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Thanks

EDIT: I felt that it needed to be a little brighter seeing as it looks like the sun shines right at the model in focus if you look at the background..

so:

Coldsnap wrote:

MagickalMemories wrote:Trygon pic looks cool, but I think it'd look better with a "real" background instead of one that looks like a piece of linen.

It's actually my Carnifex, still saving up for a Trygon... I've built a ripper-style army, removing the legs on all the models
And yes, I think I went a little overboard with aging the photo

Ah.
My bad.
Judging from the height, I presumed it was a Fex conversion to Trygon. Must just be the camera angle.

Still looks good, though.

Eric

Wow I just had to try this out, this is what i came up with. not as good as the other examples here but i like it.

I found it difficult to find an good background.

Hans

That battlesuit is pretty cool, actually.

The only problem (photoshopwise) that I see is two things...
a) the edges around the battlesuit needs fixing
and
b) you need shadows to be cast from the battlesuit...

Yeah I saw the edges to, going to fix this. Also thinking about the shadows. Thanks for C&C.

@Müller: Definitely looks more like sunlight there, nice work.

@Hans_posthumus: Nice one, I loved what the noise did for the image. Looks a bit like a surveillance camera shot it. One thing you could try (assuming you use photoshop) is dulling the blue and yellow colors down a bit to match the background more, and as others pointed out fixing the edges will do wonders. Selection feathering (CTRL-ALT-D) can be very helpful in softening up your edges, especially if you work at high resolutions. Painting shadows can be tricky, the cheapest way is probably to make a copy of the battlesuit layer, paint the entire selection black, line it up on the ground using Edit->Transform->Distort and then apply a gaussian blur to it.

Couldn't resist making another one using the technique I posted earlier in the thread...

Time for me to stop lurking after all these years & finally post something...



Cheers,
Jim.

That's really nice, coldsnap and DMG! Keep making these things, they inspire me!

Here's another quick pic.



It's not perfect & the perspective / colouring is out on the cathedral to the left as I just threw it in to fill up that side.

I need to set the board up again & take some good shots.

Love that building and the pics!!!! I had to post another one. I really need to spend more time on these but I just haven't had the time. I make this one entirely from images taken from the internet. Added my own smoke, shadows, sign and just manipulated the thing till I liked it. I need to bust out my camera and really plan out a shot. Hope you like it. Keep the pics coming guys they look great!!!!

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Also , so very talended people out there !

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[/OT post]

Eric

Here is another one. All from internet. Had to stop as I am leaving but I like it. Its about 9 pictures and heavily modified.




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Here is another one. Gotta say these are fun to make.

Dah dah da da dah da...

Some great work here but I just wanted to comment on one thing that stands out in some pictures, especially Sha1emade's work...

Play special attention to the lighting and shadows on models and backgrounds that you use in these sorts of pictures. If one model has lighting from the top and another has lighting from the side, it makes the picture look unnatural and less realistic than it would otherwise be. The space marine picture shows this the most, the shadow is coming out the same side as the reflection of light on the armour. Fixing these sorts of issues would significantly increase the quality of the images. As shown in the OP's work, using mist and fog is a good way to get around issues with lighting angles, and avoiding harsh flash in a photo is essential.

Legoburner - Given these were done very quickly, about 2 hrs, things are going to drop by the wayside. A simple flip of the marine would fix the lighting in that photo, but i never went back to fix it. Matching the lighting, contrast, saturation, image quality and hue of 7 to 13 pictures (all pulled from the internet) while blending backgrounds from various pictures, creating foreground/background elements, clipping, simulating aperture and creating mostly seamless shadows and lighting from scratch is not easy. Sometimes you just have to force it to work. Ya just have to do the best you can do and go from there with the time you have. In the marine pic I had to make the sunlight come threw in small pieces. This gives the effect of the patchy sky. Hoped no one would notice the problem with the marine but as far as I can tell, it is the most glaring light issue from the latest pictures and they are not THAT bad or obvious, not enough to be singled out by name and deserving of a paragraph. Just so you know, most people get bent out of shape when someone starts with its good but....then proceed to a paragraph about how bad you do it. It is quite rude actually, especially in an art thread where people are trying out new things, to point one person out amongst all the rest and basically lecture as opposed to being specific on your points and general on who they apply to. I understand you were suggesting to be helpful but it just came of as condescending. What a person says and how they say it are two very different things. Just saying...manners 101.

