Shaking hands with some old friends: remastering old, old images. Nice!

Michael 4 in Lux Render

Michael 4 in Lux Render -- done in 2012

2x M4, painted raytrace -- done in 2012

2x M4 ... Raytraced and Photoshopped

Still sorting through told old archives ... still playing with the ancient images in Photoshop because -- well, I don't have the energy at the moment to do much more. Right on cue, my health fell to pieces again. I'm trying to pick up the pieces, but I have to be honest and say that every time this happens, it gets harder to drag myself back up and start again. (Fair to say, also, that I ain't getting any younger. Sigh.) Having said that -- playing in Photoshop is a lot of fun, in lieu of doing fresh images.

The blog is starting to really come into shape now. There's just a little work left to do on the very, very early posts: dead links, Flash Player slideshows that haven't been supported in almost a decade, images that have vanished for one reason and another. The last thing I'll do on this job is (!) go through the retag everything. Honestly ... if you've tried to find something, anything, on this blog -- well, good luck with that! I can't find a dang thing myself! But the retagging is the last job of all, after which -- this whole blog is in very good shape indeed. 

Have been collaborating in a writing partnership lately -- which also has been keeping me busy and hence eating up what small amount of energy I have/had. But yes, I seem to have broken the drought, defeated the worst case of Writer's Block imaginable. I've collaborated on two stories and written another solo, for which I did this little piece, which appeared on my writing blog:

That's an amalgam of "odds and sods," pasted together, dropped into monochrome, colourized, and then painted with a tonne of snow. No it's not representational of an actual place in London. It's only supposed to be evocative of a time and a place: ice age hits Europe, and this is how London copes. Eep.

Last thing for today: I'm actually going to stand up here and defend the Generation 4 figures. I read something the other day where this one guy was utterly rubbishing Michael 4 and Victoria 4, as if nothing was good before about Genesis 5 or whatever. I'm going to stamp by foot and say that is utterly untrue. In fact, it's balderdash! Example:

That, there, is not Genesis anything. That is Victoria 4.2 in Iray, with a tiny bit of Photoshop enhancement after the fact. Actually LOOK at this --

Now, I designed that face and boy myself, using the Morphs++. The skinmap is Angel, with it's tattoos turned on. Shaders on the fingernails. Here is where it gets clever: that is a Genesis  Male hair prop she is wearing. Yep -- V4 can wear a G8M hairdo! The rest of it, though? If you're thinking it has to be Genesis -- nope. The great thing about M4 and V4 is that they are low-poly enough that older systems don't herniate, trying to render them.

Okay, off the soapbox. But I did want to say that. Done. More soon ... I do have many images in mind that I want to produce, and if/when I can find the energy and the time, I can't think of a better way to blow off a winter's evening. And winter is arriving rapidly in our neck of the woods. After the lingering heat of March, it's most welcome!

Happy afternoon's painting -- and here's a face you might recognize...

 

posted at full size -- enjoy

Edit: I wasn't happy with the face on this one, so I 
went back into it and ran another experiment:
face replacement. Hey, it worked!

It's been a day for experiments ... and most of them worked! Here's a face that might be familiar ... in fact, it's an old character I created a lot of years ago, but this painting is brand new: painted from scratch, from an old raytrace, with a new sky which began as a photograph I took about six weeks ago. It's painted in four layers, and ... it worked! The "blue goddess" is another kind of experiment, and that worked too.  Starting to feel like I'm making some genuine progress here, and these paintings can afford to start getting more complex. It was really gratifying to begin with work that began in DAZ Studio 3 about ten years ago, and end up with a full on painting. Nice! Guy candy. Call it what you will. 

Meanwhile, I'm trying to fathom how to paint feathers. I keep getting fur, not feathers, lol. Working on a painting of a couple of cute Tawny Frogmouths, and the plumage ... well, birds that look like owls don't have fur, but these do. Back to the drawing board and start again, I think!

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 boys are back in town!

 

Well, that was a marathon, but I did it! Safe to say, the boys are back in town -- meaning, I have working Jarrat abnd Stone models that are viable in Iray, so we can be seeing them as they've never looked before. But if I thought I'd had problems getting Jarrat "out of storage," Stone turned into a nightmare. Oddly enough, the character preset applied properly, and in preview it looked fine ... but as soon as I saw the render, I groaned. This is the same character preset as renders perfectly as a raytrace, and even LuxRender (Reality) was kind to it -- in Iray, you see immediately, the mesh on the brow line has crumpled, collapsed, whatever you want to term it. If I didn't get in there and uncrumple it, I'd have to paint out the crumpled mesh every single time I rendered Stoney. Yee-ouch. Sooo...

