Some like it red!

 

Yes, I now ... I'm supposed to be writing and editing, but the truth is, I can't get my head around the job. It's just not happening at the moment, so ... artwork. The leader image today is a beauty ... that's a Genesis 8 male, Yonni, wearing the Varun hair, and I'm using the vascular mapping from Dae to get the venous effect. Now, that is a lovely sight, no? Then -- 

"Tales of Barsoom," or something along those lines. Lots of red tones in this fantasy ... would you believe that's Victoria 4? Yep, it is. Face and body designed by me, Angel skinmap, with the tattoos turned on. New shaders on the costume, which is "kit bashed" from two old costumes ... and I managed to get the G8M hairstyle to fit V4 -- and parent to the figure.(The costume is the top of Andromeda, and the bottom of Lilith bikini; shaders by Atenais.) But wait, there's more --

This might look a bit familiar. It's a re-render of a piece I did a few months ago. It was quite good, but I was never happy with the face, so when I stumbled over the Yoni model, I thought, why not go back in and drop that face and skinmap onto the guy in the horse picture? Then, since I've recently got the CWRW Panted Ponies textures for the Millennium Horse, there's no reason not to play with those too. And the guy is wearing a new wardrobe prop, "Swamp Loincloth," which was on sale last week. And --

Back to the Throne of the Barbarian King set ... which turns out to be a bear to render. It actually chokes my graphics card, though you have to look very, very close to notice this. It's because the set is so vast, I know, I know. Anyway, I can get it to render enough to look good, and probably I'm the only one that knows it would actually have taken 20k samples to finish it ... I max out at 15k. This is Victoria 4 again, and that's the Lilith Bikini costume, very red. The set is mostly lit with its own firelight, as generated by the surfaces in the fire baskets. Neat! Plus...

Shaders, shaders everywhere! This is the G8 female, using the Ginnie HD character wearing the Shavonne hair (set to red, naturally). There's more, but ... not tonight. It's getting late, and I'm calling it a day. This is also the last of April. So, I'll see you in May! 

Shaders, shaders everywhere; and new hair on new characters

With DAZ having a 55% off sale, who could resist? New Genesis 8 Male character here -- Yonni. This is one of the very few that look good (to my eye) right out of the box; I didn't do anything to him, just posed, lit and rendered him. Am extremely impressed with the skin tones and the eyes. It's well worth taking a look at these eyes, close up:

That's absolutely wonderful, and there's no drama in configuring this. Some characters are very difficult to light (such as Rex, who renders almost too dark to see details in the skinmap), and others have facial angles that can just look "wrong" when they render up. But Yonni is close to perfect. The hair is the Deck Hand hair, which renders marvellously ... and it fits perfectly, too! You wouldn't think fit was a lot to ask for, but it is. Next ...

Shaders! Here, I'm playing with some fantastic shaders I just got from Renderosity ... I may never have to buy fabric shaders ever again! This pack is amazing. I call this picture "Autumn Breeze." The hair is new; Dax Hair for G3 and G8. It's much tougher to work with, but when I get it figured out, it'll be very good. The falling leaves to the left were added with transparent .png clip pics from a free site: https://www.vhv.rs ... it's a massive site, so I assume it's legal and above-board; there's almost 900k items in their library, and that didn't happen overnight, so... anyway, the clipart is free and top quality. And --

Shaders! I've got shaders on everything here, from the floor to ... well, everything. This was a lot of fun to set up, though I have to say the shaders on the costume are very difficult to light, because they're so glossy, they burn out as soon as you put a spotlight on them that's bright enough to render skin tones properly. I'll try again tomorrow, and perhaps light them only with IBL environment lights. They're fabulous shaders, but you can't put a bright spotlight on them! The vehicle is the old Thunderbike, which I resurfaced with car paint -- Shelby Monza Red. Big wow factor. And...

The oars are juuuust about back in the water with Terragen! I've jogged my brain about 55%, still have some things to work out, and I'm not driving it without long, hard thought, but I should be able to generate the atmospherics for Studio work without further ado. Am still making a lot of rookie mistakes; managed to saddle myself with a 25-hour render, when it should have been about two! But I know what I did, and won't make that booboo again. So ... looking good! 

The Lair of the Goblin Queen -- and so forth

 

Please see this full size -- it's quite a visual feast! Taking inspiration from Frazetta, I've put the G8 Female, and a G8 Male, into The Throne of the Barbarian King, and then lit it largely with its own torchlight. The G8F is Ginnie HD, wearing the Crimsoneye costume and Axarra headdess. The G8M is Michael 8 with the Dae face turned on 100%, and the Angelic Fallen tattoos added. All else is lighting. Oh -- Conan, here, is wearing the AS Hair for G8F; the prop works well on the male, though it's very glossy. I need to work out how to make it look less like a shampoo commercial -- or else, as I did here, zap it with some virtual paint to "paint it down." I'll come back to this barbarian soon ... I rather like the Conan thing we've got going on here!

