Painting with colored lights today ... digital musing, following the tears of blood I shed on the NARC armor the other day. For love or money, I couldn't get the armor to gloss up. I mean, you're supposed to be rendering "mirror black kevlex titanium," and what are you getting? Black suede long johns. Ack.It turned out that the solution to the problem was so totally counter-intuitive that I had to stumble over it. I was setting my lighting model to Glossy Metallic, because in my universe that would be the glossiest thing around, right? Not in DAZ, apparently In the virtual world of DAZ, if you set your lighting model to Glossy Metallic, you get -- suede. Chamois. short-pile carpet. Every hint of any kind of glossiness vanishes utterly.
So, if you're struggling to get a surface to go glossy, here's the secret: set the lighting model back to boring old plastic, crank the gloss parameter up to at least 50%, and set the reflectivity up high, and set the reflection color to boring only white.
So, putting all this to the test today ... and being bored with same old, same old, I invented a little android ... you can tell it's an android when you get to the eyes. You can see they're camera lenses. Actually, she's kinda cute, isn't she? I took every texture off everything, and replaced the whole lot with a clack and white "map" that just looks like swirls. Then set the parameters as per above and went to work on the lights.
So you have a very basic Victoria 4, wearing the anime-type hairstyle (Noriko? I forget what it's called. Doesn't look realistic enough to use for regular people, but for this it's perfect), and the Shadow Dancer costume. I used one of the Sabby Eyes -- the "blind red," which has a nice effect in these lighting conditions --
One bright green light between the android's feet. One bright red light directly overhead. One bright blue light piggybacked on the red one. One bronze cheat light in her face, so that you can see the eyes. Three bright green spotlights pointing straight down at the ground plane. And that's basically it ... garish, weird lights and parameters on the costume that turn it to silver metal. It's actually striking, and quite attractive.
Oh -- the backdrop is a GIMP digital abstract, I painted a long time ago, to try out some new .abr files, Photoshop brushes. I'd tell you what the brushes are, if only I could remember. Something like Energy Spheres ... I honestly forget.
Digital musing, spinning off those tears of blood...!
Jade, 20 December
