Hi, Does anyone know of a good tutorial that covers all aspects of post-rendering techniques? Just curious, because as a newbie, I've been finding myself a little mystified by the post-rendering phase of the process. In particular, I'm trying to learn how to make my Poser people seem less stiff and more realistic looking. I'm using Photoshop 5, but I also have Paint Shop Pro. Can anyone offer any suggestions or point me in the right direction? Thanks! Daniel daniel@danielchicago.com

A good start would be Will Kramer's EarthCurves: http://earthcurves.com/index.htm He has some excellent Post render tutorials, they're toward the bottom of the page. Not to mention gorgeous art. Regards- Lemurtek

Will Kramer's tutorials are the only ones I know of too, and they are very very good. Paul

out of curiosity what do you want in a post render tutorial? I am taking the rest of the week off now that everything for my gallery opening is done, and I just might find the time to write one or at least start.

I am personally interested in how to make lightning bolts using Photoshop.....I am very familiar with it since I have been using it for 4 years now. But I mainly do restorations or 2d work and create effects using kpt filters and brushes....would I draw a lightning bolt using lasso and fill and blur?

i would use eye candy xenofex it has a great lightning plug in. make a layer behing your poser pic. open in photoshop. For background lightning use the lightning plugin on a new layer until you get the effect you want put that layer behind you poser figure and erase the background in the poser pic. For forground lightning there is a set of lightning bolt dfx's which I am sure someone here can point you to and render them in the poser scene with what ever texture map you see fit.

heya; there's a photoshop script thingy (whatever they're called) called dr storm that you can get. it creates random lightning-looking things by using difference clouds... (now if i can remember where i got it...) actions, that's what they're called! and the url is http://digitaldesign.home.ml.org (or so it says.) if you want to paint lightning in a more controlled manner... i use paths. draw the path of the lightning bolt, then choose a large airbrush, low opacity, pale blue (or whatever colour you want the bolt to be) colour. stroke the path a couple of times, then change the airbrush nozzle to a smaller size, and make the colour closer to white. keep doing that 'til you get down to a white core.

Brad, Well, like I said before, I want to know what I can do to make my Poser people look less stiff and more realistic after they've been rendered. Also, should I use something else besides Poser to render? Daniel daniel@danielchicago.com

maybe look for a more realistic texture to start with. I export mine as obj and render in bryce and think they look much better.