I don’t think I traded insults with anyone Boozy…
I simply thought that the remark Was harsh and out of place.
There are much more tactile ways of opening a discussion.
I think it’s very easy to use harsh words on a forum.
Everyone is entitled to their opinions.
Lets just remember we can also be constructive.
Have a great day! 
Cesar Dacol Jr.
Aka, The Voodoo Monkey
Voodoo ofcoarse I agree 100%.
Methinks Davlin’s pillow talk may be a little intense for a first date. 
Thank you the Lemon for the squeeze on the Modo release.
@ boozie floozie : in fact, I think voodomonkey was talking about JFSebastian’s remark, not my post. I hope ! 
Sorry for my technical babbling, I tried to open the discussion on more specific use of SSS and translucy, taking on the opportunity from MM’s tests. I don’t pretend I know everything, so it is a great place to exchange informations and be able to learn more. 
Bye !
Davlin, Sorry if I cause you any grief.
You are correct in your observation.
No need for apologies, your points were well thought out and an attempt to dissect a solution.
Keep it coming.
Cheers
Cesar Dacol Jr.
Aka, The Voodoo Monkey
Dav,
Voodoo was indeed talking about Sebastians remark. As has been said this is a forum for Learning and while I am not the Pro here I know what I like and I know what I dislike. I have never seen anything MM has done that I Didn’t like. I might disagree with you over certain parts of your own analysis. Now then irregardless, Sebastian really is Entitled to his opinion and as I have said it takes Guts to come on a forum like this and say that. The only thing that bothers me is that along with the dislike of the image in question comes the comment about keeping MMs work to himself. Which brings us back to the point that this is indeed a Learning forum. Now how in the hell can a person learn on this forum if they keep their works to themselves? It “ain’t” possible 
Dav I think your remarks are constructive.
So (at) Sebastian, forget the rancor your post has caused and tell MM how he Can make the Image better in your opinion. Knowledge is important in the . learning process and there are a gazillion ways of doing the same thing. Redeem yourself, Forums are social in nature and any helpful comments you have would be appreciated 
Tartan
Looks like that old story about the king wearing no clothes, then a kid in the crowd pointed he was naked. Sorry to be that kid, but “the king is naked”.
@ voodoomonkey and Tartan : Thank you very much to the both of you.
@ JFSebastian : Showing stuff, even if it’s not the greatest piece of art, is often necessary if you want other people to help you, or/and to spark constructive discussions, and that regardless of the skills.
Even if I would be the king, I wouldn’t mind showing a simple cube, if it was useful to the comprehension.
Bye !
Wow! What a surprise this morning when I checked my email. I never dreamed when I posted a thumbnail of a test render to show Davlin a skull that I rendered that I thought was too waxy that it would cause so much uproar. Yes JFSebastian it is amateur work by an amateur. I have been doing this CG stuff for a little more than a year. I didn’t go to school I just started playing with it and am still trying to figure it out. I do it for fun it is not what I do for my profession. I posted it because I agreed with Devlin’s constructive criticism and wanted to show him an earlier render so that we could farther discuss trying to make realistic looking bone. The image that caused all of this was ,in fact, me playing around with a new software trying to see how different aspects of it work. How well does the image mapping function work, what does the wood procedural texture look like, let’s see what the transparency and refraction does,you know stuff like that. If I kept my test works to myself I wouldn’t have posted anything because basically they are all tests. I assuming that you are taking your own advice about keeping your test works to yourself as there are no images in your user gallery. Come on go a head and post something. I think that you will find that the majority of the people who post replies on this forum are nice and give very helpfull constructive criticisms.
Boozy, Modo 201 which is not out yet does in fact render and I am also playing with the beta LW9,which the first skull images were rendered in. I like them both and am having lots of fun playing with them. And yes I believe that Voodoo was referring to FUSebastians comments not Davlin"s
It would be really nice, in addition to the “add person to buddy list” function to have an “add person to ignore list”. That way when an obivous troll comes around you could hit the button, and not have to view their posts any more.
~Mike D.
I bet bicc39 will come around in a few minutes and will ask:
“What was the purpose of this thread again?”
Lemo :lol:
What was the purpose of this thread again?
Has anyone heard anything about Lemonnado’s rehab?
Monstermaker, I’d love to ask more questions on how your finding the new version of Lightwave but I think all Beta testers are sworn to keeping hush.
Seems to be taking ages to be released
I posted it because I agreed with Davlin’s constructive criticism and wanted to show him an earlier render so that we could farther discuss trying to make realistic looking bone.
That matter is still to be solved.
I’ll do some test renders this WE, to try and see for myself if I can get near a realistic bone. You started with a skull, I’ll use the same shape.
This will be also the occasion to try to do a dust-covered material too, something I do not have the slightest idea how to do it.
Monstermaker, if you have better results or progressed meanwhile, don’t hesitate to post, it should help me.
