Thought I'd start a random render thread. Nothing serious. Till Saturday I have some work in a gallery here in oz. Edition of 10. Has been a good response. 60 by 50 cm on fancy German or Dutch  water colour paper, pigment print. "The New Faith." 

Very nice. I'll have to look around for a few random renders - I know I have a few. 

It will be fun to see what turns up in this thread!

It is nice to see something done that is such art, as opposed to animation or illustration. Eyecatching!

Thank you Mark, looking forward to that . ,,!

Thanks Sueposer. The show is called Pattern Observation.  Though I am a painter, I was invited to show as a digital artist. I was also invited to participate in an en plein air event a few months ago - as a digital artist! Pretty strange sitting outside with my laptop ....

its tis good to see our work being gradually accepted here by other more traditional artists. 

Thank you Mark, looking forward to that . ,,!

Thanks Sueposer. The show is called Pattern Observation.  Though I am a painter, I was invited to show as a digital artist. I was also invited to participate in an en plein air event a few months ago - as a digital artist! Pretty strange sitting outside with my laptop ....

its tis good to see our work being gradually accepted here by other more traditional artists. 

So nice you said it twice. Heh, heh.

Really like the image, by the way. You've got a style I really like.

Ha ha ! Yes I am twigger happy ! Thanks for liking that ! ;) 

Double plus good.

 Thanks Eldritch !

 Something else, a poster for a show  from a few years ago. I ended up doing a painting of this, took 3 months... gah!

You're very talented, and I don't toss such things around lightly. I hesitate to make blanket judgements but in general there seems to be a pretty high level of talent and/or vision in the Carrara community, comparatively speaking that is. Just something I've noticed.

 Thank you, that's very kind. I am lucky enough to be a painter who came to three d work about 12 years ago. I've been working with a ny agent for about three years who is very very hard to please, doing mainly wordless kids books (I do the images over and over and over ;) until she is happy so I get lots of practice) So far she hasn't been able to sell any as they are bit 'unusual.' I've been rejected by all the best NY publishers so far - their one common critique is that my work looks too CG , sadly. So I will sit down for a month or two soon and look at other working methods (within Carrara).

Carrara users, yes they are in the main highly intelligent and some are fabulous artists. I'm not sure why, maybe because Carrara is such a good package that people can take a commercial product and bash it around till it is their own. Of course you can build stuff in Carrara if you want - so all sorts of people are attracted to the software.

I think it's versatility might be it's death knell as far as Daz future development for various reasons. ;)

I'm sure you will figure something out headwax. Your images look far less CG than most, so I think you are going in the right direction.

I came across an application a while back that generates brushstrokes from an image based on user input at different places on the image, rather than applying a "canned" effect to the entire image: 
http://www.gertrudisgraphics.com/help/gmx-photopainter-styles

I don't think that making your work look more like paintings is the answer. What interested me about this application is the kind of control it allows.

The Non-Photorealistc renderer in Carrara, while it does have quite a few parameters, is applying those to the entire image, so you can't say hey can you do a bit more or less of an effect on this face (or eye or nose or whatever)

 thanks cjd! I'll check out that link, appreciated. ;)

I have corel painter 2015 and it has a cloning thing with different media, but I haven't really seen any good examples of resulting work that I would be happy to have my name on!

All the so called tutors don't really seem to be doing quality work as far as I can see. I need to look at how to isolate part (via selection) of my 3d render within the cloning process so I can have the advantage of being able to use eg the object index pass to make the post work easier .

cheers :)

 Oh I really should say that I started this thread to show how Carrara can be used in the 'real' world to make imagery. Whatever the real world is....

Last Chrissie I was commissioned by the Council (actually by a company that was commissioned by our council) to do some Christmas work (banners and an advent calendar) to try and attract people to our cbd. This one of the banners.. The small crowd behind is part of the crowd that came to the 'opening'  . The first  image is a small part of  the window display. ;)

@EldritchCeller - and now I have the Eurythmics 1984 going through my head: Double plus good, double plus un-good...

@Headwax - really nice. 'Real World', why the hell would anybody be interested in that? I'm quite happy in my own, manicured world, thank you very much. :D

 Ha ha yes, last time I visited the real world it was reasonably colourless, smelt bad and left really big holes in my wallet  ;)

 there's a poster for a show I was in at a local church. The Uniting Church bought my work which was 8o cm by 180 ??? It was going to cost close to two thousand dollars to have it framed so I am glad they did. They will install in a chapel - not sure where.

