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pjacubinas β€” Subtle Light

Published: 2014-04-18 04:17:52 +0000 UTC; Views: 19296; Favourites: 662; Downloads: 640
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Description First off, this was rendered in DAZ3D...but,come on! Seriously? how in the hell did i miss the lecture on "indirect light camera"? I've been screwing around with all this amient light bs for so long, trying out every friggin' lighting rig that comes along. they all (for one reason or another) suck. period.

This is a very simple set up: one advanced spotlight set to 130% through the window, advanced ambient light at 8% (yes EIGHT) and one spot set to 60%

the camera is an indirect light camera and that's it. nothing else. render time was under 30 minutes.

working out the kinks, and i will post more later.
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Comments: 26

Beerjedi [2014-04-22 19:58:56 +0000 UTC]

Overall

Vision

Originality

Technique

Impact


I have been following Devientart for a year now while I taught myself Blender for a retirement project.

Why does this picture grab me so when I have seen so many thousands of others.

Its a mood, light captured and held, a moment that draws you in, I said in my comment that it reminds me of those old Sci-fi covers that set out to do the same thing. Its a moment you want to step into, and that in the end is surely what art, any art is really about, if it doesn't draw you in, its technical perfection is irrelevant. After all, these days we are pretty much saturated by technically near perfect imagery, how much of it do we remember.

So what's right about this that makes it work so well, I'm exploring this as I go because I want to know the answer, probably more than you do.

The girl: she sits poised, believably balanced, her centre of gravity where the observer is comfortable to believe it should be, although she herself is not perhaps comfortable; her elbows on her knees her head forward listening, caught in her own moment, there is a tension here that is subtle and implicit and maybe not intentional (only the artist can know that) but it works. There is a latency too, she is escaping but not for long, soon a sore back and numb bottom will drag her back to her reality. Positioning her down slightly into the mattress is a nice touch, it adds to her solidity, gives her believable weight. Again if it were not so we might not notice but the mood would be broken and maybe we wouldn't even know why.

I have only used Daz as a resource for posed models that I import into other programmes (lately Blender), my loss incidentally, but I know how difficult these highly reflexive poses are and how subtly clever this one is.

The setting: I understand the room is a given but an off duty soldier or spaceman with pinups and girly mags. would have had to work a lot harder to sell this image. The cleverness here is juxtaposition between the room and the girl; another level of tension, an emphatic case of less is more.

Lighting: Here I think you really have nailed it. Lighting is the mood, even more than photography, light is what we work with. There is just enough detail in the shadow to fill in the mood of the room, the pool of light on the empty floor and then the cubicle itself it draws the attention in. The only question worth asking is, if it were technically more photorealistic would it be any better. Maybe but my instinct is that hours of tweaking could produce something better but the difference is likely to be technical and marginal but, since its generally easier to break a thing than make it, I suspect we can all go round in a huge circle and end up more or less where we started but with a massive render overhead and complexity that no one can really see. Here its knowing when to stop, the difference between a great short story and a forgettable novel. One of the things that has put me off submitting my own work until now is the tendency for CGArtists to get horribly bogged down in the technical complexities and we all know there are enough of those. Some of the Blender forums are actually not that encouraging, heated arguments over minute subtleties and the punch line is that on the average hd tv or monitor you can't even see the difference and never more so than lighting, my monitor doesn't look like yours my TV not like either of them.

Layout and distant view: I put these two together because if there is anything in this composition that doesn't quite get there for me its the view through the window but compositionally I can see it could be tricky to change. Its not for me to say what I would put there. That would be insulting to you as an artist and I get the neat juxtaposition of the buildings balancing the girl leading the eye across but for me its ever so slightly predictable. A missed opportunity, I'm thinking Ian M Banks and the Culture, M john Harrison particularly 'Light', something subtly strange vaguely worrying. But there's the rub because if it grabs you too hard we don't even notice the girl and that kills it stone dead. The trick is make it serve its compositional purpose first so that we only notice the strangeness after. Neat trick if you can do it, I recon you could.

Enough of this I'm boring myself now.

