This one, I would have to call "Best Laid Plans," or "Another Fine Mess You Have Gotten Me Into," because of the look the angel is giving the hero, and the way it looks like the hero is trying to fast-talk his way out of a mess he's landed them all in! Where's the little green vamp? Taking the picture, maybe? Or is he the only one who got away and might come back with the cavalry and rescue them! Gotta love this. So have a closer look:
Nothing fancy: good old raytrace out of DAZ Studio 3 ... no fuss, no mickey mouse, just reliable work first time, every time. Meanwhile --
I managed to find and load the Genesis 3 base figure today. I did the male one, because after window shopping the 3D stores, I'm sooooo tired of looking at babes in nonexistent costumes. So here is the Genesis base figure, in an IRay render:
It's the skinny little boy on the left. The child on the right is the original Genesis base. I don't know why I expected more! This would be the time when you go shopping and lash out tons of cash you don't have, to buy characters to click into place (the whole thing is plug and play, from automatic lights to pre-set cameras, to auto everything). It's a bit disappointing for an artist. I guess I'll spend A$60 and buy the Body and Face morphs for Genesis 8, and make my own characters, then drop another $125 or so on some decent skin maps, and then a ton of bucks on costumes to fit; and then A$75 on the Reality plugin ... are you adding this up?! In short, it's going to be a while, because these are big investments, and frankly, the dentist made off with all my money a short time ago. Ack.
Besides which, Studio 4.10 is doing very weird things. Right now, on top of not being able to even find most of my content, when I try to save a file, it does this, which I have entitled "Wheeze of the Week:"
That collection of boxes stacked on top of each other is supposed to be Michael 4! This is what I get when I try to save my work ... so I can't save anything. So shelling out a ton of money before these problems are solved is not a wise idea. And tech support write to me about once a week, so it's taking a very, very, very long time to get anywhere. Hey ho. Sigh.
Anyway, I'm playing with the interface, learning it ... figuring out the lights and so forth. What I'm holding out for is to eventually see the kind of render quality you hope for -- like this catalog picture from Renderosity:
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| Intensity 2.0 IRay Lighting |
We soldier on: I'm not going to give up till I see what tech support can do for me, and I will chuck some bucks at Genesis, but only when I know I can save the work. And I'll probably cut a long story short and go right to Reality after all, which I know and trust from years ago. In the meantime --
Thank gods I still have Studio 3! And I'll probably continue to run it for a long, long time, because oodles of my content seems to be incompatible with Studio 4.10! If I ever want to use truck-loads of stuff I've bought across the years, it's Studio 3 or bust! 😡
