My first render!

Jimbles

Newbie
Aug 30, 2017
58
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One thing I've found is there's always room for improvement. However, for a first render, or even as a beginner this looks pretty good. Good job, keep it up.
 
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Rich

Old Fart
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Jun 25, 2017
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As others said, a nice job for a first render. So, a little constructive criticism, since that's what I'm assuming you're looking for. (I'm far from the world's expert, but I've learned a few things, so...)

First, your lighting is a little flat. Normally, you're going to want the lighting to help emphasize the figure to which you want the reader's (watcher?) attention drawn. Here, the background wall is quite bright - appears it's lit by lights from the ceiling. Nothing wrong with that. Your figure, however, doesn't have any direct lighting to make her "pop" out of the background. What you might try is adding one or two spotlights, positioned off to the right and left of the camera, directed at her. That'll help her stand out a bit more. Google a bit for "three point lighting" - it's a common technique. You may not have room in the scene for the rim light (unless you use a ghost light), but adding at least a key light will, I think, make a big difference. (Lighting is HARD, btw - don't take this as a ding against your efforts. But it can make or break a scene, as photographers and filmmakers have long since discovered.)

In addition, while the body poses are pretty good, the face and head of the figure has kind of the "zombie stare" - looking dead straight into the camera. You'll get a significantly more human look if you twist and tilt the head slightly and then re-adjust the eyes to point back at the camera. It's rare for people to actually look dead straight ahead. The twist or tilt or twist+tilt doesn't have to be much - it's amazing what just a small amount will do.

You might want to consider sinking her knees into the bed just a smidge. That will probably require adjusting the knee bend just a bit so that her feet aren't then too deeply into the bed.

Finally, on your second shot - if she's "covering herself in surprise," her hands are likely to be more tightened up. Her left hand is more likely to be either cupping her breast, or at least bent in around it, and the right hand is likely to have the fingers more tightly together. Everything except the hands suggests tension, but the hands appear relatively relaxed. (Of course, you could be in a situation where she's relaxing slightly after the moment of tension, but in that case the left arm would probably not be so tightly against her body.)

As I said, very nice job for someone who's just getting started. Please don't think I'm trying to tear you to shreds - all of this is stuff I either discovered the hard way, or learned from others who were kind enough to coach me. Just trying to pass it along.

Happy to keep discussing this kind of thing with you if you like.

P.S., if you REALLY wanted to get advanced, you'd add D-formers to the top of the bed so that her knees would have the appearance of compressing the covers somewhat. But that's like Lesson 37 - right now we're on Lesson 3 or 4. (You're clearly well past #1 and #2... LOL)
 
Aug 2, 2017
75
311
As others said, a nice job for a first render. So, a little constructive criticism, since that's what I'm assuming you're looking for. (I'm far from the world's expert, but I've learned a few things, so...)

First, your lighting is a little flat. Normally, you're going to want the lighting to help emphasize the figure to which you want the reader's (watcher?) attention drawn. Here, the background wall is quite bright - appears it's lit by lights from the ceiling. Nothing wrong with that. Your figure, however, doesn't have any direct lighting to make her "pop" out of the background. What you might try is adding one or two spotlights, positioned off to the right and left of the camera, directed at her. That'll help her stand out a bit more. Google a bit for "three point lighting" - it's a common technique. You may not have room in the scene for the rim light (unless you use a ghost light), but adding at least a key light will, I think, make a big difference. (Lighting is HARD, btw - don't take this as a ding against your efforts. But it can make or break a scene, as photographers and filmmakers have long since discovered.)

In addition, while the body poses are pretty good, the face and head of the figure has kind of the "zombie stare" - looking dead straight into the camera. You'll get a significantly more human look if you twist and tilt the head slightly and then re-adjust the eyes to point back at the camera. It's rare for people to actually look dead straight ahead. The twist or tilt or twist+tilt doesn't have to be much - it's amazing what just a small amount will do.

You might want to consider sinking her knees into the bed just a smidge. That will probably require adjusting the knee bend just a bit so that her feet aren't then too deeply into the bed.