Super work. I had no idea. Thanks for sharing. 

Pleasure! It's my job to talk myself up ! ;) thanks for looking.  Cheers 

Oh, I forgot to say I'm really looking forward to seeing what other people do with Carrara, in the 'real' world ;) 

Nice work headwax. 

Very impressive, much more professional than most renders I see.  The "Nightmares" render reminds me of a famous painting I've been trying to work into a medieval animation (the painting itself, a royalty free version):

http://www.wga.hu/art/b/bosch/3garden/wings/20right.jpg

 Thank you Spaceland!

Thanks Steve K. The Garden of Earthly Delights. Yes it's a delight, and Bosch's work certainly influenced this one. More specifically I visited the Cathedral at Albi a few years ago and on the back walls their are horrific scenes of hell and torture. The idea was that the Catholics of the time were trying to subdue the local peasant population by showing them images of what would happen if they weren;t good etc (eg give a tithe to the church) It could have been just after the Catholics exterminated  the Cathars from memory. .Ah here is a link http://www.sacred-destinations.com/france/albi-cathedral  and http://www.sacred-destinations.com/france/albi-cathedral/photos/xti_0553p

My work is called Vandals at the Gates. The city where I live has an ongoing battle between property developers, football supporters and the Arts. So here we have musicians (later became painters when I painted the image) in the image being tortured by the bad guys. Last year a few Chinese people came into my studio at remarked on the painting that it reminded them of one of their Folk Stories. The identified the King Devil as the Hero...........

love looking at the works of Headwax :-)

 Thanks Wonga,!  they were just hanging round I thought I should bang my drum for a while :) I hope everything is okay for you, somethings about life are crappy.

yes crappy, but inevitable but with such great art to look at it gives one an inner healing effect

keep 'em coming :-) 

 thanks Wonga, charm will get you everywhere!, now lets see where is my other 10 terabyte hard drive ;)

My carrara work had a small mention in out city's major paper's art review section today. Better than none at all ;) 

Superb work, very impressive !

I'm dazzled by the shaders in the first picture.

Your art deserves to be recognized !

thanks Dudu!!! I do my best ;) I sold another digital work today (that first render) through  the gallery, so Im stoked!

headwax, 

I'm curious, do you mean you sold a print (reproduction)?

Do you create a certain number of prints and issue numbers (kind of like limited editions)?

Or do you sell the rights to the image as well?

Hi, these ones are editions of ten. I'm still finding my way around the pricing structure. For paintings ii is easier because I've been doing them for a long time, and you know what the ceiling is (in my city) for people being able to afford them, and also what the demand is.  For these digital works I never know we there people will want them or buy them. I usually manage to sell 1 or two when I show. For example I did a very poignant and timely political one last year and sold most of the ten. But I've also done 'the death of goldilocks' ... Little girl lying dead at the feet of the three bears (after the original story) and people have bought copies. My Santa Clause project I offered to sell the rights to the company but it would have been about 14000 and they balked so we did a one use fee, which ended up being much better for me .... If I get off my bottom and sell the works this year in a gallery. I'm using an expensive printer to printer in Sydney but the quality is like what you see on the monitor! Amazing! 

I thought about selling prints in the early 90's. My work was (is) more or less abstract, and I received feedback about "limited interest". I don't have your perseverance though, so I did not pursue it. I did get an image published in Computer Artist in '94 (or '95?) but that's about as far as I got.

That's great about computer artist! :) To sell work, it's about giving people what they want, not what we think they should want. Its hard to get into people's head spaces. For my paintings I paint parochial scenes of my city. People identify with them. Last show we just pulled down I sold 16 of 24 works. The guy showing in the same gallery this week has beautiful paintings of Paris and Tokyo, but not beautiful enough to sell here in Oz. He has sold one.... but if he went to a tourist hotel in Paris etc he'd probably do much better. Abstract work is harder to sell, where as figurative work, given the right audience, is a bit easier I think.

Importnatly you can never judge the artistic value of an artwork by whether it sells or not so keep at it if that is your passion.

