I Just Wanted to Post an Image Thread

[carmen indorato]

CMYK is correct it will print correctly RGB is horrible to print. Couple of my renders that I've printed took me ages to get the settings right.

That depends on the RIP being used to print the images.
I have always used EPSON at home and the images I did in Poser went over beautifully w/o too much brain burn in RGB. THe RIP is made to do that for an amateur market. CMYK is for offset and the print houses should have an in house pre press department to get that all worked out. Best to check in advance what they need from you before sending work in to print. You just gotta provide a good proof to show what you expect to see and for them to compare to their rushes (Press proof)

 

[Rae134]

We were the print house We always had problems with MP so much so that we stopped allowing them to be used or sent to us (Other Microsoft products like Word was ok). Didn't really have any problems with PDFs made in any other program just MPub.

 

[carmen indorato]

Yep, always save it as CMYK for printing. But there's a quirk in MP that can be a bit tricky. It will not always print how the client expects (we had a client for example, do their own artwork using a blue, it looked a bit darker than the Ford blue on the screen but printed like the FedEx purple, they were NOT happy). Its not really a quality product to use for printing on a press but should be fine if its just for viewing online.

Anything Microsoft is a nightmare to print and get accurate colors. I know first hand. Best to try one of the inexpensive print apps or layout apps made for preparing works for printing. Always....Always....use PMS colors in your layouts and if the app does not allow that don't use it. Press companies invest in RIPs made to easily calibrate for PMS output.
Also, if it is getting text, first make sure the layout is exactly how you want it then convert the fonts to outline to avoid all the dumb stuff that happens with quirky apps and quirkier fonts traveling from one app to another and one system to another. I have seen nice new fonts burned to cd to go to print shops get corrupted and messing the works up. O fonts that go from one platform to the printer RIPs go bad. Keep a copy on your own system in the event of needed changes in the original format or you will be in trouble if you want to edit text in the future.

 

[carmen indorato]

We were the print house We always had problems with MP so much so that we stopped allowing them to be used or sent to us (Other Microsoft products like Word was ok). Didn't really have any problems with PDFs made in any other program just MPub.

I worked 6 years in a grand format print shop that did work for bus wraps and huge building signage and parking and retail signs as well as the all important trade shows which had to be P.E.R.F.E.C.T.!. Colors were critical, fonts were critical, image resolutions critical, especially when they are laid out out in an app like word or any other of their office suits, which are made for 8.5 x 11 printing format in RGB do NOT do well enlarging the file 600 or 1000! REAL Messy work that and many files were sent back to a flustered angry client who had no idea why their "PRECIOUS AND PERFECT" files were duds! Use an app made for what you are getting done and you will live longer!

 

[carmen indorato]

We were the print house We always had problems with MP so much so that we stopped allowing them to be used or sent to us (Other Microsoft products like Word was ok). Didn't really have any problems with PDFs made in any other program just MPub.

I guess that depends how the PDF was constructed.If you embed higher res images in the document you are ok but if you are embedding lower res images say for use on a web page or as a readme file on a monitor and want to save money and re-purpose the file as say a poster or P.O.S sign or bus ad, in other words when it needs to be ENLAAAAARGED you might be in a bit of a messy!

 

[carmen indorato]

Your welcome I use Adobe InDesign for any thing like this of my own and if I remember my graphic design papers from uni right most printers like pdf format too.
Once its saved any pdf reader can be used to view it


From what I remember of my graphics classes at uni as long as you have saved it with the right settings it should be fine. Let's see if I remember what the lecturer was trying to tell us, when saving for print use the CMYK rather than RGB as it will give a truer colour and it is normally what the big industrial printers are setup for.
Of course as I am going off memory I could have that skewed and it also assumes that everyone has their screens properly calibrated to start with and the same lol

Good choice. InDesign like Quark are made for this sort of printing. MS Sheitz anything is NOT! Their suite apps are made for printing on laser printers and/or in 8.5 X 11 inches or 11X17 inches. Anything larger can be what will age the printer unnecessarily trying to trouble shoot!

 

[Hornet3d]

I must admit the photo books I have had printed have come out really well and other than having my monitors calibrated I do nothing colour wise. I use Photo Box here in the UK and upload the photos in Jpeg the pixel dimensions vary on page size, of course, as they are landscape I use 2480 X 3508 for A4 and 3508 X 4961 for A3 and double the base if I am having a lay flat book and intend to stretch one image across two pages.

