“Love Is An Open Book” by Jay Marsh – Dreamlight June Contest 2nd Place Winner

A Recent Conversation we had with our DL 64 “I Love You” June Contest’s 2nd place winner Jay Marsh, led to a really cool email containing feedback from Jay about his work in putting together this piece.

Below you will see the feedback, which Jay has given us the go ahead to share in this post 🙂

The theme “I love you” inspired a quest for passionate lighting and a rediscovery of an indirect light camera. The IDL camera is found in the Shader Mixer scenes (color bleeding sample) that comes with DAZ studio, it bounces light around and it greatly increases render times. I thought my Mac might burst into flames from the heat of the hard drive (well, the image is pretty “hot” too).

I have mixed feelings about the grain in the image. Sometimes 3D renders can look too polished, smooth and even plastic if the specular lights and surfaces aren’t tuned “just so”. I didn’t expect the grain but was content when it showed up because the texture softened the normal slickness of 3D renders. I think that changing the shading rate for the indirect light camera would have smoothed it out but I was already at 1.5 hrs rendering time and wasn’t going to wait longer. Blurring certain areas in photoshop is where it all pulled together for me.

The “text” textures were from CG Textures and mentioned in this recent post https://basic3dtraining.com/9-great-sources-for-free-textures-for-your-3d-projects/. They were easy to apply to Michael 4 and required a little adjustments to tiling in order to get the letters to a pleasing size in relation to the book background.

Lighting is key right? What really made this image sweet was the two spotlights I used and how close they are to the figures. If this was a real scene Victoria and Michael would have been able to reach up and grab the lights. This gave the scene a feeling of intimacy. There is also a linear point light right in front of Michaels face to give a warm glow on Victoria’s face.

Jay’s working view – showing where he placed his spotlights

The history of this image is that it started as a proposed book cover for a friend of mine. The idea was to portray a woman who is addicted to “Pride and Prejudice”. This was one of the ideas that didn’t get chosen.

I’ve been freelance for about 20 years and have sampled many creative careers including body painting, corporate photography, fine art painting, illustration with traditional materials and sculptural lighting. My hobbies include riding a unicycle (I’ve painted with it too), juggling and frequent trips out in nature to photograph and get inspired. Currently I am doing graphic design for a communications company using InDesign and I have many freelance projects using DAZ studio. You can see my work here:

http://jay-marsh.com/
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jay-Marsh-Artist/324946564760

I’m looking forward to connecting and sharing with everyone in the forums and contests.

-Jay “Marshian”

It is wonderful that our members can share with each other in this way, as we all benefit and this is a great way for us to get to know each other better 🙂

-Val Cameron/Dreamlight

P.S.Want to participate in our fun gallery contests, with $55 monthly prizes? Then jump into the fun HERE

Val Cameron