A grab bag of goodies -- barbarian, dancer ... vascular mapping, shaders and all

Back to basics -- a raytrace right out of good old Studio 3. The skinmap and face morph are Atlas (which I think is by SAV; from Renderosity), and the render pulls virtually every trick in the book, with a good result. I fell back to basics after a fruitless hour trying to get the M4 Displacement to manually install properly ... it gave me the right, royal run-around, but in the end -- just as I was about to yank my hair out by the roots and run around screaming, I did get it to work:

This one is a Studio 4.11 raytrace, and I cranked up the sampling to get higher fidelity. I'm actually fairly pleased with this. (The only downside is ... I can't save the project file. Whatever I do, I do on the fly as a one-off, which makes for more work, but -- hey ho._ As you can see, I got the M4 Displacement to work in the end -- there's only one proviso: it doesn't work in Iray. So finding out that you can get higher quality raytraces becomes more important! Remember how much you love raytracing, and explore the new depth in the 3Delight settings.

The vascularity adds a dimension of realism ... it's going to be fun playing with this. The big challenge was finding the package, once it was copied over. If you're having the same problem, take a look here:

My DAZ 3D Library \ People \ Michael 4 \ Materials \ M4 Displacement

...and whaddaya know, there it is. The way Studio 4.11 reads files and folders is confusing, and can be confounding, but after six months I think I'm starting to get the hang of it. 😜

There's a package for Genesis 8 called "Add Some Veins," which essentially does the same thing for Genesis 8.. I don't have that package yet. Still going fifteen rounds with Studio, trying to get it to install things manually, and do it reliably, coherently. I had six items to install today, and got through three of them because with the exception of a set of poses (from Renderosity) the rest gave me a fight. But --

Genesis 8 -- "Going Dancing:" new poses and shaders, installed and working. Phew.

It was a bit of a chore getting the Polygonal Miniatures Iray Shaders Collection to work properly, because although everything copied over to the letter, and is in place, Studio can't find any of the texture maps ... meaning, every time I apply a shader, you have to "locate" the map. Just one more hoop to jump through I guess; so I went through the motions with a test piece --

-- using eight shaders on one prop, the Chinese screen from the Folding Screens set. Fair enough, I can go through the "locate" routine for this. The only "hmm" I have about this shader pack is that, as you can see immediately, the shaders visibly "tile" over large areas. They're beautifully seamless, but the texture maps are quite small, and you can pick the pattern at a glance. These will have to be used with considerable care, to hide this.

The poses are really good, and I think they were a freebie from Renderosity. Ain't it odd? The freebie is the item that works perfectly, installed without a fuss and just clicked into place. The only thing I need to remember is where Studio finds this item! So I'm going to make a note to myself here, LOL, so I can refer back to this post if I forget where it is! Note to self: the Thorvan Poses are here:

My DAZ 3D Library \ People \ Genesis 8 Male \ Poses \ thorvan-poses

...simple and logical, when you think about it, but I had to hunt it down. Worth the hunt.

Three more items to install, if I can manage it: a new hairstyle, a Wolverine-style leather jacket for Genesis, and an SF costume. I'll get to them tomorrow, and with a bit of luck they won't mess me about the way the M4 Displacement and Polygonal shaders did. Cross fingers.

Big story in a small space ... without words.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, this lot must be worth a whole novella. I don't think I need to add a syllable about the plot unfolding here, so ... add flesh to these bones yourself, right? It's the old, old story, told about a thousand times before, but never quite like this!

I think the last time I saw this story, it was a damsel on a pirate ship, and she ended up First Mate of the vessel, and then shoved the Skipper overboard when no one was looking and remarked on how rough the sea was that day.

What you have here is the "camera one" sequence. You're seeing one character, from one POV, while the scene plays out. There would also be a "camera two" on the characters with whom this young spacer is negotiating, while at gunpoint, and a wide camera on the whole group. These are virtually storyboards for a steamy little science fiction drama played out on a highly detailed, closed set.

And the tale turns out well for the spacer. Get held up and ripped off by space pirates, and, uh, "negotiate" your way out of it, and wind up as a pirate spacer yourself ... with an earring, no less, and the freedom of the ship. Neat. Now, there's a story for you.

One wonders if the skipper of this pirate crew will get shoved out of an airlock when no one's looking, and our young spacer remarks on how unreliable the airlocks on this ship can be at this time of year...

