Just two images today ... because I'm soooo sick, I'm about to hit the deck. There's a whole lot of sneezing going on in Australia right now, and at least for me, runaway allergies have turned into a major sinus and throat infection. So I'm calling it way early today. The experiment this morning was to render the figure separately from the background. It works.
I did the bottom layer (the woodland) in Photoshop, from a picture captured in Belair NP last fall. Finished with that, I shipped it in as a backdrop and posed a new character in front of it (that's still the Michael 8 skinmap and Varun hair, which render very well. Then, when that was done rendering, I shipped it back into Studio as yet another bottom layer, and added the bushes in the foreground. Since the PNature props don't even install into Studio 4, much less render properly, I did the top layer in Studio 3, as a raytrace with one light set. So --
If it's going to be sets rendered separately and used as backdrops, that's fine. To get a feel for this, I used one of the Sveva images, from Renderosity, which are retailed for exactly this purpose ... I also did it as a raytrace, because to get the hang of this took about 200 test renders; and Iray is sooo slow, I'd have been testing till next year! Result --
A neat Gothic fantasy where the line between foreground and backdrop has been confused, or hidden, with various props. I added the Michael 4 and costume (my own character -- you might recognize him, though I did change out the hairstyle), plus the bench, lantern, the ivy in the foreground, and the floor. Everything else is a backdrop. Having got the hang of it, I'll try it in Iray next, and we shall see!
So, just the two images today: Iray pretending to be a photograph, and a raytrace pretending to be a painting! I like them both. Must admit, the Iray render is pretty convincing, and since there was no set to render, or foreground, it finished in about two hours even on my old PC. Hmmm. Interesting.
And now -- pills, and crash. More soon, when I've returned to life!