In fact I'm still playing with the Elven Prince hair, which we're seeing blond today. The whole project is a jigsaw puzzle:
Michael 4, with green eyes, wearing...
Marco skin map (with the tattoos turned on)
Alexander's face
Elven Prince hair set to "caramel"
Raven collar "necklace"
armlets from The Hunter
floor from DM The Gate
Lanterns from Merlin's Oriental Garden
Chair from DM Arnaudhaus (who do you spell that?!)
Column from EROC column set
Back wall from the Cloister set
"Glorious texture" applied as a MAT to the column
Eight assorted lights with four deep shadow maps
This was a lot of fun. Soon as I saw that hair, I was thinking to myself ... you could get away with a LOT with this hairdo --!
The texture on the column was interesting. This morning I was shopping at Renderosity again, and I stumbled over a fantastic set of textures --
The thing about the Renderosity files is, they don't come with installers. Just the files in a ZIP archive, and you have to know what you're doing to put them into the right folders so the DAZ engine can find them. Once you have that down pat, well -- have a look at this stuff:
Now, why don't they make that kind of thing for Michael 4? I am soooo impressed with the Tavern set. It's on my wishlist!
Alas, most of the content at Renderosity is for Poser (similar to SAZ Studio 3, but much more expensive, with no free core version), but some models have the potential to crossover with DAZ, which makes me happy. I know the directory structure thing, so, so long as I can get the right files I'm in business!
(The absolute minimum you need is an OBJ, which is the model itself, and a JPEG or PNG for the texture; in DAZ you can always import the OBJ and slap the texture onto it manually. It's nice when it all happens by automatic, but it's not absolutely necessary. For instance, the column in today's renders ... is wrapped in an incredible Persian carpet texture! "Mix'n'match" just took on a whole new meaning.)
More tomorrow ... I'll probably be playing with textures, which is my new big interest...
Jade, 10 April
***Posted by MK: my connection is intermittent, too slow for this.