Bye !
I have learned by seeing Rick’s image and reading Davlin’s commentary. I don’t think it’s anything that I can put to use just yet, but it’s a definite addition to the slowly accumulating body of knowlege that will eventually hook up with something else in there.
Thanks!
Good morning folks,
I´d like to add some constructive criticism, hoping it helps getting
better results and adds more control when trying to achieve the
true artist´s vision in a somewhat hostile atmosphere like a 3D app…
A brief history about myself, to give people a base for judging my
opinion as stated below. I´m a postgrad student at a fine art college,
teach a fundamentals maya class there, work as an assistant graphics
artist pushing the [Next] button on a highend realtime titler in broadcast
some 5days/month and admire Rick Baker for his traditional anatomical skills.
I´ve looked at the wip images in this thread and must admit they indeed
look like made in the early nineties. Imho, mostly for the following reasons:
-
You have no bouncelight in your shadows, therefor the images tend to
become very dark and heavy and loose detail that would be defined through
subtile fill lights in an angle to the main lightsource. Coloring lights in a later
step would additionally add depth, the basic technique I halfdecently can
use is to give shadow parts a slight blueish tint and add warmth to the key. -
The cameraangles aren´t ideal, as they don´t help putting focus on an
area in the image. This also applies to the focal lenghts used, exept for
the one with the old man character, the image allready tells a story, is
staged pretty successful. Fritz Lang Metropolisposter with the Robotgirl? -
The third distracting thing may be the resolution of the testobjects,
without backroundinfo one could see them as amateurish, given the
huge difference of surfacedetail between skull and cross for example.
If you don´t mind, I´d like to add some tricks that help me designing things:
-For lighting, I work with basegrey materials, setting up the key as a
broad arealight (your arealight in the skull/cross images is too small)
and flood the image with shadow. I try to build up light by adding
fillers until I´m satisfied. I mostly suck, tho.
-
It´s great to have any sort of ambient oclusion pass to be used in comp,
it helps in getting out fine details by darkening caveats that would be lost
when lit directly. You could start by (de)activating cavity properties on
your shader and rendering it out. -
SSS is a bitchy thing as it´s difficult to control the amount of front and
backlight shatter with all those knobs…I mostly get it 25% right and then
take everything over to a compositing app to get to play with it more
before I return to finetune my results in the 3D app (if neccessary).
Here´s a link to a layered photoshop 7 document, play with the layers
to see different effects that would be tedious to re-render just for tests.
www.hafenlola.com/downloads/Ley_buddy_layers.psd (4Mb)
Preview:
I hope you find this useful, it´s not meant to be a shameless plug,
instead I´d like to give back on the great attitude you´ve displayed
in this forum. Allways helpful, kind and constructive.
Thank you,
tim
…very clever analysis of the SSS-subject ,Tim !..but i still think that Rick has the right to post,in his own thread, any test-render he likes, regardless of the fact that it could look better if he only had …!
This is not a Artist-forum for finished masterpieces but a Users-forum for discussing idea’s about Zbrush related topics in rendering ,modelling etc.
If a test-render would look like a finished work…it would no longer be a test-render…i rest my case
jantim
Just to clarify, I wouldn´t want to keep anyone from
posting images that don´t work out the way they where
supposed to be or that seem off for whatever reason.
I tried to share my findings since I think it´s about getting
to a point where you can do what you have had in mind.
If an image shows an effect that didn´t work out, that will
also help - especially if you get to the point where you know why…
Cheers
tim
Okay, I had a couple free hours to tweak a test of a realistic 3D bone.
Please, bear in mind that the model is crappy ( I found nothing but this one, no luck ! ) and that everything could be bettered ( UV’s unwrap, texture and lightning ). Tim’s advices were excellent, but in this case it is just a quick and humble SSS / texture test.
And I thought that, starting with a low-quality skull and trying to make it realistic anyway could be a good challenge.
All the maps were painted with ZBrush. Projection Master is really handy for these kind of things. But I guess Maya’s Hypershade could be more appropriate than Max’s material Editor to go farther in the SSS tweaking.
So, here are two pics, my 3D skull and a reference photo of a real human skull. If you guys think it could be useful to you, I’ll post my SSS setup and one or two tips.
Monstermaker, something I didn’t mention in my previous post was the specular factor, the way things are shining. Ask yourself what, in 3D, is the difference between plastic and metallic appearances. And then, look at you waxy skull.
Bye !
Attachments
Where did you find that skull? It’s better than my crappy one.
Monstermaker, something I didn’t mention in my previous post was the specular factor, the way things are shining. Ask yourself what, in 3D, is the difference between plastic and metallic appearances. And then, look at you waxy skull.
i must say it’s hard to believe a guy that make multi million dollar effects, made this image, and did’t noticed those issues…MAN QUIT COMPUTERS THEY ARE BAD FOR YOUR SKILLS 