Caught in the Tuna Net

Out of the blue, for no reason whatsoever and in the interests of better communications, some (possibly new) smileys:

o_0 < - "This is bizzarro"
0_o <- "Yep, still strange"
=_0 <- "Let's try with one eye to see if it looks any better"
0_= <- "Maybe close the other eye?"
=_= <- *squint* or, "I take a dim view of this"
0_0 <- "Yikes!"
>_< <- "Godammit"
8_8 <- "Aliens clearly invented this"
@_@ <- "Holy cow!" or big puppy-dog eyes
9_9 <- "There they go again", eyes rolling
Q_Q <- "Uh oh"
*_* <- "I. Want. That."
6_9 <- "I've gone completely nuts!"
T_T <- *sniffle*
^_^ <- smile
n_n <- even smilier
>.> <- “Do you think they noticed?”
<.< <- “Nope, don’t think they did”
.__. <- “Bored now. Can I leave?”
x_X <- “Kill me now, please” i.e., Friday afternoons and early Monday mornings
~_^ = *wink!*

* * *
You may now return to your regularly scheduled serious business.

This past fall (2009) we went up to Lake Pointe Inn at Deep Creek, Md, and I concur with the opinion that it is the best B&B in the tri-state area. Not at all pretentious, but beautifully decked out in an Arts&Crafts/Prairie style; well-managed by people who care about both their property and their guests VERY much; outstanding breakfasts, lots of little treats included; and pretty much set up for couples. They were very good to us!

It was drizzly and wet when we got there and for the next day as well. However, on Sunday and Monday the weather cleared for some classic mountain/fall foliage, a last hurrah for the season. Monday found us on our way to see both of the local Frank Lloyd Wright houses, Kentuck Knob and Falling Water. So much to take in! And so wonderful to see.

Most often heard comment: “Was FLW really short?” The houses tended to very cramped spaces compared to what modern builders think people prefer. On the other hand, being very short, myself, I thought: “Hey! Someone built houses to my scale!” Which is about 3/4 of average.

Another thing you’ll notice is that you don’t see the insides of the houses, either Kentuck Knob or Fallingwater. This is because the foundation that owns the houses keeps very tight control over photography and allows NO photography inside. You either buy the books (which are everywhere) or remember the experience all the more keenly for it being so brief.

So, is there really a tardis masquerading as a sculpture in the Kentuck Knob sculpture garden? You be the judge.

First comes the Inn, then some shots of little Cumberland, MD nearby, which had a wonderful old train station and some nifty old buildings. Then Fallingwater and then Kentuck Knob. Pix are annotated.

Herewith the gallery:

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

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This saved from a discussion in the DAZ3D forums:

Thanks, Nano.

Using Semidieu’s Advanced Render Setting script, I got the normal render, a depth cue render (alpha), and two alpha mats done in under 3 hours. …

Aha, I believe you mentioned Semidieu’s script in an earlier thread. Do you recommend getting the whole package or just the alpha’s? (They sell the alpha’s script separately as well and, given the March Madness, my budget is pretty much maxed.)

If you have the $20, I’d get the Advanced Render Settings, which gets you a whole slew of tools in one go. Tools you will use. Especially if you have Poser 7 Pro.

Or you can spend $10 and get passes and alphas (you’ll want both) and spend a lot more time fiddling with them. This don’t work *quite* as satisfactorily as the bigger kit, for me.

The motion blur was done and then composited so that it didn’t rub out the Oni’s details too much.

Also, I may be a bit thick this morning, but did you do the motion blur in postwork as well or in poser? If it is done in poser and I know it can be done, can somebody explain how? If it was done in postwork, then also, how?
I feel like such a tube/newbie. (Which in fairness I still am, have only really done this for a year now.)

Depth cue is from the Render Passes script.

Motion blur…in Poser, but again, not as easy to control, and things like depth cue and blur slow your render down dramatically if you have your render set for high/final quality. I have Photoshop and have used it for many years, so I’m quite comfortable with doing postwork…your experience my differ.

How I do motion blur in Photoshop varies. In this case, I recall this was about what I did:

1. Use alpha mat for the Oni figure to create a selection and copy of him out of the render layer.
2. Save that as new layer directly above.
3. Use motion blur filter on that new layer. Hmm, can’t see his face that well now, details too blurred.
4. With the blur layer still selected, used alpha mat to create a selection and this time feathered the selection some.
5. Deleted within that selection. Now I can see him better!
6. May have fiddled with blur layer opacity and blend mode after that.

Addendum about alphas masks:

These are black and white images that are put into the Channels palette below the usual R, G, B & composite channels. White is “show” and black is “hide”. The Alpha mask renders that you get out of Poser are about 1 pixel too large (you get ugly edges unless you contract them by 1 pixel), but they are far, far more accurate and time-saving than trying to make a selection yourself.

You click the selection icon in the Channels palette and the white parts become a selection. The beauty of this lies in the use of grayscale in these channels, and that you can paint or modify them the way you do layers to a large degree, thereby giving you a LOT of control over your selections and masks. Want soft edges? Apply a Gaussian blur. Need something to fade gently? Apply a gradient.

