A new work; stone age settlement near a swampy depression. It will have a lot of trees and shrub, as well as some folk doing their Stone Age thing.
First test (detail) of the sandy campsite; some tents I need to refine and first grasses. Idea is to make it a hazy sunrise, with vapor among trees and over swamp. It's looking great in my imagination, but I still have some problems to tackle (mainly the people).
Great start in "Dune quality". I am sure it will be another masterpiece. Pls keep post how it goes :D
It looks already great,especially the water reflection and the grass part.
David.
It's a good start. I guess those tipis didn't give you so much trouble.
Looks like this could be fun to follow...
A great start Ulco. I'm looking forward to following the evolution of your creation.
Nice start, looking forward to seeing how this turns out. Just one thing I find the shadows cast by the grass distracting.
What is that grass Ulco? And where can I get some? Dose it come in more greens?
It's just the internal grass clump, nothing fancy, and you can color it every way you want. I used the terrain colors through a transform world scale.
Here's some more tests. More woods will follow, so this empty horizon will be wooded. And I would like the shadows in the tent to be darker, but how?...
I'm not sure about the clouds and light yet; I think a morning haze would be nice...
"...And I would like the shadows in the tent to be darker, but how?..."
You could try a crop render without Gisd maybe.
Or a negative lightsource or spotlight.
Or Pshop.
Just some spontaneous musings.
This is coming along very nice. Is the depiction of North America? I ask because of the Teepee tents.
I like what you do with the default grass; its dry color variations and clumping. In all that last, full view image is beautiful. From it, I would expect you will be making a number of different POV's.
Great work again !
I agree to trying a negative light...great start, heh heh heh...better than most of my finished images.
Looks great Ulco.
Lighting is easy. Reduce the strength on surfaces in your GI. Also increase GI detail.
Thanks guys. I though PS would do the darkening of shadows easily, but I just wonder why the shadow inside something solid isn't just dark, but the same as outside behind the tepee. I'll try your suggestions, UI.
They had this sort of tents in Europe too, they told me. How they'd know, I'm not sure ;)
Thanks Ulco. Maybe the design of the teepee carried across the land bridge to Alaska and on to the Americas.
Terragen doesn't handle GI very well when working with small objects. You can see my experiments here for more reference: http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,17433.msg169118.html
This is wonderful work again! I love its historical authenticity and attention to detail.
Are you using GISD? Are you using GI at all, or fill lights perhaps? If fill lights, are all set to cast shadows?
- Oshyan
GISD is set to 2! Default GI settings.
I think you need to increase the cache detail to allow the renderer to pick up the difference between the shadow inside and outside the tent.
If there are too few GI "sample points" created then it will blur the GI result of quite a big screen space region.
So if you have more of these sample points the renderer will be more likely to accurately render the different shadows and the respective indirect lighting of those.
Default cache detail of 2 is quite low anyway and with GISD @ 2 you might even exaggerate the issue.
Another thing I noticed in 1 tent is that there's light creeping in, but that could well be because the tent does have gaps modelled in, can't really see :)
My guess, knowing you, is that it's all correctly sitting in the ground etc.
Well, the tents have poles and skin, but the skin is hard to 'fold onto the ground'. So I have to fiddle, that's why I made rings of soil around the tent to cover the lower base. And each tent has an opening, though I think of adding an extra flap to use opaque or not, for diversity. But in fact it's all so much work for something I can easily adjust in PS.
What I did find is that DAZ figures can be used. Just yesterday I installed it, had to find my way around it, but hope to be able to produce some decent looking people for the postures and shadows at least. They're terribly 'over the top' on the whole, but the posing works nicely.
been playin around with the DAZ free folks as well and they do well in TG2_3...the secret is in painting your own costumes and right away you'll stand out cuz with most users the buy from the store/use freebies and a sameness happens. A good way is to dl freebies as they often have template for specific costumes which can be adapted with a creative mind like yours.