And now for something completely different ... an android. doubtlessly. Compete with mauve hair and purple fingernails, and a costume that's been resurfaced with (!) car paint! The car paint shader was a freebie from Deviantart, and I went back to the page to find the link, to be include it here. Its a fabulous set of colors, shades, gloss, the works. Highly recommended -- click here to go there. And here's something pretty...

Right out of a storybook. What I must do (soon) is work out how to get fully photographic results with the horse. This is the exact same lighting set I used for a G8F fantasy gypsy-warrior a little while ago; on the human character, I got a photographic result. On the horse ... pretty, but nowhere near to photographic. This is one I must work out, because I'd love to get photo-realistic horse renders. 

That's all for now, from DAZ, but --

I've just started up Terragen for the first time in several years, and I'm making every rookie mistake! I've saddled myself with a 25 hour render, and it's 97% done by the time I get up next morning, figure something has to be wrong, research it, get a lead on what I did to sabotage myself ... it's not worth stopping it after 21 hours of render time, so I'll let it go, and finish -- and I won't make that mistake again! First experiments are jogging my memory nicely...

The object of running Terragen is to be able to create custom atmospherics for DAZ renders, so the 25-hour booboo I have finishing up sometime today, which involves sunlight sparkling on water, doesn't need to be repeated. From here on, I'll drop the skyline low in the shot, and just render the sky. Oddly enough, Terragen renders the skies quickly. Since this was the whole point of installing it --! More soon, but right now, the system will be tied up all day, finishing a pretty simple picture: mea culpa. My bad, as they say. Aarrghhh.  

 

Installing third party content into DAZ Studio 4 ... new shaders, sets and toys!

I'd bought a gorgeous new set of shaders and set out to play with them, only to discover myself playing with lights, too ... and this happened. That's a heck of a nice picture. And...

This one makes me think of Purdey from The New Avengers -- is anyone old enough to remember that show? This is where shaders come into their own. This costume is put together from bits of four others, but a great shader on them makes the whole thing dovetail into something new. Kit bashing for fun. Continuing on --

This worked well. The background was rendered in Vue, many years ago (by Dave!),and it's the perfect sunset for DM's Sunedge set. I call this Forgotten. It was just a few minutes in Iray, because the older models and refreshingly low-poly; and then some quick post work in Photosop (birds, lens flare on the virtual camera), and it was done. Nice! Then --

This one, you're going to have to see full size, to appreciate the details. Throne of The Barbarian King, by Sveva, was on sale at Renderosity, and I couldn't resist. This was also the exact thing I needed to test out the installation paths for third party content going into Studio ... by George, I think I've got it. In fact, I know I have. When you're installing 3D goodies to Studio, the Zip file unpacks to produce a data folder and a Runtime folder. The data folder includes a sub-folder named for the designer of the goodies, and it gets unpacked/copied to this file path:

C:\Daz 3D\Applications\Data\DAZ 3D\My 3D Library\data\[designer]

There could also be an Environments folder (with the subfolder named for the designer within), and if there is, it gets unpacked/copied to --

C:\Daz 3D\Applications\Data\DAZ 3D\My 3D Library\Environoments\[designer]

...and after that, everything else is placed into the Runtime folder, same as always.

If you've been trying to work this out, this should get you going. I have much more to upload, and a very complex render cooking in the background as I type this, but I'll sign out here, and go looking for some dinner! 

 

Demon wings -- check out the diffuse maps on this!

 

Here's the old Demon Wings prop, looking better than ever -- it was always a great little prop, even though it refused to parent properly (and still does), but I could never get it to look really good, because its materials basically amounted to a "normal" map and a base color. Soooo ... I put the template into Photoshop and painted a diffuse map for it, then whacked that onto the 3D model, and added lots or meallicity an what not --

This is well worth viewing full size. In fact, so is the "Little Green Demon" picture, which is trusty old Michael 4! The golden winged demon/human blend is Genesis 8 female. In fact, I really like the green Michael 4. And I think I feel a story coming on. The story is, not all demons are evil; some fight the forces of evil, but even they have to skedaddle at sunrise. The picture is called Break of Dawn, when the golden-winged demon (she needs a name!) warns her off-camera rival, "Night will fall, and I will return!" Along the lines of "You can run, but you can't hide..." 

This is G8F, with the Ravna skinmap and face morph; Elan hair set to black and red; Demon Wings for Poser, re-surfaced for Iray, diffuse map painted my self. The foreground set is Reparation. There's a lot more to upload, but it'll have to wait till next time! 

Morningstar Wings ... not quite happy dancing, but it's nice!

