Woman in Snowstorm

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pretty good. if you could, i think it would be nice to see snowflakes, but i its already pretty cool :slight_smile:

I’m working on some better snow particles. In the meantime just been tweaking materials, etc… Here’s more of 3/4 shot.


And the black and white version with photoshopped snow.


Not bad, but the lights and materials need some work.

I really like the fur around the hood, something about the jacket material seems off to me… I wonder if some kind of displacement would help. I can see you did some sculpting or proportional editing of the jacket, but I’m refering to the material itself.

Her facial features and skin look pretty good to my eye.

It looks great, but…

The snow doesn’t really fit in the scene. It looks like it’s only snowing in right in front of the camera and nowhere else. Perhaps you should add some on her face or on her sweater. And add some in-focus snow as well

At low temperatures, the blood vessels around the extremities and epidermis constrict, making the skin look pale. She looks really red to me :smiley:

Snow storms are windy, right? Add some wind to her hair or her sweater fur

Otherwise, it looks really amazing! I love it

@bendod , The materials are still weak I going to work on them, and experiment with some node setups, and a new lighting scheme. right now it’s just my standard 3 point system, which not correct for this type of exterior scene.

@harleynut, The coat needs a revamp, I’m going to work from reference photos on it.

@khalibloo. The snow is going to be completely redone. the second/third images is just photoshopped, but the first is a first particle system. I have added a wind system to the scene and am playing around the the hair/snow to get it looking right. I think I may actually do a few seconds of animation, as the snow now looks quite convincing motionwise, just not materially.

As for the skin redness, it is probably too much. As you can see in the color map I have a layer of red blush on the face which is pretty strong, but I can take it down quite easily. I think I will probably add another hair system to the coat/goggles/face, and cover it with a few flakes as buildup. I hadn’t though of that.

But yeah, I’m going for a strong storm feel, and adding wind to the coat hairs, head hairs, will help a lot. I think i will try your advice too and add a handful of snowflakes close to the camera and just keyframe them moving very slowly to get some in focus ones. Obviously I’m using motion blur on the others.

Hope I can find time this weekend. My girlfriend and I have to change condos for 3 months, as ours is being stripped down and Chinese drywall is being removed, and we have to be out by months end, so it’s all cardboard boxes and no blender. :mad:

:smiley:
Take your time… no hurries

@khalibloo, Thanks I will pace myself.

LOL - I just googled “woman in snow storm” (images, not web) and who should pop up on the first page but my cover image! I will take it as a compliment that Google considers this a woman.

I hauled some boxes like I said I would, but snuck some blender time in before bed.

I lowered the red blush skin color in the color map. Although now I miss it on the cheeks some.

The fur on the coat is now affected by wind. Opengl renders show that it looks about 80% convincing in real time.

I reworked the lighting entirely. I changed the environmental lighting image to a blue snow scene, and then lit an emission cube around her in purple/blue. Then I added the flame, and an off camera orange/red emission cone representing fire. Some snow is posted. A subtle vignette I believe works in this scene.

The piece is becoming much more about contrasting warm and cool lighting and mood than anything else.

Thoughts?


hmmm… this is quite tricky
lighting has never been my one of my strong points, so i can’t tell you exactly what you need to change. Personally, I liked it better without the fire

There’s something off about the foreground/background interface. She stands out too much from the background now. It almost looks like she’s been cut off of a photo and stitched to the snow background :slight_smile: again, i can’t say exactly what you need to adjust, sorry

the wind on the fur looks great, but it doesn’t seem to be affecting the falling snow at all. The snow looks slightly like a tiled texture…

For me, the original look of the scene + the wind on her coat’s fur + the snow on her coat = perfect!

