Cyber Tech 2083 by theSea
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Description
Hello and thanks for looking in.
This is something of a technique piece, experimenting with the skin, 'blown' lighting effect and the "White Room" environment from the Dreamlight Members club.
Character is Victoria 4 with the "Elite Utopia" morphs spun to 100%. Texture is "Hanyma Skin" from Aery Soul (available at the RMP) and outfit is "Cy-Atletik" also by Aery Soul and available at DAZ.
I played around with the 'tattoo' masks in the Hanyma package to create the mirror strips on her face and body, I created inverted versions of them in Photoshop (black on white instead of white on black) and used both sets to control the diffuse, reflection, SSS levels and add a touch of displacement.
Other than that, the skin was done using my usual methods for DAZ Studio. I did find that the Subsurface Scattering maps I've been using forever (From Dan Burdick's "SkinVue" set for Vue) have a nasty transition in SSS level where the ears meet the face. I had to open them in Photoshop and do a little painting to ease that transition.
The Round implant over her ear was created in Modo in about 5 minutes.
Setting is the aforementioned "White Room" from Dreamlight members club. I'm finding that the big black void at the front of the white room is a little too big... so added a semi-circular array of vertical white cards, not too close together, to break it up and give a more interesting reflection on the chrome parts.
I added an UberEnvironment2 light to replace the AH environment light in the original white room and lowered the lights vertically somewhat.
With the UE2 it's is also helpful to reduce the "trace distance" value, it is set to 150 in this image and the quality values are maxxed.
In the 'advanced render settings' tab, I turned up the pixel samples to 24x24 for a smooth Depth of field effect and to reduce 'jaggies' where the figure meets the white background. I rendered with shadow samples at 24 for the two raytraced distant lights and cranked the quality settings on the pwSurf2 shaders as well.
I rendered this image overnight and it was done in the morning. I also rendered a mask of just the background for postworking.
In Photoshop, I opened my original image and duplicated it as a new layer. I set the layer mode on the duplicate to 'screen' and reduced the opacity to around 50%. This reduced the contrast and punched up the whites nicely.
Next I duplicated my original layer again and placed this on the top of the stack. I used the Hue & Saturation adjustment to reduce the color saturation by about 80%, then went to the brightness and contrast control and cranked the contrast to 100% and dropped the brightness until it isolated the highlights on the image. I applied a strong Gaussian blur to this and changed the layer mode to 'screen.' This is a really easy way to produce specular bloom with an image.
Finally, I grabbed my mask layer (white background and black figure) and applied a Gaussian blur to that, then changed the mode to screen. This served to completely blow out the background, making it pure white with soft edges around the figure.
I changed the image mode to 16bit - I almost always remix lighting layers in 16-bit color space and then flatten back to 8-bit to save as jpg. This gives a better dynamic range when you're mixing the various layers and things are less likely to 'clip' to either pure white or pure black. Not such a big deal in this case as the objective was to blow a lot of the image all the way to white... but this allowed it to happen smoothly.
I adjusted the opacity of the various screen layers until I was happy with the result and added the border, title and copyright. I saved the .psd and then switched the color mode back to 8-bit RGB and saved out my jpg's.
That's all there is to it :)
As always I do appreciate your comments and any constructive critique you may care to offer.
Comments (30)
texboy
well, she looks like a real heartbreaker, and mighty pretty, too! thanks for the details on how you made the image.... it sure helps!
doarte
Ah even robots can look beautiful!
Lyndseyh
ooooh Beautiful lighting and I like the icy expression
marineguy
wow, very very nice effects and great image!!!
njb2000
Great looking image and a lovely technical explanation of how this was achieved, Thanks for that.
CrownPrince
This is a great image! The technical specs got a bit beyond me, so im going to have to do some research to find out what it all means but the results are amazing!
Akhbour
Awesome work Michael, as usual! ^_-
Rhale
Love seeing this quality in DazStudio
Timesurfer
very cool pic and love your detail on production... it actually starting to make sense to me lol
P3Design
Quite some work, but the result is amazing! :)
Cimaira
"That's all there is too it" he says, like ..no big deal, rofl. I go crossed eyed just reading your setup/ps tips sometimes, lol. Beautiful work as always! And thank you for always telling us how you did it and giving us tips on layers and postwork. It really is appreciated.
alessimarco
Really great explanation of the technique! A fine result!
Carlazzo
Great artwork my friend! Very well done!
Kattey
Nice picture! Thank you for sharing your rendering tips :)
wblack
Very nice work, well done.
Teufelseinhorn
someday i must have this tex .. looks so amazing!!
reciecup
Amazing
DarkStormCrow
Cool sci fi image, well done...
geirla
Excellent! Thanks for the mini-tutorial too!
eportscreations
An excellent piece of work!
BadKittehCo
oooh, that looks soo cool!
thecytron
Most Xcellent modeling work! Superb render!
PhilW
Original, imaginative and wonderful work!
anitalee
Excellent
maraich
Really enjoyed reading about how you created this image. The reflective skin decor came out really cool. Hope I get a chance to experiment with that myself.
kobaltkween
as always, i love your material work. i don't think i've ever tried working in 16bit. sounds like a good technique. i like the reflections and scene. i have a similar room prop of my own, and i use a fully ambient image on the wall behind the camera for reflections. i have 2 white squares as well, but the image gives me whatever mix of colors and contrasts i want. interesting use of the Hanyma texture.
scifibabe
Really interesting writeup on how you did this. Fabulous skin and 'tattoo mask'. Creative and cool scifi babe.
Seaview123
Very nice looking character!
arcas
Very cool portrait, right down to those irises!
Eugenius
You've done and amazing job. Your experiment paid off :-)