So I won mrsparky's excellent Hell's Hauler in the naming thread here a while back and I am finally getting around to my first scene.  I am going for a Halloween scene and am using the Manitou from Devil Dog Studios as one of the attacking creatures.  I have M3 sitting in the driver's seat in a truck driver pose, but you cannot see him.  I need to figure how to add a light inside the cab to illuminate him.  There is still lots of tweaking to do on the poses and the mats.

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mrsparky sent me several excellent prop sets and I am probably going to use this broken down Bank building in the immediate background.  I am trying to resist the temptation of putting lots of background in so I can keep the focus on the Hell's Hauler and the attacking creatures.  Maybe some DOF will be of help to me in this endeavor?  I also need to try and show some dirt and dust being kicked up by the tires of the truck.  I have no clue yet how to do that in P6.  Suggestions?

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The simplest way to do your dust and dirt would be to postwork it.  Other than that, make some transmapped dust clouds and attach 'em to the one sided square. 

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Ever see Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust? The Marcus Brother's van? Hell's Hauler's screaming that vibe to me. It'd be fun to do atmospheric crosses... I'm not sure it's possible in Poser, though.

At any rate, can't you stick a small light inside the cab to illuminate the driver? Your best bet at making him visible is to point the camera so it looks through the larger grates.

I agree with Sam's suggestions. Postworking dust with a paint proggy is the easiest way.

Why not have Mike leaning out of the truck door, one hand grasping the wheel and in the other a pistol, trying to get a shot at the thing? The truck's front wheels turned hard left and the truck slightly tipping to the right. That would make for a more dramatic scene showing lots of action and interest. Oh, and a horrified screaming damsel in distress too!  ; )

 Don't sweat the petty things, and don't pet the sweaty things!  ; )

Thanks alot SamTherapy, EsnRedshirt, and Elfwine.  Those are some good suggestions and I will try to implement them.

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Wouldn't be a pistol- most monsters wouldn't flinch at a single bullet (unless it's a .50 cal.) Mike'd have to have a sawed-off shotgun (a.k.a. boomstick)- even werewolves don't take well to having a significant chunk of their body turned into a fine red mist...

Ok I have added a second Manitou who has ripped the door off.  Next up tweaking poses and fixing the grips of all characters involved so far.  Also finding a weapon for the driver.

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You are in luck! Right on the first page of ShareCG's Poser page is an Uzi!!  Just uploaded!  Woot!

Go get em', Tiger!  ; )

 Don't sweat the petty things, and don't pet the sweaty things!  ; )

 The door being ripped off would look better if the second manitou is holding it by the outer sill, like her ripped it off by grabbing through the window. It would seem more natural.,IMO

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Thanks Sams's, it's always great to see artists enjoying my stuff.

Suggestion for the bits your stuck on...

Angle - drop camera to floor and angle upwards for a more dramatic look.

Background:
DOF - but not too high - is a great idea.
Or have you considered motion blur ?

Snap a shot out of a car or train window, or pan your camera at a slow shutter speed.
If you want a more dramtic angle, take a angled shot and play around with the radial blur in bloatoshop. Give a slight blur as well.

If you grab the DSU from my freestuff, you can use your own digital photos for the background and ground. 

Lighting - cheat :) Use the lasso tool in your painting app, draw around the area you want and increase the gamma or highlight. Or you have fingers like mine cut out the cab area you want and paste that over the original image. 

Dust - theres an addon for RNDA's Infinity Cove which has fog and mist.

Posing - don't forget the ladder by the door - just great for an hungry furry beastie to get a good handhold!

Gun - theres a new pistol in my sites freestuff. Meant for zombies, but you could always change ammo:) Or I'd reccomend anything sold by Panko here.
 

Pinky - you left the lens cap of your mind on again.

I would change the poses of both of the manitous a bit, they both look like they are posing for the camera.

Not sure how detailed the mesh is- can you use magnets to crumple the roof and door of Hell's Hauler where the manitous are? As for the poses- xantor's right; they should be focusing on their target, not the camera. Also- I'd imagine a monster would punch through a door to rip it off, rather than daintily holding it at the top. And definately use some motion blur.

That's why "the devil's in the details"- there's just so many you have to think about...

Oh yeah- background. Do some research on depth-of-field. You should be able to have a full background, but keep focus on the main scene by having the background blurred. Look at stills from action films, or even some war photography, for ideas.

Thanks for all the cool ideas people. 

Special thanks to mrsparky for all the cool stuff!

