#raytracing but no pathtracing cause.... yeah.

[elvenbeard]

I need an honest opinion XD which of these do you think is the coolest? XD

Like, I feel the first one is the "coolest" in terms of angle and the dof turned out really cool, as well as the gunshot XD but I also rarely use any of the stickers in Photomode and it was a lot of fun to play around with some and then the max amount plus a frame xD

Also... it took over an hour to just set this shot up cause the Bhargest are so bad at chasing Vince on his bike apparently XDD or at least in that part of Dogtown.

[elvenbeard]

Hold on tight to yourself, not just anyone else When you've sailed to the edge, nowhere left to go

I've talked about my experimental light and water shooting in last week's wip wednesday, and I'm here to finally share some fave pics xD I have more, and I might post some on a separate occasion or just use them for OC ask stuff where they fit, we'll see!!

Vince is someone who often asks himself where his place in the universe is, even more so growing up, but the doubts keep creeping in again now and then regardless of how much more confident he is now in his own abilities and goals. I kind of wanted to capture this feeling of being lost, just floating for a while as you try to figure things out here... and play with light and color.

I didn't really take any behind the scenes pics for this (I should really start doing that) but I made some shitty sketches just now with my mouse cause I mentioned I wanted to illustrate how I did this xD Also for my personal reference, cause I wanna do something similar, slightly different for another project in the future!!

Very simply, this was the setup xD I used Denny's pool as location, mainly because it was the first that came to mind, had a decent size, and I wanted to do some stuff there anyway xD I think you could pull this off in any other pool or body of water just as well. Originally I wanted to keep the normal pool background, but then I spawned in a black wall from the photostudio props to block out the sunlight and get a darker backdrop, and I really liked that!!

I had three customizable point lights spawned, a red one below V, a purple and greenish one above him - I don't remember the exact placements, I mainly just wanted a nice color contrast and I like those colors and played around with where I put them!

Something like this!

Now, the ripple effect of the water...... I had V spawned in via AMM, and so Player!V was also still there in the scne, so I just ran around his spawned self a little bit to create the splashes xD And voila!

I always take my pics just in in good old vanilla photomode, and at first I had pathtracing on for it (raytracing is also on). And I did like that as well, but look at these unedited pics:

The reflections look a lot more natural and detailed, but are also waaaayyy less colorful. So if you wanna go for a more realistic approach that might be the better option! Everything else is the same, lights, backdrop, etc.

These are some unedited shots with pathtracing off (raytracing still on):

The lights kind of create this oil-spill like effect on the water and I loooove that so much!! Also, the red light from below was reflected in his eyes in a really cool way somehow (less realistic, but very aesthetic xD)

So yeah! If your graphics card can handle it, mess with all the ray/pathtracing settings a bit for a variety of effects xD

Also, all my pics are usually heavily edited in case you couldn't tell XD I love vanilla photomode for its convenience, but it has its limits when it comes to color adjustments, depth of field, and the like!

Same shot, unedited above, edited below. Played with color balance, saturation, sharpness, and in some of the pics some slight motion blur, too. I also shopped in his top surgery scars cause I didn't get around to trying to make them as a mod yet but it's on my list XD For more of them artsy pics with consistent looking scars!

Thanks for reading this far, I do hope it was interesting and you can take something away from it for your VP XD