Devlog 21 (Patreon)

So, I have said before that I love volumetrics a lot, so things like light rays, fog, smoke. They help to highlight an area in an image, and they add depth to the image. However, volumetrics in Daz3d increase the render time by a lot. In my experience, it's not worth it.

Because one, if you don't wait for it to finish, you will get a very blurry or noisy image, and I'd rather have a clear image without volumetrics. Two, it's faster to add "volumetrics" manually in GIMP or Photoshop. Now, why did I quote that? Because it's fake if I do it in GIMP or Photoshop. At the end of the day, every image or photo is 2D, even if it comes from a 3D environment like Daz3d or real life, so anything that can be seen in a 2D image can technically be added to it like painting. The difference is, volumetrics in Daz3d are simulated, so it should be more "realistic", whereas a person can draw doodles or a very realistic drawing. It depends on the skills of the artist. And unfortunately, I'm not a very good artist :(.

In this example, I added a layer on top of the original image, and painted it with a gradient colour to transparency from top to bottom. And then I added a layer mask to this layer, with another gradient from the centre to the sides. Then I scaled down the top corners to form a cone shape. Not the worst thing I have done :P.