Howdy all. I've beeen getting great help in my P4-P6 adventure. I've gotten most of my problems solved, but I think that i still need a little work on my new project, mostly with lighting. What stands out here as being "bad". It is P6 at 1 click off of max rendering options. There is post work (obviously) on the staff and cloak (i'm probably buying a tablet tonight for better post work). Any feedback would be helpful.

Ok. That's really menacing looking character and I love it, but one thing I would definetly change is his wand. It looks a bit too cute for some reason. A darker magic staff with spikes and a slight bloodred glow/or frost spikes could perhaps be better. You could allso have some fog and mist in there to spice things up a bit. But this is a very good looking character you've done. As for lights, Experiment with spotlights. Create one spotlight and point it at the characters head. Then look at the shadowlight cam to position it perfectly. Another spotlight pointing dwonwards from the sky. And delete some of those infinite lights so you start out with a dark image and gradually keep getting it more lighter with spotlights. One infinite light might be enough and 2 or 3 spots. Not all the lights neeed shadows tho. So see and experiment and do test renders. You can allso add one light with volumetric light, but thats heavy on the system.

Message edited on: 02/24/2006 09:27

The pose is based off of one of the contrapostos with very little tweaking. The Staff is very specific and as an Electric Based Superhero (a MMO character), the Blue is required.

Looks good but the lighting isn't very strong. What kind of lighting setup do you have now? I would probably do a fairly simple three light setup with one strong point light extra for the staff. Right now you really don't have shadows, you have an overall blue thing that could be refined etc. Think of one light being the sunlight, one as a filler or bounce light and one as a secondary source with the extra point light for the staff.

Yep, I agree.. the scene should be much darker, with shadows, plus th estaff should be casting a lot of the light (maybe with a spotlight or point light?) The whole over lit background overwhelms the character.

My dilemma is that the head of the staff is supposed to be a (blue) light source. In full shaded mode, I'm getting some slowdown and i get frustrated working the lights. I'm thinking i need 1 infinte from above, a spot to add blue highlights to the figure and another 1 or 2 to drop some light on the scenery as well as 1 or two other spots on the figure (maybe a very lightly saturated bluish white from below and one front light?)

If it were me, I'd use: 1 dim infinite AO light 1 blue spotlight with a wider "end", or a pointlight for the staff, and also make sure the staf "lit parts" have ambiant turned on. 1 or possibly 2 colored spotlights to "pop" details I'd want seen.

Here is my quickie light ideas. I would do a spotlight or infinite light above and to the figures left (the white) this would have shadows. A point light as th staff glow with shadows (placed right on the end of the staff), a bluesish grey infinite light front and right, placed fairly level. The last one would be a rim light placed behind. Maybe with a slight warm cast, spot of infinite for this one. You could do one of them as an IBL light sorce thing but I normally don't mess with it since it washes things out. Hope that helps.

is that a nemisis staff?

Why yes that is a Nemesis staff you Paragon City of Hero type you.... It was modeled by Amacord.

How's this. I'd have liked it if it still looked liek daytime (a poitn light over head do that?) But I'm happy now