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I finally found a little time to get back to this.  I have tried to pose the Manitous so they are not posing for the camera and the one holding the door has a proper grip along the edge.  I have also replaced M3 with M4.  How did we ever get along without M4 in the past?  Poser is starting to get squirrely on me.  It is whiting out when I try to make adjustments.  I hope I can get some more scene elements in here without it locking up on me.  I need to learn how to do external runtimes.

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Lookin' good!

Is it gonna be finished in time for Halloween?

He's gonna haveta hose down that truck after he finishes splashing it all over with werewolf parts!  :P

 Don't sweat the petty things, and don't pet the sweaty things!  ; )

Thanks I hope to get it done in time for Halloween.

Free men do not ask permission to bear arms!!

Poser is starting to get squirrely on me.  It is whiting out when I try to make adjustments.  I hope I can get some more scene elements in here without it locking up on me.  I need to learn how to do external runtimes.

Sadly external runtimes won't help you here. The fact you can see "whiting out" says what you've got is a very old, and well known problem, with Poser running out of memory.

Some solutions to this are...

Before using poser, reduce some of the texture maps in sizes. Say from 2048 down to 1024. Obviously, if you are rendering large you'll loss quality this way, so reduce the textures that will be at the rear of the scene.

Also don't forget to BACK UP the original BEFORE any reduction. I often reduce maps like this and just leave the zip file in the same directory as the originals. That way I don't lose them.    

Poser isn't just a memory hog, it's an untidy beastie. It doesn't exit clean but leaves stuff hanging around in memory. So don't just restart Poser after it bugs out, restart the machine then use Poser before anything else.

A general cleanup of what stuff loads when the computer (mac or pc) startups can also help.
That should be done anyway, as you don't need stuff like itunes, skype or adobe starting when the machine does.
Renoving these from startup will always make a machine faster.

These problems will also get worse when you try to add more elements.
So theres 2 tricks here to fix that...

Firstly, try rendering your scene in segments. Save the camera position first makes this way easy, though remember watch out for the shadows.

Second approach. Render the environment your truck will live in, but don't add the truck.
Take that render and apply it to something like the Infinity Cove, Nerds backup or my free DSU prop.

Pinky - you left the lens cap of your mind on again.

Thanks mrsparky!

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Here I am scouting mrsparky's Ruined City model for a location to shoot the Hells Hauler scene.  I am liking under the bridge by the graffitti in the dry river bed.

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I have imported the scene with the Manatous attacking into the scene with the Ruined City and placed the Hells Hauler into the dry river bed.  I may try a different placement so the HH is facing parallel with the river bed.

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Ok, I got turned around in the dry river bed and added a background.  I will try some DOF next.

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looking good there Dan

Pinky - you left the lens cap of your mind on again.

Thanks mrsparky!  I love working with this model and the ruined city prop.  I think I am going to have to put this together in layers in Photopaint by exporting the Hells Hauler in PNG format.  Maybe I should just use the river bed sections and bridge instead of the entire ruined city to get some breathing room on the render?

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Thanks mrsparky!  I love working with this model and the ruined city prop

Cool! Thanks. I'm currently working on another big set. But as thats commerical I'd better not go into details here. Moreso on halloween, the undead admins may be running loose :) 

Maybe I should just use the river bed sections and bridge instead of the entire ruined city to get some breathing room on the render?

Yep. Because theres so many parts the preset version is very heavy and uses loads of textures it can be hard on a system.

All of the city parts are avaliable as standalone bits.  So I'd suggest making it in parts and either postworking the lot together or render in stages.

 

 

 

Pinky - you left the lens cap of your mind on again.

Thanks.  That sounds like a plan.

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Now I have loaded only the dry river props and have placed the Hells Hauler in it.  I have added an explosion and I can see that I need to clean up the edges of my transparency mask a little bit.  I may add another explosion on the bridge before I am done.

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You should move that explosion a bit to the left.  That way, it will be more clearly way behind them (somewhat cropped by the door-weilding werewolf) and not possibly blowing up out of the back of the hauler itself, and help clarify the werewolf's sillhouettte in the process.

That or you could move your camera left, which might be more dramatic, closer to the front edge of the hauler (what lense are you on? Go wide!)and would bring the bg explosion still somewhat behind the door wolf.

Lookin' good.

Thanks for the suggestion heiro5.:biggrin:

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I ended up doing two renders and compositing them in Photopaint to get the motion blur onto the background.

The final work can be found in my gallery.

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