Finishing up your Daz 3D Studio creation - Viking Visual Art Tutori...

Last time, I showed you some of the steps I took when posing my characters.

This time, I'll talk you through some of the camera/lighting steps, but concentrate on my "post work" - after the render.

Camera/Lighting

I'm going to breeze through this this time because I went through it in more detail in the Name of the Neví cover tutorial (below). I didn't require any crazy techniques this time.

I just put a camera to where I wanted my picture "taken" from.
First, find the + camera icon across the top of your page and add a camera.
To view your picture from the perspective of your camera - locate on your image view where it says "perspective view" - click on the caret there and find where it says "camera 1."
Use your view tools to turn the camera and zoom in or out until you have what you want in your view (the solid rectangle around your scene.)

Add your lights - play a bit until you find what you like. Move them around, make them brighter, change their color, whatever you like.

When you're ready to take your picture, consider how much light is on your scene - and change your render settings to reflect what you want.

Under your "render editor" you will find "tone mapping" - this has a place where you can set your ISO and shutter speed. That's right, think like a photographer. If you have a bright scene, you're only going to need 100-200 ISO. If you are working in the dark, you might even want 1600.

Here is my render, which took just over an hour on my i7 desktop computer.

This photo is only the first part of what I need!
For my background, I first found a photo of mine that I took in Avebury, England.

In order to use the Avebury picture, I had to do a bit of playing as well. To begin with, I made the rather dull image look a lot more exciting with more blue and green in it. (The original was taken in January.)

I had to create a reflection to go in front of my characters in the water, so I copied the background image (without the heron), turned it upside down and cropped it so that only the part I wanted reflected was in the shot. Then, I smudged the picture back and forth to make it wavy like the water.

My characters were then placed between the background layer and the reflection layer.

I also had to add more mud to my characters, their arms, faces, necks...

I reversed the picture so that Yuri's back would be to the spine of the book which felt like a more natural, open position - it also makes the heron fly off towards their future... the book.

I then found a picture of a heron from Pixabay - because this heron is the reason why Melia and Yuri had this swamp fight to begin with, so it's a very important character in this book.

To use the heron, I had to add an alpha channel and remove the background. Then, I changed the blue of this bird to more of a yellow tone because this is meant to be an "amber heron" - not a great blue.
Placing the heron wasn't super easy. I couldn't find a spot I liked, so I settled on it flying away from in between them, further emphasizing the fact that the heron was largely responsible for them falling in love.

Here is my final image.

I'm still trying to work out whether this is my final cover or whether I'm going to add a surrounding element to it - like I've done on the previous two of this series... but I'm happy with this image.
Thanks to @jamerussell who gave me feedback as I was developing the "post work".

Other parts of this tutorial: part 1, part 2, part 3

Past tutorials:

Map Development for Alacantis (on GIMP), part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4
Cover image for Acting the Part
Cover image for Brighid's Blood (part of the update).
Cover image for Birth of the Neví, part 1, part 2
Map Development for Velantia, part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4
Map Development for Kranisis, part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4
Cover Image for Name of the Neví, part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6
Beginning with Daz 3D Studio - my cover image for Mind of the Neví: part 1, part 2, part 3

All work done by myself on Daz 3D Studio, GIMP, and/or Photoscape.
Crossposted at Steem, Whaleshares and WeKu.

Lori Svensen
author/designer at A'mara Books
photographer/graphic artist for Viking Visual
verified author on Goodreads
find me on Twitter
also on: Whaleshares, WeKu

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Finishing up your Daz 3D Studio creation - Viking Visual Art Tutorial - part 4

Camera/Lighting

Past tutorials:

Photo salvages:

Coloring Tutorials & Mini-tutorials:

Miscellaneous Artwork: