Boy and his toy.

[DarwinsMishap]

Okay. Let me give the stats here:
Studio 2
LDP2 lighting

Issues.....LDP2 Lighting. XD

I am not familiar with this app for Studio, and though I understand doing the three passes (Which is a FANTASTIC idea, by the way) I still don't like the way this came out.

I had to do two different pieces and paste/erase/flatten the images to one, then postwork his shadow below him due to him not having any shadow whatsoever when I put him in the scene.

The sunlight light is high enough that there should be no overhang to obscure him from the light, and resulting no shadows below his feet-yet there were none.

Does anyone else have more experience in the Light Dome Pro that can help me out in this?

Thanks in advance,
Dar

[DarwinsMishap]

Let me add this as well:
The model/clothing has the shadows "on" option on.
The sunlight (which is the only one given raytracing) is set On.
The other 47 diffuse/spec lights have no shadows attached to them.

Yes. 47.

*Chuckle*

I did one pass with just the sunlight and the raytracing.
I did one pass with the other 47 lights for ambient lighting.
I did another with no textures on anything for more detail-AO, I believe, it's called. All lights set to white, as well.

Three layers, and no shadow under him. It was all black-the entire floor.

So, I did the erase, paste, and fake it thing.

kay ....


well 47 lights in DAZ ... *coughcough* ..

3 lights are enough ..everything else .. is ..unnneeded .. seriously .. just rais up rendertime up to infinity ...DAz renders very well with HDRI- AO -IBL..makes very realistic renders ... all you need is to set up shadows under deep shadow map ... raytrace not really needed ... maybee the environment light you set under raytrace ...

This doesnt count for complex scenes , there you may need 2 or 3 more to light out corners ..

Working with only 3 lights needs a bit practice but as soon you are getting used to it ..you love it ...
just take a look in nature ..how many light resources we got ?

Only one ... well reflected of many things arround ..but still only one ..

For the shadow ..i do my preview renders all with shadows on ...so i can see exact where the shadows goes ... making about 3- 5 - 6 - 7 renders for a piece in finished full size , with different settings of lights ...

nothing wrong with making layers out of those renders and postwork them just like you did ..erase , blending .. good choice to get the last out of youre rendered resources ..

To the guy in the image :

well besides that you mentioned about shadow allready ..he looks even with the shadow , like he is flooding somehow ... most issue people do when postworking shadow is .. there is a much deeper shadow tone directly under the feets what gives the illusion of deepth ...mostly just a very small line ..

The light itself seems a bit to harsh ,overexposed somehow , bit more contrast and deeper shadows in some parts would have given the image more deepth , this way it looks flat ..
The face itself looks like painted white , cause of too bright light .. can imagine hes a pale dude but in contrast to the rest of skin ( arms ) ..way to bright ...


The pose is okay , and not need to say any to this ..

i may would suggest ( and not only in this image , seen that in few images of you ) to overpaint the hair to give them a more natural look ..

you can use brushes or resource images ( photos and blend parts of it in ) , very fine brush and smudge tool .
Try out a bit and gett practice in this and you will see that there is no limit making the hair just like you want them ... like nobody else have them ..
Most hairs you can purcase haviing very bad transparency maps and they just look bad .. like straw or wire ...same with textures ...

Tip :I search most times for photoresources and overwork the texture images by myself , this way you dont have to buy expensive texture products , which are not all the time worth the money and having to much unnneeded colors at all ...and serious ..who needs pink hair often ? xD...

The sleeves could be corrected in color , matching to the cloth with darken the diffuselight in the surface ..i know this product and i know the stiches , band and main texture are sperated material zones , so they very well to adjust to different cloth sets .
Also its seems you had specular on at sleeves ..where you had it off at the coat ;-)

The last thing i would like to suggest is , to bring youre light in a direction where it can be reflected from the eye surface ,this way the eyes get more life into ..or .. just do a bit postwork and give them a bit a highlioght ... needs a bit practice too ..to much will look odd ..

What i like is the distribution/calibration of the image , maybee a little change of the pov could be more interessting view , but thats personally taste and not important here in the moment .


okay so far for the first ;-)

LS

[DarwinsMishap]

Thanks so much for the input, LS.

The lights were excessive, I know-that was the first time I used Light Dome Pro…and I had NO idea they had so many freakin’ lights for the ambient lighting. Trust me-I don’t use that many in my renders. Four is the most, and two are usually for spec and diffuse. XD Like you, I think more than that is just too much, and takes up too much resources. I don't like using shadowmapping unless it's something indoors; I keep the raytracing passes at a low range to keep the render from taking too long. I wonder if that's correct? Now you have me curious, and I'll have to look. ;)

The hair-I’ve considered that more than once, using the painting techniques. I’ve not done so just yet (except for the Calm before the storm piece) due to me not having a pen/tablet to work with and my mouse more often than not stutters too much to paint with it. I hadn’t considered, however, using photo resources and such to change out the hair a bit more to make it my own-- Thank you for that idea!!

The outfit (jacket and boots) was not the same as the armbands, the spec on those weren’t up to par with the armbands. I noted that as well after it rendered, but eh-what can y’do? ;)

I won’t be redoing this piece, due to the file was lost when I reinstalled the factory settings on my computer recently, but I shall take your input into consideration for future renders! I muchly appreciate your thoughts-thank you!! Hugs!!!

Hi LS,
Some good tips here. I never considered using brushes to tart up the hair and, as you say, most hair in Studio or Poser is pretty awful and haven't advanced all that far from the knitted tea-cosies in P3. Must have a go at that. So far I've only repaired hair in places, using a tablet and pen and also fiddled with textures and Bumps. One of my biggest gripes is with alleged blonde hair textures that have bands of brown down them. I'd love to add a grumble or two about lights and shadows but I'm a Poser freak and this is not the place and wouldn't help DM at all.