I saw Justice League The other night. It's what you expect: dumb but entertaining. I thought Ezra Miller as The Flash was excellent.  The marketing posters, however, were not great - (no offense DC!). Overly yellow and flat.

How can you make gorgeous people like Gal Gadot, Jason Momoa, and Ben Affleck look that bad?  Don't even get me started on the typography...

Turbosquid has a great model of the Flash, so I posed him up and made my own. Cinema4d & Corona with lots of photoshop.

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Meanwhile.....uh......

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as better explained by smarter minds.

I guess this is what I'm trying to get a handle on lately.  Light and dark and the overall effect it has on the feeling of the work.  Going back and forth.

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Models provided by dimensiva.com

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Model from CGTrader.com

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Loft model from Turbosquid and furniture from dimensiva.com.

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Fumigator model from Turbosquid.

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Furniture from dimensiva.com

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Space Hunter model by Hermino Nieves.

The Classic struggle...

I wanted to play around with lighting some shots on a model with much more detail then my usual subjects.  So I bought a model from CG Trader that has been sculpted in Z brush but has no textures.  I'm going to try a few different things with this model but first up I did some basic portraits.  More to come on this.

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Working on posing figures.  Fumigator model provided by Turbosquid and posed by me with a little help from Mixamo's auto rigger.  Also working on more cinematic post processing to feel more like concept art and less photo-like.  This is Corona Render, Cinema 4d and Photoshop.

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Pretty easy to get carried away with this....

The goal today was to rendering something on a white background.  I lean on black on black too much and need to get better at bright shots with color.  Baby steps - right.  I did this series starting with the white background, but of course, I like the darker backgrounds so much more.  I will always be a theater vampire.  Bottle models provided by model+model.

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Well, subtle, but working on getting some slight haze and rain to add more depth and detail.  Lots of post work on this to finish it.  Corona render engine and Cinema 4D.

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Pony model by Slava Z and House model provided by 3dhdscan.

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It's been a busy 2018 so far and I haven't much time outside of client work for fun/experiments/learning.  But I have squeaked a few renders in here and there.  I've been wroking on textures with Corona and trying to get a better handle on more interesting and realistic surfaces.

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Focusing on Camera work here mostly.  Trying to get more comfortable finding angles and lensing for renders.  I modeled a quick fake Bluetooth speaker as a subject.  All Cinema 4D and Corona Renderer.

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Feel good about what I can do with this render engine and it's still being developing.  Here's some more practice with textures and atmospherics.

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You know...like, when you hold a flashlight up to you hand.  or Candle wax.... Subsurface scattering.  I suspect Octane does it better, but Corona sure makes it beautiful.

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Today it's a simple pillow.  Nothing fancy, but fun to learn more about this program.

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Highly overworked.  Wrestled with this for a while.  On to the next.  Marvelous Designer and Corona.

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Downloaded a trial of Marvelous Designer.  This is a draping and fabric simulation program that works really well.  Now I just need to learn about pattering and draping for real clothes.  I see the potential here and wonder if costume designers could get into this.  I've been using it for simple curtains, but want to try something more ambitious.

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Trying out some backplates with HDRI lighting in Corona for Cinema 4D.  So no lights used here, just HDRI images (and a lot of post processing).  Essentially a 3D car matched into a 2D photo backplate with 360 high dynamic range photo for lighting and reflections. Lotus model via Turbosquid.

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Totally shifting gears here and trying some close ups of chocolates.  Modeled, textured, and lit these all from scratch.  Good practice.  I find it helpful to do something totally different now and then to flex different muscles.

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Lighting practice with sparkle.

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A little studio lighting practice while waiting for client feedback on another project.  Lotus model provided by Turbosquid.com - textured and modified by me.

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I think we have a winner winner chicken dinner on making audiences now.  This is the final technique and posed figures.  I spent years photoshopping crowds into Arenas and stages and I was never really satisfied with the look/integration.  It's a lot of work to make the lighting look correct.  This system is more flexible, but requires a hefty machine to be able to render all that geometry.  This crowd is 7400 bodies.  GT5 Space hunter model by Herminio Nieves and modified by me. Thanks to @stuz0r for the tips on Fuse to Mixamo workflow in Cinema. Here is a Corona render test.

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Trying some new techniques for audiences to make them take light better.  Not perfect, but not a bad first attempt.  More work to be done.  Rendered in Corona. Recon Flyer model by Herminio Nieves

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