Im on my telephone…perhaps some red glow around the battery gauge - a brighter red than the background to give contrast and to lift it up. IMHO.
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I changed the color of the animated progress circle to white and gave under it some baseline in black so that contrast is now improved, i think.
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I like how the shadows on hands give it a volume, but somehow I cant figure yet, how would I go about it, to make them “dynamic”, in sense that they would share common light sources all the time, not just coincidentally.
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I tried Morphing one image to another to make Dynamic Highlights . I real don’t think for most it is worth the effort . It would be really nice to use the Gyro to flip them a bit . The gyro on Facer is so clunky these days I have stopped using it .
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Interesting theme, shadowing, adding some realism i suppose. In this face, i did not study so much to make the shadows realistic. I have done it to make them realistic with other faces, and used different methods to achieve that. You have of course the default shadowing of F, but that is not realistic. The first thing you have to determine is, where is the light source. Is it stable, is it moving. To make things even more realistic, one could use local weather conditions, sunrise, sunset variables. Would not that be nice.
The position of the light source has of course influence on that shadow, how it is presented. Mikeob is a specialist, but i studied it too, this theme. I like shadow when they move and they only really move, with seconds. Moving shadows are wonderful if seen. And shadow can grow thin or large as does the distance of the shadow versus the object casting the shadow, in this case the hands. So realistic shadowing needs to cover that.
So you need a lot of variables to create an imaginary variable, realistic looking shadow. It is not easy, but achievable, If you use like me a third software, like Blender, you must import or as a image with or without shadow, or as a collection of images, an animation. In this case i imported images, included the shadow, which makes it fixed, the shadows. If i import is as as animation i need many images to fill up the sequence element, limited in its form to 24/25 images pro sequence and of course overall limitations as who many images can a face have. The opportunities within F as for free face makers as myself, are restricting what i can do in F.
In Blender i can create for example 60 images with perfect shadowing, great. But then i need them for hours, minutes, seconds. Meaning 180 images, which will weigh or even obstruct saving your face as i encountered many times. The animations are also limited in its use, especially the duration. I would like to be able to freeze an animation on timed base, be it seconds, minutes or hour values. Pity.
And it is not just only the hands, also ticks, any object that should look like a 3d object needs variable shadowing, not just shadow, to make it realistic. In this face i did some broad shadowing on the animated progress circle for watch battery at the bottom, It is tuff, but a challenge.
The closest i came to shadowing from my perspective, was with this face
In this face, the light source is at 12 o’clock.
Look at the seconds for example after the 30 mark. They grow thicker, the distance form the casting hand, grows larger, and all that is reversed at the 50 seconds mark. You can see it too at the other side, but it is less notable because of a darker background. So here i used default hands and calculated the shadowing depending on their values and a 12 oclock light source. If i remember well, i used 6 elements for each hand.
But i think not many people really noticed the hard work to achieve this.
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This is actually not what I meant. I noticed you fixed the shades to the hands and they cast each two shadows but in a way that each hand would have its own light source fixed to it rotating with the hand. Then you have there moving lightening on the dial, which I thought could be made as a common light source casting these virtual shades. I guarantee there is no need for many extra shade layers, but a corresponding formulas for moving the shadow layer accordingly.
I will try to prepare an example tomorrow.
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Well that is another big theme, besides shadowing.
Glass has 2 two interesting qualities besides the annoying feature in life time, to break easily, especially wine glasses, but perhaps that is predictable…
These 2 interesting qualities are according to me, transparency and reflections. Two area’s where i study further.
Reflections are so interesting. For example what do you reflect. In Blender you can import - already created environments, be it intern or extern, which add to the reflections, but of course also light and the behavior of all these elements on that little micro display of ours, a face.
I am doing experiments nowadays. If you want to have a look at this face, i make more clear where i am at.
Notice that by moving the reflecting object, a face, cylinder that turn inside, i can show reflections. You can move that or reversed, a light source. The reflections you see are of a HDRI environment i used, a countryside, but i can anything. I do not make those, till now…
I let you know if i get somewhere through this holy grail thing…
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Just to be clear, there is actual only one image i used in SHADOW ON THE… for both hands for hours and minutes. I copied the one of the hours for the minutes. So they have both the same light source and thus shadow, a fixed and not variable shadow. It only turns with the actual values for hours and minutes on the face. So there is a common light source. And it is fixed in this case. As with default shadows Facer.
I think that a image with shadow included, will bring no solution. Only when you separate them and use formula’s to create their behavior as for thickness, distance to the casting. I did achieve that in my last face GENESIS II B side copy…
But i am curious for all solutions to tackle this challenge. Perhaps also for moving light sources.
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On image I attached earlier I tried to show that the shadows only look good in the coincidence when both hands point to similar direction and look out of place when each hand casts shadow different direction which looks unnatural.
Check this example. The imaginary light source orbits once per 10s and all elements cast shadows in according direction.
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Very cool !!!
Nice Peter, thanks!
Do these shadows also alter in thickness, distance shadow to casting object. The jumping light source is interesting, showing clearly how the shadows position alters. I prefer though a fixed source with shadows adapted in position, thickness, opacity and distance to the rotating hands.
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I admit my example is made in a bit “crude” way not altering the length and opacity (nor sharpness) of the shadows as its imaginary light source keeps constant distance from the dial and that is considerably larger than distances between elements on the dial.
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