I struggled a bit in the beginning, but I now got a reasonable workflow to make some Stone Age tgo's for TG. Pose and clothe someone in DAZ, export as obj, check in Poseray, resize, reduce in Meshlab, reassign textures in Poseray and import in TG. Opening another thus made object in LW, and made a bow and arrow, took through Poseray to convert lwo into obj again. I'll dive into making clothing as well....
And the client wants a warm summer's day, so I get rid of the misty sunrise.
You can also import .obj you've made into poser and use hem to help pose person then export the lot as a group. Not sure about .lwo objects though
Quote from: Dune on July 10, 2014, 02:36:39 AM
I struggled a bit in the beginning, but I now got a reasonable workflow to make some Stone Age tgo's for TG. Pose and clothe someone in DAZ, export as obj, check in Poseray, resize, reduce in Meshlab, reassign textures in Poseray and import in TG. Opening another thus made object in LW, and made a bow and arrow, took through Poseray to convert lwo into obj again. I'll dive into making clothing as well....
And the client wants a warm summer's day, so I get rid of the misty sunrise.
What's up with reducing in meshlab step...what are you reducing Ulco?
The objects from DAZ are about 20-30MB, and I don't need them that heavy (they'll be quite distant). But it's quite a hassle to reduce, so I might keep them big anyway.
very nice image, as always :)
Quote from: Dune on July 11, 2014, 03:27:46 AM
The objects from DAZ are about 20-30MB, and I don't need them that heavy (they'll be quite distant). But it's quite a hassle to reduce, so I might keep them big anyway.
I get ya...had the same feeling with them but as I've been only using them largely for visual scale reference there is often only one in a scene so not too heavy for TG2-3
QuoteKempen-1-v6.jpg
Is GREAT.
Ahh, thanks about the grass. Is that what you used in your tundra images?
Partly, yes. The grass is great as long as it's colored well and fits well to dispacements.
I need to have another look at my grasses here; perhaps make them greener. It's supposed to be a hot summer's day, on the edge of a swamp. Dumped in some trees, but I need more species and variation. Slowly starting to get stuff into the camp. Placed them just anywhere for the time being, just to see what they would look like. Off to make more...
One thing I don't like is the hard distinction between woods and sky. But what to do about it? It's flat there, and no mist :(
I like what I see here; and, agree about the sharp horizon line between the tree line and the sky. The thing I would do is add some mist/dust to smooth the sharp line.
Or possibly a low hill or two?
Like....
There ar no hills unfortunately, and in summer mist is a bit strange. I thought of both, but dismissed them. Perhaps I have to lower the POV and have some larger trees break the line.
Maybe some faint distant depth of field would help
with that sharp transition?
Btw did you model the clothes or does DazStudio have
some presets to go from?
Quote from: Dune on July 12, 2014, 08:43:07 AM
There ar no hills unfortunately, and in summer mist is a bit strange.
I'm wondering about that. I recall several instances of mist hanging around a body of water, usually in the early morning hours around sunup.
Yes, maybe local vapor should after all be best. But they want blocks of text over it as well (ugly, isn't it?), so I'll advice them to cover the horizon somewhere.
I am still struggling to find a decent workflow with DAZ. The posing is great and now that I purchased the evolution morphing pack, I can make fat people, or very hungry ones. I think I'll need the mesh reduce pack as well, as I really don't need every wrinkle in the skin (and some folk are 50MB), and Meshlab isn't taking in, or exporting all textures correctly. On a sideline; I wonder why TG doesn't properly load all assets from an object; like opacity. You always have to handload that.
And I still need to find my way adjusting people (adding hair/beards) without ZBrush. I still have to try Mudbox. Same for the clothes; I have some (presets indeed, you can purchase all kinds of stuff for all the characters), but it's all too fancy. I need basic wrap-around, rough skins, so I'm seeing a lot of tuts, and have to find a way to export a model from DAZ into, say Mudbox or LW, make clothing there and import back. But it should also adjust to the poses then. I'm sure there's a way, but I still have to find it.
Until now, I exported an object, reduced it in LW, cut out all unnecessary stuff, made a rough version of clothing and draped (ClothFX) it around the body part. But it should be easier.