I never expected anyone to be that interested even looking at my renders for free so I can't see me having a story book printed. In fact my photo books could be purchased from Photo Box but the price is around £150 for a 95 page flat book and even I did not pay that as I waited for a sale, I think I paid £39. I am up for the idea producing something on line. I already decrease the resolution of anything I upload and colour would not be an issue it is just the adding of the text that would be different.

I had a play last night and I am able to create a page of text alongside a render using MS Word. I have another multi format conversion program that will convert word documents to .pdf. It worked well and I was able to have pages side by side with a two page display with Adobe Acrobat. When I have time I am going to try using MS publisher which would make things easier for me.

 

[Hornet3d]

Whispers of Dragonfire
View media item 2971
Still playing with LAMH, this time adding it to a hair figure to try to re-create that "halo" of loose strands and single hairs that look so pretty when they catch the light... I think I need to decrease the hair count and fix some curl issues, but I'm happy with the direction this is heading. I was moving my camera around the scene, and liked this view so much I decided to render it out.

That is beautiful, I think that is one of the advantages of 3D even though it ends up as 2D render, the ability to spin the camera is great. A couple of times I have done the same, moved cameras or switched cameras and suddenly seen a great scene.

 

[Gadget Girl]

Catching up to this thread after being away from my computer for a bit.

Actually, I think Ken was saying he'd rather have an intelligent critique than someone say "Nice" (which I see alot).

I don't quite understand why some artists claim that feedback is not important to them. That they create art for themselves, and don't care what others think. If that were true, why do they post it publicly? Why do they show it to the world if they don't care?

I'm guilty of just hitting the like button instead of saying something, either I'm busy or on the phone (and I HATE typing on the phone).

I'm somewhat guilty of this as well. Mostly I will hit the like button most of the time when I really like an image, but I don't comment unless I have something very specific to say. That doesn't mean the specific has to be negative, if something really grabs me, I try to comment on that as well.

I actually love criticism, even when it stings a bit, because it helps me grow as an artists. Part of this comes from my upbringing in the theatre (I'm in the fourth generation of actors in my family, we're up to six now). A think of myself as a very good actor, and I've done roles where I've gotten very little criticism and direction from the director during the rehearsal process. But the roles that I've always gotten the most compliments on were always ones where the director gave me more feedback and pushed me more or at the least challenged me to thing about the role in a different way.

One of the great things about a community like this, when you do get feedback is that it can help you grow, especially since the people commenting have an understanding of how the tools work and what the challenges are.

For instance this is one of the first full renders I ever did (Aiko 4 for those wondering):

I actually use this as my desktop background just because it feels very me, and because of that people will see it, and tell me how amazing it is. And I do like it, and yet almost right away when I look at it, I see the hair clipping through the arms and I think parts of her chest as well. I don't think I actually noticed that for a long time in this image, and I'm not sure if anyone would have pointed it out to me, had I posted it back when I first made it. But having things like that pointed out to you, definitely help you learn.

Also, although I'm a very shy introverted person, I do in part do theatre, my main form of art to be noticed. So I'll admit, I do care whether people see my work or not, even if they don't think it's great.

 

[Gadget Girl]

A few Carrara'ists have been playing around with the NPR renderer in Carrara..

Here a a couple I have done to share with you.

I love these. I really want to figure out how to do more NPR renders. It's funny, I love Superfly, and love pushing towards photo realistic, but I also love the far side of the spectrum and things that made to look more like illustrations than renders.

Final hurdle I have already touched on, I do not know the best way to create the story book. I don't want to go down the route of a comic just because it is not really my style and I feel a great deal of information would be lost as I am OK with renders and writing in general but I doubt I can convert that to a comic and feel I have done it justice.

So here's a thought. Because you haven't been creating this story and the art to go with it with the idea of a traditional storybook in mind, maybe don't put it together that way. It might be interesting to let it me an evolving work in progress, even with some of the older v4 renders (although you could always update those if you wanted.)

My thought is what about a web based 'book'. Not necessarily a pdf, or a web comic. Basically a series of ordered webpages with images and text that you could update as you wanted. You could have the main page show a link to the latests changes or updates whether they were at the beginning the middle or the end and then you could add to it as you went. So if you later decided there was a spot in the middle that needed another image, go ahead and add it.