This is DAZ Michael 4 wearing the SAV-Eros skinmap, face morph and Sav-Eros short hair. The costume is Utilitize, lashed up with the SH Hadcore addon textures. The set is Sector 15 by Stonemason. The poses are all adapted from the Amazing Bodies set. The earring is from the Gypsy Hair prop, actually designed for V4, but as with most props, you can make anything fit anyone.

And I just noticed, it's the Equinox of Spring in a few days ... what happened to 2011? It's winding up to summer already, and I've been so busy this year, I've hardly noticed it passing by! Waaaah! I want it back! Not much chance of that, though, so we'll just look forward to 2012, firm in the faith that the Mayan calendar cycles to zero and (duh) resets itself, and starts over. Let's face it -- calendars usually do.

Jade, 16 September

Michael 4, the new pants, new poses, and all

Still on the "Spirit of Place" theme -- because I rather like this! -- here's our young hero again. The archeology student who's out there in the field, studying a fantastic ruin which just appeared out of the landscape after an amazing storm caused four-meter surges which scoured out a valley that's been silted up for, well, forever. The ruin is seeing the light of day for the first time in 5000 years, right? Right. And there's something so weird about it...

Remember, this is the same ruin you saw in the Winged Avenger post, a little while ago --- remember this:


...and this guy is still around. He's been the sentinel in charge of making sure this ruin was buried, and stayed buried forever ... and if it hadn't been for global warming and climate change, it probably would have. But now it's out in the free air again, and what's more, humans are already here. They're measuring and photographing, taking samples, and generally getting themselves into danger they know nothing about.

Time for our archangel to appear on the scene? Mmmm, that's what I thought, too! So join me tomorrow, when he arrives.

In the meantime, this is actually a study of Michael 's new costume. The pants are a great prop. They're the Sickle Yield Rogue Armory pants, which you can get fro Renderosity and they're both easy to work with, and they render up a treat. They have a variety of textures in the package with the pants model itself, and more morphs than you can shake a stick at. This costume is from the same designer who did the sweats you saw quite a while back, in a Male Glamor Photography exercise:


(Click here to see the rest of this series ... they're, uh, nice!)

And I just got another one of Sickle Yield's M4 costumes: a neat pair of jeans that (at last, somebody did this!) have the morphs supplied for "half on, half off," or "state of undress," that kind of thing. I haven't even had the chance to install this yet, but it's on the agenda for the next few days, so stay with me.

The other item I'm test-driving today is a great new set of poses for M4. It's called Amazing Bodies (also from Renderosity), and the title is accurate. These are tremendous poses, and trouble free. Usually, no matter how good they look on the thumbnails, there's a problem somewhere when you apply a pose, but this pack is one of only a few pose packs that I've found to be "viceless." I'll show you some more of them tomorrow --

Tomorrow, the winged avenger, the archangel guardian of this ruin, is going to join the archeology student, and this promises to be interesting. If you're into this kind of work, the easiest way to achieve this effect is to merge two scenes into one. If you're feeling your way through DAZ, join me tomorrow, and I'll tell all.

And because I knooooow some of you (most of you) are wondering:


Yes, this pose looks beautiful when you click "off" on the costume and leave a glorious CG male nude behind!

That's Michael 4 wearing the Raphael skinmap, but not the Raphael face. That's the Rock Star hair by Neftis Salon (from DAZ), and the set is DM's The Shrine (from Renderosoty). The claw-footed incense burner is from another of DM's sets (Fantasy Visions??). The sky backdrop is a recolorization of the stormy sky I did in Bryce to use as a backdrop for the Steampunk Clock renders back in June. The last time you saw it, it was purple.

And now the brain is busy with images of the scene where the archangel meets the archaeologist! This is going to be interesting...

Jade, 1 September (other side of the dateline, of course)

Michael 4 and Michael 3 ... not what you'd call siblings!

As promised, I ran the experiment ... and learned a lot, not least of which was, don't make assumptions! Suuuure, you can swap skinmaps between Michael 4 and Victoria 4.2, and make a real mess, and have a lot of fun with primitive humor (which was the force driving these renders), so I'd assumed that you'd be able to slap the M4 skinmap on Michael 3, and though it wouldn't fit, it'd be good for a laugh. Right? Actually, wrong.

The truth is, there doesn't seem to be any retrocompatibility whatsoever! While you can trade skinmaps between male and female models which share the same generation geometry, but go back a generation to M3, and you're right out of luck.

