|
|
|
CREATING "FOREST
WAR GOBLIN SHAMAN"
|
|
|
This tutorial is an in-depth explanation of how
I created a scene, and postwork afterwards :)
|
ROLL MOUSE OVER PIC BELOWTO SEE THE
INITIAL, UN-TOUCHED RENDER, VERSUS THIS FINAL IMAGE
|
|
|
CONCEPT
My idea on this image is a forest scene, it's a light forest so
it has small trees not huge ones (I'll use birch and the like),
with a small rise in the ground
centrally, with main characters at bottom, fighting
Usually characters are central to an image, but here the forest
IS a main character, it's what the fighting's about, so the forest
must have prominence.
A goblin shaman is fighting an elven archer. I improved
it as I worked, adding content I already had added to my Vue library
from Poser imports:
scorpion bodyguard, and conjured tentacles!
I've detailed in previous tutorials
how I make the Poser characters very realistic by tweaking their
materials, rather than using the "Poser shaders",
which I find to be very poor ocmpared ot Vue materials. It takes
time but is well worth the end result :)
For skin I usually use David Burdick's excellent "Skin Vue",
which I can't recommend highly enough for most work, especially
big portraits.
But for this image I didn't, instead just using the Poser textures
and bump maps in Vue materials, with translucency
as one of my tutorial shows.
The goblin shamn though I had to do a lot of hand tweaking ot
his skin as his skin is green, hehe!
|
|
|
|
BASIC SCENE &
ECOSYSTEMS
Here is the basic scene, with materials turned to the "default
rock" on everything bar ecosystems, to show the terrain
design much clearer.
Main camera is off screen to bottom left, looking uphill
It's like a small stream has worn down this high point when
it rains heavily, the gulley has ferns to show it's damp.
Note the trees with the "square leeaves", lol, these
are Vue plants from the global ecosystem I converted to normal
Objects, using the "Edit---> Select Ecosystem Instances"
command, then "Manipulate-->Convert To Objects"
Command.
( When I made the material into "default rock"
to show you, it removed the transparency on the leaves, hence
the odd look, hehe)
I converted these trees to "hero trees", because
they are main foreground items which must be made into "hero
items".
"Hero Items", are object sof special note, ones you
must have good detail on, such as trees, rocks in the
close
foreground, characters up close etc. So these are "Hero
Trees".
You want the best detail for any hero object, but default ecosystem
trees usually have low polygon counts that
show up poorly when they are in the foregorund, so convert these
to hero objects, edit them and
increase the polygon count (use the "x2" command in
the plant editor one or more times depending on need)
|
|
EDITING ECOSYSTEM INSTANCES
TO MAKE THEM INTO NORMAL OBJECTS
|
 |
|
MAKING A "HERO TREE"
|
|
|
Below is the Global Ecosystem painter, showing the plants I chose
to use.
Lacy lady Fern from Martin
Frost's "Lady Fern" collection
Barnyard grasses from Martin'
Forst's "Banryard Grasses collection
The two tree types come with Vue Infinite.
This makes up a believable light forest plant growth :)
I must say that I didn't do a good job with the grasses as there
is too much colour variation with them, oh well, who's perfect?
;)
|
 |
|
|
As I built up the ecosystem, I noticed the background
wasn't going to have enough trees to make it look like a forest
receeding into the distance,
and if I painted too many trees at the border, it would look fake
as they'd ALL be too close.
So, rather than mess the existing terrain up, all I did was add
a simple "plane object" beyond the terrian and slightly
lower than it.
It isn't going to be seen, saves polygons! ;)
You can also adjust scale of the trees at the rear as you paint,
bigger or larger, to make the distance/size seem different.
|
|
|
SIDE
VIEW OF THE SCENE, SHOWING THE PLANE AT THE REAR
 |
|
THE ATMOSPHERE
Lighting is crucial for any scene!!
I went through many atmosphere's and tweaks until Ichose this
one, it's from
Laurent Rodriguez New Latitudes, Vue 6 Collection 1
though I've tweaked it a bit :)
Note the Sun's in a different position than from the default
in Lauren'ts "Stormy Sunset" atmosphere.
I need a powerful sky, glooming and somewhat scary.
Note, since this is a near-sunset pic I've made the Sun quite
soft at 3 degrees. Sun softness makes a BIG fifference
I don't use shadow maps for fine renders by the way, I find
they suck but that's my prefference :) Slows renders though
Also, since it's a fine render I want, I use Radiosity. It's
outdoors though and a messy, natural scene, so I leave the quality
boost at -2.0
as the orginal settings of -2.0 is fine for such a scene. Generally,
you want to use negative numbers there, to keep render times
low.
