Anyone for a stroll in downtown Mos Eisley --?

In all seriousness, that's a gorgeous skinmap (SAV-Eros), and it fits a few of my characters beautifully. I'm thinking, I might switch Neil Travers over to this skinmap and see what happens. He's currently wearing the Elite Lee skinmap, which is very good, but I've always had a couple of reservations about it, and I have a real feelng SAV-Eros might be just what I was wanting. This skinmap comes with a very, very good bump map, which you can dial up or down at whim, or as per need. One wishes other skinmaps came with better bump maps -- it's the one map which, in skins, is often overlooked, and and undercooked bump map can make poor ol' Michael 4 look like plastic.

I believe the SAV-Eros bump maps are either mostly or entirely hand painted, and what can I say? Fantastic work, guys! Call this a "model review," if you like -- see here for the post where you see the skinmap at work. Now --





Here are some nice renders of that new set I've been talking about in the last couple of days ... they were supposed to be posted yesterday, but (surprise!) I ran right out of time. The set is D'Square, which is from Renderosity, and it's a very, very nice set -- absolutely excellent value at the price, too. It has an almost exotic flavor about it ... it makes me think of "downtown Mos Eisley," the better part of town where the scum and villainy don't hang out! In fact, you can imagine the Millennium Falcon in the sky, departing the Tattooine system with its tail feathers on fire and the local contingent of the Imperial Fleet wondering where it went!

You know, I think I'll try the SAV-Eros skinmap on Neil Travers, and see what happens. This afternoon. See you tomorrow, with the results!

Jade, 7 September

***Posted by MK because the internet is AWOL. Intermittent crap.

Michael 4 tries on his new skinmap

Having fun playing with my old mate, Michael 4 ... who just got a new skinmap, new hair, costume, the works. I've been shopping sales at DAZ and Renderosity even while I haven't had a chance of doing art to upload. Now I'm getting a half hour here and here to break the new stuff out of storage and play with it.

The new skinmap is SAV-Eros, from Studio Art Vartanian. It's billed as "could be vampire, could be human," and here's the original face and body morph, as supplied by the designer:



It's a very good face indeed -- angular and harsh, and you'll see a lot more of it. But after I rendered the whole SAV-Eros character a couple of times to get a handle on it, I wanted to see how the skinmap would suit my own characters, so I dropped it onto the morph I call Ron. The result is very nice indeed -- that's the top two images. You've actually seen this morph once before ... a looong time ago. I like this combo of morph and skinmap a lot, so you'll definitely see him again!

This is also the SAV-Eros hair, which is a great new style. This is the "long" version of it; the model ships with a short version too, and I'll be looking at that next. (I also bout another hairdo, Sissy LeBeau, which fits Michael 4 and Victoria 4.2, too. We'll have a look at that one in the coming week.

The costume is the Sickle Yield Rogue Armory pants once again; this is another of the textures which are supplied with the model, and I'm about to change to my own textures next, see how far we can go with this garment.

And I'm also playing with a couple more of the stock poses from the Amazing Bodies collection, which is one of the very best pose sets I've ever come across. As I said -- having fun playing with a bunch of the new stuff I shopped for during August.

I'd like to render this character as an exotic male nude -- the kind of thing that would be uploaded to the other blog. In fact, if time permits, I'll do this tomorrow. Also today, I had a chance to load up a new set, D'Square, which is a challenge to render, and very rewarding if you can get it to come out right! Still need to do a bit of post work on those renders, so you won't see them before tomorrow. Sooooo tired! Have been cleaning house on top of working, and even though it's only early evening, I'm propping my eyelids open and yawning! Methinks it'll be an early night tonight ... then look out for either of both of these characters to appear nude tomorrow!

Jade, September 5

CG art project: merging two projects in DAZ Studio, the CG-archangel meets dishy student

(All pieces are uploaded at full size -- click to see the details)

As promised, the archangel meets the archaeologist ... in a full-on CG art piece done in three programs and worked by merging two projects in DAZ Studio. The story so far: this ruin in the wilderness has been buried for 5000 years, and a recent storm just washed it out of the ground. An archaeological team is all over it in an instant, and they don't know what trouble they're getting into, because this ruin was buried for a reason, and was supposed to stay buried forever. Whatever is here is so dangerous, an archangel was assigned to guard it, and he's still here.

Enter the aforementioned archangel, and our somewhat dishy archeology student is bowled over. Understatement.

So, how do you go about putting together a project like this? It's not actually as hard as you might think. Assuming you have scenes that are already in a good state of preparation, you're more than halfway home.

I was using The Winged Avenger, and then the Spirit of Place scene. Check out each one, if you haven't seen them in development in the last week or so. Then the storyline that's been evolving in my imagination called for them to be blended together, and the plan was to hit "merge" in the DAZ Studio file menu...

Here's how you'd go about doing this. You have two full scenes. You need to decide which scene is the primary one -- in other words, the other scene is going to be added to it. In the primary scene, keep all the sets and props and so forth, but in the other scene, which is going to be imported, delete everything that you don't want to come in on the import/merge command:


So, strip the scene down to the basics you want to bring in, and save it under a new file name. Open up the primary scene ... notice the x,y,z coordinates of where your "hero" figures are standing. This will give you some orientation, when you click "merge," and you'll have an idea of where everything is.

The merge command is hiding under the FILE menu. Choose a file to merge, and click it ... two files become one, and now you'll be grateful that you stripped the incoming scene, because if you leave extraneous stuff in there, the result can be a huge chaos. Resave the compilation -- under a new filename, in case something goes wrong.

Now you can set a new backdrop, and reposition the characters:


This is the halfway-finished render. What's "wrong" is that there's a big "dead" area in the right bottom corner. It's perfect for matting text over, but in a painting it's just ... empty. In this one, the sky is a Bryce render I did a long time ago, which was recolored for this occasion ... and this gave me the inspiration for how to fill in the blank, wasted area.

Time to get this render into Photoshop and do some painting. I wanted light beams and lens flare in the area where the dawn spills over into the shadows of the shrine. Then I wanted fire and smoke from the burner, and also birds in the morning sky.

For all this, I used Mystikel's light beams and then Ron's flames, Ron's Steam and Smoke, and Ron's Birds. Yes, I like Ron's brushes! Why? All Photoshop brushes are not created equal. There are great ones and there are dog-rough ones. A lot of brushes are too-low resolution, and "pixelie," meaning they were made from images scanned from books or magazines, and they're just not so good. Ron's brushes are very, very good indeed. They're not cheap, but they're among the best I've found. Other absolutely top notch brush designers are Mystikel and Designfera -- I have loads of their brushes, and use them all the time. You can buy Ron's brushes at DAZ, and yoou can find Mystikel and Designfera at Renderosity.

So here you have a piece that was done in three programs (Bryce, DAZ Studio, Photoshop Elements 9) and used two separate DAZ projects, merged into one. Neat!

Jade, 2 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)