Thanks keep it up

Colink

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Shimeri [2016-08-07 00:02:00 +0000 UTC]

Awesome effect

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MASCH-ART [2016-06-12 14:18:04 +0000 UTC]

super work

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MitooshiFang [2014-05-17 04:21:42 +0000 UTC]

Want to live here......

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Meema [2014-04-26 03:18:11 +0000 UTC]

Lovely.

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tora-no-shi1369 [2014-04-25 17:25:19 +0000 UTC]

Great work. Haven't heard of the indirect light camera. Of course I am new to all of this.

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AOGRAI [2014-04-25 00:31:22 +0000 UTC]

HEY THERE! You've been away for quite awhile… nice job as always.

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jdavison67 [2014-04-24 16:54:28 +0000 UTC]

I'm with you!
I have been fighting with this myself.
Thanks for the post!

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Brendan-Toy [2014-04-24 10:34:30 +0000 UTC]

very Ghost In The Shell like it

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Minidarkcalibur89 [2014-04-22 23:27:43 +0000 UTC]

Nice !

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Beerjedi [2014-04-22 15:44:27 +0000 UTC]

This does it for me.
I go back far enough to remember the Sci-fi covers of the 60's and 70's (actually the late 50's if I'm honest) I can't tell you how many short story compilations I bought back then on the strength of moody and inspired cover art. This captures a moment and a mood.

Thanks

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AdrianMarkGillespie [2014-04-20 12:49:02 +0000 UTC]

Fanatastic composition, beautifully executed! I particularly love how you have achieved that slightly polished floor. The work with lighting is excellent.

Regards,

M

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wasabiiid [2014-04-20 00:51:30 +0000 UTC]

Amazing job! Would I be able to use this as a background for a music video for my youtube channel?

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Mad-Geo [2014-04-19 01:15:59 +0000 UTC]

Looks very good.

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ViperAnaf [2014-04-19 00:03:24 +0000 UTC]

u know art is good when it touches your soul and makes you want to be in it

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BlueIlCaterpillar [2014-04-18 23:39:36 +0000 UTC]

Oh my God .

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CHEYENNE75 [2014-04-18 19:40:50 +0000 UTC]

great image with "stonemason Sci-Fi Bedroom"

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Nathan8688 [2014-04-18 18:29:55 +0000 UTC]

Amazing piece of Art!, I wonder if you are collaborating with others, I could have sworn I've seen a similar room with a similar character in another art.

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NekoSore In reply to Nathan8688 [2014-04-27 20:55:27 +0000 UTC]

The room was made by a guy/team called "Stonemason", there are several online shops with different vendors whom sell everything from exteriors, interiors (like this sci-fi bedroom), clothes, characters and what not so it's not unique in that sense. Still it's amazing to see what people do with it, I've seen several renders use this scene with a different take and they all look great.

If you're interested look up Daz3d or Poser, it's like playing with digital high-rez mannequins and it can result in some amazing renders if you know how to work light and a camera.

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Forsaken59 [2014-04-18 16:13:14 +0000 UTC]

I can see the issue with the lighting. But despite that I like the mood, and it looks full day outside with only so much light to illuminate the cabin. Makes my mind wonder on living in such a place could have some effect on emotions.

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deskridge [2014-04-18 13:01:24 +0000 UTC]

Excellent!

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jerry001 [2014-04-18 12:52:34 +0000 UTC]

great render

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shirowfan [2014-04-18 12:08:23 +0000 UTC]

Somehow, it reminds me of the first scene of the first Ghost in the Shell movie. Nice athmosphere. Beautiful work.

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Matsuyuki-Kenjiro [2014-04-18 10:41:54 +0000 UTC]

Really beautiful and sad in the same time...

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wolvesbreath [2014-04-18 10:29:04 +0000 UTC]

I like it, It has a feeling of watching someone through a low resolution surveillance camera, and you start to wonder about the story of the person and why she is under surveillance

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The-Psychonaut [2014-04-18 04:33:41 +0000 UTC]

Thank you for not being lame and blocking comments on this page. To wit, this composition is top shelf.

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