FROM THE COMMUNITY COLLECTION
Reach Up
Another exclusively IBL lit experiment. Here, I cheated the sky picture David used in ?Alpine Sunset? into a light probe. I have that picture because I tried to remove the noise in it. I have reasons to doubt that this shows an Alpine Sunset - possibly rather a North Sea Sunset. Nevertheless, it is a very beautiful one and well worth struggling with it for several hours. Victoria is from DAZ3D, the metaballs are alternatively white (as the Mordor terrain) and fully reflective. The staff has been placed for obvious reasons and is fully transparent, with a low refraction setting. The rest is all sunset. I didn't intend to show this here first, because it is just an experiment. However, I fell in love with it watching it unfolding. There are many things you could interpret into it: rise to a better world - intermediate stage from hell to heaven - the urg to touch gleaming things - ... IBL settings are 15/74/100 and it rendered at the old crate in some 9 hours while I slept.
Comments 4
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I cannot see what's below, where Vicky seems to crawl out. But the reflective metaballs slightly uncover the secret. I like that effect - intended or not. I think a bit of DOF and a lower hdr intensity will raise the "drama" of climbing and reaching up and high. The flames of Hell gently embracing a woman's figure, almost giving a "divine" boost to her speed and helping her escape. Now the question is - Is it really Heaven that lies above :) Horo, thank you for this image. I really like what's put within!
I really like the lighting. I love the metaballs silver. Yes, I do think she is tempted to touch such pretty shining things. There is that sense of heaven and hell as you mentioned, driven further by the light coming up from below. The over-all impression is very powerful. A more realistic skin and hair for Victoria would have made the entire scene more realistic, in that she is the only recognizable item in the scene. The more real she looks, the more real the image looks. I have found that the skin maps that come from dazstudio are rather bland when rendered in bryce because the lighting is so different. I have found that increasing the color saturation of the photo skin mat can correct this. Her positioning is very natural and that reach does seem genuine. The color contrast from light to dark and from red end to blue end colors is astounding. Very nice work. You really can do this stuff in your sleep.
Ah - sunrise and sunset - I should have known sunset would be over the the Wolds. Agreed, Vicky could have done with another ?skin?. Michael would probably have fitted better.
The terrain looks glossy, almost as if it were responding to speculative. It would make a good silk if the ground was not so spikey. Good balance of colours and contrast range. Strange subject, poor bald Vicki... like something off of a Philip Jose Farmer SF novel book jacket. 9 hours does not seem to bad considering all the metaspheres. Good work on the nipple covering. And the sky... yes, it was not over the sea but the land, but it was in the region of the north sea. Here we have sunrise over the water - which, thankfully, I am not awake to witness. And sunset - at the moment that is somewhere between 4 and 5 I reckon, but it starts to get dark about 3.30. For the best skintone response for blue light you could do with darker skin on your model. I often use a brownish version of her skin to offset the lighting employed - but for this, very dark might be good, particularly with a bit of a sheen to it.