Here's what's really involved:
Michael 4 ... three of them
Lee skinmap on Neil Travers (left)
Specially hand-painted skinmap on Mark Sherrat (center)
HZ Victor skinmap on Curtis Marin (right)
CG Event Hair on Travers, set to dark brown
Midnight Prince hair on Mark, set to golden blond
Danyel hair on Travers, set to red-brown
M4 Real Jeans on Travers
Narkilir shoes on Mark
Trainers on Marin
Beowulf slacks on Marin
M4 Veranil slacks on Mark
Callico texture map plus displacement map
Utilitize boots on Travers
M4 Basicware T Shirt on Travers
Colors changed out as needed
M4 Veranil shirt on Mark
Hawaiian texture map plus displacement map
Beowulf shirt on Marin
Texture map plus displacement map
One spotlight with shadows set
Four distant lights for fill
The set is "Commander"
With so much loaded into the scene, I find that DAZ 3 can get a little bit unstable -- it loves to crash to the desktop -- so you need to save the scene constantly, and of course it's also a looooong save. Renders were reasonably quick (a few minutes each), but I think it took about twenty to get everything right ... and these are not raytraced. If they were, I'd still be trying to get it done!
Speaking of rendering stuff, DAZ Studio 4 has just entered its beta phase. They're promising a better, or beefed-up, render engine, so this is something to really look forward to. However, I think I'm about to get left behind, because I think it's going to need a 64 bit system to make it go, and despite the fact this is a powerful PC, it comes up 32 bits short! So right now I'll let the specialists get through the beta, and then hold my breath and read the specs when it comes out.
Jade, 31 March
