Thanks for the feedback. I'm using DAZ|Studio instead of Poser, so
unfortunately, I don't have inverse kinematics.

The woman is posed in DAZ|Studio, but the books and pen are CSG. Posing the
hands to fit properly was very time consuming as I'm using two programs to
line things up. I've worked out a more realistic (and less painful!) pose
that I'll post shortly.

I agree with you about the elbow. I played around with rotating the joints,
but gave up, opting instead for a long sleeved top to hide the elbow joint.

Rob.

"gonzo" <rgo### [at] lansetcom> wrote:
> "RobF" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I'm looking for constructive criticism to improve this image.
>
> Well, my critiques are on the Poserish problems... the woman looks very good
> (excellent hair!) except her arms and hands...  From personal experience:
> get a rough approximation of the pose you want, then TURN INVERSE
> KINEMATICS OFF! Fine tune all the joints using the movement dials.  Its
> more time consuming, but its the only way to get away from the "Poser
> look".
>
> 1. Fix her index finger on the page, the current pose is painful to look at.
>  Poser doesn't do straight fingers very well, I'd use the dials to raise the
> knuckles and give the finger more of a natural bend.  You may also need to
> change the angle of the bend at the wrist to get this right.
>
> 2. The inside of the arm at the elbow has a very flattened "bent" look. This
> is another area Poser is weak, because the skin does not flex with
> positional changes like real skin does.  Poser isn't natural, so ignore
> what *seems* natural in favor of what looks good.  Rotating the forearm
> with the dials will move the flattened part to where it is less noticable.
> In this case, moving the elbow further away from the body would probably
> help also as it will put the flattened part on the inside facing the figure
> and away from the camera.
>
> RG

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"s.day" <s.d### [at] uelacuk> wrote:
> Great image.. Difficult to say what needs improving, I assume as it is WIP
> you may be working on some of the textures (although none of them jump out
> as being bad, I just think they need a bit more detail/dirt etc..) Also it
> would look better with radiosity.
> Gotta get me one of those cordless lamps, are they cheap to run?
>
> Sean

Yeah, still playing with textures. The "cordless lamp" has a cord that goes
thru a hole in the table (unmodelled of course!). At least that's what it
looks like in my "inspiration image":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:NYC_Public_Library_Research_Room_Jan_2006.jpg


Rob.

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I used
global_settings {
  gravity off
}
:-)

I wanted to use that particular hair model, and tried to "gel it back" to
reveal her face. I agree with you that it looks unrealistic, so I'm working
on giving her a new hairstyle.

Thanks,

Rob.

"dlm" <me### [at] addressinvalid> wrote:
> "RobF" <nomail@nomail> wrote in message
> news:web.4484e379e003e28629c50a910@news.povray.org...
> > Hi,
> >
> > I'm looking for constructive criticism to improve this image.
>
> Rob,
> Pretty good!
> One more thing to consider is the hair. Lovely texture. But no visible means
> of support - unless its thick with laquer. Gravity would have it hanging
> over her face unless clipped back.
> DLM

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I had some issues using an area light, perhaps you can help.

1) I seem to get lots of grey speckles when I used an area light. I had to
go up to adaptive 3 to get rid of them.

2) The light shade texture is opaque and uses double_illuminate. The area
light is actually below the shade. Are you suggesting using a rgbf based
texture to let the light through?

3) The area_light is defined inside the lamp CSG union. The lamp's units are
in inches and in my scene file, I scale it by 1/12 to get it in feet. I
assume the  light_source units like translation are scaled as well, what
about fade_distance?

4) The area light has the following settings
  area_light
  <2, 0, 0> <0, 0, 2> // lights spread out across this distance (x * z)
  10, 10                // total number of lights in grid (4x*4z = 16
lights)

I get the following warning. As far as I can tell, I scale the lamp evenly
in all directions

  Parse Warning: When using orient, the two axes of the area light must be
of
  equal length. Only the length of the first axis will be used.

Thanks in advance,

Rob.


Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> This image is screaming for an area light instead of a point light.
> Use a 'circular orient' area light (probably a 10x10 points adaptive 1
> should do) which is about the size of the light bulb (well, of the
> imaginary light bulb since you probably didn't use a real one but
> just put a light source inside the shade).
>
>    Also the shade should have an effect on the lighting. Try removing
> no_shadow from it and letting light go through it filtered.

Post a reply to this message

Thanks for all the great feedback. Here is a new (too-dark) version with
better poses for hands, some improved textures and different lighting.
Still working on the lighting..............
Comments/criticism welcomed.

Rob.
---
http://www.fitzel.ca/dart/index.html

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Attachments:
Download 'library.0608.jpg' (168 KB)

Preview of image 'library.0608.jpg'

"RobF" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> I had some issues using an area light, perhaps you can help.
>
> 2) The light shade texture is opaque and uses double_illuminate. The area
> light is actually below the shade. Are you suggesting using a rgbf based
> texture to let the light through?
>

You can try using an rgbf texture.

If you can't get that to work properly, have a look at "projected_through"
for light sources, i.e., duplicate the lights but with the colour you want
to result from the shade and have them projected throught the shade.

One problem that you will need to address either way is that the lighting
from the shade shouldn't produce as sharp of shadows as from the bulb
directly as well as dimming/colouring it.  Using projected_through, you can
make the shade light larger (i.e. approximately the size of the shade) to
simulate this.

-tgq

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Excellent work and better than the first version.

But now the background looks too flat. Perhaps another lamp far behind of
the woman would give contrasting shadows.

Norbert kern

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"RobF" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> I'm looking for constructive criticism to improve this image.

Cleavage.  ;-)

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RobF wrote:
> Thanks for all the great feedback. Here is a new (too-dark) version with
> better poses for hands, some improved textures and different lighting.
> Still working on the lighting..............
> Comments/criticism welcomed.
> 
> Rob.

Excellent improvement!  I would only suggest reducing the ambient light 
(perhaps even setting it to 0?) and using radiosity to light the rest of 
the library.

Also, in the first image it seemed there was another light source 
further back (there's an area which is brighter towards the back) which 
seems to be missing in the new.  This helped break up the uniformity of 
the background, without drawing too much attention to itself.

...Chambers

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"RobF" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm looking for constructive criticism to improve this image.
> I'd like to improve the radiosity (currently using Radiosity_IndoorLQ), but
> not clear on which settings to tweak.
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> Rob.
> ---
> http://www.fitzel.ca/dart/index.html

WOW!

The hair doesn't look right.... instead of flowing naturally, it seems glued
to her ears.  Not sure how to advise you on this.. so I'll upload a sample
image.

Looking at parts of her skin and her books, the white is too bright.  I
think if you reduce the gamma slightly and reduce the source light, it will
look better... and if you are using any phong (or simlar) function on her
skin, she will look real if you turn it off.

If light is based on <r, g, b>, decrease the B by some subtle amount....
hmm...

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