A fantasy of horses...

Just the thumbnails left now ... the rest have vanished
with a deleted image hosting account or whatever. So --

2014 Edit: filling in the blanks here with later images which did indeed explore the very techniques I was talking about in the original post: yes, it's about Photoshop, and CWRW's add-on resources, which are still available through Renderosity. 

Horses in DAZ Studio 3 ... your imagination really is the only limit on what you can do. These renders were done with the Millennium Horse model and the MAT-Mor Manes pack, and the CWRW Pro texture -- Palomino. The background is a heavily-processed dawn image, and I have about five lights set up on the horse to get this effect...

The available morphs don't really allow for this much stretching and twisting and pulling. The 3D object (an OBJ) which is the actual mane model gets kind of buckled or crumpled, so to get this effect took quite a lot of clean-up work in post production ... old fashioned airbrushing to paint out the buckles and crumples in the model.

Which begs the question, if you're going to start airbrushing to get the effects, why not go all the way? If you're thinking 3D horses, or horses in DAZ, or horse artwork, have a look at these (click to enlarge) --

Isn't that absolutely amazing?! The only thing is, this has a lot more to do with Photoshop than with DAZ. These are painting effects applied to 3D modeling rather than the 3D itself. Then again, since it took quite a lot of digital painting to clean up today's renders, as I said before, why not go the whole hog?! There really isn't a reason ... um, is there?! The work of the designer and artist, CWRW, is out of sight. Recommended? How about 6 out of 5 stars?

Anyway -- just a couple of beauty shots today, really, because I got caught up with domestic stuff and ran right out of time. Best laid plans, and so on. I was going to do sooooo much today, and it just, well, didn't happen! Try again tomorrow.

Jade, 14 April