Thus, the depth cue image is grayscale…and if you go back to the layers palette, make a new layer of your render (saving the old one, just in case) and use the Lens Blur filter, you would identify that depth cue channel as your mask. Now you can adjust how much blur, how much noise and such in realtime. Awesome! It’s like fixing the F-stop on the fly. How good is that? That’s why I do that. No need to take forever re-rendering because the depth cue wasn’t what you wanted.

Earlier Discussions:

• Artistic Depth of Field
• Masks and Render Passes

Getting sets for Poser is like reading real estate ads: sounds great and the photo looks good, but you need really walk around in them to find out what they’re like. They’re never as good as they sound. Mind you, there’s theoretically nothing wrong with a set made to be used at a distance. However, I like to work into the nooks and crannies of a set. Who the heck spends their time standing out in an empty space surrounded by grand structures? Not me and not my figments, that’s for sure. I also do not do cartoon images. I like my renders realistic.

And why the heck won’t they tell us when a set is not made for closeups? Are closeups only made for interiors? GRRR.

With those requirements in mind, I have a huge beef here: a lot of interesting sets available for Poser and Studio (and even Carrara) are actually NOT made to be used up close or even in the mid distance. What makes this the case?

• low resolution textures for the surface covered: nastily blurry and artifact-y when rendered at medium distance (within about 12 Poser feet)
• edges that are too sharp and too clean on old or worn buildings
• textures that are too regular or have moire patterns
• lack of mesh detail and general boxiness

These lists will be updated periodically. I’m not finished by a long shot with this!

The Roll Call of Crummy Sets

I’m not going to bag on the freebies—you get what you pay for.

Roll Call of Good Sets

None of them are perfect, but these are pretty darned good.

Fox Demon: Chusont'rai Shen-ro

My revelation with regards to lighting in Poser (I use 7 pro) began with the purchase of Blackhearted’s BH Pro Studio, over at Rendo. The tutorial alone in that product is worth the price, as I’m sure we’ve said here a bunch over the past year. Smile But the main thing I took away was using an IBL as a bit of fill light, and a different use of point and spot lights than most people start out with.

Point Lights

I used to think “Point lights = candles” or some other such specific point source. Well, that’s still true, but what I discovered is that you can get your textures to really sing if you use point lights and set a falloff range, like DistEnd = 6 (feet). Or whatever. (At least I think that’s close to the name of the parameter.) Rolling Eyes The trick is to position a light so the figure is near the edge of its falloff zone. Not for every light in the scene–that depends on the logic of the scene itself. And how bright the scene is supposed to be. And if the falloff is right but the light too dark, set it to over 100%. I will often set falloffs to just past the distance between the light and the main figure, with 120% brightness.

Set shadows to 0.77 to 0.88 or even lower, sometimes – not to 1.0. A 1.0 setting makes them not so much dark as just smudgy. They should be mysterious and transparent, not *black*–a sensibility I acquired as a painter. But I *always* use raytraced shadows on every light except IBLs (of course).

I do not put ambient occlusion on the lights–it tends to give you that X-files black-oil-eyes look with the effects of soot caught in the creases of everything. Yuck.

Spot Lights

I also discovered that you can do similar things with spot lights and get some wonderful looming-out-of-the-dark effects. Use a point light for the main light, set up an IBL (at about 40% brightness for starters), and then, if you need some more illumination with directionality, create a spot light with a very narrow End Angle, such as 20 to 45 degrees, and put it far away–like 20 poser-feet, so the light is spreading a lot by the time it hits your main figure, and use a falloff to just cover the back of the visible scene. Again, put shadows to 0.88.

Also, set all shadow biases to 0.333 or even 0.222. The default 0.888 comes out too grainy. I never use shadow maps.

I also use some helper scripts for lighting by SemiDieu over at RDNA to more easily create and delete lights. His IBL creation script will make what is called “Olivier’s IBL”, which lets you specify six colors for the IBL regions to match your scene! Very worthwhile. I generally love SemiDieu’s utility scripts.

And every time I add or adjust a light, I do a ray-traced test render at screen portal size and fairly low-quality settings, just to check things out. The thing that lets me know if the lights are doing their job, most specifically, is if the shadows give a proper feeling of shape, or “modeling” as it is used in painting. FYI, I will almost never, ever, have a main light straight face on, full face to the camera, either, for this reason–it comes out looking like a bad flash photograph and flat as hell, both in terms of modeling and texture response to the lights.

In the pic below, I used points, spot, and IBL as described. While it’s not the most compelling image in the world, the lighting works fairly well.

Clicky for larger…

Sorrows' Soldiers: Kerry

Mind you, I still do postwork. Poser lights may, even with a lot of effort, still not come out with a sufficient dynamic range of light and dark in the image, so some small adjustment in Photoshop may be required to get a more dramatic effect. I will also add a subtle color cast and pump up the saturation a little–not a whole lot, mind you–using Mystical Tone Tint & Color 2 filters, which have been worth every penny. The point of doing any of that is to hone in on the picture’s focal point and give unity to the image, using light, shadow, and overall tone.

(Oh…and please, please, do not get ultra-happy with the Photoshop filters. I swear, most of them should be tried out and forgotten. Forever. Or used very, very sparingly.)