Taronites

I needed to stretch my legs and experiment a bit. This is a 3d scene I rendered. I am a bit miffed that I went black on the forefront character on his pattern. I lost clarity on his hands after it was all done. It has no face. The one in the back is of course Cthulu. The goal of the experiment was to try and make Cthulu appear like he is coming through a misty portal without using a transparency in photoshop and also to give more depth.

What a curious quality this has... definitely not an "ordinary" render.
Looks like Cthulu is morphing out of a rock formation, I find. Makes it almost even more ominous!

I agree. The morph from stone is very cool. I did that with one of my filters and one of photoshops own filters. I think I should have posted the original render lol. I wasn't worried about his wings or hands. At any rate I prefer the modified version as usual. It's rare for me to do a render that I don't have the impulse to take it into Photoshop and Verve depending on the project. I am a firm believer in post work it can turn a poor render into a decent image

I do like the sense of scale in there! I wonder, if you could give it a little bit of fog so that Cthulu is a bit more washes out (not the same deep blacks like in the foreground creature), you'd maintain the wonderful sense of scale even more after any other post processing, I can imagine.

Good idea I have been pondering how to do it. Match the original render to the Post Processed render. Isolate the foreground figure with a selection made from the original and then photoshop fog into it with a brush and maybe a medium grey with opacity at 25% to build up with. I am also thinking of tinkering with the scene and turning it into a proper one with fog and placement to get that scale and try and imitate the effect from the processed image. Ie use Zbrush to create the fog mass with and then apply the shader in Daz Studio, making sure to have proper placement and lighting. I really dislike the original render which is more of a concept sketch than a final.

Can you render out a depth pass? Just a z-depth image of the scene? Because that you then could easily use as a quick mask in photoshop to perfectly control the fog or atmosphere.

I haven't tried that with Nvidia before and think its a great idea. I used that method a lot in Vue 11 to isolate and control. Buit that was a step down the road from Bryce. I will explore that today. First I will write the scene. and merge it into Imp online. I am still leaning towards creating that effect in 3d just by placing an object in the scene with a cloud shader for him to loom out of. But that will take time. I am concentrating on finishing the Yeti/Pixie storyline just to get it out the door and publish on Royal Road. The problem here is integrating it correctly and nailing the foreshadowing. I will send you the image I made to illustrate it and a brief description. I can't really publish it here first because of Royal Road policy. but once again... Happy Belated New Year!

I've got your email and will reply to it there!