Something whimsical and "feel good"

I call the top picture "Listening at the Window," and the second "Rainy Days." These were such fun to do, and a huge departure from the usual stuff I do. They're also a lot more complex than they might seem! To begin with, I don't (yet) own either an owl or a cat (they're on the list!) so both of these had to be added in post, in Photoshop ... from transparent PNGs, which you can get for free from a remarkable site, which I assume is kosher. If it isn't ... ahem! Oh, while I'm in this neck of the woods, I should mention that HDRI Haven has changed its name and address to PolyHaven ... another godsend for resources. Fantastic place to get images to drive environment mapping for ambitious scenes like this:

Any chance I can get you to look at that one full size?! Thanks! That was such an ambitious project, in a HUGE set, with two spacecraft, two droids, and three armoured figures, plus an atmospheric plane. I'm just amazed that it only took 45mins in Iray -- and that's the magic of the low(er) poly figures of yesteryear. Then ...

We'll close on this one today, I think! The old DinoKonda, for which I did a new skinmap, and dug around till I found the DinoKonda Plus morphs to make it bigger and badder! This was a neat project too, so filled with shaders and props. Oh! One last image for today, before I sign out -- speaking of shaders, that is! This --

I treated myself to some new toys! Bohemian Candles by Sveva, from Renderosity, and ROG's Fantasy Home props from DAZ. I've also been installing scores and scores of older items from the 2010 - 2019 content ... am juuust starting to knock a dent in that work! The oars are definitely back in the water. 

Gotta Dance, April Daydreams and Holiday Snaps!

Just playing with some new props and shaders and poses. Having a lot of fun with this kind of thing at the moment. There's not very much left to learn in Iray now. If I can get the sky dome figured out, that's about the only mystery left! I've found some pretty good tutorials on YouTube which will get me into it, and I just need to devote an afternoon to this. There's not much to add here ... my wish list is getting longer and longer at both DAZ and Rendo -- I think I could spend about two thousand dollars in a single shopping spree! But let's not. This isn't a cheap hobby, and one accepts that, but there's a limit! In the meantime, I'm just enjoying playing with the wealth of old, old props I've had squirrelled away for years. Not much beside the Genesis figures and a few costumes and hair props is new; the rest goes back a long, long way, and is gussied up with new shaders! 

More tomorrow -- there's still a raft of images to post here. But for now ... it's getting late and I'm closing down for the day. Yaaawn...

Baby dragons ... how cute is this?

 

The assignment began as the chore of breaking the Consulting Mage out of storage as a Character Preset, running the whole thing through the Iray Converter, and seeing how he'll render up in Iray ... and I guess I got side-tracked! Can't have the Consulting Mage without his pet, right? Right. So ... next, load up the Dragonling and convert that also for Iray. This was such fun, I wound up posing him as if he were a kitten, and the render was so delicious, I wanted to come back for more. So --

The experiment grew. I had an intuition that the Demon Wings would look better on him than the wings shipped with the Dragoning, so, having fitted them, well, then I had to paint a whole new shader for them, so they matched the rest of him. Diffuse and Displacement, translucency ... okay. And doesn't this just look grand! Then, just as I was closing down for the evening a little idea ran through my mind of having the Dragonling chasing butterflies in the sunshine, since he's like a scaly, smoke-breathing, flying version of a kitten (ye gods, what a thought), and the top picture happened! This was a lot of fun. I think I'll come back to these characters soon...

Staying on the fantasy theme, I went on to these ... and you know something momentous is going on here, but I'm not sure (yet) what it is! The Gypsy Wagon is enormous fun to play with...

...and I treated myself to a pack of "greens" to make it easier to get really good landscapes. I still need some great trees, but they can start to get very, very expensive. I have some wish listed, and am keeping an eye on them, because trees are the factor that can make or break a photorealistic scene. If they're "storybook" trees, you'll end up with art, not a photo, no matter how clever you are with the lights. I did some other renders of the wagon, too; but I think the figure I placed into the scene is out of scale, so I'll re-do that ... the lighting is too gorgeous to just ditch the project because of a problem that could be pretty easily fixed. Hmm. I might do this, this afternoon! And right now --

https://www.renderosity.com/rr/mod/bcs/the-wizards-wagon/72818/

--Sveva's Wizard's Wagon is on sale at Renderosity. I think I'm about to give myself a treat! I just have to be a bit careful with spending, because it's soooo easy to spend way too much. This month, I already bought characters, poses, shaders, two greens prop sets, and a fantastic set of homewares for a fantasy house. An inspired designed has modelled Bilbo's hobbit house, and filled it with all his possessions. You buy it room by room, set by set. LOL, all you need is money! I bought one set of props, and the rest are wish listed. Oh, one day.  That's all for now ... there's a load more to post, but we'll get onto SF and so on tomorrow. 

Colony world, a fractured faery tale, virtual holiday snaps, new props and shaders!

 

"Heavy lifter on approach" ... another in my series of "Alien Colony" images. Pleased to say, this doesn't use a backdrop ... that's the Power Cargo prop, by Powerage, waaaaay outside the Station 3000 set, also by Powerage, with an atmospheric plane slapped between. I put an opacity map on it for some airborne texture. Add Yonni for G8M, and the Droid with new shaders; the whole thing rendered all of a piece. The only post work is a lick of dust rising in the foreground. This took about twenty minutes to "cook"... interesting that the old Rust-icator shader works excellently with Iray. And ...