There is a bridge from DAZ to Bryce, dunno if y use Bryce .
You could try to bring your posed naked figure into mudbox/Lw and
use an extract feature to get a starting mesh for clothes.Sculpt/model
some simple folds and stuff and then texture it.Loin cloths or skirt
like things may need a temporary substitute copy of the figure to
modify and extract from there.
That's exactly what I did. Took me some trials to get it to collide with the figure in DS, but it turned out rather nice. Only thing is that the texture is stretched when the figure poses. For these skins, I just added a world scale PF.
I know pro's don't talk highly of these DAZ people, but they suit me fine for this.
Quote from: Dune on July 13, 2014, 12:27:15 PM
That's exactly what I did. Took me some trials to get it to collide with the figure in DS, but it turned out rather nice. Only thing is that the texture is stretched when the figure poses. For these skins, I just added a world scale PF.
I know pro's don't talk highly of these DAZ people, but they suit me fine for this.
I've found on simple items like that PoseRay fixes the U/V mapping if you remap to cubic, at least has been working for me...the tricky bit is tiling sometimes.
Looking very good Ulco.
Two more tests, one in final resolution but low specs. The haze may be a good idea (better of course). Now I have to fill the foreground with more grasses and shrub, weeds, reeds, dead tree perhaps, and off to making more people and their attributes; just killed deer, birds or boar, a cooking 'facility', another type of tepee, a fishtrap and arrange all these handsomely.
If anyone has any ideas for stuff in a camp like this?
smoking rack for fish skin drying? stretching frame.
maybe a canoe or two?
You must be pleased with what you have done so far. Your enthusiasm is contagious. I really like your use of the stock TG grasses. In all. this is super so far.
Quote from: masonspappy on July 14, 2014, 05:44:55 AM
maybe a canoe or two?
Nevermind.
I enlarged the image and spotted the dugouts .
Quote from: masonspappy on July 14, 2014, 09:39:32 AM
Quote from: masonspappy on July 14, 2014, 05:44:55 AM
maybe a canoe or two?
Nevermind.
I enlarged the image and spotted the dugouts .
hee hee hee, I almost said that till I put my eyes back on....thought they were logs....
This is a most educational project to watch your inclusion of DAZ models and the always superb natural environments, great work!
Superb stuff once again. For the sky/tree line, I'd experiment with some really tall trees and maybe a clearing (swamp?) in the distance. Aren't the huts too rust colored? I mean those hides should be a bit bleached by the sun, i.e. appear lighter in color? I am very envious of your character 'factory', that was one element missing from your renders at this scale. Now you can depict real life more accurately and it should bring those renders to an even higher level.
Yes, another swamp was an idea as well. I'll do that anyway. Some larger trees are a good thought, the drying rack was already planned. I used one for the museum, so that's easy. Today was filled with struggling in DS, LW, PR and ML again. But I got a pregnant woman, a girl sitting, a woman walking.... to be displayed soon ;)
Look forward to seeing it.
Quote from: Dune on July 14, 2014, 01:27:59 PM
Yes, another swamp was an idea as well. I'll do that anyway. Some larger trees are a good thought, the drying rack was already planned. I used one for the museum, so that's easy. Today was filled with struggling in DS, LW, PR and ML again. But I got a pregnant woman, a girl sitting, a woman walking.... to be displayed soon ;)
Leading the charge...as is often the case....
Update after a lot of DS struggle. Getting there...
Cool..............love the kids. :)
Great stuff - personally, I hate DS much prefer poser!
Quote from: mhaze on July 20, 2014, 05:57:34 AM
Great stuff - personally, I hate DS much prefer poser!
But DAZ Studio is/was free and Poser is $600,00+ by now (buy NOW)
Quote from: Dune on July 20, 2014, 03:12:09 AM
Update after a lot of DS struggle. Getting there...
Comin' along nice...the tiny folk add sooo much; the kids playin' is a master stroke of composition.
