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Tips and tricks: Making of "The last days of a roman woman"

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justarandomguy

justarandomguy

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After my break and some research, I can bring you the making of my "The last days of a roman woman story".
I wanted others to be able to take stills from Ramon's passion of the christa (or any other production with dark lightning) and be able to use them for manips.
I could also bring advice for blender if people ask for it.

While for the image editing I used photoshop, I tried to research how to do the same on free software, in order to not lock this behind adobe's subscription paywall. In this case, I will be using the GIMP 2.10.36 software.

The first deal is how to make a png out of a dark photoshoot/video.
The following method will be a simplified version, you can optimize things if you know more advanced image editing methods.

Making a png out of a dark image.

Step 1
Making1.jpg
First off, open your still and duplicate it. You have two layers of the same picture.
Hide one of the two layers and save it for later.

Step 2
Making2.jpg
While you have the visible layer selected, go to the colors tab on the top left, then select curves.

Step 3
Making3.jpg
Move the curve to the top left, burn that image boy, BURN IT.
Jokes aside, the point of this is making the image brighter in order to make the task of removing the background easier.
Adjust the curve until you can easily tell the subject from the background apart.

Step 4
Making4.jpg
After you remove the background with your favorite method, pick a magic wand or equivalent tool. In GIMP's case, it's called "fuzzy select tool". Select the or all the areas where there is no subject (AKA, the background we just removed).

Step 5
Making5.jpg
While keeping this selection, hide the over-exposed layer and make visible the original one and delete the selection.

Step 6
Making6.jpg
Ta-da, the image is now cropped. This extra step with the original layer is meant to solve the problem that once you overexpose an image, it's hard to change it without the overexposure making the image lose some information, thus making the picture quality look bad.

Step 7
Making7.jpg
It's time to tweak the proprieties to change the lightning. I recommend you to change them in the following order.
  1. Curves
  2. Color temperature (will elaborate on this one for the next step)
  3. Shadows-Highlights
  4. Hue-Saturation (in case the image looks too pale, increase the saturation)
  5. Brightness-Contrast (Optional for the contrast)
Step 8
Making8.jpg
Color temperature is where the magic lies at. Move the two sliders to tweak your picture, which makes it look "colder" or "warmer". While I used this mainly to make it look like a daytime setting by making the image warmer, you can do the exact opposite. It also works great to change the mood of a scene or make the subject match with different weather settings.

Step 9
Making9.jpg
If the image looks "noisy" (ugly pixels here and there), you could go to the "Filter" tab, then go down to "Enhance", and then select "Noise reduction". Don't abuse too much of this or the picture will look too clean.

Step 10
Making10.jpg
Do whatever final tweaks you need depending on the image, and you are done!

Hopefully this helps you, and I will be gladly waiting to see what you come up with.
Have fun!

PS: Forgive me if I can't post 10 pictures for this kind of thread by the way :frown:
 
fallenmystic said:
Personally, I would suggest using a background remover than manually selecting and deleting areas.

There is a good open source tool like rembg, and there could be a GIMP plugin for similar tools too.
Click to expand...
That too, I did that using photoshop's background remover, but sometimes it struggled with some parts (at least with these pictures from passion of the christa), you could start with a background remover and then manually deal with the imperfections.
 
justarandomguy said:
That too, I did that using photoshop's background remover, but sometimes it struggled with some parts (at least with these pictures from passion of the christa), you could start with a background remover and then manually deal with the imperfections.
Click to expand...
There can be many different workflows but I would do it the opposite way if rembg has trouble with some images, meaning roughly selecting and removing the background by hand then applying rembg afterwards. The reason is, rembg is much better than humans in dealing with the details (e.g. the hair area) and if it removed something it shouldn’t, there won’t be an easy remedy anyway. So it could be easier to remove the parts that may confuse rembg beforehand than to repair the output after the damage is done. You can also try a different model if it doesn’t work.

On a side note, I would recommend utilising AI a bit more than removing the background if you’re into photo manip and don’t mind using AI.

You don’t even need to take effort to cleanly cut the source images if you can use Stable Diffusion because you can just apply a low denoise strength pass on the edges after pasting an image which will blend perfectly into the new background. Better still, you can even match the tone and lighting conditions with a bit more effort.

As you likely know if you have spent much time doing manips, matching the tone and lighting of the images is a crucial part that can determine the realism of the outcome. As such, one would spend much time to perfect this process but the problem is that it’s practically impossible to change certain aspects of the lighting conditions.

You may be able to adjust things like the temperature, saturation, brightness, contrast, and so on but you can never change the number and position of the light sources, for example. But with a bit of help from SD, it’s possible to make the pasted area to perfectly blend with the background as it would fix such hard to change discrepancies automatically.

I think photomanip is a great way to make a sketch for AI work or to edit it in a precise manner. And even if you’re not interested in going the full AI route, the ability to compose source photos seamlessly can drastically improve the realism of photo manip works.
 