The only proviso is, that if you want to sell work, you need to give people something they want - t hey might want it as a perceived investment, because it reminds them of a place or a time or a person, or they might buy it because they feel sorry for you! (happens to me).

I've had one lady (a stranger) cry over one of my paintings in a gallery a few years ago  (a landscape) because it reminded her of her grand daughter - so I gave her the painting. Ever since she and her partner have been talking me up to various gallery owners (hasnt worked yet ;)  But I think there is karma in art in some ways.

Another lady got in touch with me about that first image in the thread and told me she cried when she saw it because it reminded her of her singing in a church when she was 12. So people react to artworks in different ways....

"To sell work, it's about giving people what they want, not what we think they should want."

"Importnatly you can never judge the artistic value of an artwork by whether it sells or not so keep at it if that is your passion."

It is difficult to find an in between ground I think.

yes, so right!  I've been to plenty of galleries where the work is beautiful and not very expensive and nothing has sold. Makes the artist very despondent. Art is a luxury, and often that is the first luxury to go when people arent so affluent. If I stopped selling work, then I would...... ? dont know. Oh, when my work doesnt sell then I paint on thinner canvases so more fit in the cupboard!! Who needs clothes ? ;)

sorry to sound preachy, as you know you cant edit after a while .! My house is full to the rafters of unsold work.

spent the last few weeks working on a new technique, lots of render passes combined with toon pro, toon three and textures copied to  the glow channel .... then worked up in painter 15 ... now to retrace my steps :) that's always the hard part

Like it. You need to start taking notes. You know we're both getting to that age where if you don't write it down you'll never remember how you did it. Heh, heh.

sorry to sound preachy, as you know you cant edit after a while .! My house is full to the rafters of unsold work.

I did not take it that way, thanks for relating your experience. I understand about extending effort and time where there may be limited or no return, but if one measures actions solely by the return, there seems little purpose in anything. Besides, "return" can be many things, not just money of course. Experience and learning are huge returns, in my opinion.

That image has a soft warm feel, its very painterly.

Like it. You need to start taking notes. You know we're both getting to that age where if you don't write it down you'll never remember how you did it. Heh, heh.

I'm wondering if using a screen recording application might be helpful for trying to remember how you did something. Note taking is ideal in many ways, but its also disruptive. Some of the codecs make relatively small video files, particularly for recording applications, where typically very little actually changes from frame to frame.

Like it. You need to start taking notes. You know we're both getting to that age where if you don't write it down you'll never remember how you did it. Heh, heh.

I'm wondering if using a screen recording application might be helpful for trying to remember how you did something. Note taking is ideal in many ways, but its also disruptive.Some of the codecs make relatively small video files, particularly for recording applications, where typically very little actually changes from frame to frame.

I've considered screen recording as well, but for me at least, stopping to write things down makes me actually think about what I just did. Besides, I spend so much time doodling around to find just the right approach I'd quickly fill up my hard drive. :)

thanks cjd and books by david ;) Ah, old age shall not weary us, just make us .... what was I saying?

great idea on the screen capture cjd, thank you.

I'll look into that. So far I have been doing it over and over and seeing what works, it's like walking around in a forest with a torch that has a 6 degree arc of light and hard edges and an eight foot range ;) and a lousy battery...

Hmmm. I guess I won't be buying any Australian flashlights...or batteries. I don't know what the heck you're doing out in a forest with your computer anyway. Especially with such a lousy flashlight.

 heh, sorry I just realised that it was a wind up flash light ... no wonder it was so dim :) talking about sharks , here's my board with an image half done in carrara (rest in ps) , putting the teeth on was a mistake because it's usually the last thing I look at before I paddle out. It was printed at 150 dpi so unfortunately it lost a lot of detail, especially in the darks . Live and learn :) Hmm, pic wont upload oh well :)

 hmm 

oddly enough copy and paste worked!

Oooooo! Cool!

 thanks David, :)

 now unrelated, I had a great discovery yesterday about transmapped hair, you know that it gets screwed up in coverage, object and  depth pass etc ? in relation to being able to select it for post work, well I discovered that a diffuse texture pass of the character against a dark back ground gives the cleanest selection chance - I think it gives a much cleaner selection area than even an ordinary pass ? have to double check on that