Victoria 4.2 to the rescue again today ... because I've just blown off a ridiculous amount of time, experimenting with moving files around in the hope -- vain hope? -- of hitting on a directory structure which would work to let me recover my old scene projects. No joy. Then again I didn't expect any -- I just had to try.
You name it, it's been tried, so ... it's time to bite the bullet and just get down to the work of recreating all those characters and sets. In the meantime, here are some more of the V4 pictures -- intended for a brochure, and available for uploading right here, right now.
Victoria is a curious model to work with. The hardest thing to handle is the hair -- also trying to get a decent body shape onto the doll-like figure of the default model. V4 does NOT look very realistic "right out of the box." In fact, she's a holy terror to make anything of -- in other words, to get her to stop looking like plastic, like Barbie doll with eyes the size of saucers and lips that look like she ran face-first into a door.
Mind you, if you put in a bit of work, the results are very nice -- so nice, I've pulled the portrait shot out of the brightest of the above renders, because it's worth seeing full size:
Click on that to see it at 800 wide... now, that's realistic. That face kinda reminds me of someone, but I can't think who it is. Anyone??
Something positive came out of the debacle in which I seem to have lost all my existing work. I spent a long while in the www, hunting for any hint of a solution, and I stumbled over a great site where artists gather and model-builders sell their wares. It's http://www.renderosity.com/ -- and from the looks of it, the models are the same quality as the stock you download from DAZ ... but they're a LOT cheaper. I mean, half the price, and less than half.
So I can afford to get Victoria some clothes. I'm already tired of seeing her prance around in the nude, draped in snakes -- so let's get the poor woman something to wear. I ordered up a couple of costumes, but I don't have them yet: Renderosity has a system of manually verifying your first order, which takes 24 hour. Hmm. I wonder how they do that? Anyway -- this time tomorrow, Victoria will have something to wear, and also I ought to be back in control of the artwork.
I've been kind of floundering around for 48 hours, trying to get my bearing, because my SETS have gone walkies! I would think to myself, "I'll just put Amadeus in that set..." And then it dawns on me. Amadeus does not exist. The set does not exist. Damn. Why is it, you always want the most, the thing you just plain can not have. I need to recreate about 20 characters ... ouch.
Back tomorrow -- with Michael 4 in some role or another ... *sigh* ... where do you start?!
Jade, 6 April