So many details here. I'm beginning to realize the advantage of your overall views wherein many other points of view can be attained for future compositions. Excellent efforts Ulco.
bobbystahr,
Poser is nowhere near that price. Just wait for Smith Micro to put it on sale like I did. Last month, Poser 10(32 bit) was $60.00 and Poser Pro 2014(64 bit) was $199.00. The 64 bit has other features the 32 bit doesn't. Among others, bullet physics and Pixar subdivision. :)
Why is Poser better? In what way?
I just find it simpler to use and navigate. It's good to have both perhaps. If you use the more recent daz products and can get used to DS it's probably better but with stuff going back 20 yrs I find poser better.
Quote from: yossam on July 20, 2014, 01:00:02 PM
bobbystahr,
Poser is nowhere near that price. Just wait for Smith Micro to put it on sale like I did. Last month, Poser 10(32 bit) was $60.00 and Poser Pro 2014(64 bit) was $199.00. The 64 bit has other features the 32 bit doesn't. Among others, bullet physics and Pixar subdivision. :)
I suspect a typo on my part...one too many zeros, meant to say $60.00 which was the price I saw; but on a fixed income pension that amounts to half my food budget for the month...I ain't cheep, just a bit poor...heh heh heh
The sand was not supposed to be so sandy, but more 'earthy', so here's an update. Did some minor 'for the time being' drawing, like the smoke, just to see what it would look like. Another one is now rendering with some pots and stuff.
I was struggling with the swamp; reflections weren't easy to get nice with a soft reflection of 0.03; it takes more than 16 samples and doubles the render time. So I'll forget about that and now added some more wavelets.
There will be some nice details, like the spear throwing guy. He's after a deer.
Sweet!
So how did you do the darkening of the tent inner for this version (part5)?
It is intriguing to see this project grow with the introduction of human life - it becomes more realistic with each iteration. I like the recent addition of vegetation you've added here.
The sand tweak did wonders for the figures' visibility..good call on that.
PS, Jochen. I'm afraid I had to.
I'm finishing this off, spent enough time already. These are some details in final resolution (SoSh on), and the total in lo-res. See what they think. The only thing I want to add is some dead wood, perhaps some really big rotten trunks of an ancient forest. And the spear thrower needs to turn 10 degrees.
Very good. What gratification this must be being able to create a time in human evolution.
Old, rotted and degraded trees and other vegetation rubble models is something that is needed in order to enhance realism. Have no doubt that you will achieve that in the future. Great work Ulco!
What do you think, guys? I'm not too pleased with the way these dead trees turned out. Especially the broken trunks look a bit cartoonish. I'll redo some. The fallen one seems ok to me.
Maybe punch a hole in one and have a squirrel peekin out, or some bird that lives in tree holes...If you can figger out how populate them with Walli's Lichen he uploaded a while back....
D'oh prolly XFROG trees eh?...maybe make an alpha map for the hole...
For such large trees procedural lichen is easier. I partly covered the fallen one with black rot and moss.
Quote from: Dune on July 27, 2014, 11:18:38 AM
For such large trees procedural lichen is easier. I partly covered the fallen one with black rot and moss.
Gotcha, broke a rule and didn't go full size so I missed that and you're right..looks good so maybe some on the North side of the standing one...and if it's an .obj maybe make some ivy crawling up it?
What bugs me most is the uniformity of the broken branches.
I'd go for less of them and with more variation.
And maybe a shorter one with almost no branches at all.
For me I think the dead trees look fine. They stand out and dominate because of their contrast against their green surroundings. As Bobby mentions, maybe some ivy/moss breaking up their surfaces would help. In all however, the scene looks fantastic!
Great image, and I thought the dead trees look fine, except for the several limbs that typically would have a more jagged and random termination than what is here. Looks like you were limited by the low poly count at the end of the limb. Maybe bump up the poly count to more easily approximate a busted tree limb?
Thanks, guys. I made some other trees, and I think they're much better.
Much, much better Ulco. Very realistic with the remnants of bark and the live vines.
