Cockscomb Ridge

richter, Don't worry about saying to much. I appreciate not only the critique but also an explanation of how to improve. I am still working on the Sedan trying to bring more detail out on the car body. I will try to re-post this horse scene with your suggestions and see how close I can get to making it more convincing. I have already downloaded all of the HDRI's from Horo's website and plus I have some others that I converted with the HDRIshop. I already tried the bump on the fur or what is called coat and did not see any great results. I am not sure if the Daz horse has an option to add bump to the body the only selection I can find is called "coat". I noticed later that I did have two radial lights in the scene which could have caused the light to be to strong on the horses. I will try step 3 on this. I have copied you comments and printed them out for future reference. Yes if you like the picture in this scene do a search on Scenic Sties in Utah and you will see some very nice scenery. I just went hiking today and took some great pictures jut two miles from my home. Horo has inspired me to get my camera out and use it.

U just figured they were really large horses.

Leave it to Rashad to notice the size of my horses in comparison to the vegetation. Ha Good observation as it is very true. Horo, I tired some lights but had them to close to the 2d face but you are right if I had to much light the picture washes it out even more. I decided to delete the extra lights and just use the sun.

Ah - the size issue. I didn't notice until Rashad ponted it out. But less because of the vegetation but rather for the cart tracks on the road. A picture with an overcast sky is always a bit flat because it lacks shadows. You could use either radials or spots to light the picture. If it is far enough away, the light won't interfere with the objects, the horses in this case. You could then decrease ambient and will probably get a higher contrast backdrop. But you mustn't overdo it because it looks quite natural as it is.

Foxboy it most certainly is a photo but I wished I could do work this nice. You are all right about the fur. Rashad you mentioned from one of my other horse scenes to try using the more bump in the materials lab but alas I forgot to try it. The overcast sky did help in many ways but also made for a dull picture. I still need to learn more about painting in photoshop as I wanted to have more mud on the legs of the horses. In this picture on the 2d face I had the ambient on 100% along with full diffusion. I am sure there are some tricks to making these pictures come to life. One thing that seemed to help was to use put the blue dot in the first column in the ambient channel I am not sure how this all works yet but can see the affect. The other thing I noticed was the hair on the manes could have been blowing in the wind. I think you can make some adjustments on the this hair in Daz. Thanks for you comments. Next time I try horses I will try increasing the bump on the hair to see if there is much difference.

I think it looks amazing. Horo is right in that the overcast sky evens out the shadows in almost all directions softeneing them drastically. I think the fur is not easy to remedy but the effect as is pleases me. There is a slight issue of apparent scale, these horses seem quite large compared to the nearby vegetation. Still, very good work!

Clever to use a photograph with an overcast sky. There is no need of shadows without direct light and shadows are the most difficult thing to get right. Fox is right about the fur. This is another very tricky thing to get right.

If thats not a photo, then you just slaped it sliily. Great work! If it is, still good work. The only trouble with animals is fur. It seems hard to have the fur stand out right. Still, it looks welll done. A happy 4/5