Finally, on your second shot - if she's "covering herself in surprise," her hands are likely to be more tightened up. Her left hand is more likely to be either cupping her breast, or at least bent in around it, and the right hand is likely to have the fingers more tightly together. Everything except the hands suggests tension, but the hands appear relatively relaxed. (Of course, you could be in a situation where she's relaxing slightly after the moment of tension, but in that case the left arm would probably not be so tightly against her body.)

As I said, very nice job for someone who's just getting started. Please don't think I'm trying to tear you to shreds - all of this is stuff I either discovered the hard way, or learned from others who were kind enough to coach me. Just trying to pass it along.

Happy to keep discussing this kind of thing with you if you like.

P.S., if you REALLY wanted to get advanced, you'd add D-formers to the top of the bed so that her knees would have the appearance of compressing the covers somewhat. But that's like Lesson 37 - right now we're on Lesson 3 or 4. (You're clearly well past #1 and #2... LOL)
Thanks! I'll make sure to use these tips going forward!
 
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Cyan

Member
Jul 25, 2017
126
551
In addition, while the body poses are pretty good, the face and head of the figure has kind of the "zombie stare" - looking dead straight into the camera. You'll get a significantly more human look if you twist and tilt the head slightly and then re-adjust the eyes to point back at the camera. It's rare for people to actually look dead straight ahead. The twist or tilt or twist+tilt doesn't have to be much - it's amazing what just a small amount will do.

You might want to consider sinking her knees into the bed just a smidge. That will probably require adjusting the knee bend just a bit so that her feet aren't then too deeply into the bed.
I was trying to put my finger on what was off about the image, and I think you're on the right track. The face looks good IMO, but the position of the body seems really off to me. Of course, there's the sinking into the bed issue, but the center of her gravity is tilted (not necessarily an issue), and shes leaning far too forward for her thighs to be that vertical. It would be a very uncomfortable position to sit in for long.

If she pulled he knees toward the camera and put more 'weight' onto her legs, it would look a lot more natural to me. If you look at it just right, it looks like she doesn't have calves.

Still, great images for first and second render.
 

Jimbles

Newbie
Aug 30, 2017
58
81
Like I said before, this is really good for a beginning render. If you're actually looking for constructive criticism on this though, here's what I would change:
  1. Lighting: The background in the scene is well lit and though there is also some light on the characters front. The bright lights in the background are causing a your character to become back-lit (bright background dark foreground). Though this happens in real life, it's generally not what we're going for in renders. So I'd dim down the intensity on the background lights. Also, I'd add a spotlight in the foreground on the character to help bring her out.
  2. Shading: You might adjust your characters glossy layered weight, to give her skin a little more shine. Not a lot, but it looks like this scene has some really bright lighting and her skin is kind of dulling it out.
  3. Clipping: In the first picture, it looks like she has some clipping going on with the top of her underwear. This should be a simple fix, if you open your shaping tab/window and select the panties in the scene tab, you should see the options to adjust them to fix this problem.
  4. Material and Shaders: I personally don't like the materials used for the bed. The wood looks stretched for the material resolution and should be tiled more to reduce this. Though I think the blankets are supposed to be satin, they have too much gloss and are too smooth making them look glassy.
  5. Posing: As others have mentioned, she's not sinking into the bed, however, without a moldable asset or the use of a secondary processing program like Photoshop, it's hard to make "sinking" look good in Daz; so I wouldn't really worry about that. Also, someone else mentioned her balance, I'm not sure if it's the angle, lighting, or actual pose, but she does look like she has her thighs vertical with her upper body leaning slightly forward, like she's getting ready to fall onto her face. Lastly, Daz doesn't always do a good job with bending parts, and her ankles are a prime example of that, because they look like she just got her legs smashed in with a bat. This isn't your fault, just one of the limitations of Daz. However, I would twist or bend her legs and adjust her feet, or do something so it's not so obvious.
Also, it obviously takes more time, but higher resolutions usually make for prettier renders. Those are the main things I would change. However, like I said, for a beginner, it's not bad at all.
 
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