Lovely render.

Absolutely wonderful!!! She looks surprised to see you though. As far as test renders don't even get me started. LOL

Thanks for the comment! I was hoping she'd look a bit surprised or startled! As you know, once you apply an LD character, sometimes it's hard to work with expressions.

I'm sure we all do lots of test renders, but what was annoying with this one is how many times I had to just move one plant and then render again, because I was trying to figure out how to get the DOF to look right (so that the plants didn't just look like a big blurry blob). That's not something I could figure out in preview. If I'd been trying to figure out something else, I would've turned DOF off for faster test renders. But of course for these tests, I needed it on, and I hate waiting!! Then again, stores like Renderosity probably like it a lot when I have to wait, because that's when I tend to go shopping :-)

T-test renders.... >.<

The rendering that you have shared is great, though! The use of DoF really works here and I LOVE the hair; so nice and shiny in a very real way. =)

Molly

Thanks, Molly! As I just wrote in reply to kelchris3's comment above yours, I'm sure we all do lots of test renders, but that's more annoying for some scenes than others. For this one it was annoying b/c I had to do test renders with DOF enabled, since I couldn't see what was happening to plants in preview!

Thanks also for the comment on the hair. As I mentioned in my reply to your comment about Carmen's hair, I used a specular node setup that I got from a forum post by BagginsBill. It includes two anisotropic nodes, a blender, some math nodes, and a generic bump map (that part was my idea, so I could just add the nodes to any hair material). None of that would probably work or be necessary in Superfly, but it works OK in Firefly!

And would you believe, I had the hair color as blonde until the very last moment before I did the final render, when I had a "duh" moment. No forest fae trying to blend in would go around with blonde hair!

It doesn't matter how many times you had to move & render these plants; the results were worth all of the work! This looks like a very natural setting for this Forest Fae! I'm glad she didn't see me. It was wonderful getting to see her!

Thanks so much for the comment! I'm glad you got to take a peek at the forest fae before she went back into the deep woods! I'm sure we all do lots of test renders, but it's even more annoying when what you're testing for is something you can't see at all in preview, like how DOF will affect items! But I can understand why "real time" DOF is not likely to ever be a thing, given how much we tend to move the camera around while setting up!

We are seldom satisfied with the end result no matter how many things we change to get it just right. There is a leaf in the image which you missed that should have been adjusted. It nearly killed me when I noticed it. I'm only kidding about the leaf. :)

Oh darn it, now I see that "wrong" leaf too!! I'll have to go do the whole thing over again... Just kidding! What was a pain with this one is that I couldn't tell what was going to happen with DOF effect on the plants until I rendered, then moved a plant and rendered again, repeat ad nauseam. All in an effort to make them look like plants and not, say, a giant green blurry blob monster!

i !!frickin'!! love this image, Amy!! i'm glad you used DoF here as well, as i adore the sense of peering through the undergrowth like a cat might do - gives a great tactile, no, sensory, aspect to it that utterly delights & charms!!

Thank you so much, Giana! The lighting may not have had the dappled sunlight effect I was going for, but I'm glad it at least had the sense of peeping through a clearing, which is about the only way you'd ever catch sight of Button the Forest Fae :-)

I know what you mean with the lights. She looks cute in the forest of her home nonetheless. I've had to set the shadow blur radius like at 1.0 to get the light to glimmer through. I'm sure you tried that. I'll look into it to see if I can come up with a solution.

Thanks for the comment! I did try a shadow blur radius of something like 1.5 (my default is set to 2), but I was hesitant to go much lower b/c the shadows in a forest wouldn't be super sharp. Maybe I should've tried that. I think part of the issue has to do with some of the trees having leaves that are large polygons with fairly small leaf trans maps, so it's like the shadows are being cast by the larger polygons, even though that's not how it's supposed to work.

It's a little frustrating that, at least for me, if I enable shadows in preview, they look almost nothing like what ends in the final render, so there's a lot of trial and error involved! I have shadows in preview turned off by default for that reason, but I had them on while working on this scene in the hope of making sure Button's face didn't end up in shadow. (I ended up having to use a low intensity inverse linear point light near her face.)

a very delightful fantasy image with this little fae of her forest. nice realistic leaves.

Thanks! Those are all trans-mapped leaves and the set is fairly old, but LisaB always did good work and it shows!

Beautiful scene work!

It's just pure magic. Unbelievable awesome composition, impressive details, that depth is just mind-bending, excellent lighting, brilliant render. Top-notch skills and creativity. Magnificent Masterpiece of Finest Arts. I love it!
Words can not spell it's brilliance and beauty, though. It's all magic.

Thank you so much for the comments! I think I'm starting to get the hang of the ways DOF can be useful :-)

Ein süßer render

ohhhh, I really really love this one!!! Beautiful composition, great use of DOD, gorgeous greens, and Button the Forest Fae is cute as a button!!!! I know your struggles, that has happened to me before too with the lights.

Thanks so much for the comment! What was most frustrating with this scene was having to do a test render every time I moved a plant, b/c otherwise I couldn't predict what DOF was going to do. At first the plants looked like a big green blobby mess, but gradually they began to look more or less like separate plants, in varying degrees of focus! The dappled light thing was a bummer b/c I love how that looks, but I think the lighting came out OK for the kind of scene it is. I'll try to figure out how to get trees to make dappled light in another scene!

It only just now occurred to me that maybe one reason the light didn't "dapple" like I wanted it to (and like it appeared to do in preview) is that I had DepthCue atmosphere enabled and it was probably kicking in close enough to the camera to dim the bits of sunlight shining on the leaves and ground. Oops!

Super cute character. Love her expression. Beautiful setting

A fantastic setting for this cute little character! Marvelous work on this fine creation! Bravo! Well done!

Thanks for the comment! I enjoyed setting up a custom forest for this little critter :-)

Delightful image! The forest looks really natural and the DOF sets the focus on the cute forest fae. Excellent work!

Thank you for the comment! I was a little iffy about the "Forest Whispers" product when I first loaded it, but it turned out to work out pretty well for setting up a custom little forest scene like this!

Just open your own masterpiece in full screen. You will find yourself mesmerized and stuck staring at it the whole day.
It's just pure magic. You will not waste a day long, you will have more than a day, added to your life time span.
I assure you it's worth trying it.💖

But.... I don't want to have spots!!
Super render!

Not even when you're wobbling along the balance beam? What about in a commercial for cat food? OK, if you insist... no spots for you! :-) How about stripes?

Button is totally adorable !!!!