Um yeah, I think I am gonna CGI all my D&D stuff now...

Imagine this, if you willl......

You show up at a D&D game, and everyone says heyas, grabs seats, sets up their areas and whips out the soda and dice. The GM says "Ok, so, you all are in a Tavern. Say hello to each other, and if you have any character sketches, now would be a good time."

So, people pull out doodles and sketches and whatnot, some good, most bad. They get to me, and I say "Well, I haven't got much talent drawing people by hand, but I did manage to scrabble something together real fast on my computer before the game."

Then I whip out a printout of THIS!


BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA


(Credits: V4 by Daz, Future Hair by 3Dream/Plus3D, Armor by Aery Soul, Tavern by Faveral, Rendered in Daz 6.2 Pro at 1200X762)

I would call 'Game Foul' and roll a 1d4+2 for the number of times I'd have to punch the 'DM' for identifying himself as a 'GM'.

I would then pass out Mt. Dew and Cheetos to cheering masses.

DM, GM, it's all semantics. I have been role playing for so long myself, I've been called about every name in the book (and not just those used to refer to Game Master's :P)

Originally Posted by kageryu

DM, GM, it's all semantics. I have been role playing for so long myself, I've been called about every name in the book (and not just those used to refer to Game Master's :P)

I still have my 1st edition AD&D books.
LOL!

I would never call call a DM anything else.
:laugh:

Back in the early 80s I remember the kids who used to try and say things like 'My mage climbs into his F14 and...'
LOL!

I actually came into D&D when it was in 2nd Edition, but tracked down many of the first Edition books for reference - gave up on it when it went to 2nd Revised. Since then I have played so many games...my personal favorites were Mekton II, Cthulhu, and Star Wars (the D6 edition). Still, when I can find players willing to use older rules, I'd happily run a 2nd Edition game again (I have so much published and home made material for it).

My favorite D&D Edition is 3.5.... (Flees for an armored bunker in the wilderness)

[volkov]

Looks good. Rendered in DAZ Studio or Carrara 6.2 Pro?

I hope you don't mind, but I tried playing with the contrast ratio and added a bit of glow. You can see what you think and try tweaking the original if you like the results.

Volkov I like the extra warmth the image has.
I'd like to see brighter candle flames.

Both versions are cool in my book (and if you'd like to know they're 2nd edition rules. LOL!)

I'm 90% sure that ArielSzataria is using Carrara Pro 6.2.

Yep, Cararra 6.2 Pro, I never use Daz Studio (I can't even load props in Daz lol)

And awesome alterations on the image, really shifts it from "Good but stock" to that real "This tavern has one fighter, and you want to have THEM in your group...."

What program you using? I dunno how to add glow to stuff, though I can easily tweak contrasts and stuff.

[volkov]

Originally Posted by ArielSzataria

What program you using? I dunno how to add glow to stuff, though I can easily tweak contrasts and stuff.

I'm glad you liked my tweaks. I used Photoshop, but any 2D program should work (Paint.net, GIMP, etc.). I played with levels and then used layered blurs and masking for the glows.

You could work in 2D, or you try tweaking the light intensities in Carrara. I have Carrara, but I haven't had a chance to use it a lot so I'm not sure of the exact settings. There may be a post/image filter effect in Carrara to add glows or you could try different light types and rendering options.

You might also try adding a back light/kicker/hair light (explained here: Three-Point Lighting - see the picture of the apple, with and without a back light) to separate your character from the background a bit. You could also try playing with character position, framing and lens to make your character a bit more prominent in the scene. Right now, the table in the foreground seems to be too dominant.

Of course, you can take or leave these ideas. Just try them out and see how they look to your eye. Or you just can keep them in mind when you create your next scene.

Ah, ok. I have photoshop too but I am self-taught on what it does and how it does it, so I really have no idea of half of what it can do lol. But I think I figured out how you did what you did from how you described it. Cool beans

As for lights, I played with the lights for about an hour. I have been having light problems in Cararra. Dunno what's up with it but see how dimly lit her face is? That's with a lightbulb right in it, maybe 1 foot off her nose. Sure it was not at 100% (I think it was 75%) but yeah, 1 foot from her face and you only get a bit of light on it.

I will check out that three point lighting bit in a few, sort of on a writing kick ATM Thanks for the ideas and tips tho

Carrara Pro 6 & 7 both have a real good '3 point lighting' rig already built in.
You've just got to know where to find it. (browser window>lighting scene> top row -3rd from left)

Since we're sharing images.
He's a shot from the "Dark World" animation I'm building.

I didn't use it (3x lighting) for the scene this shot comes from because the crystal is radiating a bunch of different colors of light as the scene plays out.

As you can probably guess, this isn't going to end well for the poor fella.

[volkov]

ArielSzataria, you might try changing light types if you're not getting the effect you want. I think you might be able to set your light over 100%+ in intensity. Carrara also might have the option to make lights with negative intensity (black lights, sucking the light out of an area), so you can tweak the contrast ratio and shade the scene to bring out depths. You also should be able to control whether or not each light hits each object or not and whether or not the light casts shadows. You can use that option to add fill lights or to brighten an area without casting extra or unrealistic shadows.