Well,no great loss, really. Having had a muck about with the M3 model today, I can honestly say, I'm somewhat glad I didn't get into this kind of artwork a few years ago, because M3 is about as realistic as a tailor's dummy. I'd have been quite disappointed with the results, rather than being inspired to learn!

So there you are -- all questions answered about Michael 3 and his compatibility (or lack thereof) with Michael 4. As the post title says, they're not exactly siblings.

Jade, 24 May

Another of my favorite characters comes to life

One of the biggest thrills of CG art is creating characters -- in fact, it's the biggest thrill. This is what I got into it for, in many ways. And it's a huge pleasure to bring to life a character who's a major player in a very major fiction event. You must be able to "pick" this one! Six foot four, statuesque, white blonde with ice blue eyes, brain like Einstein, fists like Xena, lives and works on an industrial ship that's as powerful as any warship?!

You got it -- Barb Jazinsky. I got the nod of approval on this character this afternoon. And put another tick against another Hellgate character! Mel Keegan is "tickled" with this one. My next project is to pose the two of them together -- Vaurien and Jazinsky, they go together like ham and eggs. Add Mark Sherratt, and there's the brains trust that makes a lot of Hellgate go. Can't wait to see the images myself! You won't notice how big Jazinsky is till she's standing in the same scene with other characters who are normal size. This is going to be fun!

So here you have Victoria 4.2 wearing a new hairdo that I bought this afternoon specifically for the character. It's the Accents hair, and I switched to this because after about an hour of mucking about with other styles, I was getting nowhere. She's wearing the Shadow Dancer costume, but I changed the texture out completely, and added a pair of stylish boots rather than the "cockroach crushers" that come with this costume. That's the Mimi skinmap (actually, it's too olive to be 100% right on this character; I definitely need to get a couple of new skinmaps for V4) and the palest eyes in the Eyes Have It set of eyeballs. The set is Commander, which is a vast starship ops room and bridge set.

Answering a quick question I was asked the other day: Can I use V4 poses for M4, or do they not work, and therefore stuff up your scene and/or computer? In short ... you can use any pose for any character; it just might need a bit of adjustment because the various characters have different proportions, so what's perfect for one will be a close fit, maybe not a perfect fit, for another. (A lot of the V4 poses, when applied to M4, are going to look like scenes out of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, but hey, give me a reason why not? You want "go-go boy gorgeous," check out Guy Pearce in that movie ... and this is the effect you'll get, slapping V4 poses onto M4 as he arrives right "out of the box.") But yes, short answer -- any pose can be applied to any character. M4 poses work fine for V4, giving her a lot of gravitas ... how well the V4 poses work for M4 depends on, uh, what you want out of them!

Not much else is happening in this neck of the woods. Just working while the year winds down into fall. The sun is gone much earlier and the blackbirds are singing, which is a sure sign that we're well into fall.

Jade, 18 April

***Posted by MK: my connection is intermittent, too slow for this. Seriously, guys, I've got dialup speeds. How are you expected to do anything these days, at 1990 dialup speeds?!!!

Cyberpunk ... 3D super commando

Still on the theme of 3D Science Fiction ... this is a new model from DAZ, just appearing this week, and I'm impressed. Take Michael 4 and add the full costume, guns and all ... drop him into the Station 3000 set (which is immense), adopt some stock poses, tweak everything ... set three lights and have a fiddle with the camera. Too easy!

Also, this is a set of bits and pieces that will mix and match nicely with loads of other bits. These days, I rarely use anything just as it arrived "off the peg" or "out of the box." Just about the only time you'll see the model itself is when I'm test-driving it. This one is terrific. It'll also take textures very nicely too. Jade's verdict: 5 out of 5 stars.

No time to write any more, guys. Too busy today ... am packaging a book, and have been looking at various computer screens till my eyes are not working the way they ought to. So -- enjoy the artwork for today. Next post will be a hunk out of uniform!

Jade, 20 July

***Posted by MK because the internet is AWOL. Intermittent crap. Be warned, guys: our connection is going to be in and out for a week or two, as of this point: Telstra (or whatever) is doing a lot of work on the landlines in this area. And as you know, if you've been looking at the "poster notes" on these journal entries in my looooong adventure through the world of CG, 3D and digital, even at the best of times we can find ourselves with dialup speeds in this area. This is why MK has been making many posts for me, since Day One -- Keegan has the fast connection, not me! (This should change in the near future, when the cables or whatever are updated, and they stop working on them. At least, s'wot Telstra promises.) Credit where it's due: this blog would not have been possible without the support of a pal with decent internet. Because ours sucks. We moved into this area about six months before I got into Studio and blogging about it, and I almost quit right there: DAYS to download something from the DAZ store, at one point. Argh. Thank gods for friends when you need 'em! 