Part of me wants to happy dance -- "Yay me, I got the Morningstar Wings to render" ... part of me wants to groan, because they only 99% rendered, and left me with a bit of painting to do. Not that I mind painting, I do it all the time -- BUT. This is the first time I've had a subject that "choked" my new video card. This is an NVIDIA RTX 2070 Super, and that is the max I'm likely to be able to afford. Period. From here on up video cards start to get into the same price bracket as used cars, and when you're talking about a gadget to support your hobby ... nope. Can't rationalize it. This video card is supposed to be up to the task of rendering top-line games in real time. Well -- I like painting! Good thing I do. 

This one was fun. It's actually Victoria 4.2 in Iray, wearing the Evangelique hair and the ShadowStorm dress, standing in a bit of DM's Kerrick's Throne set. I must say, V4 renders very nicely in Iray. And being a low-poly figure, she renders fast, virtually trouble free. I like the old costume, too -- always did. So when I saw how Iray handles it, I thought, hmmm. And --

Okay, I didn't shoot all the way for G8. This is the G2 Female wearing the V4 dress, and it fits pretty well. She's standing in one corner of DM's Anardhouse set, which renders wonderfully in Iray, too. Not bad at all, that! I don't have much in the way of G2 assets; they don't share between figures as well as the G3 costumes and hair. (The skinmaps don't share back and forth at all, as far as I know). So...

Alas, poor Yorik! A nice sunset shot, with golden light and interesting shadows. The set is Reparation, and I'm rather impressed by how it renders. Must do more with this. Well, there's lots more to share, but ... not tonight. Have been editing all day, and painting all evening, and I'm sooo tired! Calling it a day right here, and hitting the hay. More tomorrow!

Shamanic Visions, and an Elf about town

 

It might look like a simple image, but it's actually very complex! Took an hour to set it up, an hour to cook till the fireflies resolved, and then an hour to paint the next morning --

There's every technique in this one, from an under-painting generated specifically for this project, to the render itself, to 2D graphical layers (Renderosity to the rescue again -- so long as you really know what you're doing with the resources!) and photoshop brushes. I love the graphical layers:

This project was huge fun -- to begin with, playing with new 3D toys. The headdress is the Axarra Headdress for Genesis 8, and it's the most amazing prop to work with. The only downside is that, in closeup, it takes 12,500 samples to resolve all its fireflies, it's sooo poly-heavy. But it's worth the work, and the wait. I'll be using this again, often, I think ... there's so much you can do with it. I'd had my eye on it for some time, and when it popped up on sale for half price, well --!

I call that one Shamanic Visions, and it was big fun ... but there's more! You want fun? Try this:

That's our elven archer, from yesterday's Archer in the Dawn project, but this time it's a street scene, with leather jacket and shades. Elf about town. How realistic is that? It's almost, almost at the level where you'd just accept it as a snapshot or selfie in the street. Moreover, that's G8 wearing Michael 4's sunglasses; I redid the surfaces for Iray with shaders, and they worked just fine. Well, there's more, but I'm tired so I'm calling it a day. ack tomorrow, with pretty things! 

Let's hunt some Orc!

 

Okay, I had some time on my hands ... not because I'm actually at a loose end; I'm supposed to be editing and/or writing, and I couldn't get my head around either, so I decided to say "stuff it, do something creative instead of just spinning my wheels." So I did the second and third renders in this series: Nock the arrow and aim, and the next one on, Orcs on the Rampage! Here he is --

The story is, this band of marauding Orcs has been raiding through Elven territory all night, and they've left a path of devastation. In the dawn, the hunters go on the trails to get them -- hence, "Archer in the dawn" ... but here's the Uruk in the moonlight. Not bad, actually:

This is based on The Freak! A Generation 4 figure which the Iray Converter makes absolutely compatible with Iray. I used the Falcon M4 skinmap, for its weird warpaint, and used the Morphs++ to create a real Uruk face, teeth and all. The axe is an old, old prop; I did all the surfaces in the Surfaces Pane -- no shaders on this. And somewhere in the course of doing all this work on the old props, I do believe I've stumbled over how to get displacement working in Iray. Stay tuned ... am not 100% sure yet, but if I'm right, this is going to be great. So...

...so I've had a marvellous day rendering, with some terrific results and, I think, something major learned. If I can get displacement mapping going in Iray, that really is the last hurdle to be scrambled over. I'm liking this character a lot, too; and I must do more with the M4 costumes on G8, and also see how good they can be made to look in Iray. Hmmm. 

Archer in the Dawn: "Draw the bow, how does it feel?"

Lots and lots of experiments going on here -- and they mostly worked. The first big surprise is how good the old M4 costume looks on G8. Not all M4 costumes will load properly -- though I suspect there's a way to make them, I just haven't yet found it. I redid all the surfaces for Iray, of course, but at the end of the project, this is a very, very nice effect! Not to mention that I'm starting to love this character. The skinmap is Rex, and I'm using the Rex body morphs, but I designed the face myself -- and I'm using the vascular mapping from Dae, plus the SSS mapping from ... now, is it CC Foster? The effect is seamless and lovely.