I think I’ve figured out the problem. The background of the trees. which looks like DOF, is really just a blurred photo. I am going model some low poly background trees/snow and use DOF. The reason she looks painted on is 2 reasons: 1) She is. I mean the background photo does not share the lighting of the scene. 2) The snow really was painted on in photoshop and looks more like a drawing. Hopefully the next version will be tied together. Today was all moving no blender. :frowning: But it makes me smile that google images has my model indexed as a photo. :eyebrowlift2:

Once again I found some time late to try a couple things. I removed the bg image of the trees, and used the sapling add on to make a couple large evergreens with low poly snow systems on them. This helps a lot with the painted on issue. The snow is real everywhere, although it looks terrible on the coat. I think I am going to change the fur on the coat back to a browner material like the first image. Obvioulsy the coat is red here, not sure how I feel about that. I ran the output through the compositor trying some new nodes I’ve never used. This s a gpu render at 777 samples, so no SSS in this one. And no photoshopping either.


and the evergreens:


Great improvements! But yeah, the coat in the original image fits better in the scene… and the snow on the coat can be improved

the bottom-left corner of the image :smiley: you should probably fix that too

Ok, I’m getting close I think. This is probably the best overall render so far.

Coat is back to dark. I pushed the hood back and let her hair pop through, tweaked the goggles some. The big change is the snow, which in my opinion is much better. I modeled a couple of mid poly hexagonal snowflakes, duplicated them in edit mode a few times and mangled them together to form a clump. Of course the motion blur hides the moving snow, but the hair systems on the coat needs to look true. I rebaked the moving snow and I feel it’s a more natural sweep. The skiis are quick stand-ins, I’ll add detail to those last. But I think one or two more days and It’ll be finished.

Thanks for the feedback @khalibloo, it’s always nice to have someone give you notes.

This is a raw render, I resisted the urge to even tweak levels in photoshop.


I think the snow definitely looks better, and being able to see the pine trees in a more clear way looks good. The ski’s are a great touch… but personally I liked her better when her hood was up as before… in fact I thought that was what was really cute about girl.

Are those… snot icicles? :eek:

Harley, I think I will put the coat back up, it looks better that way. I’ll probably do one more overnight render tomorrow night on CPU to get the sss back. But the particles ae just getting out of control, and its a pain to work on, even simplified.

Richardw , it is pronounced snotcicle, and they look pretty fake and are definitely on the chopping block for the final render. :rolleyes:

I have a couple other nighttime fire renders that have almost an illustrated look, I think I may do some post on those for a drawn , Semi toon look.

That’s a nice image, photox, and I can see all the work you put into this. I especially like how you made the snow and I think that this is really paying off.

There are some aspects which are a bit confusing in my eyes. She pulled up her shoulders and overall it looks like she has withdrawn herself into her parka. People do that if it is cold and you depicted that very well. But on the other hand her facial expression looks very relaxed and comfortable. Perhaps you’ve been going for that, but it looks a bit contradictory to me.

Your title says that there is a snow storm. And the pelt on her hood is blown consequently from left to right by he wind. But the hair on her forehead is directed the other way round. I would think that this both directions should match. And I also think that the path of the snow particles should reflect that also.

I think that you’ve been closer to it at post #13.

But besides that this is very good work. Looking forward to seeing your next render :slight_smile:

@minoribus, Thanks. I see what you mean on the hair. It certainly looks like they are heading left even though in reality those are the roots, but you’re correct, it doesn’t look right. I think I will put the hood back up and possibly get rid of the head hair, I need to reduce particles somewhere. I think I will experiment with a more stoic, cold look on the smile. Although the addition of the skis and snow could explain a happy smile, but somehow it doesn’t look right. And I am going to fatten up the snow and have it pushed farther right for the full storm feel much closer to #13, the stormiest of the renders.

I got sidetracked on this project and it was getting large in terms of particles, so I took a detour and started a new project with even more particles. The past few days have my CPU has been making heat creating slow renders on a young capuchin monkey. I considered putting a little snowsuit on the monkey and merging him with this scene, and letting my machine cook overnight. I don’t know, monkeys aren’t much for skiing.