Victoria 4.2, and a real, genuine fantasy romp

Victoria 4.5 starring as Zenobia in a 3D fantasy romp, Escape from the Seraglio. Hey, if this old chestnut's good enough for Hollywood, it's good enough for me! So here's the story:

Evil Warlord from the desert region south of our heroine's homeland on the steppes has sent his raiders into the heartlands of the horse peoples. Zenobia is their best warrior ... she fights valiantly to save the tribe and is knocked unconscious, and picked up with the wounded.

Taken back to the Evil Warlord's palace in the sands, she wakes and realizes she has no idea who she is. She's lost her memory, and when the snake-oil salesman of a slave dealer tells her she's an expensive courtesan, who's she to argue?

The next few months make Don Juan De Marco look like he was on a go-slow industrial action. (Didn't you love Johnny Depp in that?!) You don't want to know what she got up to! Then again, maybe you do ... but not on this blog, kiddies. Use your imagination. Ahem.

Then one day, shazam! She gets accidentally smashed on the noggin with a huge bronze incense burner and her memory comes back. She wants out ... like anyone in the Evil Warlord's palace cares about that! In fact, the boss has her tentatively pencilled in for an appointment tonight, between the hours of nine-thirty and seven in the morning. Little does he know, it's his last night on this world, and Zenobia will be over the wall and astride the big white stallion, streaking off across the desert while the stars are still blazing...

Yeah, right. Reads like a  sizzling romance bestseller, right? Ouch! Anybody want to write this?! I'll paint the cover...

Jade, 1 June

***Posted by MK: my connection is currently intermittent, too slow for this.

Fantasy 3D art: Frank Frazetta would be ... intrigued. I think.

2014 Edit: sorry, guys -- this one, above, is the last surviving image of the series. The rest have gone. The only hint as to what they were is in the raw thumbnails, below. In fact, this is a pretty neat idea -- I need to come back to it in Iray with Genesis 8!

DAZ Studio 3 meets Frank Frazetta -- and I'm not quite sure if Frank would be impressed, nonplussed, bemused, amused, or scandalized! Top : the classic version ... Frazetta was the one who invented the brawny barbarian with the naked babe sort of draped off one leg, on a mound of bodies or bones or cast-off armor. Middle: we live in the age of Xena Warrior Princess, and where it'd be positively sexist not to play both sides of the field. So ... here's the barbarian babe with the naked hunk sort of draped off one leg. Bottom: We also live in an age of equal rights across the board, so here's the gay version. There ought to be an L version as well, but I totally ran out of time. Let me see if I can do it later, and paste it in!

Here's how you do this work. It all starts with the background -- same as yesterday:

Airbrush colors into the shades and tones and blocks you want, then use your Gimp brushes to paint in the steam, smoke, fire, fog, clouds, whatever you need. Then...

Import the background into DAZ 3D and pose your models in front of this. Now, here's where it gets clever. It can take a loooong time to get the poses right, and you don't want to be doing that over and over. Really special poses (like these) are pretty hard to buy, too: nobody does them! So, here's a nifty trick...

When you get the pose just right (and it could have taken you 15-30 minutes to get it), leave the character selected and go SAVE AS ... then look in your "save" flyout menu. You'll see a Preset Pose, or Pose Preset option. Use this, and DAZ will save the POSE only, to a special file called a .dsb file. A dialog opens with options -- take "record all."

So now you've got your .dsb file. What the heck do you do with it?! Well, the next time you want a character to jump right into that pose, you select is, and the MERGE the .dsb file. That simple. Nothing to install. Nothing to import. Just select your character, go MERGE, and hen double-click on your .dsb file, and chuckle smugly.

So, to get these shots today was pretty easy one I can the initial poses done. I save Michael 4's pose, then I saved Victoria 4.2's pose ... then switched out the characters and merged the poses. With very minor modifications (the right hand must be tweaked to fit a left leg that's a different size and shape ... and Michael's left arm doesn't need to be positioned to occlude the babe's bare superstructure) the scene is ready to be re-rendered.

Then ... have your Gimp open in another window. You only need to paint the smoke and fog into the foreground ONCE, if you paint it into a new layer. Then, you can go back into the bottom layer where the DAZ render lives, and paste a new render right over it. The smoke and fog stays the same. You can get three spins on the same art (classical, shero and gay) in about five minutes!

