Still playing with the Matthias skinmap from DAZ ... and having a lot of fun. These renders are loaded up with textures and rich with color. Green, gold and purple are three colors that just "sing" together. I love that combination.
So here's the Matthias skin map again, and I'm very impressed. It renders well in low light and bright light, and also in closeup. It also has a nice bump map, to bring up the skin textures in extreme closeup, so you don't wind up with something that looks plastic.
Here's the promo for the model:
...and if you're looking for an excellent skin map, this is it. The bod, you can re-re-re-design yourself, so long as you have the Morphs++, and you'll need those anyway, if you intend to load up the Matthias body morph. (On the body morph, the "Big Arnie" effect is fairly extreme, with a body shape a lot like Conan in the second of the two movies -- which is fine and dandy, till you start to set poses, and you find that the arms are conflicting with the blown-out lats etc., and you have to re-re-repose everything. So what I did was to go into the Morphs++ and just 'dial down the size of the body! As soon as you take him back down to something more normal, you're fine with your poses. Vertict: five out of five stars!
Also used in this scene: the floor from DM's Around the Lair; the claw burner from DM's The Shrine; Val's Folding Screen (with a complete switch-out of textures and displacement maps at this end), plus one of Val's fantasy shields (same deal with the textures and displacement maps). Michael 4 is the base model (duh!) and he's wearing the Spartacos hair set to mahogany and the armbands from The Hunter, and the Stylin' jeans (though you'd never recognize them with the silk-screened texture on them).
Lighting? There's about 10 lights set, but I did this whole thing with point lights, not a distant light anywhere, because I wanted to make it look like the whole thing is lit by candles and lamps. If had two functional hands and more time, I'd have shipped the renders into Gimp to have smoke from the incense burner added in! But I'm sloooooow today, because I'm typing and working one handed. I carved a chunk out of my index finger with the bread knife yesterday, and today's it's splinted, and it, uh, um, hurts. Status: healing. Requirement: patience.
Jade, 11 June
UPDATE:
