Portrait of Paige Turner

[Finis]

I modeled the cup and tea, windows, flower pot and book. With DOF, caustics, transparencies, and subsurface scattering this rendered for four hours. She is reading some Ipsum Lorem text in Alien Language 1 from Futurama.

[Emmanuel]

Good render !
It requires some additional work in lightening I think. In daylight, the maximum of lightening comes from the outsitde ; but here it looks like the interior artificial lightening is superior to the exterior.
Also, the outside, the cup and plant at the window are catching the eye, while we are supposed to focus on the character and book... Lightening may help here also.
Personally, I would have twisted the scene, to let the book title appear.
Just some ideas...

[Finis]

Thanks Emmanuel. At four hours render time I thought there would be no new version of this but your suggestions lead to a picture that might render faster as well as be better.

Yeah, the lighting is wrong because I added a light on her face to reveal the green eyes but it messed up the lighting. Black hair, green eyes and a tan gave the cat-like quality I wanted. The plant was to fill empty space on the right but the problem was really that the picture is too wide.

There is deliberately no book title. That she is reading and is fascinated by the story, can't look away to sip tea, is important while specifically what she reads is not. So the tea cup stays since it is part of the story. As the only glassy thing visible is does distract though.

It would be hot in the sunbeam and she would have a little sheen from sweat and people aren't that matte anyway. She needs brighter gloss or highlights on her skin but gloss and reflectivity settings don't have the expected effects.

Improvements to do:
- Remove the extra light but still show the eyes.
- Frame the picture to focus on the subject and omit the empty area on the right.
- Add skin sheen.
- More blur on the background outside image. It should just show the idea that there is a world out there but not distract.

[spacekdet]

Looks OK

[Finis]

[Dragneye]

Yup, I like.
Hey, if it's ok with Flo it's ok with me.