Death From Above by theSea

DAZ|Studio • Fantasy • posted on Mar 01, 2008

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Description

Something simple today.... Continued work on composition - the idea here is for something dynamic yet pleasing to the eye. DAZ|Studio render, postwork in Photoshop. This is DAZ's Mil Dragon 2 with Rawn's addon textures. Materials on the dragon are essentially the same as "The Black Dragon." The interesting thing here is the use of reflection and refraction on the skin/scales: 100% Medium Gray reflection, 100% White Refraction with in Index of refraction of 1.29 - the Fresnel effect does the rest. So we get a nice reflective edge effect on the scales. Use pleanty of bump! The Scene is surrounded by a skydome that was rendered @ 6000x3000 in Vue 6i - basic spectral sunset over a simple water plane. This gives the cloudy background and something for the skin to reflect. Lighting is Dreamlight's LDP sunset high res with a Pendragon environment light & ambient occlusion. The environment light uses an HDR lightprobe rendered from the same panorama as the skydome. Total rendertime ~4.5 hours - the reflections and ambient occlusion were expensive but worth the effect. Postwork included painting an extension onto the stubby Mil Dragon 2 tail, a little darkening under the tongue and some highlights in the mouth, a faint layer of fog/smoke in the foreground and some levels adjustments. My thanks to eveyone who commented on 'comPosed' - obviously the image commentary will continue - I'm very glad folks are finding it helpful. Your constructive criticism and comments are always most appreciated!

Comments (24)

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ThetaGraphics

9:16PM | Sat, 01 March 2008

Nice work! ;)

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maraich

9:39PM | Sat, 01 March 2008

Yet another very worthwhile exercise. The reflection was especially effective on the belly - added quite a lot of dimension. Is it silly to be impressed by his mouth? I really like it - the extra shadowing and highlights make him seem more alive. Two things that I think would add interest... decrease the opacity on the wing membrane, and in postwork add some movement blur to the limbs, tail and wing edges. Obviously, this is a personal preference thing, but I think it would make the image more dynamic.

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Pewter7

9:54PM | Sat, 01 March 2008

An excellent action scene, with great pov and character! :)

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lorddarkwolf

10:13PM | Sat, 01 March 2008

DAG<<> Fantastic work, one of my totems is a black dragon, although doe not quite look like this one, but still its cool. definite fav!

shotgung0d

11:06PM | Sat, 01 March 2008

Great idea and result on the scales. Simple scene, yes but dramatic POV and the moody sky definately make it something grand.

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DarkStormCrow

12:38AM | Sun, 02 March 2008

Excellent nicely done..

robin123

1:48AM | Sun, 02 March 2008

Ooooooooooooooooooh nice work

dshield

2:52AM | Sun, 02 March 2008

Excellent. D

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dreamlord08

4:14AM | Sun, 02 March 2008

Great !!!!!!! Mike

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Akhbour

5:10AM | Sun, 02 March 2008

Well Michael, as the others said, great work, the skin looks very "natural", the pose is dynamic and the sky kust the mood to fit! But only one thing maybe, another prop to judge his size, maybe the eagle, scaled down a bit or something like that.

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