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| Poser
figures and the Real World....right!...but
we're going to try anyway.
Ever
want to render a Poser figure in a real
photo? Or create a digital painting
using a photo reference with a Poser
figure? Because that's what you will
find below. Hey, I'm no genius, but
in the tutorial to follow, you will
find one way to do it. Don't take this
the only way, by any means... it seems
every time I do something, I find myself
doing it a little differently every
time. Experiment; have fun with it.
Like someone said sometime, "If
you can't dance...."
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here we go...
On
the right you find a picture of a nice
waterfall. I found it on one of those
collections of royalty-free photo cds...
you know, the ones that have 300 gajillion
pictures on 25 cds? I browse the cds
every now and then for ideas... this
time, I saw the picture and thought
it would be cool to insert a Poser figure
into this picture.
You
understand, of course, this has been
done before, by others much brighter
than I... but here's the way I worked
out this one...
The
original was small... something like
700 pixels high. But I knew I was going
to use Painter, so I wasn't worried
at this point.
So....
I imagined this woman standing in the
waterfall, got a good clear picture
in my head of the pose, and moved to....
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| ...Poser.
Here is a small copy of the rendered pose.
I know I'm going to take this to Photoshop
next, so I chose a high contrast background.
This way, it makes a cleaner selection
when I cut the figure out using the alpha
channel that Poser creates whenever you
export as a .psd file.
To
back up a second, I created the pose
using the waterfall picture as a background.
I created two lights to simulate the
lighting in the waterfall picture. I
wasn't too worried about getting things
exact....remember, I'm going to manipulate
this quite a bit later on. BUT... I
was careful to get the color right.
Skin color in Poser has so much to do
with lights. If you use the program,
you know that well. 'Nuff said.
I
had my main camera set up with the figure
in the place I wanted in the waterfall
(making her legs below the knees invisible),
and used the pose camera to bring her
in close for fine tuning. When I was
finished, I zoomed in the main camera
for a larger render, exported a .psd
file, and opened up....
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| Photoshop.
On the right you see a composite of the
waterfall picture and the Poser figure.
I enlarged the waterfall pic to 1500 pixels
high. Sure, there was some pixelation,
but we'll take care of that later (in
Painter, remember?)
I
opened both pictures, then cut the figure
out of the Poser render and put her
into the waterfall pic on a separate
layer.
Sure,
she's much too large, but we'll fix
that.
Now
the fun begins.
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| I
hope I don't lose anyone on this step,
but you can see that quite a bit has occured
between the last picture and this one.
We're still in Photoshop. Here's just
a few of the things I did before I scaled
the figure down:
-painted
her hair
-fixed
a couple Poser figure 'artifacts' (elbows,
breasts, etc.)
-painted
some water splashing over her
-cut
and pasted part of the waterfall over
her in a separate layer, and painted
in a layer mask and toyed with the opacity
until it looked somewhat right.
I painted over the pool of water on
a separate layer (set to colorize),
then adjusted the hue until I was happy
with the greenish color (actually, I
lie (!) I did that in the step previous.
Just scroll back to the top if you want
to see the original brown water).
-added
the ripple to the water in the foreground
After all this was done, I saved a flattened
copy, and then opened the picture up
in....
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Painter.
The picture to the right shows all the
work I did in Painter, and is almost the
complete version (sorry, I didn't save
any halfway-done pics...besides, you want
me to give away all the trade secrets?
I only have a couple...).
To get there, I first cloned the Photoshop
image, and using a large square chalk
(because it's fast), roughed i in the
entire image using clone colors. Then,
using a couple different oil brushes,
at high, and then low saturation, got
the brushstrokes where I wanted them.
After
the major cloning work was done, I unchecked
the clone-color box, and color-picked
my way around.
I
used a custom brush (a kind of oil brush
I came up with that manages to pick
up paper grain) to brush in textures
to the rock and trees behind. I know
the rock doesn't show well, as it's
dark, but I'm going for the subtle look...
anyway, is anyone looking at the rocks?
I
used the same brush to color-pick and
paint the water pool, mostly using a
very low saturation at low opacity to
gradually work the strokes in.
If
I ever got too far away from what I
had in my head, I would re-clone paint
a section and start over.
After
I'm done in Painter, it's back to
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| Photoshop.
Notice how the picture in Painter doesn't
have a richness to the colors? If you've
ever seen my work before, you know I can't
handle undersaturated colors :) I always
use Photoshop for color correction. Nothing
beats it.
So...
I created two adjustment layers. One
for levels, which increased the contrast,
and one for hue/saturation, which I
used to bump up the sat' and change
the overall hue just a tad.
Playing
with the layer opacity sliders a bit,
I went back and adjusted a few things,
until I was happy with the result.
attention!!
hot tip! Use those adjustment layers...
paint in them. Don't forget they are
masks. Whip out that airbrush and you
can remove parts of the mask you don't
want to show. I use them quite often,
painting in them or using gradient fills
to help draw the viewer's eyes to the
parts of the picture I want them to
see (or the parts I don't want them
to notice).
One more layer for the signature, and
it's done! Sure, perhaps there are some
things I could have done better, but
my goal here was to have fun. In that,
I can assure you that (take my word
for it) I succeeded. :)
For all of you who strained your eyes
looking at the incredible detail in
the rocks and water, you will find in
the next pane below...
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| ....the
woman, cropped from a full-size version
of the photo-render-painting. Here you
can see the working size.
Normally,
I work on a size much larger, but in
this case, I was just having fun (like
we're supposed to, right?) and wasn't
concerned with all the Giclee and Iris
print terminology... this one is for
the screen only.
Now
get back to work on your own pictures!
And
have fun... 'cause I said so.
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