Bryce skies and Photoshop brushes: Ron's Birds

Bryce meets Gimp ... and it's love at first sight. In fact, what you have here is an outstanding collection of Photoshop brushes from the Ron's Brushes range (available at DAZ 3D). It's only very recently that I've gotten into Gimp, and even more recently that I discovered that Gimp will shake hands with Photoshop brushes. I've used a lot of Gimp and PS in the last few weeks, and I have to say, Ron's Brushes are the best out there ... and Ron's Birds are just amazing...

What you have here are a range of Bryce skies, with Ron's Birds (and a bit of fog here and there) painted directly on. I tend to make Bryce skies half a dozen at a time, to use as backdrops in my DAZ Studio 3 work. Bryce is at its best when making skies. Landscapes -- okay, too; but it's the skies where Bryce really, really excels...


...but there's always an element lacking. Birds. And this amazing set of brushes makes it so easy to add the extra dimension. I'm constantly amazed. I actually read the set-up notes, too ... and was sad to see that the designer who created these brushes seems to be havign a rough time due to e-piracy. People just giving away his work, which really hurts the artist. The same thing happens to writers, whose ebooks are pirated left and right. In the end, writers and arists can be hurt so badly by the piracy that they have to give up their art and go get a job! So, in the end it's art as a whole that suffers, when the real talent is driven away.

It's sad to hear of artists and writers being taken advantage of this way, but I'm afraid it's so common these days. But if I can add my ten cents' worth: five stars awarded right here to Ron's Birds -- highly recommended! They work perfectly in cooperation with Gimp ... full pro quality and not even expensive (eight or nine bucks). Get them via DAZ 3D -- click on the banner in the left column, and when you get there just search on Ron's Brushes ... see the whole vast range!

Jade, 18 May

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

A little romance ... To Please a Lady

Romantic art, ad rendered in 3D! ... as promised, here's the lady's beau ... the Errol Flynn character who's off tomorrow, adventuring around the world with his mates while she's stuck at home with her geriatric hubby, the Duke.

In fact, this kind of this is so much like the art one sees on romantic novels! Come to think of it, let's mock it up, see what it looks like:

The 3D romantic book cover! Nice. I can't claim the title, incidentally. There's an ooooold movie with this title. Clark Gable and ... now I'm racking my brains, because I haven't seen this in about 40 years! ... was it Barbara Stanwick? Something to do with car racing, as I recall, and I do believe it was made in the late 40s or early 50s. (Your pardon ... I like old movies. Short pause, whilst I \Google it...) Don't believe me? Then believe this, instead:

Used in these renders:

Michael 4

Mario skin map, including the 'tash (but not Mario's face)

GQ Event hair, set to blond

Leon de Castiglio costume

Shirt color and texture by me

Vintage Darlings flower in his right hand

Victoria 4.2

'Natural' skin map

Face designed by me

Angel hair set to auburn

Night Lily costume set to 'gilded'

Swank Pumps (you don't see 'em but they're there)

DM The Lair columns and floor

Tree from the Deluxe Tree pack, bark and foliage set

Sky by me, in Bryce 5.5

Six or eight assorted distant and point lights.

Then, the book cover was just mocked up in Photoshop, with fonts and textures, bevels, and cool 3D lighting effects on the text objects. There is no such book, guys! There's also no such writer ... no one should be stuck with a name like Ethel Hebblethwaite. You'd change it -- something like Agatha Hebblethwaite, or Mildred Hebblethwaite. There, much better.

2014 Edit: Book cover art became a special interest of mine as the years went by, and I painted many. Over 100, I believe. I was a cover artist for Rennaissance eBooks for some time, and produced covers for Keegan, DeMarco, Lansing, and several others. These days, the covers are do are simply for ebooks, and most often for freebie online reads that need a bit of art lashed up for them. It's worth pasting in a few right here:

Jade, 17 May, updated 18 February, 2024

DAZ 3D art meets classical art ... nice!

2014 edit: The render, above, is the only one of the original series that survives. The rest have gone the way of crashed computers, dead disk drives, discontinued accounts. I'll bulk this post up with other renders along the same lines -- all Victoria 4.2; but I'll include the original text, for interest's sake.

And now for a complete change of pace: here's the young Duchess of some elegant dukedom ... married to a Duke who's about 90 ... and she's having an affair with Errol Flynn, who's about to go adventuring with his best friend. She's come to their trysting place on the hillside to say farewell ... or else to tell him not to go on pain of being written out of her will!

Seriously ... the sky was done in Bryce, the columns and lamps are part of DM's Lair, the dress is something called Night Lily, the hair is one of the three styles from the Angel character, set to auburn, and the shoes are the "swank pumps" set to black. That's Victoria 4, face designed by me ... fingernails set to Talon, with a blood red texture added.

It's a very evocative set of renders ... the character was just designed for another project, but I actually like it quite a lot. It's a strong face, exotic ... a little dangerous, even. This a very, very strong-willed woman, and I don't think you would want to get on the wrong side of her. She'd make a bad enemy.

Come back tomorrow, and meet the Errol Flynn character who's about to shoot off around the world with his best buds, adventuring on the Seven Seas while the Duchess is stuck at home with the geriatric hubby, playing power games!

Time was the one thing I didn't have any of today, so I couldn't even start on putting the Medieval Tavern into a Bryce landscape. That's going to be a loooong job, and today, all my plans went straight up in the air! Sunday's can get a little crazy. Then there's Mondays...

Jade, 16 May

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

Going to hell in 3D ... and enjoying the trip!

2014 Edit: the only thing left of the original renders -- thumbnails. I'll include the text of the original post, because to be it's like a journal, a peek into the past. But I'll also pad this out with other renders that are on a similar theme, and in keeping. Here we go:

Back to the original post now...

Um ... going to hell in 3D -- who needs a handbasket? Seriously, it looks like Dante had it all wrong! 

There's nothing particularly coherent or intelligent in this post either -- beauty shots only, really, because after a few days of utter chaos, now I'm working long and hard to catch up to where I need to be!

Here's a peek at what I'm up to right now -- click to see this LARGE:

It's a presentation of the Woman in Red renders from my new opus. I'll be cycling all the artwork through my online portfolio in a couple of weeks ... changing everything. Right now I'm starting to do quite a bit of cover work, and this is reflected in the current art. This also means I'm working quite a bit with Victoria 4.2 as well as Michael 4, so I've stared buying a few items of clothing and shoes for Miss V. Give the poor woman something to wear.

In these renders today, it's a "teddy" sort of thing she's halfway wearing; there's also stockings and shoes that go with this ... all models from DAZ, which installed well, except for the textures on the teddy, which didn't install at all. Or at least, they won't load. So I quit struggling with them and used textures of my own ... and that worked out just fine, so I'm happy.

In the renders of Michael 4, who's apparently gone right to hell and is having a great time there ... it's actually the kirtle from Wood God set he's nearly wearing -- but I changed the textures and displacement maps out for my own, and then got naughty and told the kirtle to be, um, gauzy. Ahem. Good thing I have Ron's Smoke and Steam, and Ron's Flames, which were painted onto these pieces in Gimp, and got us that PG-13 rating!

Next I'm going to TRY to get the time to place Merlin's tavern in the middle of a Bryce landscape. Rendering the shot will take over an hour, but I'm dying to give this a go. So -- see you then!

Jade, 15 May