One of the benefits of getting the hang of Bryce is that I can work with models that are too much for DAZ to handle. Now, it's perfectly true that 3D Studio Max handles them like a dream ... but I never got the hang of 3DS. It's about 1000% more complex than DAZ and Bryce. Actually, triple that, come to think of it. The manual is 1,250 Letter-size pages of close-packed type. It's like a phone book. And I just never had the time to learn it, which is why DAZ and Bryce came as such a welcome surprise: they don't take all that much learning before you're confident in what you can do.
A while ago I splurged and got a star destroyer model ... thirty bucks in a sale. On of the most expensive models I've ever invested in. I promptly discovered that DAZ can't even open it! Too many "polygons." Now, all models are made of polygons, and by the time you get up to modeling things like human faces or the behemoth starship in the shots above -- well, your average computer (and software) will barf before it even opens the model.
The good news is: Bryce is a wireframe environment, and will handle this model eeeeezily. The better news is, I'm living Bryce 7 Pro a lot. So it was an obvious move to render the starship in Bryce. Then, when I saw the final render I thought to myself .... hang on, I can import this into DAZ as a backdrop!
Add the Vanguard spaceship prop and set some lights.
Add Kevin Jarrat at the pilot's controls and set some interior lights.
Render up a storm; finish one of the shots in GIMP, to put the flares on the engine exhausts...
And you have a picture sequence as Captain Kevin Jarrat, Raven 9.4 himself, is on approach to a big ship. Remember the Starfleet carrier, from Scorpio? This could be it.
Woohoo! Expect more -- lots more -- just like it.
Jade, 29 September