Originally Posted by Fretslayer

Since we're sharing images.
He's a shot from the "Dark World" animation I'm building.

I didn't use it (3x lighting) for the scene this shot comes from because the crystal is radiating a bunch of different colors of light as the scene plays out.

As you can probably guess, this isn't going to end well for the poor fella.

Cool. I watched your trailer too. It looks like an ambitious project. If you used Carrara in that shot, how did you make the crystals glow? Maybe a similar effect could be used to generate the candle glows in the tavern.

ArielSzataria,

The lights in Carrara Pro 6 and 7 are both set up so you can include/exclude objects, shadows on/off (as well as softness of shadows). In addition to the lights themselves there is also the global lighting which can be set - in fact there are several different global lighting settings which can be tweaked but they tend to be in them more advanced sections of the rendering part of the app. (In the render section there are 3 tabs at the upper right -rendering/output/progress- on the rendering tab you'll find the global lighting options, but be aware that tweaking these settings can add a great deal of time to the render.)

There is a section titled 'Global Illumination' you should play with some of the settings there and see how much it effects your final render. I tend to not use them that much but that's because I do not render a single frame but rather 300+ frames. There really is good info in the Help section (I know, it's painful to click the tab - LOL!) so you should take at it. I still do and I've been using Carrara since 5.0

I used Carrara Pro 6 for a couple of years before I upp'd to Pro 7.
They're pretty much the same so I would guess the Help info is as well.

Originally Posted by ArielSzataria

My favorite D&D Edition is 3.5.... (Flees for an armored bunker in the wilderness)

Ther's nothing wrong with liking 3.5, I certainly wont begrudge you of it. I simply had so much invested in 2nd already when 3.5 came out, and they are two completely different animals.

Originally Posted by ArielSzataria

Ah, ok. I have photoshop too but I am self-taught on what it does and how it does it, so I really have no idea of half of what it can do lol. But I think I figured out how you did what you did from how you described it. Cool beans

I used to have some killer links to tutorials sites I use a lot, I can try to find them for you if you are interested (they are on an older comp).

As for lights, I played with the lights for about an hour. I have been having light problems in Cararra. Dunno what's up with it but see how dimly lit her face is? That's with a lightbulb right in it, maybe 1 foot off her nose. Sure it was not at 100% (I think it was 75%) but yeah, 1 foot from her face and you only get a bit of light on it.

I am, admittedly, not familiar with Carera, but this sounds as if it could be several causes. Possibly too steep a light falloff from the lightsource (though unlikely as it would need to be really steep). More likely it could be the diffusion and/or specularity settings of either the light itself (if added as a secondary or terciary light - some programs default to "no diffusion" and "no specular" when adding lights, and it needs to be manually turned on) or the surface receiving the light.

Volkov - I didn't see your comment about the lighting thing I did in Carrara until now.

Ok, with the crystal effect there are a few things going on.
Carrara has this killer trick called 'Anything Glows' and here is what it does.
You set an item into the scene and then add the 'Anything Glows' to the scene and the 'AG' turns any item into a light source. You get all of the same controls as a 'true' light with the exception of lense flare effects.

In the image though, the crystal is not in the actual scene. It's shot separately and composited into the shot. The detail accuracy is set to half a pixle and the shadow detail to one pixle. Because of that it would have taken over 70 hours to render the 300 frames of the scene. My solution was to shoot the scene with the crystal in it but with it set to 'invisible'. This way all of the light emitting properties of the crystal (because of the Anything Glows effect) would still illuminate the room and the figure but the render time could be cut down to about 6 hours. I then rendered a single frame of the crystal against a green background and then layered it into the scene (with Adobe After Effects CS4). I used the GLOW effect in AE and eye dropper tool to grab the color from the illumination to match up the crystal's glow with the scene. *whew that seems like a lot of text! LOL*

Having said that, you can use the 'Anything Glows' effect on the candle flames but there seems to be one drawback. Now I may be doing something wrong (being self taught I know how to get what I want but that doesn't mean I get it the easiest way or the best way possible) but when I use 'Anything Glows' on more than one object I have to use a different name for each object and an 'Anything Glows' for each object. You would have to have something like 'Flame1' and 'Anything Glows1', 'Flame2' and 'Anything Glows2' and so on. There might be a better way of doing it but I've not found it yet.

In all fairness though, Carrara has awesome information in the HELP file and I've read a lot of it but my brain can only hold so much data at a time. LOL

ArielSzataria - If you still have the scene saved, post a screen shot of the light you're talking about and I'll be able to tell you how to fix it.

** I don't like 3.5 rules because to me they are too much about the rules used to generate a character than the actual game play. The rules IMO should be like the sidelines on a football field - they are just there to frame the game - in 3.5 the rules ARE the game. I hate rules. LOL **

[volkov]

Thanks for the breakdown. I had done a couple small, lo-res tests with Anything Glows before, but nothing so involved yet. It sounds like you've got it down to a science.