Basically, I've managed to resurrect about 95% of the character. The brow line in "Stoney 2.0" isn't the same, and can't be, because those morphs -- applied legitimately with Morphs++  -- cause the mesh to buckle and look baaad in Iray. Harrumph. But 95% is pretty good, and I'd happy. That's still Stoney as we remember him from years ago, and much closer to photorealism. Now, you're never going to get 100% photorealistic renders from the Generation 4 figures ... there's just not enough polygons in the old mesh, end of statement. But these guys now look at least as good as the figure work we saw in Final Fantasy II The Spirits Within, and we were gobsmacked --

-- it's up to me, now, to light, pose and render them in a way that does the figures justice. And even though they're Gen 4 figures, I can do that. Here's a case in point --

No, that is not a Genesis figure. That's old Victoria 4.2, albeit wearing Genesis 3 hair, which illustrates perfectly what you can do with the old figures, if you're smart, and careful. (In fact, the only thing I don't like about the Stone model is the way Neftis's GQ Event Hair renders in Iray. I do have another hairdo which I can try on Stoney, and we'll see if it renders well without changing the way he looks too much (or, if it does change him, it's an acceptable change). If that doesn't work out, I'll try some Genesis 3 hair on him ... but if Stoney ends up wearing G3 hair, it means Jarrat will have to get the upgrade too, because if they're posed together, the old hair will really be noticeable. We'll have to see. Also...

That's a re-render of something I did in Bryce 7 Pro back in 2014, and it's another case in point. The old Bryce picture was good, and a great idea, but the Iray render is far, far better, and illustrates what can be done with sheer cleverness, opacity maps, tone mapping, photometric lights, shaders, whatever. So, take this degree of sophistication and apply it to the Gen 4 figures. Yeah. Let's do this. One area in which the Gen 4 figures way outperform Genesis is in the render times. You can render a whole crowd of Michaels and Victorias without choking your graphics card (GPU); or render one of them at high-rez and large size in under five minutes. Try that with Genesis. Ahem.

Stay tuned!

"Brokering a deal" ... too many visible polygons!

 

Call this one "Brokering a Deal." Two Michael 4s, and I couldn't be happier with this render (see it full sized, please). On the left, that's the serendipitous new character who just appeared spontaneously, when Studio 4 mis-read the character preset file for Jarrat; I called him Kurt. Now, today's experiment was to see what we can get from the HD skinmap for Michael 4...

Sooo, he's wearing a new face and custom body form, designed quickly in Morphs++, and that's the HD M4 skinmap plus the Iray Converter for Generation 4; and the result is dandy except for the sheer number of polygons visible in the M4 figure, after rendering in Iray --

-- and the left shoulder has a major problem too. Now, sure, you can paint them out, and I've done it in the past (ran into this problem for the first time in LuxRender, long ago), but that's a lot of painting, and frankly, I couldn't be bothered. So a put a jacket on him, LOL. If there was one reason for using the Genesis figures rather than the Generation 4 characters, this would be it. Iray can really, really show up the polygons! And speaking of Genesis --

"Personal Demons" ... a half-hour quickie because I had time to kill last night. And it goes to prove that viewers relate more to human figures than to other kinds of images; and female characters get more response than male. I slaved for about three hours to complete the industrial site render yesterday, and it's going largely unnoticed at the DAZ Creative Art and Renderosity groups on Facebook; but this one romped its way into double-figures at Renderosity, when in fact it only took a few minutes to put together and fifteen minutes to render. (Incidentally, if you can get into double figures, you're doing well. Hunh. Go figure.) I like the new M4 character a lot. Call him Simon, I think. And he also is wearing Genesis 3 hair ... it works on Michael 4! 

Serendipity! Okay, call him Curt ... and fitting Genesis 3 hair to Michael 4 -- easy.

A few very minor adjustments to his nose (which I thought was too large), and here he is, in his own photo shoot. Talk about serendipity! If you haven't been following this -- "the story so far." Wanting to break Jarrat and Stone out of storage (you know -- from Mel Keegan's NARC, nudge, wink), I loaded up a Michael 4 and applied the Jarrat character preset. If this were Studio 3, it would have worked, but in Studio 4, I didn't get Jarrat at all; I got a whole new character, s Studio 4.15 interpreted the preset, got it wrong, and produced...

And I like what I'm seeing -- a lot. This is a beautiful new character, and he wears the Genesis 3 hair as if it were made for M4. Okay -- let me write a little about how to fit the G3 hair to M4, because I suspect a number of people will be trying to do it, and it can be extremely fiddly.

• Load your M4 figure in the 0 position, meaning 0 valued on every transformation parameter. Unselect the figure. Load the hair into the scene without anything being selected. It loads also on the 0 position, just too low to fit the M4 -- meaning, if you jog it up till it looks good, the scalp cap will fit. You might need to jog the z (back/forward) parameter to make sure the back of the head is well covered; when it is, the hairline should be right. Do this in the Perspective view, so that you can swing the scene around easily without moving the M4 at all. Lastly, in the scene menu, select the hair prop and drag it upward throug the list till you can drop it onto the M4 'head' list item. This will parent it to M4, and now you can adjust the styling and colour to your heart's content. For the best fit, use Genesis 3 hair on Michael 4 or Victoria 4.2 ... and enjoy!

And we call him Curt because Mel Keegan has just given this face and body form the nod ... this is Curt Gable, the Athena's Third Officer, soon to move upwards through the ranks as the series develops! Very neat indeed!

Second major thing fixed today:

Yep, the problem with the visor on the HAAS Armor helmet, by Xurge3D, was caused by an opacity map which Studio was reading incorrectly (it was original configured for the Firefly engine, in Poser, maybe ten years ago). Basically, I just deleted the opacity map from the "Cutout Opacity" channel in the Surfaces pane. Now, if I want a semi-opaque visor, I can either drag the slider to 75% or whatever, or else apply a glass shader. Great -- with this problem answered. I can load the rest of the Xurge3D content without a qualm. 

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! 

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.