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GrandSACHI — Crestbraid - Page 13
#centaurs #dragons #dryad #dungeons #paladin #tiefling #therina #udele #bioluminescence #comicstrip #dungeonsanddragons #halfdemon #webcomic
Published: 2018-01-17 15:50:14 +0000 UTC; Views: 1236; Favourites: 20; Downloads: 20
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Description
Thirteenth page of Crestbraid!
I mentioned that in the past, but making night scenes has always been more challenging than scene in daylight. one of the reason is that you want the scene to be lit enough so details can be seen, but you don't want the scene to look like a big projector is lighting it up.
For this page the challenge was doubled by the fact that I wanted the scenes to be lit only by these strange bioluminescent plants. Unfortunately, lights can't be instanced in DAZ Studio so I had to rely on light-emitting textures so each instance (there are hundreds of them) of the plants will emit light. Now these light-emitting shaders are a pain in the butt to work with using the 3Delight engine, which translated in prohibitive render time. As an example, in the last panel the expression of Udele is not quite what I wanted, as I was aiming for a more evil-looking grin, but after a render that took 9 hours, I said: well, that's how it's gonna be!
For that page, iRay would have been the way to go!
Crestbraid index
Page 01
Page 02
Page 03
Page 04
Page 05
Page 06
Page 07
Page 08
Page 09
Page 10
Page 11
Page 12
Page 13
Page 14
Page 15
Page 16
Page 17
Page 18
Page 19
Page 20
Page 21
Page 22
Page 23
Page 24
Page 25
Page 26
Page 27
Page 28
Page 29
Page 30
Page 31
Page 32
Page 33
Page 34
Page 35
Page 36
EDIT 18-01-18: Corrected a few typos. As usual, thanks to Lespion1944 .
Tools of the trade:
DAZ Studio pro 4.9 (3Delight)
Photoshop CS3
Illustrator CS3
Related content
Comments: 46
What a great story unfolding, with such wonderful illustrations.
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Well, as we found out, having succubus blood isn't something you can shake off...
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No doubt, in my eyes it's even without your satisfaction a wonderful work and the smile from Udele works quite well in a other way.
For me it looks like she suspects more about Crestbraid real inner self.
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There definitely a bit of that in that smirk!
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Send in the clones might have worked. I should keep this in mind in case I decide to do another scene like these!
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Maybe you could try
Marshian Reflective radiance
high ambient textures setups
Omnifreaker ubersoft light kit can easily fake area lights too without too high render times i guess
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the ubersoft light kit would not work in this case because lights in general can't be instanced (in these scenes, the light emitting plants consiste of hundreds of instances spread over a very vast terrain using UtraScatter) and placing manually a light at every instances was just not feasible.
Increasing ambiant strength worked (and that's what I did) for the bioluminescent buds themselves, but would be impracticable for the environment.
Now Reflective radiance on the other hand... does seem to provide emissive shader (used in conjunction with the light) and that might have worked. Now it's a little bit too late to try, but it might get better lightings than emissive surface using the UberAreaLight shader.
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Awesome job and love the personalities you've built for each character.
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Well done. Great lighting. I wish I could make night pictures this good. And as usual, I love the naughty/funny twist at the end.
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Thank you! It was a pain in the butt, but was worth it!
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I hear you about light emitting textures and 3DL. Some of my render times went through the roof when using them, and they never seemed as strong as they needed to be (more like the ambient had been turned up than any real glow). I think I ended up doing most of it in postwork.
For what it's worth though, the effect you pulled off is still quite nice, even if it wasn't quite what was intended.
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Gosh! don't tell me. The light strength in these texture is set at 1500% and still gave me such a dim glow! With my first few assays, I even thought that the shader was broken because I wasn't getting any lights! It's just when I realized that I had to crank up the light strength (and the sampling) that I figured that, no, it was not broken!
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About light-emitting textures.... hmmm I can say that, from my experience at least, Iray emissive lights takes longer to render than normal lights. So I have to be careful and only use when necessary and just for candles, camp fires and the like, but not being the main light.
I loved the page and in my opinion the night scene is very good! 
