
products speak for themselves. Down to earth, easy,
usable, these are the principles
we believe in.
I mentioned previously about issues that I have had with lighting lately. Beyond the obvious too dark or too bright issue there is another one that involves shadows. DazStudio creates some shadow-like features when you turn on lights in the scene. These tend to be limited to the figures and are due to where light hits, where it does not hit, and the levels in between. Some of these are very nice looking and much desired. I have been dealing with issues where they are not wanted because they look unrealistic or just unappealing. One of those issues I have been fighting in postproduction is bearded women. If you put in an overhead light so that the floor or ground in your scene is not pitch black you almost automatically get this beard effect or shadows on the lower face, but they are not where you expect they should be. Sometimes they ride very high on the cheek as in the picture below.
I find it very difficult to blend out these beards and notice them in so many recent renders. There must have been some kind of change in the way that DazStudio renders the scenes. In addition I have found this problem to be onerously more apparent when I turn the Shadow settings on for the overhead light. I have come up with a fix within the render engine, but it may present its own problems. I have started changing the angle of this ground light to more than 90 degrees down from the horizon. An X-Rotate of the light of -110 degrees is a good place to start. It does make the light less bright on the ground so you may need to adjust the Brightness to compensate. Depending on your scene and the brightness, it may affect how your figures' are lit from behind. When I use a two light set up it hasn't been an issue and the fact that it lights the very back of everything means less impact on the scene if the Y-Rotate is parallel to the angle of your camera, otherwise it may light some items in a way that you do not want.
If you haven't clicked through on the image above to the full size image please do. That scene has the -90 X-Rotate and a light pointing horizontally straight at the figure so that it is not dark. Where then do those light patches appearing on her midriff and under her breasts come from? Neither light should hit those spots like that, with or without shadows turned on, but there they are.
The image below is one of the most recent quick renders that I put together. I did a fast little post work light shaft to add some verisimilitude to the lighting, and because I think it looks good. I might work on making the demarcation between the centre of the beam and the resulting light haze less distinct, but I am not sure yet what process I will use. Looking at it further maybe it is fine the way it is.
Hello. My name is Robert and I am a sweetening addict. No, not sugar or Splenda or ever Aspartame. No, I'm talking about image sweetening. Are your renders dull and dingy? Do you want them brighter and to really pop when your audience views them? Then you need to learn the techniques of image sweetening.
While this is the first post of 2012 for this blog this is my second blog to get a post. As I said in the other, I have taken to posting a look back and then a look forward at the start of a new year for my blogs. This time however I am not affording myself the luxury of that slow kind of start. It's time to jump right in with both feet.
Back to sweetening, ever since I bought a copy of PaintShop Photo Pro X3 I have had access to a Smart Photo Fix function. It has made the job of sweetening my images not only easy, but also a practical requirement. The final product just looks so much better. It also doesn't help that every new version of DazStudio seems to result in darker and darker renders unless the light source is so bright that it obliterates much of the detail of the figures. I believe I have been lighting the scenes the same as before or better, but to get light where I want it ends up with too much light for lighter surfaces. Simple brightness and contrast tweaks to the rendered image just don't cut it for me anymore, I need more control.
This photo fix functionality of PaintShop brings a small handful of tools together in one slider driven control panel that is applied all at once, starting with an immediate preview before running the changes. There are Brightness controls, the first of which is for the overall brightness. This is followed by a slider to increase or decrease the brightness of the Shadows in the image and then another slider to do the same for the Highlights or brighter parts of the image. These controls are also elsewhere in the program. There is then a Saturation slider and the one slider for Focus to Sharpen the image. I have only found a Sharpen function elsewhere with preset increases that work differently than here, not a user-controlled filter. Then lastly there are Black and White balance controls that work differently than the Brightness controls but don’t ask me how they work.
I have some more quick renders I want to post in the coming weeks, but I wanted to do a talky first and this was something that was on my mind. Watch this space for more art and more talk of how I make it.
I had only a vague idea of what to use this building for. When I came into contact with a tutorial on using a background image that gave me the image seen through the window I immediately knew to pair the two of these together.
![[Valid RSS]](valid-rss.png "Validate my RSS feed")