The bow is the old V4 Dragon Bow prop, by Val. Again, I redid all the surfaces for Iray (mostly in the Surfaces Pane, but one or two shaders), and resized it for G8M. Very nice result. And the last of today's experiments is in "reverse vignetting" -- I'm fading the borders to white rather than black, and it's rather a lovely effect. I actually started with the backdrop, which helped to set the tone for the picture:

Once the background painting had set the tone, I was able to design the lights around it. I have one strong, warm spotlight and a soft greenish environment light on this, and the effect is ... artistic. Nice!

Snapshots! Or, Sunlight in Iray

 

So here's the challenge: how do you pour enough light into a scene to simulate full sunlight? And it turns out to be a balance between a skylight set dead overhead (or offset at an angle, if you want more of an afternoon or morning look about the shadows), and an HDRI image set as the Environment, or IBL light. Soooo, I went to HDRI Haven (Google it) and picked an image that looked like it would generate the kind of lighting I wanted, and then just cranked up the settings, higher and higher, in the Environment Pane, until I had it reasonably close -- like an overcast day. Then you make a distant light (a spotlight would have worked just as well), put it high overhead, adjust it to about 500k lumens, turn on shadows. Result -- well, check it out. I did two different virtual exposures on the shot, to be sure...

With a bit of work in the Tone Mapping Pane I was easily able to either burn out the highlights and brighten the subject, or else balance the shot for "outside," and let the subject be darker, which is exactly what you'd get if you were there in person, and taking photos. (The Tone Mapping pane gives you access to ISO, Vignetting, Gamma and Saturation, all of which I use a lot before doing the final render. And of course, with the DOF turned on you get that extra level of realism. This worked out perfectly --woohoo! (The set is The Gate, by DM; the model is Dae for G8 Male; the hair is Varun Hair for G8; and incidentally, the same hairstyle works on the G8 Female. I was just about to do a render using this when Studio announced that it had to "update Genesis 8 Starter Essentials," and launched into a process that is going to take up to sixty hours. This effectively ties up my system, soo... Grr.)

Speaking of hair -- I was going through old renders from my previous foray into Iray and G8, and I stumbled over this. It's Dae again ... but he's wearing a Michael 4 hairstyle, and it looks good on him. This is Neftis's Mon Chevalier Hair for M4. You just load it, jog it into place, parent it, and then tweak it in the Surfaces Pane to make it Iray compatible. It looks great on G8. 

That's it for me, for the moment. The computer is slogging slowly through the process. After several hours it's up to a whole, whopping 13%. Oooh, ahh. Patience, Grasshopper. 

Two generations of geometries. In the same shot. Not too bad ... and dForce!

So here's a bold experiment! I've been wondering for some time how a Generation 4 character (Michael 4) and a Genesis character would look, in the same shot. Would the Gen 4 character hold up, or just look hopeless? Well, the Michael 4 is obviously of an early generation -- well, duh! -- but on the whole it's fairly good. You just have to be careful how you pose the older figures; and the faces take quite a lot of work to make them look fully realistic (to some degree, the same can be said of Genesis, too). Genesis makes it soooo easy, you just load the figure, pose it set lights and camera, and render ... but now and then I enjoy a challenge. I'll be playing with the many M4 skinmaps I have, to see which ones work best. All are different, and not all are created equal. 

Speaking of challenges --

It may look like an ordinary shot -- nice enough, and very pretty lights -- but you are witnessing my first ever experiment in (gulp) dForce. It's far from perfect, I know; in fact, it took a fair bit of fixing in post, in Photoshop, to mend a lot of goofs in the dForce fabric draping, which, here, only worked 95%. But this is a first attempt, and I'm sure there's a lot I didn't do, and was supposed to do, LOL. So far, I have about one tenth of an idea of what I'm doing in dForce, but we learn by doing. It'll get better as it goes along. When I look back at Iray, and the learning curve for that, I often wonder how the heck I ever got started, much less got through it. But the fact is, I did. And when you have a look around at the great costumes and hair available for dForce these days, this is something you just have to learn. So here we go! 

The one real downside to dForce is the sheer time it takes. To drape this skirt to this degree of exactness took about twenty minutes (even on a super-fast computer); and I suspect I didn't allow enough virtual frames in the so-called simulation. I think I gave it about 20 of these iterations, or frames; and I rather think it'll take upwards of 40 to do a really good job. Ack. That means forty minutes just to drape the fabric, before you can even think about setting up the rest of the scene, and setting the engine to do a high-rez render. Ooof. Hmm. We'll have to see about this -- dForce is a neat thing, but it's sooo time consuming.