Gimp (or Photoshop, if you like) brush effects -- over a model designed and rendered in DAZ 3D. Wow ... I mean seriously, the brush effects a a whole dimension to the art. These are actually fairly pedestrian images -- deliberately, in fact. I wanted to create something that was simple, and then use the picture as a canvas to paint on with the Gimp brushes.I just got some beauties, free, from www.deviantart.com, and http://brushnet.com, and www.free-brushes.com ... and I scored some incredible sale prices on Ron's Brushes, at DAZ. Up till a very little while ago, I didn't know Gimp would actually open a Photoshop brush, and since I don't have the occasional $1,800 to chuck in Adobe's direction to buy Photoshop (who does) I'd been drooling over Ron's Brushes at DAZ but not actually buying them. Then two things happened almost at once: one, I found out that the new versions of Gimp will open the .abr files that Photoshop uses, and two, there was this amazing Fast Grab, where Ron's Brushes were going for as little as .90 ...!!
So of course, I got all the sale ones, and today I had the chance to install a couple and play. So the first thing was to do some very simple renders to be painted on!
It's just Michael 4 wearing the Jagger skinmap (not Jagger's face, though), and the Elven Prince hair -- which actually is set to Emerald! -- and the pukka necklace belonging to the Alexander character, and the Wood God kirtle with textures and displacement maps by me. Then, set four lights to make it a bit interesting, get a couple of interesting poses and -- hit render.
Then -- into Gimp with these three, and play! I used Ron's Smoke and Steam, and the Moon brushes (which, I wish I could remember where they came from, but it could have been any one of the above). Marvelous. There's a lot to learn, but I do like this very much indeed, so you can expect to see a lot more like this! I got fire brushes, mist and fog, water and rain, bubbles, butterflies, trees, fractals, dragons, you name it. It's, um, a lot of fun!
Jade, 4 May
