Not only peruse here, looking through the galleries (from specific software - Poser, 3DS Max, Cinema 4D, etc. - to genres - Realism, Fractal, Atmosphere, Fantasy, etc.), lurking the forums, but go outside the site as well - I'd suggest going to your nearest large bookstore and grabbing copies of 3D World and 3D Artist magazines, as well as HDRI 3D.

Once you start figuring out what's what, tools most often used for whatever you're looking to do (this alone is so wide open a topic - I think you should look around and figure out what directly interests you.

Once you've got a discernible direction and realize you specifically need to learn THIS to go forward, I'd suggest checking out thegnomonworkshop.com (actually ore professional level training) and geekatplay.com - while the latter is mostly Vue related, they have a handful in Poser to Cinema 4D to Modo.

I hope this helps - good luck and welcome to the awesome world of CG!

-Lew

How funky...

At first reading you post I was wondering if you went through all the history one at a time after applying an Action that went bad - you'll see when it goes bad, and be able to figure out what it was that made it go sideways.

I'm wondering what would only work on jpegs (and I imagine bmp and tif) but not on png...

What if you were to save your images as tifs with an Alpha - would that do the job of cutting out your rendered objects instead of rendering with a transparent BG?

I'm interested in hearing your results - sorry I couldn't be more helpful.

-Lew
 

You can record anything - pick a certain color (let's say a version of Tan) and Fill the blank canvas, create another layer that is Soft Light Mode, hit the letter "d" and fill it with White, run Filter>Render>Clouds, then STOP.

With this action, regardless of how large or small your canvas, it's now going to look like Parchment Paper, and you have a repeatable Action to do it, with 2 editable Layers so you can modify it later.

It doesn't have to stop there - you can create (as you were talking about) another Layer that is a percentage smaller, up in the corner, and using gradients make it look like a page curl - get it?

You can create a single action that will take you through a HUGE amount of steps just to get a raggedy parchment that has tears and page curls. It doesn't just have to be huge changes to an already on display image.

Have fun with it - and the nice thing is that it's something you can delete if you realize you can do it better and record a new one. You can also give the actions to friends, or sell them - this is how you buy them, as already saved bits of Photoshop info in a single file, that you simply put into your Actions Directory.

Some people just make them more elaborate than others (which is why they're for sale).

-Lew

Experiment and CAREFULLY plan out exactly what you want your action to be in advance - it will help to write your procedures down in detail.

In the Actions Tab, you will see a little "double box" - click that FIRST to start to create a new Action.

Name it, and give it a Function Key so you can quickly access it later on (ex.: Shift + F3) - repeatability is what these are for.

Then click the Record Button to START recording your actions.

Go through the process of whatever you want it to do - ex.: Duplicate Layer, Change Layer Mode, Desaturate, Lower the Opacity, etc.

When you are done, click the STOP Button. Now you're finished, and every time you click (for example) Shift+F3 it will do exactly what you just saved as a set of steps.

Repeatability.

Hope this helps-

-Lew
 

Here I created a Levels Adjustment Layer and clipped the whites down, then brought up the mid-tones and blacks, inverted the mask (Ctrl+i) so it was hidden, and with a pantbrush, using white, I painted in the "darkness". I overpainted a bit - this is normal, - then used Black to hide the overpainted areas (I painted black to hide them again - I dunno how much you know about Masks in PS).

The major highlighted areas on her skin were still a problem, so I made ANOTHER Levels Adjustment Layer and clipped the whites, brought up the darks again, etc., then used a soft edged brush and painted those areas to bring them down further.

Any additional coloring here, I would probably do some actual painting at a low opacity, but this will give you a good start to how things might look or react to the actual lighting conditions in the render.

Hope this helps, and good luck-

-Lew

Actually, 17 voters for the number of entries up there isn't a bad turnout.
-Lew

Congrats everyone! Very cool images all around!
-Lew

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/465156-REG/X_Rite_EODIS2_i1Display_2_Colorimeter_Monitor.html

Every lab I've worked in had an X-Rite color meter, so I went ahead and got the X-Rite color calibration hardware. Went middle of the road on price - there's cheaper, and certainly more expensive, but this little puppy ($189 in the US) works like a charm and was easy to use.

I can't see why it wouldn't work for dual-monitors, but then again, I haven't tried - I use single widescreen monitors for my workstations.

I've heard god things about the Spyder 3 as well.

Hope this helps-

-Lew

The extra geometry seems to have helped, but I see a bit of the problem still there in the rounded geometry. But I have a feeling it's also something that a single color with a good amount of Specularity is showing. When I put a real texture on there I have a feeling it's gonna blend in and look normal.

We'll see...

Meanwhile - I'm LOVING Spanki's Riptide plugin! MAN that really helps organize things for import into Poser!

-Lew

Gonna pull in the new model and see what that does.

BTW - I have it divided now into 3 "sections" I guess you could call it.
1 - The Arena below, hallways, the 2 large side monitors above the doors, the seating and railings - everything you could "walk" on.
2 - The monitors suspended over the arena.
3 - The whole ceiling section with the girders and lights, etc.

By having only 1 of these at a time  - say, just the flooring section so you can set up your characters and basic lighting - greatly reduced the polycount and things seem to work much faster. Then you can add the later sections at the last minute IF you are going to need them at all, or if you want something like the shadows you see in mine.

-Lew

@Jonnybode - thanks! About to fire up P8 now, and I'll try that. I also went through the model last night and came up with the minimal amount of added loops cuts I could figure out and I'll see what that does as well. Gonna try both the one shown above, as well as the new version and see if I've gained any benefits.

@TrekkiGrrrl - thanks also! I'm gonna start with a clean futuristic kinda texture, and then an almost kinda creepy "underground brutal" texture (I'm thinking people would like a choice between a good or bad place for "competitions") - and have the templates so you can create your own as well.

Yes, I was gonna for for an outlandish over the top Vegas cheesy hotel room next. This would not be your normal hotel room - multi-level (3-4 stair steps to get up or down to them), center fireplace, champagne glass bathtub, heart-shaped big bed, large open shower stall with quadrupal head, monster TV with entertainment system (basically, this could be a mnulti-use place - you could actually turn it into a bar, turn it into a regular living room for more normal settings, etc.) etc.

After that I've come up with a list of 18 more scenes/environments, and that's not including "props sets" that I'm planning as well.

Gotta finish this one first, though. Gonna bring both in - the older one with smoothing unchecked and see if it works, the new one - see if it works regardless (or did I just create more geometry for no reason? kinda thing).

Thanks all, and I'll be back later tonight (can't be on P8 too long - gotta play with my boys today, mow the lawn, make sure my wife realizes I still love her and haven't forgotten her, etc.).

-Lew ;-)

Not enough support geometry is making the endcaps bloat and look like pillows.

I have a feeling that the same situation is what is causing the phenomena of the rounded seating inside edges in the far end of the picture, as well as atop the lower arena door (where the "teams" come out) the weird highlights that look "lumpy".

My "doors" along the outer walls disappeared, which tells me the walls ballooned as well.

The down below interior of the walls must have puffed out as well - they are starting to obscure the indentations I gave the doors.

And here I was trying to keep the poly-count down...

Still trying to figure out a good lighting setup, still need to figure out some more things in P8, as well as UVMap this puppy.

-Lew

I think it's ready for another round of play, then possibly some minor tweaking and then off to prep and package...

Off to make a few purchases, and then I should have an OBJ for another round.

-Lew