Underwater scenes, clouds by moonlight and others

[Mele]

The hair has already become better with more translucency. Only the hairlines of the scalp do not like me yet.

Had looked at CGTrader two collections. When I wanted to buy them, it no longer worked. Have contacted the artist via form. Because he was a Russian, there were some problems, maybe with payment. Only later I found his offers also at ArtStation. These also seem to be available again at CGTrader.

In the meantime I had decided to make some myself this year. I don't know yet if anything will happen. My first starfish still had defects. Swapped diagonals, took a negative for displacement. But also defects in the shape and texture.
My first house got better. Texturing with TG wherever possible. Example front door glazing. Window curtains translucency a little over 1, too much lightened the room. Wanted to make another wood texture. I didn't get around to it because it was just a practice object.

[Mele]

Smart to increase the opacity to such high value, it apparently works the same as increasing mask whiteness in Photoshop.

In this case, only for two out of three textures.

Should mention I started the scene with gamma 1. With Gamma 2.2, the values could be a bit off, but the principle remains the same, I think.

Hair 1 and Hair 2 - Translucency 3, Opacity 14
Scalp - Translucency 3, Opacity 1

hair-side-view-01.jpg - bald spot on temple.

Scalp  - Translucency 3, Opacity 5

hair-side-view-02.jpg - bald spot on temple closed. It would be way too much on the forehead again. Here the partial editing of this texture with an image editing program could be the better choice to edit only these areas.
 

[Hannes]

Cool! I'd say, the path tracer wins. Probably longer render times, but it's worth it. Too bad about the bald areas. Maybe it's the texture map?
And by the way, there are some weird polygon shadow artifacts. I could imagine, running the models through Poseray, recalculating normals and maybe subdividing there could help.

[Mele]

The hair masks are not necessarily designed for other 3D applications. The hair was also rendered a little thinner in Blender.

After the import, the figure in TG and Blender is blind for the time being. Someone is telling me what shaders to look out for to bet on that one glass shader. I made it easier and swapped out the textures for small transparent images. But what I didn't save, the TGD file, in which I set a glass shader on the scalp. Today I no longer get the same result.


Image - an enlarged section. If I need it, I will look for these places in the mask and edit them.

The PT renders the water better, but I'll save that for the final render.

[Dune]

What I do in DAZ is merge the pupils, irises and lacrimal for an eye texture, the sclera gets an eye texture as well, but also an extra reflective shader. The cornea gets a glass shader (default). Tear gets a skincolor and reflection. But it's different for different generations, different names, different combinations.

[Mele]

My notes:
Eyes after import into Terragen - Image 01.

Had this scene also started with gamma 1, so the values are slightly different. This difference became very clear when I rendered this scene again yesterday. Then saved the render once as a tiff and once as an exr. Exr became much brighter and paler. As a background image in DAZ, both were blurred. It could be related to a missing Nvidia graphics card. Have to get my new computer running first, then I will test it again.

Or:
Rendering as a transparent layer in DAZ - Image 02.

The day before yesterday evening I saw a very beautiful evening sky. The horizon is still a little yellowish, a few lower clouds are already pitch black against dark blue background. A little later a crescent moon could be seen, the bright radius was only about three to four times that of a lunar disk. The higher clouds were darker gray than my previous ones. I will keep this image in mind to try again later.

[Mele]

Experiment - Standard Scene with Moonlight

Sunlight: outside the area visible to the camera on the right edge.
Moonlight 01: weak light matching the clouds.
Moonlight 02: of strength and hue to match the scene. Same position, atmo/cloud disabled.

Rendered with Gamma 1, no changes made to the atmosphere.

base-standard-01.tgd

[Dune]

Looks good, and thanks very much for sharing this with the users!

[schmeerlap]

Took a screen capture of your Moonlight nodes, great local cloud lighting achieved. Thanks Mele.

[Mele]

schmeerlap - Thanks for the feedback, I'm glad.

A little further with clouds in the moonlight - image moonlight-007

wolkenschichten-right.tgc
lighting.tgc


Render Camera
Position: xyz: 6686, 1727, 2098
Rotation: xyz: -5.8, -106, 0


Some more experiments.

Build scene around camera.
Create a river or a gorge.

schlucht-02.tgd - image schlucht-02

Added Fractal Terrain 02.

schlucht-06.tgd - image schlucht-06


Now played with Seed from Fratal Terrain 02 - schlucht-07 - I like it, I'll keep working on it.

[Mele]

More experiments.

Someone was looking for a scene in which two figures are crossing a ravine on a log. But got sick afterwards and didn't use it, although it's very simple. I also explained the assembly step by step as simply as possible. Maybe one day I'll expand on this as a scene myself.

Since I didn't like the view of the exit, I used a fog cloud layer. The variant of WAS with Distance Shader is the much better solution in this case.

Image tree-trunk-bridge-01

For the tree trunk I used a Sphere.

Image tree-trunk-bridge-02

With fog or without, the morning sun would also be an option.

Image tree-trunk-bridge-off-01

Or push everything together, increase Smooth step and increase Twist. Remove the river, create a simple shape as a pedestal under both fractals. At the exit there is now a rest area for a campfire.

Image tree-trunk-bridge-off-02

With the ceiling pulled in, it should make a spacious cave.