Given the time frame put into them, not going for perfect, going for interesting. It is easy to be an arm chair quarterback. If you had made a picture of you own and posted saying what you said I would be more apt to take your advise. And you would probably have suggested something that I could have used. Jump in and make one and lets see. Suggestions like add more smoke or mist as a suggestion does not work in most cases and is just a rehash of what was said earlier. In referencing that, those rules apply to pics with one light source, not multiple. Ever tried adding smoke to a picture? Do you know what it really does? If using light smoke or mist it will help dull your subject and give the appearance of a foreground element and cover your tracks if and when using a clipped image by dulling the edges. It is however mostly to entirely useless for covering flaws in lighting. It cannot change the source of the light or the direction. It cannot cover more intense lighting up, unless it is so thick that you cannot see the model beneath which is often not desired. It can however simulate lower contrast and lower brightness but that can be done in far better and more exacting ways than just tossing smoke over all mistakes. As brighter luminosity shows first when using any type of mask or lower opacity layer. Followed by lights, darks and shadows in most cases depending on your method. Basically does not work like you are suggesting and when it does there are far better ways of achieving the effect, especially on the flawed marine pic. Smoke is a style choice and should not bee seen as a photoshop fix all.

Coldsnap uses primarily one shot for his pics. He uses background smoke and sky to great effect. The end result is amazing photos. He started this all with some great creativity and thought. He would have no lighting issues as they all come from one source, generally. When one picture is 75% to 95% of your photo these issues should not arise. So referring to his work really does not apply as they are basically 2 very different styles of photos. A photo montage is very different then doctoring up a photo, even though they both use smiler techniques. Sorry for the rant and rudeness but things like that really bothers me. Rudeness begets rudeness. ADMIN or not.

General Mayhem- I was going to do a pic just like that! Yours looks great. Now i don't have to. My Valkyrie is not very convincing, that i stuck in my pic. Was that your valkarie? Did you paint it? If so hats off.

Apologies for causing offense, I was merely trying to offer some constructive criticism, which I assumed was part of the reason why you posted them, and like I said there are some great pictures here. I've done more photo retouching work than I care to remember so am well aware of the efforts required, especially with multisource montage work. The only reason I mentioned you by name was because your images are good but the poor lighting angles was the one exception that would make them great.

Thanks for responding like you did. I probably should have been more clear that these are just me messing around and not trying to make a flawless piece. I guess I never really expected them to be good enough for people to get picky about them. Thanks for saying so. It seemed to me that you were just pointing out flaws and dismissing the pics because of that, now I know that you were not, stupid internet and its ability to remove inflection and mood. . So my bad for getting a bit huffy about it. It just didn't seem to come across that way in your original post. I know that to make them really good will take more time then I am willing to spend. I make my living this way and only put that kind of time and effort in when I am getting paid for it.

Awesome stuff guys

Thats my baby and yes I painted it, thanks Sha1emade. Got some more shots to play with, I want to try getting a guy rapelling out the back! If I get it sorted I will post it.

This was pretty much the story last time I actually used a commissar in 40k. I paid a little more attention to the shadows this time but all I really was going for is the overall visual. The shadows played a funky trick on me when I applied the last filter so I just let them go.

I love the model of the commisar reading from his "littanies of hate" or "bedtime stories for up too late canifexes". As we have both these models maybe I will try to set it up as a "live" photo shoot tomorrow.


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This dude, some columns, a carnifex or hive tyrant, and some time. Tomorrow, definately tomorrow.

I would love to see that!!! I am thinking trying one with some Tau next.

Ok got this shot done today, unedited so far, but based on Sha1emades photo shop image.

I need to "airbrush" out the bases and try to darken the whole image (Shot taken outside for good lighting)

VERY nice pictures all of you ....

General Mayhem- Looks like it will be a cool picture! All of my shots were separate elements. This made it easier to move and arrange the models in a pleasing manner. I did not pay much attention to the horizon but it seems to work regardless. You might have trouble editing the photo because of this. I was able to remove bases and add motion effects with little trouble. What you are doing is quite a bit harder than what I had to deal with. My hats off to you for doing it that way. My brain would explode. However if you can pull it off, It will be very cool. Can't wait to see!!

@General Mayhem: You're looking forward to quite a bit of work if you're getting rid of those bases (Very nice scene though ). I don't know what I would have done about the carnifex base since it's a large scenic one... the rock will not ruin your scene, but the grass and base edge might. If you really want to get rid of it you could try to mirror parts of the floor from the other side of the pathway, and blend these in on top of the base edge. For the little guy I suggest the same thing, copy the top-right corner of the floor tile, mirror it and use a layer mask to hide the green parts of the base. Of course you could also draw freehand on top of the photo using airbrush and/or clonestamp, but that's going to take some time. You'll probably want to keep the thing he's standing on, and maybe some of the rubble also. If you remove all of it, you'll have to make a fake shadow on the floor or he'll look like he's hovering above it.

One of my own tricks for editing out bases is to have the camera fixed in place (on a tripod, on the ground or whatever), and take 2 photos, one with the mini and one without it. Then you can just put them on top of each other and use layer masking to remove the base (Though you may have issues with shadows here as well).
If you have a rubble base, you can also just clonestamp rubble from the base right on top of the base edge, it works surprisingly well sometimes (see the Chaos Dreadnought photo I posted way back in this thread).

Hi there!

When I was painting my tau fire-warriors I couldn't resist taking a quick pic of my battlesuit and one of the warriors in the grass. Here is the original pics + edited pic's

C&C are more then welcome everyone!