The Shadows Listen Redux 3D Render, Digital Artwork by DustRider

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The Shadows Listen Redux

3D Render by DustRider

"After a longs day's journey on their quest for the treasure of Olbre, Queen Daenestra and Tryamon find refuge for the night in the Red Crow Inn. While eagerly planning the route through the treacherous Wallheim Peaks they failed to notice the watchful figure hidden in the shadows. Their wise old friend Ruehnar warned them as they left the village of Nya Alari "There are those who don't want you to succeed. The shadows will hear your plans and try to slow, or even stop, your progress.". Hopefully the figure in the darkness is not the shadows Ruehnar warned of. "

This image was an entry for the Jan. 2024 DAZ+ render contest (Woohoo - I actually got 2nd place!) I thought maybe some people here might enjoy it.. The theme of the contest was to re-do an earlier render. I chose this one because I really wanted to give a greater sense of interaction between the characters to better support the story. I didn't have time to do it with the first render, as it was also a contest entry, and I was running out of time for getting it submitted. I'm happy with the results, I hope you enjoy it as well. The general process was to first make the character. I loaded the base character(s) I wanted to use, then add morphs to make it into the character I really wanted. Then I added the clothing (as usual, a bit of kit bashing going on with the outfits). The figure on the right was based on Daenestra from DAZ3D, the figure on the left is a combination of Tillie and Topsy 8 also from DAZ3D (with several other morphs), and the figure in the shadows is Mabel 8 (without any mods - didn't need to do much except find/fix clothing for her since she is in the faded background). I created the two main figures individually in their own scene, then merged them into the scene with the Red Crow Inn (moved the environment scene to where the location I wanted to use was in the center of the scene to make adding things in the camera view easier). The lighting is based primarily on the lighting provided with the environment with modifications to intensity, some location changes (the candles).

The original image had only two spotlights. Another spotlight was added to enhance/brighten the light on the two main characters, the second is a rim light for the center figure. For this image I added some additional spotlights to help highlight the characters (rim Lights). To give the smoke/haze effect I added a fog prop turned upside down (opacity reduced and scaling modified). For this version I increased the opacity on the fog prop a bit more, and improved the camera angle to help lead the viewer to the "hidden" figure.

The scene was set up in DAZ Studio Pro Beta and rendered using Iray. Post work was pretty simple (GIMP). I adjusted levels to improve light and contrast a bit. Added an unsharp mask layer, and used a very slight lighting filter with G'MIC, and of course added the signature. As usual, please zoom to full resolution to see the details.

Thanks for stopping by!!! (Please zoom to full resolution to see all the details)