Jade, 12 May

***Posted by MK: my connection is intermittent, too slow for this.

Character creation and 3D serendipity

Character creation is one of the biggest thrills in 3D art, especially when you're bringing a character alive for a story. And DAZ Studio 3 is the perfect medium for this art, because you can start with what they call a "base" -- for me, it's always Michael 4 -- and change every last thing about the character. You could give him ingrown toenails, if you wanted to!

If you know your Hellgate, this is a Very Big Moment. About a week ago I was just playing around while I took a break from work (incredibly boring stuff. Code. Javascript. Gak) and this happened, literally accidentally...

Do you recognize him? If you take the beard off Remendado, and give him one of the NARC jackets, and Alexandre's necklace, and the aviator's glasses and Nomex gloves from the M4 Aircrew kit ... Mon Chevalier hair left on golden blond ... you get Sergei van Donne. And if you know your Hellgate, you'll know that this is the character who's been the bane of Richard Vaurien's life for years! He's six-foot-six, Richard's age, a mercenary, a pirate, drop-dead gorgeous ... and absolutely wicked. He's a technology thief on top of everything else, and he's been after Barb Jazinsky's work, one time tried to snatch it right off the Wastrel, from under Barb's and Richard's noses...

If you have no idea what's going on here, you need to catch up on Hellgate. No, you haven't missed a major TV series ... well, not yet, anyway. It's a monster series of SF novels by Mel Keegan, due to be finished this year, and one of my favorite "universes." You might know, I've been Mel Keegan's cover artist for a loooong time, and it's one of my guilty pleasures to create, in 3D, the characters from the NARC and Hellgate books.

Anyway, MK took one look at this guy and said, "Label that dude: Sergei van Donne!"


Next, Neil Travers' other half, Curtis Marin. Message to DAZ 3D: somebody needs to model real good curly-hair, because this is what Curtis Marin needs.

Jade, 20 February

***Posted by MK, because I have no viable connection to the www today. 

Yaoi beauty and fantasy horses ... am I daydreaming?!

Due to the tremendous -- and unexpected! -- generosity of a very special patron of this artist, this blog, images like these are now possible...

The magic is all about the CWRW Pro Textures for DAZ's Millennium Horse ... and I am, to quote Han Solo, totally blown away ... both by the astonishing quality of the textures, and the amazing generosity of my patron! I want to say thank you so much!! And keep an eye on this blog, because the most amazing things are about to be happening! The images which have been locked inside my imagination are about to be let out...

The plan for today's renders was this:

...and the little story that goes along with these images is about a young man who wants to liberate his tiny kingdom from the grip of a tyrant who took control in the days of the young man's grandfather. The kingdom has gone to ruin, but the grandson of the old tyrant just assumed the throne -- and this is where the plot thickens. Two generations of living the good life have turned the tyrant's descendants into degenerate weaklings. The grandson has the hots for young dancers ... but this young dancer is also a martial artist. He vanishes into the woods after dark to practise, and when he charms his way into the palace as a seductive entertainer, on the night of the Festival, well, let's put it like this: there's a nasty-minded warlord who won't be watching the sun come up!

(Actually, don't applaud just yet. The story is a new spin on an old movie called The Flame and the Arrow. Burt Lancaster and Nick Cravat, made about 1955, set in one of those dukedoms in northern Italy, in about 1300 (mind you, I haven't seen it in 20 years so I'm absolutely guessing the date of the story).

So, anyway, there's the story that goes along with the planned renders ... and then magic happened! A donation of great generosity, leading to a swift shopping spree at DAZ 3D. The CWRW Pro Textures and fantastic ... I also got the Millennium Horse Mane add-on, which obviously lets you do a lot more with the horse's mane; I also got the Western Tack for the Millennium Horse, so that when he appears with our Western heroes, he'll be properly dressed; and the Equestrian Poses, which are a bargain at $5.95 or so, and have not only horse poses, but also poses for riders, too.



Now, you can do the riding poses yourself, but it takes quite a long time to get them just right. The beauty of having the pre-set poses is that they get you into the ballpark in a single click, and then you can nip and tuck and tweak to get the exact result you want, and still be done in a decent time.

Give me a couple of days to play happily (and I do mean happily!) and I'll do a full-on review of the CWRW Pro Textures. At first glance I can tell you, they are FANTASTIC. I also want to play with the tack and the rest. Christmas in February!

Jade, 4 February

***Posted by MK, because I have no viable connection to the www today.