When tackling fantasy scenes, the best lighting to use can be quite a daunting challenge to determine. If you look at pinups, the lighting used will be bright studio-quality lighting that brings out realistic skin tones and colors on your characters. However, if you use the same studio lighting from your pinup scenes on your fantasy artwork then you might notice that even though your main character may be well-lighted, the rest of the background scene is all bright and washed out. There's no mood or any atmosphere in it.
If you were to study the masters of fantasy art like Royo and Vallejo, you'll notice that their main characters are well illuminated, however the background scenes are usually shrouded in darkness and faint illumination.
So how do you achive this in Poser? Well it's quite simple and it involves two sepetrate renders that you'll composite together to achieve the effect.
In this tutorial, I'll be using the BVH ProStudio 1.2 light set that is available for free with your purchase of any outfit here at Planetvixens. The background scene I'm using is Citadels of Troy (available previously at Renderosity) while the outfit set on my character is Princess of The Elves II - available now at the Fantasywear section of Planetvixens.
First of all, render your character along with the background set with just a couple of low intensity lights - just bright enough to give a faint moody illumination to the background - it dosen't matter if your main character is not well illuminated at the moment as our focus is currently with the background. Once done, save this render on your hard drive. (picture below)
Next, without moving the scene camera, select the background set and all lights and delete them from your scene - leaving just your character standing in darkness. Browse to the Lights folder in your Poser library and load the BVH Pro Studio light set into the scene. Click render - you'll notice that your character is well illuminated now. (picture below) Save this new render now as a .png file. Saving your second render as a .png file will help you composite it with your first render as the background in the .png file will be transparent.
Once done, boot up your favorite photopainter and load the first rendered scene. Then open up the second one (the .png render) and copy it over your first render. You'll notice that your well-illuminated character from your second render is now superimposed on top of the poorly illuminated one from your first render. Next use the eraser tool and brush up the edges to help your second render blend in with the first. Adjust the colors and hues a little, and voila (picture below) - you've just completed your well illuminated fantasy artwork! :)
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