It's the sort of thing that you wouldn't want to do if your end goal was to make a book that you were going to sell, but it could be a very interesting way to share your art and the story behind it if that's not your goal. Basically, I think several of us find the story your are telling, and the images that go with it interesting, and you don't need to put it into a traditional format. It doesn't need to be laid out like a graphic novel or a web comic, just whatever format feels right for your story and your art even if it's not in a traditional narrative style.

Still playing with LAMH, this time adding it to a hair figure to try to re-create that "halo" of loose strands and single hairs that look so pretty when they catch the light... I think I need to decrease the hair count and fix some curl issues, but I'm happy with the direction this is heading.

Looks really good. I'd agree that you probably have two high a hair count. Usually those little hairs are fairly few. Also you have a dark enough color on the hair that I think just a very few hairs will show up very strongly, and create the effect you are going for.

 

[Hornet3d]

So here's a thought. Because you haven't been creating this story and the art to go with it with the idea of a traditional storybook in mind, maybe don't put it together that way. It might be interesting to let it me an evolving work in progress, even with some of the older v4 renders (although you could always update those if you wanted.)

My thought is what about a web based 'book'. Not necessarily a pdf, or a web comic. Basically a series of ordered webpages with images and text that you could update as you wanted. You could have the main page show a link to the latests changes or updates whether they were at the beginning the middle or the end and then you could add to it as you went. So if you later decided there was a spot in the middle that needed another image, go ahead and add it.

It's the sort of thing that you wouldn't want to do if your end goal was to make a book that you were going to sell, but it could be a very interesting way to share your art and the story behind it if that's not your goal. Basically, I think several of us find the story your are telling, and the images that go with it interesting, and you don't need to put it into a traditional format. It doesn't need to be laid out like a graphic novel or a web comic, just whatever format feels right for your story and your art even if it's not in a traditional narrative style.

Thank you so much for your interest, taking the time to comment and, even more, coming up with suggestions. I have been playing with a lot of ideas to see how I could put something together, either with the software I have or finding software that can get me to reach the goal of creating something that would tell the story. I like the idea you have and while doing some Internet searches I came across a couple of online publishers which appear to provide pretty much what you have described. It allows you to build a book and modify it while they provide the medium of getting on line for any one interested to access. I would need to pay a small subscription each month, which is understandable, but it would be a cost well worth paying as it would give me a nice project to work with.

As it is an on line subscription I needed to fund it by credit card and, unfortunately, my cards have been defrauded again so all of them are blocked for the present. I will stress it has nothing to do with Hivewire3D but another 3D market place, who have admitted their security was breached, again. Anyway I digress, this means I have an enforced delay so I am using the time to look at the best mediums and also try and bring the first few chapters together.

I certainly like your suggestion and the online publishing I have seen appears to provide a method I could use without looking to much at keeping a web site going and thus allows me to concentrate on the art. I certainly never planned to make money from it, it was never planned and I am not even sure where the story started. I think the first grains of a story was born when I first started using Poser for, as I created scenes, I tried to imagine how they came about. When I moved on to renders with figures in them I started wondering what the characters might say to each other. I suppose it came more concrete in my mind when the figures became characters to me, so much so, when I morphed Dawn into my most recent character I was really trying portray what the character in my head would look like.

Thanks again for you time, interest and encouragement it has really spurred me on I'm just not quite 100% sure in my mind that spurring will do. I will update when I have a more solid idea of the path forward.

 

[Hornet3d]

Catching up to this thread after being away from my computer for a bit.





I'm guilty of just hitting the like button instead of saying something, either I'm busy or on the phone (and I HATE typing on the phone).

I'm somewhat guilty of this as well. Mostly I will hit the like button most of the time when I really like an image, but I don't comment unless I have something very specific to say. That doesn't mean the specific has to be negative, if something really grabs me, I try to comment on that as well.

I actually love criticism, even when it stings a bit, because it helps me grow as an artists. Part of this comes from my upbringing in the theatre (I'm in the fourth generation of actors in my family, we're up to six now). A think of myself as a very good actor, and I've done roles where I've gotten very little criticism and direction from the director during the rehearsal process. But the roles that I've always gotten the most compliments on were always ones where the director gave me more feedback and pushed me more or at the least challenged me to thing about the role in a different way.

One of the great things about a community like this, when you do get feedback is that it can help you grow, especially since the people commenting have an understanding of how the tools work and what the challenges are.

For instance this is one of the first full renders I ever did (Aiko 4 for those wondering):

I actually use this as my desktop background just because it feels very me, and because of that people will see it, and tell me how amazing it is. And I do like it, and yet almost right away when I look at it, I see the hair clipping through the arms and I think parts of her chest as well. I don't think I actually noticed that for a long time in this image, and I'm not sure if anyone would have pointed it out to me, had I posted it back when I first made it. But having things like that pointed out to you, definitely help you learn.