Those new trees are great. What do you use, SpeedTree?
8)
Yes, speedtree.
If that is with the trial version, I think I'll give it a try.
Excellent trees and a great piece of historical illustration
God, so much new stuff in one weekend. The latest trees are indeed much better, though still not perfect. I can still easily spot a few corners/bends that look unnatural. It also seems to be a wet environment, so you'd think there would be some growth on those trees. Some ivy type, perhaps, maybe a nest, too. I know you can improve this infinitely, but the scene is already very natural and interesting. Previously, I thought the village ground was too uniform and textureless, but you have taken care of that nicely. The swamp looks very good to me, too. I don't see why the client wouldn't be pleased :)
Well that ties up the trees very well...Speedtree, sigh...another one I'l likely never have...great output from it Ulco
Also like the tweaks on the tents.....
I'm curious why the dead trees are so huge compared to all the surrounding vegetation. Much older, I'm sure (matured and then died), but what this depicts to my rational mind is an area where a fire had come through long ago, clearing trees, and leaving only remnants of the largest ones, with all the living trees being new growth. Otherwise you would expect to see living trees of similar height and branch thickness here and there. There are large-ish trees elsewhere, but they don't seem to be as robust as the dead ones, indeed by inference these dead trees would have extended much further when alive (broken limbs, lack of foliage, etc.) and would be even larger. They just look out of proportion to me... and they dominate things visually as well, due both to their size as well as lighter color.
But if the client likes it, that's what counts. :D
- Oshyan
Thanks for the feedback. I agree with the height of the trees, and did wonder myself whether it would be plausible. I was indeed thinking along your line, old clearing by storm or fire, some ancient biggies (though only 25-30m high) still standing, bleached like in some reference photo's I found. The POV is not very much above treetop level though, and they're still smaller. I'll just await the client's verdict, but it's easy to decrease them a bit. Or add some bigger trees elsewhere.
As for the straight bends, that can be changed too, these are still not very big in poly's, so there's plenty room. I'll have a look. Maybe do some more ivy and mosses on them too. A nest is a good idea! I was thinking of making a raven as well, waiting for scraps of meat to steal when the community is dreaming about the future of the world.
Well, the client likes it, so I'll keep as is. Added a few berry pickin' ladies (hard to spot), a pregnant lady and another hunter, and some black storks (freshly made), more open water, and some different trees (large oaks, and low willow shrub in water). This should be about the semifinal, before rendering big and high quality. There will be alot of sky above, but I'll render that separately.
Quote from: Dune on August 05, 2014, 02:40:26 AM
Well, the client likes it, so I'll keep as is. Added a few berry pickin' ladies (hard to spot), a pregnant lady and another hunter, and some black storks (freshly made), more open water, and some different trees (large oaks, and low willow shrub in water). This should be about the semifinal, before rendering big and high quality. There will be alot of sky above, but I'll render that separately.
Well they're certainly getting value for their money. This has turned out amazing Ulco....
Terrific piece of work.
What a great composition Ulco, the dead trees are a nice touch, and the hunter at the bottom. You might blur the back side of the closer up crane in flight a little. Really cool work.
This is beautifully done Ulco; so many points of interest. This is one lucky client.
Thanks, guys. They are all lucky clients; I totally commit and dedicate myself to make something beautiful (within my powers), unless they get nasty or mean 8) But actually I make them more for myself, in a way.
Quote from: Dune on August 06, 2014, 01:59:37 AM
Thanks, guys. They are all lucky clients; I totally commit and dedicate myself to make something beautiful (within my powers), unless they get nasty or mean 8) But actually I make them more for myself, in a way.
That's what happens with 'art'...the cool part I find is getting paid for what you'd almost do for free, like my music....
Absolutely! Because if a client is a bit mean (I mean, no budget, and still demanding a lot, and also being not very nice), I'd rather do my own stuff.
Oh yes, I know what you mean. I'm glad that I have a main profession and I don't have to accept any order. So if there's someone like you described it feels good to just say "No, thank you".
