I envisioned an art studio render a long time ago. I wanted to create a piece that featured a model being painted, and that you could see her being painted on canvas. I picked up a nice set on sale a long time ago. I just never got around to it. Actually, for a time, I forgot that I had the set. I just "rediscovered" it the other day and figured I'd have a shot at it. Very rarely do I nail a render I sat down to create. I usually start with an idea, and then go off on a tangent and create something totally different.

For this, I started off with Studio Paris.



I started to move things around, and deleted props that you wouldn't see.



I posed Victoria 6 on the couch and started to drop in some lights. I still haven't gotten the hang of how the lighting system works with DAZ's new Iray render engine, so I'm going to give this one my best shot.



I then dropped Lee 6 into the scene and posed him with some art supplies in front of a canvas.



This is actually a two-in-one render. First, I have to create the render that Lee is painting. For that, I moved a second camera into position in front of Victoria and started to play with the lights.



Not bad. Shadows with Iray are definitely different compared to that of 3Delight, and a lot harder to influence/manipulate. With 3Delight, there's a slider in the settings for shadow softness. With Iray, it all has to do with the brightness of the light source and the distance from the object. Being a physics-based rendering engine, it works just like the real world.

I then retextured the canvas with my secondary render and moved my primary camera into position.



I did a few more renders until I had the lighting just right. Somewhere along the way, I decided that I didn't like the yellow material on the couch, I changed the diffuse color to red and ran another render.

Much better.



If you look at Victoria's butt, you'll see that it looks like she's disappearing into the couch. For some added realism, I added a deformer to the couch in order to create a depression in the couch where she's sitting. I also threw in some pillows just for fun and gave her some sexy gloves.



I scaled the deformer down and moved it right under her butt. That's a little better. I played with the lights a little more to create some sunlight coming through the window and ran another render.



OK, that's starting to look like something, and you can see the depression in the couch right under Victoria. That looks a little more realistic.



Instead of playing around with the depth of field in-camera, I decided to just cheat in post. I started with the original image and then duplicated the layers.



I blurred the top layer, and erased the foreground. This effect leaves the background slightly out of focus.



I then dropped a nice image into the background along with some light effects.



I then took that image and applied it to the canvas.



I also decided to take advantage of the door that was in the background. I opened the door just a little bit and added a bathroom to the side of the art studio.



I like adding little details like this. There's a whole bathroom back there, but you'll never see most of it. I think it gives the scene just a hint more realism knowing that there's a bunch of tiny little background details there. I also added a clock to the wall and a table behind Victoria with a bust. These aren't in the "painting" but I wanted to show that Lee is taking some artistic license in painting the portrait. His primary focus is Victoria, and is omitting the background clutter from the scene.



I then took the render into Pixelmator and added some filters and light effects.



I think it came out amazing. It's a shame I had to shrink it down to 620-wide for the post. At 2560x1440, the detail is amazing. I'm really liking the new Iray render engine and can't wait to see what else I can do with it.