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| Richard Vaurien and Sergei van Donne |
After a very, very long absence ... I'm back. At least, I hope I'm back. I'm certainly going to try! I've been wrestling with health issues that came close to utterly defeating me, and though I'm still not well, the fact is, I'm bored out of my gourd. So I'm going back to artwork and writing, and nuts to the fact I don't feel so good. My head's going to ache permanently? Fine: be like that. It'll just have to get on and ache, because I'm bored enough to stick out a thumb, just ahead of the next UFO, and bum a ride right out of here. So...
What better place to start than Hellgate. Always my favorite place to "run home" when I need a vacation. I could live there in a heartbeat because I love the places, the people ... everything. All credit to Mel Keegan as the creator of this fantastic universe. [2023 EDIT: the dot-com web address is defunct as of early this year. For some reason, the system utterly denied access to it, and it could not be renewed. Then some joker bought it as a zombie domain name, and MK would have to buy it back at significant cost. Not going to happen, but the web pages are all still there and still viable. Find MK online in the same place.]
I did a lot of Hellgate art years and years ago, and some of it has traveled surprisingly well across time, and some ... hasn't. Generally, it was "okay in its day," but CG art has progressed by leaps and bounds since the last time I dabbled. Michael 4 has become Michael 6, while I was looking in another direction, hunting for my health! Well, I don't have access to Michael 6, or the Genesis figures, or anything remotely similar. But I do know where I am, driving the classic software.
So here's one of my old favorites: Richard Vaurien, talking to Sergei van Donne in the big industrial airlocks on the Wastrel. This is "just" a DAZ Studio raytrace with a modicum of Photoshopping in post-production. No Lux or Bryce involved here. Most textures on the costumes were switche dout for my own textures, and displacement maps added. Depth of field (DOF) is turned ON, and much work was done with lights and virtual camera settings before the whole shebang was raytraced at 3200 pixels wide. Good old Studio 3. Still works -- dead simple, friendly interface. Next, I'll go play with LuxRender!
And just in case you're into Hellgate, here's a wallpaper version ...
... at 1600 x 900, which suits most monitors. Certainly, if you have Irfanview, you can tell it to "stretch proportionally," and it'll fill the whole screen on a big 26" monitor --
-- like that. Neat. Loads of space on the blank left side of screen for parking icons out of the way, allowing you to keep the art clear. Golly, you'd think it was designed that way, LOL.
So in the days and weeks ahead, look out for new art, with all the bells, whistles and skill I learned and acquired in the seven years since the original art on this blog was done! If I do manage to trade up to new software and Genesis models -- dandy. If I don't, the art will still be suitable eye-candy ... and there's a lot of it, backlogged, from the ten months or so (I know, I know ...) since I had the chance to upload here.
Cross fingers, things are "coming good."
What better place to start than Hellgate. Always my favorite place to "run home" when I need a vacation. I could live there in a heartbeat because I love the places, the people ... everything. All credit to Mel Keegan as the creator of this fantastic universe. [2023 EDIT: the dot-com web address is defunct as of early this year. For some reason, the system utterly denied access to it, and it could not be renewed. Then some joker bought it as a zombie domain name, and MK would have to buy it back at significant cost. Not going to happen, but the web pages are all still there and still viable. Find MK online in the same place.]
I did a lot of Hellgate art years and years ago, and some of it has traveled surprisingly well across time, and some ... hasn't. Generally, it was "okay in its day," but CG art has progressed by leaps and bounds since the last time I dabbled. Michael 4 has become Michael 6, while I was looking in another direction, hunting for my health! Well, I don't have access to Michael 6, or the Genesis figures, or anything remotely similar. But I do know where I am, driving the classic software.
So here's one of my old favorites: Richard Vaurien, talking to Sergei van Donne in the big industrial airlocks on the Wastrel. This is "just" a DAZ Studio raytrace with a modicum of Photoshopping in post-production. No Lux or Bryce involved here. Most textures on the costumes were switche dout for my own textures, and displacement maps added. Depth of field (DOF) is turned ON, and much work was done with lights and virtual camera settings before the whole shebang was raytraced at 3200 pixels wide. Good old Studio 3. Still works -- dead simple, friendly interface. Next, I'll go play with LuxRender!
And just in case you're into Hellgate, here's a wallpaper version ...
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| Hellgate wallpapeer: 1600x900 |
-- like that. Neat. Loads of space on the blank left side of screen for parking icons out of the way, allowing you to keep the art clear. Golly, you'd think it was designed that way, LOL.
So in the days and weeks ahead, look out for new art, with all the bells, whistles and skill I learned and acquired in the seven years since the original art on this blog was done! If I do manage to trade up to new software and Genesis models -- dandy. If I don't, the art will still be suitable eye-candy ... and there's a lot of it, backlogged, from the ten months or so (I know, I know ...) since I had the chance to upload here.
Cross fingers, things are "coming good."