Fortunately the people I usually work for are all very nice people.
Got a potential client who wants to pay 1500 euro's for a highly detailed (A2 size, 300dpi) reconstruction of a medieval village. I have to build 20+ farms and side buildings, add people, set it all up in TG and they want to use it for publications also. I call that 'a little on the low side'. So while we're here; does anyone have any ideas about price ranges for such work?
And by the way, got an issue to solve yesterday; I wanted to have these lily pads on the water plane (lake object), so I anchored the pop to the lake, but none where populated, while they did when set on ground. The thing is (I just realized) that that lake is small and localized and does not cover the 0/0/0 location. That may be the cause of the zero count (staff?).
So I added a sphere, plus a displacement shader of local water height fed by a constant color (white), disabled it and anchored the lilies to that. Solved. But still strange.
I agree that this is not enough, given the fact that you have to pay some amount of tax. It's always the same. Clients always think, it's so easy to sit in front of the computer, hit the "cool render" button and that's it.
When you put your car into a garage you pay a lot of money for one hour work, and that's normal. Spending weeks of work for an image like you mentioned results in the client's complaining how expensive you are! Weird!
15% Overhead; 10% profit - a good rule of thumb.
Digital artist wages: https://www.google.com/search?q=average+wage+for+a+digital+artist&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=sb
Quote from: Dune on July 04, 2014, 10:44:56 AM
A new work; stone age settlement near a swampy depression. It will have a lot of trees and shrub, as well as some folk doing their Stone Age thing.
First test (detail) of the sandy campsite; some tents I need to refine and first grasses. Idea is to make it a hazy sunrise, with vapor among trees and over swamp. It's looking great in my imagination, but I still have some problems to tackle (mainly the people).
Seeing the attached "first test" file I just have to ask - where did you get such beautiful grass? Did you create the model yourself and/or is it part of some kind of pack?
I remember doing some grass tests a couple years back and it just didn't look any good which was probably due to the model used.
Nothing special about the grass; it's the internal grass clump, reduced in size (10m is a bit wide to have it rotate nicely to little bumps, so I think I made them 1.5m, with less blades), and colored by the same colors as the ground.
Quote from: Dune on August 08, 2014, 10:32:02 AM
Nothing special about the grass; it's the internal grass clump, reduced in size (10m is a bit wide to have it rotate nicely to little bumps, so I think I made them 1.5m, with less blades), and colored by the same colors as the ground.
Then it probably wasn't the model but rather my ability (or lack there of) that made it look bad back then. ::)
Thanks. :)
You improved the dwellings! Love it. Overall image is another gem and this time with all the people in it, it definitely gains in appeal.
So these clowns want you to build all these models from scratch and a whole scene from scratch in high res and pay 1500 for it? I'd say that's almost insulting. I'd expect more like 5000, just from guessing on the amount of time required to achieve this. It's not like you are just starting out, after all, your references should blow them away :o
I'd let them know that they're not paying by the size (A4) of the finished print, but the hours of work that went into the creation of all the elements, the pleasing placement (which requires ability) of said models, and the hours of test renders required to get everythinG 'just right' for them. I'd also mention residuals on any published work. Initially they are paying for the print. Publishing rights stay with the creator unless signed away. Same way with oil paintings.
Thanks for thinking along. Yes, I think 5000 would be nicer and more in line with the hours spent, though I would also accept less, because I also like what I do. But indeed, I was a bit insulted. Most people don't realize all the work that goes into 'just an image'. And all the hours spent making attributes in the past, the hours of study and experimentation, and the money spent on software and machinery also have to be earned back in due time. And then the taxman says 'thank you' as well. Or actually, he doesn't.
And indeed, it's not really the size, though the amount of detail needed rises with size of course. And I always charge publication rights apart from production of the render (depending on the use), and hope to get some residuals afterwards (from others wanting to use the image).
Sorry I can't show the final in high resolution; it's going to sit in a 180x85cm information panel that slides down into the ground to emphasize older times beneath us, somewhere in Belgium, very nifty.