We just talked about posing dark-skinned characters. So let's use the opportunity to talk about Maya's Skintones subset from the Purple Cocoon collection, created with these tones in mind!
@MayaPurrrple Maya Purple Cocoon is part of the default GShade collection: You can find it under gshade-presets.
@MayaPurrrple The presets are implemented in two subgroups. Obsidian is focused on skin tones with some color component to it, while Shungite is geared towards pure grey skin tones. This example shows the Warm preset variants:
@MayaPurrrple Both use LUTs to bring the correspondent skin tones to the surface, making it really easy to set light sources up. To me that means less time fiddling around with overlapping light sources.
@MayaPurrrple Warm, specifically, have great contrast - excellent for strong rim lights.
@MayaPurrrple If you have a dark-skinned character, give it a try. I think you'll be surprised at how well it'll work with minimal setup!
@MayaPurrrple Thanks, Maya (@MayaPurrrple) for giving me permission to talk about it! You can find more information about her work at the following links:
Previously, we talked about gpose controls and how to use them in a controlled setting. But instances offer amazing places for scenario composition: so grab your backpack, we're hitting the Duty Finder!
One thing that may escape our attention when planning for solo shots is that it's very easy to use dungeons as backdrop: Newer dungeons benefit from Explorer Mode, while older dungeons can be entered solo by selecting Unrestricted Party. Both options can be found under Settings.
Raids, on the other hand, can be finicky. There's no Explorer Mode, but regular 8-people raids can be accessed with Unrestricted Party.
Some (I'm looking at you, NiER raids) have access points that you can use to jump into an empty copy of the raid instances.
Quick GPose tip:
You can use profile-relative positioned point lights to give volume and definition to faces and expressions. It's super quick to set up, and it cleans up jagged light projections too!
Did you ever lose your keybindings or HUD layout configuration?
Or maybe preset changes, or wish you could revert a preset you modified a bit too much?
From Wikipedia: "Portrait photography, or portraiture, is a type of photography aimed toward capturing the personality of a person or group of people by using effective lighting, backdrops, and poses." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_…
Given the nature of this theme, we'll be relying heavily on facial expressions. If you want to learn more about how to use the gpose tools for that, check out this thread: