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...

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. 

Ruins in the dying light -- and browsing for a new leading man.

Here's an unexpected pleasure! The sale at Renderosity never stops, and since there's been a few things I've wanted (can't actually say "needed") for a while, I decided to take a look. This is AppleJack's Ruined Church, and it renders brilliantly. I added some skies photographed in the Flinders Ranges last week (where the sky is overwhelming, and gets very dramatic several times a day), and then got clever with IBL lighting, actually using the same images for backdrops and lighting. In this one, above, I added a hugely bright, warm spotlight, angled off to represent the lowering sun, and two copies of Merlin's crow, from the Wild Borders set.

The Ruined Church set may be old, and low-poly enough to render like lightning, but the finished result is more than good enough to feature on a book cover, for example -- and with careful lighting and camera work, it can be indistinguishable from reality. Neat! Very glad I shopped this sale! I also got a boat and a bridge, and you'll see more of all this in days to come. 

Next thing on my list of gotta-have items is this:

https://www.daz3d.com/michael-4-for-genesis-2-male

Rather speaks for itself, doesn't it? Basically, you can dial the exact-same body morphology for M4 into the Genesis 2 Male, which means that all your costumes and skinmaps will work. What won't work, of course, is the Morphs++ for M4; and you lose the head morphs. So the old characters (Jarrat and Stone, Leon, Sebastian, Amadeus, the list goes on) will be much, much harder to resurrect in the high-poly figure; though I wonder if it might be possible to go a step further. For US$50 there's a face transfer system, whereby you put in a clear full-face image, and it drops it onto the Genesis 8 ... mind you, not the Genesis 2! So there's a major compatibility clash, and to date no one has offered to resolve this. Hmm. US$50 is a a lot, but supposing Jarrat and Stone and the rest leapt into being as Genesis 8 characters. Lemme think about this. You have to wonder if there aren't better ways to go ... do what Hollywood does, and "recast" the parts. Try this for size:

See that full-sized, please ... I uploaded it large. This is Ragnar for Gianni 7, for Genesis 3 Male, by GypsyAngel, who also designed the Rex and Dae characters I use so much. Hmm. I really go need to think this through before I run hither and thither, chucking $$$ in every direction! Gianni 7 bundle for $90, and the GM3 Body morphs for $20, and Ragnar for $20. You're out US$130, but see where you are at the end of that spend! Huh.

See where your imagination goes, on a lazy Sunday afternoon?!

The Night Before Battle

 

The title tells all ... kind of speaks for itself. What you have here is ...

Michael 4, wearing the Ferendir skinmap (from Renderosity), which has been tweaked and configured for DAZ Studio and 3Delight; and I overlaid the Michael 4 venous maps (from the DAZ marketplace), and used the Aged for M4, from the Morphs++ pack to sculpt the hands. That's Neftis's Daniel hair, set to black and made long; the loincloth from the Wood God costume -- DAZ marketplace -- resurfaced with red leather. That's the Great Sword from the Fae Weaponry prop set (from DAZ). The chair, shieldwall, props, floor and and lamp are from DM's Kerrick's Throne set. Everything has been resurfaced; a lot of work was done on the floor, to make it softly reflective. The face and body are designed by self, using Morphs++ for M4, with eyes from The Eyes Have It (from DAZ). I havwe two lights on this, and the DOF is turned on, with a virtual aperture of 30. Then I cranked up the raytrace settings to squeeze everything possible out of it, and then did some Photoshop painting, for the flames, smoke and shadows. Nice.

And I really, really like this character, so you can expect to see him again soon! In fact, I'm thinking of giving him a name and pairing him with the black horse. That would be a lot of fun. Hmmm...! 

One of the main experiments I must run soon is to see if I can import the character preset files from the old Studio 4. If I can, we can have the old characters back. If not ... well, rats. Worth a shot, anyway!

Old props, new surfaces, and lighting fires in Iray

 

Spending a cold, wet day installing old, old props and working with Iray shaders and surfaces to bring them up to spec for rendering as we understand it today. This, above, is DM's old Fantasy Musings, which goes back to about 2012, and is actually still available. The product notes say, "The entire content of this package has been optimized for Poser 6 and above. Not tested in Daz Studio. Some materials will need adjustment." And of course, when this was uploaded, Dannie and Maforno were talking about the 3Delight render engine, not Iray! The truth is, to get it working in Iray took some considerable time, but it was worth it. It renders up nicely. And of course --

--even if you were inclined to stick to poser (I bought Poser Pro 9 and never really got into it; I didn't have any space whatsoever on my C:\ drive to install the figures and props, and Poser wouldn't load content from any other drive, so I was sunk!) ... well, if you were inclined to stick to Poser, the aforementioned Poser 6 is long, long out of date. Ahem. Anyway...

This, above, is the old Dinokonda, which I used to love rendering ... in 3Delight. I just gave it a shot in Iray, and honestly, you had to cringe, LOL. So I spent an hour with the texture maps and redid everything; I still can't get quite the response from Iray that I keep hoping for, but it's not bad. What I'm still trying to work out is gloss and reflection. Right now, it seems to be a kind of "all or nothing" scenario: if the Glossy Layered Weight controls are there, bonza. You can do it. If they're not there -- you're up the creek. I'm sure I'll find a way to do this eventually, but for now I'm pretty happy with this; It's looking almost as good as it did in 3Delight -- not quite. There's room for improvement, and the next time I'm in the mood, I'll keep on experimenting, see if I can get closer to the old work:

More soon ... now I must get some actual "work" done! It's writing and editing stuff, of course ... but it won't do itself. I'll leave you with a closer look at the part of the picture I'm most pleased with -- the flames. I managed to turn the props into light-emitting fire -- gotta like this Ciao for now...

Woodland elf ... enchanted forest, Yaoi daydreams...

A woodland elf ... and I'm getting distinctly Yaoi vibes off this! The character would bear some more exploration, yes??! (nudge, wink)

Just daydreaming today ... still playing with the Ferendir skinmap, exploring ways to get the most out of it in DAZ Studio without -- yet -- seeing if Iray loves or hates it. You can't know till you try it and see what happens. This is "just" a raytrace, with the render settings cranked way up; and I also played with the tattoos packaged with Ferendir. The face and body morphs are my own design, though, using Morphs++. I'd forgotten how much I used to enjoy making new characters -- and this one is a beaut:

Sooo, because it take a fraction of the time to get a raytrace (rather than waiting all day for Iray), let's go again -- same character, new scenario, telling a story, or at least hinting at one:

Treasure -- a hunt for the stuff, by the looks of this! A ruin, a lantern, something sparkling with jewels. And take a look at that skinmap. This is marvelously responsive, and with a slight adjustment in the lighting it can look either very pale or deeper colored, almost Hispanic. Me like. I also really like this new face morph:

So, what you have here is Michael 4, custom face and body done in Morphs++, Ferendir skinmap, plus the facial tattoos, M4 Displacement to achieve the vascular mapping, Neftis's Danyel hair set to black, one of DM's columns used as a plinth, and the lantern from DM's Pyrago. In the top render, I used the Euros skirt with lots of surface mapping, plus two of Merlin's trees sized to be bushes, and the menhir from DM's Elven Rock. The backdrops are just that: backdrops. If I'd done this as sets (which I could have), they'd have been rendering for three times as long. Backdrops save a ton of time.

That's it for me, for today. Must sleep! Also, thunder is rumbling and it's probably wise to turn the computers off. Lots more to play with -- the only new toys I got around to today were the tattoos, the lamp and the backdrops! The toy box is overflowing with goodies! (Boom goes the thunder ... it really is time to log out and turn off...)

A wood elf at dawn ... Photoshop to the rescue!

A wood elf at dawn, in Iray ... hmm. I won't say I'm super happy with this one: Iray did some very strange things (or was it Studio??), and it took a lot of painting to rescue it, even after something upwards of six hours rendering. The fact is -- I can't render this! It was nowhere near rendered after six hours; another six wouldn't have finished it, but my computer was running hot (too hot?) and it was time to call quits on this project. We're starting to climb back up into the hot weather now; there's a limit to what I can, or will, ask of the system in summer. So --

This, again, was a high-poly figure + hair, but a low-poly costume, set and props. I was pretty sure it would render, but -- nope. Whats different between this one and the last one, which did render? Well, purely as an experiment, I put the vegetation into this image rather than rendering it separately as a top layer. Even though the tree props are low-poly, this made the difference between getting a finished render before my system "choked," and, uh, not! It would have been nice to render the vegetation as part of the same picture; it looks more integrated if it can be done that way. However --

I'd have to say I'm actually more pleased with the result of rendering the vegetation separately (above), than I am with the overall render of the Genesis figure in today's picture (detail, below) -- and I realize I'm comparing apples and oranges! Still, take a closeup look for yourself, you decide:

So?? You were hoping for something absolutely photographic, and we got about halfway there before the hardware "choked," and it was time to get Photoshop going, and start painting. Okay, it's a nice image, but not quite what I'd wanted! Worth six hours of rendering? I think so. I'm also delighted with the way DM's Elven Shed renders: the set looks a treat in Iray -- it was from Renderosity many years ago, and I tracked it down in case you like the look of it: you can still get it:

DM's Elven Shed. Catalog image. See this.

This is a Poser set, actually configured to render in the Firefly engine, but Iray seems to like the original mapping, wh\iih makes a change! It looks lovely in the new engine, and the price is right ($16, on sale now and then for $11 or so).

Tootling around the internet on my laptop while I twiddle the thumbs, waiting for things to render on the desktop, I can't help stumbling over some amazing stuff. There's a page showcasing Zbrush "portraits," and you really need to shoot over there and take a look. I'll borrow a couple of images here, in the hopes I can interest you in going to look at the rest -- no, the site isn't done by a mate of my mine; I'm just hellaciously impressed. There's a collection of thirty on the page, but I've chosen Bruce Lee (in Fist of Fury), Russell Crowe in Gladiator, and Stan Lee (no relation to the aforementioned Bruce):

Isn't that utterly amazing? Here's the page -- see the rest! And from that page, they linked me on to another (on the Webneel site), where a Russian portrait artist by the name of Igor Kazarin is featured. Kazarin is not a 3D artist; he works in traditional media ... looks like oils or acrylics, perhaps a combination of both. Again, I'm gobsmacked. There's fifteen celebrity portraits on the page, but I've chosen Harrison Ford (circa 1984) and Jackie Chan (circa 2005) to grab your attention:

Here's the link ... remember the name of Igor Kazarin. I'm very impressed. I vacillate between figuring the Zbrush work is more amazing, or the traditional oil painting. In the end, I couldn't make up my mind ... I leave it to you!

I'll be back with more art soon, but the plan is to back off a couple of steps, return to simpler things and see if I can figure a work-around for the problem of my computer "choking" before it finishes a render. Before anyone says anything, yes, the trouble is my graphics card, I know, I know. Am hanging on for a whole new computer! 

Something magickal for Friday 13th, with a full moon...

Behind the scenes, I'm working on the update of my gallery, which is seven years out of date. Going through the old files, I'm coming across a number of idea from as far back as 2010 ... great ideas which couldn't be done properly back in the day for any number of reasons. The main two were the shortcomings of the hardware (the computer would crash if I tried to raytrace), and the sheer lack of expertise. I started in on 3D art in September, 2009 (yes, it's been ten years, all but about a week since I turned on DAZ Studio for the first time and said, "Woooooow...).

One of the projects that really deserved to be redone is this one -- Stormlight. The original is only about 880 pixels high, that being the maximum I could render, and the best I could do was deep shadow mapping, and don't even think about turning on depth of field --

It's a heck of a nice idea, though, and coming back to it today -- Friday 13th, with a full moon! -- seemed quirkily apropos. I was lucky enough to find the original project file, right down to the background sky image, which had been painted in GIMP! Everything needed to be redone, and was. The final result ...

Nice! This one is a 1200 x 1800 raytrace. I set three lights, turned on depth of field and set the virtual aperture to f/15. The original backdrop was much too low-rez and small to serve, but I saved the color set and used it to rebalance the new render. I also redid the transparency mapping on the costume ... so easy to do this in Studio 3! Speaking of which --

This whole project was done in Studio 3. I did try to open this in Studio 4.11, but it dumped most of the props, and I just couldn't be bothered going through the process of exporting to OBJ, then importing that, and going fifteen rounds with the transparency mapping to get the shrubs to look right. Another time, maybe, but -- not today. So much easier to run back to Studio 3, where everything was quick and simple ... until it came to the rendering itself, of course. Studio 4.11 would have done this raytrace in about ten minutes. LOL, in the old program, it took about half an hour. I can live with that.

What you have here is good old Victoria 4.2, wearing the Celestial Hair, and a costume so old, I can't even remember what it's called. I designed the face and body form, and did all the surfaces on the costume. The props are PNature bushes, and the big slabs of rock from DM's Instances. For the life of me, I can't recall if the props were from the DAZ store or Renderosity. I used to buy loads of stuff from Renderosity, when installing it into Studio was dead simple. Now, getting third party content into Studio 4.11 is such a crapshoot, I'm a bit leery. Note to self: get this problem solved!

Happy Friday 13th! (Any Space: 1999 fans out there? You gotta know what day this is. According to the show, the Moon was blasted out of Earth orbit twenty years ago today. Don't we wish the technology had happened that way! Right now, we're watching From the Earth to the Moon on dvd, and I'm reminded of the way we all believed, before 1970, that by 2000 there'd be cities in space and a colony on Mars. Whooo! Never happened, but it might. Today's literary science fiction is full of stories of Martian colonization. Makes you wonder, and cross your fingers, dunnit?

A little spring romance, anyone? It's spring down under!

I treated myself to a nifty set of props a couple of nights ago. Merlin is one of my favorite content providers, because his stuff is so different, and so well done -- and at the same time, priced where I can afford it, and it's render-able with the PC I have right now. So --

The flowers look so convincing, how could you resist? The model is CC Foster, for Genesis 8 ... which can sometimes work, and can at other times be a bear to work with. When it works, the results are very good indeed -- though I've adjusted the gamma and balance on this render to put some tone into his skin, which tends to render up very pale indeed, in anything remotely similar to natural daylight. Still, take a long look at Foster if you're looking for a very useful Genesis 8 guy:

Catalog image. See this.

I ought to use this character, or parts of him, more. Hmm. Expect to see elements, and versions, in the very near future! In the 'spring romance render, he's wearing the Landis hair, which I got last week along with the Varun hair, but this is the first chance I've had to play with it:

Catalog image. See this.

Good news and not-so-good news with the Landis hair. It looks fantastic, but after six hours of render time I still had to paint a little here and there to get around a lot of unresolved pixels. It's high, high poly, and with a slow(er) system, it could be rendering for the rest of your life. But if you don't mind painting on it a little bit, it does look great in the final product.

The props are what make this shot, honestly. Otherwise you just have another Genesis 8 with its kit off. Cheers to Merlin for crafting a really fantastic set of wild flowers -- I find myself wondering if they might just work in Terragen, too! Can't see why not -- Flinx's trees work in Terragen, so... 

I only used a few of the wild flower props to create the 'Spring Romance' picture, and these will be showing up in sets and scenes everywhere. Lovely! I did a CU shot on the cow parsley, which rendered for about two hours to get to this point, at 600x900 size:

Now, that is nice. It's also a full-on 3D rendered shot, no a backdrop -- everything in here is from Merlin's auto-load (ie., load the whole thing with one click), but you do have to set up the lighting; the lights packaged with the auto-load scene make it look like a raytrace. 

I'm thrilled to bits with the results, dying to work more with these props. They're on sale as I type this, and they're not expensive to begin with. If you're interested in this kind of thing, take a look --

Catalog image. See this

Images springing to mind everywhere, right? Now, the challenge will be to see what's doable with a system that's not exactly on the cutting edge of desktop PC tech today! Speaking of which --

I've been wanting to check out the dForce dynamic fabric function of Studio 4.11, so I went over to YouTube and had a look at the tutorials. Phhht. Ahem. Not on this computer, sorry, guys. Anything dForce is going to have to wait till Christmas 2020, when I can run it. Right now, it would just be a time-waster and (another) source of endless frustration. So, for fifteen months, we'll stick to the old morphing costumes and hair, and let the rest slide on by. 😜

More soon!

A fantasy swordsman ... adventures in Iray shaders

The assignment was to switch out all the textures on a costume for new shaders -- and this turned out to be the easy part, though I have to admit, I haven't yet figured out how to get the metal shaders to behave themselves reliably, predictably. I'm getting there. Leather, lace, silk, glass -- no problem; but metals are tougher to squeeze good, predictable results out of ... which is why it was 'Photoshop to the rescue' again on this sword. After four hours rendering, I still had flocks of 'fireflies' in the gold ... unresolved pixels. Ack. This processor and video card are too slow! Before I can render metals properly, I'll need to upgrade ... uh, end of 2020 sounds doable. About a year and a half. 😭

Having said that, Photoshop rescued the metals and a bunch of apparently unrenderable pixels in the hair, so the net result is a rather good image: the Dae face, body slightly tweaked, wearing Michael 8's skinmap, a G3 hairdo that doesn't actually like G8 as well as it's supposed to (Shavonne hair), and the Dark Prince costume with every texture changed, right down to the rivets.

The sword is an old prop -- one of hundreds that can't be saved into a file by DAZ Studio 4.11, though it can be loaded. Go figure. Tech Support doesn't know why either. [Rolls eyes] But with new shaders, the old props look pretty neat. Now --

If I render the metals in an image that's 600 x 900 pixels, in two hours, it's finished. This one, above, is the proof of it! But if I put metal shaders into a 1200 x 1800 image, well ... I'll be in Photoshop rescuing the picture! Sticklebacks, to quote Uncle Bilbo.

Anyway, we're playing happily...

... and there's only a few shaders I still need to track down. Wood, bone, ground, satin, organics, so forth. I just wish Studio 4.11 knew how to save the old props into its files. That would make life soooo much easier. Still, I was smart enough to keep Studio 3 on board, so we can run both back to back, to get access to the props and characters that Studio 4.11 can load, but not save. So strange ... 'tis a puzzlement.