Modeling Monday 01

DAZ 3D Studio has the ability to create several primitives including spheres, cubes, planes and more.  The geometry available is very limited, but the materials run the full abilities of DAZ 3D Studio, there is a lot we can do with these primitives and learn about the surfaces tab at the same time.

Images made with a backdrop and no geometry can look a little strange.  Don't get me wrong you can make some very good images with the backdrop, but it can be disappointing.

A full figure can look like its strangely suspended in an amorphous space.  This is not too disturbing to many viewers and I have seen thousands of drawings made on this "hollow" paper.  Many artist are in complete control of this, but many more are not.  Portraits work a little better because the viewer assumes there is a floor, etc below the frame.  Still the major aspect of backdrop is that they have no shadows and we usually want shadows on a portrait to show forms clearly.  Shadows on the person, but not on the world around them can be disappointing.

Let's use the create menu and select New Primitive..   This will bring up a dialoge where we can creat various primitives.  The plane setup looks like this

Let's make it 4 meters (a little more than 12 feet)  which is fine for a backdrop.  The new planes are always square, but you can use the scale parameters to make them any rectangle you want.

When the plane primitive is created it is created as a floor, so we have to turn it to have a wall.  X rotate 90 degrees

  

That's too close, it actually disecting our guy.  So back up with z translate -- wrong way.back up some, but still close enough to have shadows.

BTW  the lights in this example are my little 2EZ light set that we will develop in the next few days.  It is very easy for beginners (like me), but very versative.  All of the images in the slide show at the top of this blog were made with the 2EZ lights.

I think a color for the wall will look better.  Select the plane in your scene tab then open you surfaces tab.  The plane will show there, open it to see default at the top of the default is diffuse.  You can change to diffuse color, let's use a cool gray

Create a second plane the same size (it will be plane2)  rotate it and place it barely in front of the first plane.  In this scene the first plane is at z = 80 and the second plane is at z = 79.99

Set it to a grayed blue.

In the final image I move a light a small amount and increased the shadow softness to 8%.  Notice that the shadow is still there, but more subtle and seems more natural( to me at least)