Also, although I'm a very shy introverted person, I do in part do theatre, my main form of art to be noticed. So I'll admit, I do care whether people see my work or not, even if they don't think it's great.

Love it, it puts my first attempts to shame. I think I was about five years in before any of my renders, usually by accident more than design, could be deemed anywhere near as good as this.

 

[Gadget Girl]

Love it, it puts my first attempts to shame. I think I was about five years in before any of my renders, usually by accident more than design, could be deemed anywhere near as good as this.

Thanks so much. I think the thing this image has going for it, is that I was really intrigued by the posing and expressions aspects of 3D at the beginning. It's funny because I don't have as much patience as I started with for posing figures and working on expressions. That's probably what I spent the most time on, was the position of her hands and how she was focused on the orb. I think these days I spend too much time worrying about making clothing and hair fit, and sometimes not enough time on the poses and expressions.

 

[JOdel]

That is very much what I had in mind when I first started the idea of a photo book but I could not find a print house that did that sort of thing at a reasonable cost. I can generate something very similar using something like Microsoft Publisher but that limits the people that can see it. I will look into your suggestion of a pdf format and see what how that would work. Thanks for the suggestion.

I've been using a faux book layout for my posted .pdfs over at Red Hen since about 2004. Not appropriate for something that ever is designed to go to print, since the background graphics choke the printer. But it does have the virtue of being a viable production method requiring no additional participants. (Apart from the various authors, that is. I don't write the projects, I just produce and publish them.)

Red Hen Publications: My Work — Publications
The publications are accessible from the sidebar. The non-fiction work is not produced from the method described above. The others all are.

 

[JOdel]

Class work. Am taking a 3D modeling class this semester. Assignment 1 was to build a computer mouse. Assignment 2 was to build a car.

 

[Rae134]

Love it Jodel

 

[Hornet3d]

I've been using a faux book layout for my posted .pdfs over at Red Hen since about 2004. Not appropriate for something that ever is designed to go to print, since the background graphics choke the printer. But it does have the virtue of being a viable production method requiring no additional participants. (Apart from the various authors, that is. I don't write the projects, I just produce and publish them.)

Red Hen Publications: My Work — Publications
The publications are accessible from the sidebar. The non-fiction work is not produced from the method described above. The others all are.

Thank you for the link, I have just had a quick look and it certainly is interesting. I have booked marked it as I want to spend some serious time there.

 

[Hornet3d]

Class work. Am taking a 3D modeling class this semester. Assignment 1 was to build a computer mouse. Assignment 2 was to build a car.
View attachment 25129
View attachment 25130
View attachment 25131

I love that, the detail is stunning.

 

[Pendraia]

Lovely work Jodel...that's a full on second assignment. I hope there's lot of tutorials to help you along though.

Can I ask who is the class through and what program?

I was very bad a few days back and bought some things from the Daz sale. Bad because I should really have spent the money...but I couldn't resist stonemason's willow creek and the lovely Mother Earth which iirc is from Emma and Jordi. Just really a load an shoot as my computer is very slow at the moment would like to revisit this and add better lighting and also maybe Ken's lizard on the rock. and also that naughty squirrel that also jumped into my trolley.

 

[JOdel]

The class is at Santa Monica College (they have an Entertainment Design track), and the program is Maya. That's about the only program -- apart from AutoCAD -- that I've been able to find that I can take actual classes in. Mainly because people actually get hired on the grounds of being conversant with it. I get a strong impression that many of the instructors are industry people who are effectively moonlighting.

There was a trio of tutorials which got us about 2/3 of the way into the project. We also had a photo image of a basic roadster in side view (I think a BMW, but I'm not sure) which we were to use as a starting point. But we were to customize basic the car rough (which was very blocky) to our own preferences. We also got a 4th tutorial on doing some of the details for the car. Basically just the steering wheel, tires, hubcaps and seats.

The interior was kind of a composite from memory (I haven't had a car since '94). Sort of a mashup of what I could remember from the family car when I was a kid (a '50 Chevy Deluxe), and my old 1969 Fiat 850 Spyder which I had from '72 to '79. I did go online and look over images of car interiors from the '50s though.

From the timing, I suspect that this constitutes our midterm. Unless the midterm is an actual test.