Attached Link: Bloodsong's Gallery

heyas; i had to grab keoto's really cool pharaoh guys (or at least this one, which is the gold one) and try out this scene idea with a panther. (that's not the panther, it's the p4 lion, actually.) and, uh... this is the result, and i just don't like it. i couldn't get the skin tone to turn out right. in poser, i tried mixing skin textures with a dark material base to get nice, rich dark skin. but vue doesn't do materials AND texture maps, so i tried to mix materials to fake it. didn't work well at all. i couldn't seem to tip the balance to the dark colour and not totally lose the texture map. (in poser, the texture map was set to like 75%, not full strength.) this is the size/proportions for the zygote calendar contest. it's just a tad too wide, so i end up with empty edges. i dunno, maybe some papyrus in there? i don't want to spread out the figures and the torches too much, they'll lose their cohesion. the fake heat-haze bit turned out... um, a bit strong! that's a plane with my air shader, and some horizontal ripple bumping and refraction. the pyramids... bleh. i turned up the fog and haze to fade them into the distance, but they should really be darker, as the sun is behind them. maybe i should put them over a hill. any other ideas? (nothing too complicated, i hope!)

bloodsong, I know the feeling WELL about working all day on something in Vue and not being happy with it. Big difference is, you know what you're doing and I don't! Vue does seem to have some annoying little habits and limitations, but hell if I can as of yet figure out how to work around them without asking someone else. Far as your picture goes,though, the other day I was working on one and had a similar problem as far as trying to make the background objects "fade" a bit more, and i just ended up putting a huge cube between the foreground and background so it filled the whole scene, and then I txtured it with a smoke sort of material... I think I mixed it with a glass material as well, and after a few hours of messing around with the transparencies and the size and thickness of the cube, I almost got what I was after. I'm sure you've already though of that, but you DID say, "nothing too complicated"! Fortunately, I'm not capable of giving complicated advice! LOL As far as the skin texture goes, I haven't even yet reached the point of even trying to alter it or anything, so I would have nothing to say about that. Otherwise, I really like the overall composition--has a nice balance to it. Cheers, Mike

Hmmm...no help on the skin color, but on the heat haze is there a way you can increase the space between the ripples and the size of the ripples themselves? Right now they look "squashed" or compressed downwards. I would increase them in an upwards direction to get more of that "shimmer" effect that I think you were looking for. I wouldn't change the height of the planes, just the height of the haze texture itself. Oh heck, I don't know how to describe it but I think you have an idea of what I'm talking about? Kate

Problem #1: A reflecting surface is never brighter than the original light source. In this picture, the sand is much brighter than the sun. Problem #2: A reflecting surface will be affected by the color of the original light. Once again, that's not the case with the sand in the picture. As for the skin texture, I'd adjust the brightness and constrast of the texture map in a paint program till it came out the way I wanted. SMT

heyas; i know what you mean, kate, i was messing with the bump for that, trying to get it right. in the preview there were less smeary lines, so i thought i almost had it. maybe i will try a vertical bump instead.... mike, i can usually get what i want for the distance effect using haze and fog. but the fog kinda lightens the shadows, too :/ the sand is brighter than the sun?? oh! you mean the sandstone thingy the guy and cat are standing on? um, er, that's lit by the torches, yeah! ;) thanks, guys. dunno if i'll be messing with it, though; got two other things going relatively well for the zygote contest... and just found out the measurements the rules give are wrong, so gotta re-change my composition again... ::sigh:: how bout you guys, are you doing anything for the zygote calendar contest? how about the ripple effect halloween contest?

I'm too swamped with other stuff right now to do anything for the contests sigh I'd love to do a rendering of some of my favorite disney villains tho...can just see them sitting around a kitchen table somewhere swapping recipes giggle Kate

heyas; aw, bummer. paying 'stuff,' i hope ;) you have disney villains in poser? which ones??

Nah, don't have disney villains in poser - YET g Wish I did. someone did a snow white queen a while back that looked good...don't know where it went tho.

oh, bummer. cuz maleficent rocks ;) maybe we need to snag disneyfan... ;)

Yeah...that's what we need...Oh Disneyfan...yoohoooo... Maleficent is my favorite, too.

bloodsong, Have you got it figured out yet? if you do, I'd love to hear about it! The haze/fog stuff is really starting to get the better of me. Do you know of any tutorials "out there" for that stuff? Cheers, Mike

well... it's fairly simple, really. haze is good for far away stuff. mainly it is for blurring the line between the sky and horizon. you pick a haze colour (usually it is light blue or greyish), and crank up the dial for more haze. it's kinda like the difference between a clear day and a foggy or humid day. if you do like i do, and make 'forced perspective' landscapes (ie: those distant mountains aren't as distant as they look, they're just scaled that way), haze may not fog out your stuff the way you want it to. in this case, use distance fog. pick a colour just like you did for haze. then slide the amount slider over. watch the little enigmatic picture of the line that kinda makes a backwards checkmark squeeze together. the line on the left represents the front of the fog bank, and the line on the right... i think that represents the picture plane where the camera is. so as you increase the fog, you're moving it towards the camera, and can even cover up the camera and go beyond it. well, anyway, i usually play with the sliders, then do a quick render to see where the fog ended up, or if the haze hazed out my stuff yet. ;)