In this post I wanna breakdown a quick render sample, to show how each render was made.

btsc1.JPG
First of all, this is one of those cases where I made a new pose for Bruna. There are lots of little tricks that I could share in a separate post, but for now, here is a breakdown of that picture.

btsc2.JPG
Then, I put the image on blender, on the already made scenario.
Quick note: I decided to make backgrounds in blender because it would be a nightmare for me to just use pngs of backgrounds and stay consistent. Maybe I used a shotgun to kill a flea, but hey, it worked.

btsc5.JPG
Then we place the elements on it's place, camera, other characters, props, etc. Then we fix some texture settings on the PNGs that will help make the picture look better. Another advantage of this method is that most of the time, the pngs in blender cast shadows that look really good, thus, I don't need to guess how to put the shadow.

btsc3.JPG
Then we tweak the final camera placement or other details in case we need to.

Sample1.jpg
Then violà, we got ourselves the render. If we find there are still some things to tweak, we can open photoshop to fix stuff like minor lightning issues, additional objects, weather, etc.

If anyone wants me to breakdown any specific render, feel more than welcome to ask.

Fun fact: The tunic of Kieara/Bruna is a modified 3D model that I tweaked to fit in with the poses. For this scene specifically, I "ripped" the model of the tunic and then added clothing physics to the model. In simple words, I told the tunic to behave like, well, a tunic. Then I simulated the tunic dropping, and once it was on the floor, I used that in the render.
 
justarandomguy said:
In theory I could, but I personally don't feel comfortable trying it :frown:
Click to expand...
I admire you for that. Clearly if she was comfortable to appear nude she would have done so in the original. A pity, yes, but we should respect her evident wishes.
 
stepnash said:
Thanks for your honesty
Click to expand...
Wragg said:
I admire you for that. Clearly if she was comfortable to appear nude she would have done so in the original. A pity, yes, but we should respect her evident wishes.
Click to expand...
Thanks for your support, I really appreciate it.
Since I began to make the renders, I was worried about the choice of not making her nude, yet you have been really understanding.
I really, really thank you
 
Your technique is very interesting. I think a few of us have experimented with photomanipulation on PNG backgrounds, moving arms and legs, etc, but this is the first time I've seen someone combine that with a Blender generated background. I think you got some very good results. Well done. :)
 
The clothes for Kieara and Diana were modified 3D models, where I would adjust the model according to the pose I wanted for the frame.
Next I would render the clothes to then find which parts could fit into the pose I wanted to make. It's fun for the freedom it gives you in posing, since the clothes can hide things that could not be photoshopped or would be really hard.
PS: Same went for the sandals, modified 3D models.
MakingOf_Clothes.JPG

As for the stripping scene and the clothes being on the floor part, I would cut the model and then sculpt it to look like it's being ripped.
Then, to show the clothes on the floor, I would apply physics simulation to blender (because I was too lazy to sculpt the model to look like it's on the floor lol), and then let it do it's thing. Then I would render that and add it to the final picture, like in this one I already showed.
justarandomguy said:
btsc1.JPG
Click to expand...

Here is a gif of the process for the tunic on the stripping scene and others where it's on the floor.
ClothSimulation.gif
 
justarandomguy said:
The clothes for Kieara and Diana were modified 3D models, where I would adjust the model according to the pose I wanted for the frame.
Next I would render the clothes to then find which parts could fit into the pose I wanted to make. It's fun for the freedom it gives you in posing, since the clothes can hide things that could not be photoshopped or would be really hard.
PS: Same went for the sandals, modified 3D models.
View attachment 1426146

As for the stripping scene and the clothes being on the floor part, I would cut the model and then sculpt it to look like it's being ripped.
Then, to show the clothes on the floor, I would apply physics simulation to blender (because I was too lazy to sculpt the model to look like it's on the floor lol), and then let it do it's thing. Then I would render that and add it to the final picture, like in this one I already showed.


Here is a gif of the process for the tunic on the stripping scene and others where it's on the floor.
View attachment 1426143
Click to expand...
Now there's a thing. Stripping is so rarely shown in 3D art that I assumed that it must be very difficult.

You make it look at least possible.
 
Wragg said:
Now there's a thing. Stripping is so rarely shown in 3D art that I assumed that it must be very difficult.

You make it look at least possible.
Click to expand...
Maybe it depends on the software, blender has got a sculpting mode where you have a cloth deformation tool.
ClothTool.png
It deforms the model while it behaves as clothing, with wrinkles and all of that.
You could in theory use simulations, but since I worked with flat pngs and not 3D models, that would have been borderline impossible.
In another post I will upload the modified tunic model and quick tips on this tool. You could try it yourself, since blender is a free software, and that tunic alone should not make your computer explode
...hopefully :couch:
 
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