"...and as the sun touched the hills she heard the creature's dreadful cry. Rogue Red took up her grandmother's sword, left behind the ill-favoured riding hood -- and went out to hunt wolf. " In fact, a fractured faery tale, in which Grandmama had been the swordmaster who, in her day, taught the young warriors, and the wolf is wyrkind, yielding only to an ancient blade that was Grandmama's possession for over a hundred years before the creature got the better of her. (That's Jolinari; Akaste hair gussied up with new shaders by TwiztedMetal; parts of the Rogue Red Returns costume; Swashbuckler boots; DM's Kerrick's Sword, fallen boughs and lantern. Additional shaders by Atenais (dress), JG (glass), Twizted (tights). Yet more shaders layered on the ground. One bright, warm spot, a hint of environment light, a tonne of light poured out by the candle flame, and some tone mapping. The shader on the sword ... hey, I made another shader! Couldn't find anything I liked today, so I delved back into an old project and exported the surface I'd made for another blade. It worked!) Plus...

Another in my ongoing series of "Holiday Snaps" ... in fact, playing with "available light" streaming in through two opposing windows. This was fun. That's a mix and match V4, with the face morph from one character, the body morph from another, the skinmap from a third, plus Nana hair with Twizted's hair shaders added, and the old Shadow Dancer costume given a complete makeover with fabric shaders. Victoria is visiting DM's Anardhouse set, and in the background --

Renderosity was having a sale (when are they not?) and I couldn't resist a pack of Ceramic shaders. These are goof proof and unspeakably gorgeous, so I'm salting them away in all kinds of places. They really are gorgeous ... and tonight, DAZ was having a sale, and I bought the "ROG Fantasy Home Living Room Furniture Set, which is a set of over sixty props, which are going to be sheer joy to work with! Later, when I have some spare cash, I'll get the Fantasy Home set too ... it's a 3D realization of Bilbo's house, and it's ... delicious. But not before I have some spare bucks. 

A little SF, a little fantasy

 

She's the boss! Or, "This alien tomb is eight thousand years old, you are not blowing it up!" There's a story idea running through this sequence of images. A field archaeologist has her dig invaded by the military, and naturally their idea of getting things done involves explosives! I've been installing more old goodies from yesteryear ... DM's Pyrago set as never looked better, and the Xurge3D space armour renders so well. That's actually Jarrat wearing it ... I wanted to put the scene together quickly, so I merged in an existing figure...

And the other day I bought a new Genesis 8 Female character -- on sale for about $7.50 and too good to go past. It's Fumiko, and it renders like a dream -- soooo easy, literally no way for it to render poorly with this HD skinmap:

And the other thing I've been playing happily with is the hair shaders, by TwiztedMetal, which are a little tricky to use, but can give some amazing results, like this Genesis 3 hair prop, which fits Michael 4 perfectly...

Varun Hair for Genesis 3 male, fit to Michael 4, with shaders by TwiztedMetal

Must play with these some more, and really get the hang of them. Tomorrow, I'll be installing the set of ceramics shaders I bought the other day, too. From the catalog pictures at Renderosity, they look amazing ... this will be fun! 

The Little Demon returns ... and hair shaders!

 

Now, here's a character we haven't seen in a long time! I got back into Studio 3, exported a whole bunch of the old characters as presets ... ran them through the Iray Converter for Generation 4 to get them ready for Iray, and here we go! "Magic Hour" -- the Little Demon, in the Ruined Church set by AppleJack. And the thing I'm proudest of about this render is ... the shader on the wings is mine. Yep, I made a shader, the whole thing, with the mapping and everything. Whoo! Also...

I treated myself to some shaders from Renderosity this morning, and boy, do they work!At least, so far, so good. These are the Hair Shaders 2, by TwiztedMetal, and they just look so good on hair props right across the spectrum from Genesis 8 back to Generation 4. Above, this is Georgia HD for G8 Female, and good old Victoria 4, wearing a face designed by me and the Angel skinmap. The hair in both cases is resurfaced with the new hair shaders ... now, I'm impressed! The possibilities are endless. There's more, but it'll wait till tomorrow. Stay tuned!

The Raven in Silence

With the old computer turned on, I managed -- at last! -- to get back into Studio 3, open up a lot of eons-old project files, and export a dozen of my characters of yesteryear as presets. This is great news for me, at least ...  Now I've got the Raven (this character here, with the glossy wings), The Conjuror, The Man in the Hat, my Little Demon, The Swordsman, The Ronin, and a few more. The Iray Converter for Generation 4 works so well, all of these characters look grand in Iray. And what with my budget for new stuff shrinking to not much above zero, well, getting access to old treasures is doubly important. (This picture is called The Raven in Silence ... the set is known as Silence.) Speaking of which -- 

https://www.daz3d.com/leather-jacket-for-m4

Am seriously thinking of buying this. It's only $10, and I can see Jarrat wearing it. There's a lot of goodies for Michael 4, and the old figure is very, very renderable, even in this day of Genesis everything. I actually enjoy working with M4 as much as with G8 ... call me nuts, if you will. I also like this one, which is for G8:

https://www.daz3d.com/vintage-leather-jacket-for-genesis-8-males

...and that also isn't too expensive, so it's on the agenda. But a new jacket for M4? Sure. Why not? Anyway, we'll start with "The Raven," and explore the possibilities of Iray and classic characters. This will be fun!