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Yeah, emissive lights should only be used sparsely, but now I can affirm without any doubt, that 3Delight is NOT meant to be used with those. Not only the render time is increased exponentially, but the quality and strength of the light you get are... very poor!
Thant being said, I'm glad you like the page. I'm quite satisfied with he end result anyway!
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I like that you are making Udele a more ambiguous character. It gives her more depth and makes her quite interesting! I wonder now how this is going to go by the end!
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Yep... interesting indeed!
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That page was so sweet, it makes me want to read the first Adventures again to see Noech again <3
But yeah, Night scenes are a pain in the butt, I love dark images so I know your pain too well. When I saw the thumbnail at first I was like "Omg that must have taken an eternity!"
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Oh, it did... take an eternity, I mean.
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But it was absolutely worth it!
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Well at least it's good to know that I didn't do that in vain!
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I completely understand that kind of difficulty, but the grin works. I read it that way immediately.
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the grin was just looking better in the main window of DS, so I was a little disappointed when I saw the result the next morning. But we all know well how expressions do not always translate very well between the openGL view and the final render!
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I think that smirk tells it all. No need to change that.
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Tons of light sources are prone to significantly increase the render time in about any engine I've tried, including Iray. Though 9 hours for a 3DL render is indeed a lot. Reminds me what size do you render your panels?
Anyway interesting character development, will be interesting to see how this goes on.
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Obviously I don't render very big images, which help to reduce render time. All my panels are rendered at a height of 1000 pixels. So this list panel being fairly squared, the size of that particular image must have been around 1000X1000. Under normal lighting, it would have taken at most an hour to render, or more likely around 30 minutes. The worst part here was Udele's hair. Normally I take advantage of AoA advanced lights to reduce sampling specifically for hairs and trees, but with light emitting shader... forget about it!
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Do not worry about your night scenes!!They rock!!
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They look good, but damn! they're hard to do! 
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Awesome job on the lighting then! I tried a night time render & ended up having to lighten it via Paint Shop Pro. That alone is an amazing feat on your part. 9 hours!?! WOW. That's dedication.
I love the story here & I love the ending as well. I just wonder where Crestbraid will be at the end of this journey.
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At least I can let my computer work while I'm sleepling, but that one was not even finished when I got up in the morning!
I love those characters too, so I couldn't let them go... entirely!
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I understand on the rendering. I would leave mine rendering, but I live in fear that my tower will burst into flames while I'm sleeping. LOL
I'm glad you couldn't. I'd miss them. I just passed your gallery on to a friend a little bit ago, as well. I just assumed she already knew about you, but hopefully you'll have a new watcher soon.
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That why when I built this computer I put some extra money on some of the best air cooler out there. Now even if the 4 cores (8 threads) runs at 4.5 GHz for 10 hours, the computer remains cool and quiet! So no fear!
Thank you for recruiting a potential new reader! These characters need some love!
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WOW! We once built a computer with 2 radiators in it for a customer. The guy said money was no option. We though he was kidding. He was not kidding. My bro-in-law says that you add fluid by the CD drive. I still don;t believe it. 
No prob. I need all the new people you can get. I want these adventures going on indefinitely.
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A good air cooler can be a quite cheaper than a good water cooling system and perform just as well on a non-OC CPU. I've got my Noctua NH-D15 for about 100 CAN$. Only problem, it won't fit in 85% of the computer cases out there. No really, that thing is massive, but so quiet as I have it running at only 50% of its capacity under full load! No kidding, I can sleep beside my computer while it's rendering and barely hear the fans!
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WOW! That sounds cool & cheaper than I'd expect. I've never looked into the cooling part of a pc beyond fans for myself & our customers usually buy what's on the shelf. We have custom built a bunch, but NEVER in my modest price range.
I know my bro-in-law had to order the case the guy wanted, then modify it, then buy him a new one...twice. It was what the guy requested. LOL
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Cooling has always been overlooked by people and because of that, prebuilt system sold by big companies often go cheap on that part. The problem is that for a rendering machine, I would call it a vital part!
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I can't say that I disagree. My bro-in-law usually orders all the sweet stuff. I need to keep that in mind as well. I'm gonna copy & paste this in a note to a friend looking at buying a computer for rendering. I appreciate the tip.
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