Rosé's learning journey

LewdRose · Sep 6, 2019

Hey guys I'm new here! I've been learning about CG renders and art for about two months or so, but I can't get anyone to give me any feedback on my

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Maybe my stuff is just

but I figured I may get some useful criticism in a community of artists and developers.

This is my latest render

And these are some of the other ones.

Please do let me know what you think. I'm starved for some feedback, even if negative!!

Credit where it's due:

ellowas for the d.va model
pharahbestgirl for pharah model

Thanks for reading if you made it this far!

Saki_Sliz · Sep 7, 2019

I am going to guess you use Blender and it's cycle's engine just based on some of the noise patterns, and 3D models that I know are available.

I would say, in terms of lighting, you know what you are doing.

I would have two recommendations, one to improve the quality of meshes, and a bit about shaders.

Based on the image with the girl with ponytails, I can see the mesh as a limiting factor. Have you tried adding corrective smoothing to improve joints when posed (sometimes it overcorrects so you'll have to play with a slider or weight maps) and using subdivision to improve the mesh during rendertime? I usually use 3 subdivisions max to get the best mesh quality.

I would say the skin shader is alright, possibly room for improvment, but I wouldn't be able to say much other than copy what I do, but the subject is subjective and what I do may only work for me. I would also say play with the shaders/materials for things in the scene. for example, using these

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to make the desk look less basic, and maybe a bevel modifier on the upsidedown chain in front of the camera to make the shape look less computer-generated, more realistic. you can use the same site or others to get HDRI maps to use for the world, so that there is a background outside the window (also provides sunlight in some scenes).

Other than that, there is the topic of posing, which you are doing as well as can be so you are good there, and render settings, but that may be a bit excessive.

What focal length lense do you use, and what type of stuff do you hope to do with your art. I may be able to provide more feed back if I have an idea of what you are trying to do.

for examples I want to work on characters for nsfw games, pre rendered images not 3D games, and I find that I want to do full body images all the time so I can see how I am doing, but I know I'll only do thigh high in game as it allows me to zoom in without actually making a large image to zoom in on, so I have to tailor how I pose characters based on what kind of camera view they will have. and other gotcha's like that.

LewdRose · Sep 7, 2019

Thanks a lot! That's a lot more feedback than I had hoped for.

The renders are done with Cycles, V-Ray and Arnold. Yeah it's all over the place lol I'm trying to soak up as much information as possible and I'm trying pretty much anything I get my hands on.

I just started doing all this 3D stuff so I'm a bit overwhelmed by all the things one has to pay attention to. That girl with the ponytails, I actually did her three poses joint by joint

because I didn't know much about rigs and I just wanted to render something. I absolutely agree with you on adding imperfection to shaders and detailing the meshes some more. I heard about corrective blend shapes but they're a bit outside what I can do for now, I have no idea how to use them but I'll have to learn eventually. Actually, I wouldn't know how to use those imperfection maps either, but I suppose I'll figure it out. Should be plenty of tutorials out there.

About focal lengths, the D.Va render was done at 50 mm and the other ones except for the Pharah render were done at +100mm.

That trick about working full body but rendering thigh high is pretty neat. I think I should've done the two vertical renders like that.

As far as what I want to do I'm not really sure. I'm proficient with Unreal Engine so a 3D game is possible but I also like the idea of a VN. For now it's just a hobby though, rendering pretty girls is just fun even if I don't do anything with them. Ideally what I really want to do is learn to make my own models instead of using somebody else's assets, but I figured I might as well use them to practice and learn.

Again thanks a lot, I'll try and improve the shaders by adding imperfections for my next renders for sure.

Saki_Sliz · Sep 8, 2019

If you want to explore character creation, there are many tutorials, one of the people I think you should be aware of is

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, now they focus mostly on character scultping and only in the past few months have they done optimization for animateable characters. You do not have to creat a character by sculpting, but if that is something you explore, I would say this is the best person to learn scuplting from. you can make characters from draws, blocking, meshing. I find I tend to prefer to raw dog it and make the mesh raw just using lots of subdivisions to makes something closer to final quality while I work at the same time. Everyone is a little different. After character design, you have to optimize the character, and the key term you will want to know to search for on google is retopologize or retopology, which is creating a whole new mesh after a sculpt, it is probably the most amount of work in the whole process, followed by rigging, both are the most hated parts of character creation, but the two parts I have the most fun with.

A lot of the time used in 3D art is time making content for a 3D scene, so it is not uncommon to just buy the shapes (or be me and be thankful for the online community that share lots of free stuff), recently I have stopped making characters and I now use daz to make base characters, which I then sculpt on top of to make my characters, to help speed up the progress (plus I love how they did the shoulder topology, which is what I have the hardest time with when retopologizing my characters). I do have a skin shader you can use, but it is old an out of date, and I am working on an improved version currently.