Only in indoor scenes with lot of different lights do you want
to turn it above -1.0, but render times suffer higher it gets.
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
THE LANDSCAPE
This is how I built the landscape itself.
Since I used to love walking in the woods, I had an idea of what
I wanted, it really helps, or using photos as reference :)
Real landscapes are often very odd.
Using the "material painting" ability in Vue, I made
it so there is a drier, earthier area on sloped parts, as if worn
by gravity and rain etc
Then I clipped the terrain, to remove uneeded polygons.
I tried using an ecosystem of grass on the forest grass material,
which was very nice, but had WAY too many instances, so I just
used
the Global ecosystem, and painted onto "selected objects
only" (the terrain) and with selected objects only (grasses,
fern and a few flowers, iirc)
|
|
|
|
|
RENDERING
Once it's all set up nicely, it's time to render!
My settings are below. This was a VERY slow render, took 26 hours
on my quad core, ouch.
But worth it in the end :)
Note I added lens glare in post, so it changed the
"anti-aliasing strategy" Lens glare is very nice in
any scene with strong light!
|
|
|
|
FINAL RENDERED IMAGE
|
|
|
POSTWORK IN PHOTOSHOP
And now, time to tweak the render in Photoshop (or your fave
2d editor) :)
I add special effects in Photoshop, sometimes in Particle Illusion.
here, I'm making it appear as if the elf's magic has trapped
the scorpion, miring it in the suddenly boggy ground!
To do so I make a new layer, paint using a Photoshop brush of
flames (many such are avaliable on the Net, free and commercial).
IIRC, I used "Ron's
Flames".
White colour for this brush.
Then, I add a "layer style" to that layer, giving it
"outer Glow", and using a "Noise gradient".
This gives an eerie colour to it!
|
|
|
|
SPELL EFFECTS
Next it's the shaman's spell effects!
note, always make such effects on seperate layers!! important
tip! stops much hassles!
The staff has magic erupting from the top, as it draws in power
for the shaman's spell. I made a layer, white brush, special
brush, sorry I can't recall which one, I have loads! :p
then applied a "Layer style - Gradient Overlay" giving
it varied greenish yellow colour as if it was flourescent.
However, this was far too neat and straight edged.
I duplciated this layer, gaussian blurred it a bit and used
the BLUR TOOL to smear it our aorund the skull at the base a
bit, as if it was flowing around the skull as you'd expect.
New layer, brush with white paint, I used "Flux"
brush from Renderosity to give a weird looking effect as the
shaman cast his spell at the elf, using a "layer style
gradient overlay" with
suittably eerie looking colour choice.
I used "Warp" in Photoshop to alter the shape of the
painted on brush to better fit the scene, and some "blur
tool" to tweak it into shape.
Note the spell effect layer is NOT set at 100% opacity but
at 88%, generally all such effects shouldn't be at
100% opacity, so as to let some of the background show through,
and thus be more realistic.These effects need to be slightly
transparent.
I made a mask in Photoshop to cut out a tentacle from the spell
effect , to make it look like the spell was going behind the
tentacle, another wee tweak that adds the illusion of reality
;)
|
|
|
|
TWEAKS
There is a very simple tweak to add some real punch to your
image, now I read this in 3DWorld magazine, who got it from
the folks at GeekAtPlay.com, whom
I guess got it from an old trick that's been going around from
Poser folks experiments years ago :)
What you do is make a copy layer of your entire final, finished
image. In Photoshop that's easy to do, select a visible layer,
hit CTRL and ALT and SHIFT and E, bingo, all visible layers
copied into one new layer :)
So, that's yer final image.
Now, duplicate that layer twice. Set the layer mode of one
of the copies to "Overlay", the other to "Multiply",
set opacity of both layers between 10% to 25% depending on what
you want, I used 18%.
BINGO! massive punch added to your pic :) please see the roll
over image below
For more softness, very good for moody, images, you can use
GAUSSIAN BLUR on these two Mutliply and Overlay layers, about
4 to 8 pixels depending on need. I didn't want to do that on
this one.
Also, as a final touch, I used the BLUR TOOL, to add some blurring
around the tentacles, archer's arm, to indicate motion.
VOILA'! :)
|
ROLL MOUSE OVER IMAGE TO SEE THE EFFECT
THE MULTIPLY AND OVERLAY IMAGES HAS ON THE FINAL IMAGE
|
|
|
For Mary on the C3D forums, 'cause she wnated
to know how I'd done this ;)
|
|
I hope you find this of use! :)
|
|
