CG storyboards

Long time, no post ... I know! September turned to be the equal of August, in terms of workload, and it's blurred by. Last time I remember looking at the calendar, it was about the 10th, and since then I have no idea what happened...

Well, I do know a couple of things. The Rugby Union World Cup is being played in New Zealand. Dave and I love the sport, so we're watching the games which are telecast (and there's not enough of them; some of the good ones have been bypassed), and in the last week we've organized ourselves an Android tablet, which Dave will enjoy playing with, and which I'll use to test some new "interactive ebook" ideas I've come up with lately.

I might ... mind you, might ... be about to spring something brilliant on you. Stay tuned. If this works out, it will be something new, and something rather special, but I'm the first one to admit that it's a bit early in the project to be sharing too many details. All I need is the time to properly develop this, and the first step is to test out the workability of the format. Hence, the Android tablet. It's a neat little thing, looks like every other tablet you ever saw, including the new color Kindle device (which isn't on sale in Australia, so shopping for one of those isn't even an option). The first thing we need to do is get the aps sorted out -- specifically, the aps to read PDF and epub. It's going to be interesting.

What's the deal with today's renders? Drama. No particular reason. I just felt like working with an athletic young man with a sword. (Let me rephrase that...) Anybody out there remember Duncan McLeod? Note to self: I need to tack down Highlander on dvd. Today's renders are a lot like storyboards, those images used to help a director thrash out the framework of a movie scene, so that he has something to work with when the cast and crew gathers on the set. An artist sweats blood on the concepts, and then the director uses them as inspiration, chucks out the artist's work entirely and obeys his muse, which commands him to do something entirely different.

Here's Michael 4 wearing a face and body morph designed by me, and the Neftis Classic Slick Hair set to red, and Billy T's M4 Real Jeans, and the GA Matthias skinmap. The sword is Merlin's Katana; the set is a great "closed set," the DreamHome Basement, and I have two spotlights and two distant lights on it. No particular messing about with textures and whatnot ... this is just everything "as it comes," to feed the drama...

Here's the scenario: he got a phone call to come to this place, this time, to pick up a package, and when he got there -- well, they're waiting for him, and he kicks himself because he suspected it was a trap all along. Now he'll need to bluff his way out, and it that doesn't work ... it's a very good thing he's a highly-skilled swordsman.

Vignette drama to go. Or is it the prolog to something big? Hmmm...

Jade, 29 September

Post 600 -- would you believe it?

For Post 600 it had to be something special. Something with the richness of high fantasy, and great beauty, and so forth -- and a piece that took some considerable time, and skill. This one seems to fit the bill. It has an almost classical feel, reminding you of the paintings which were produced in the late nineteenth century, illustrating the collections of Irish mythology which were being compiled at the time, before the stories were lost forever. I'm thinking of the work of Lady Gregory, obviously.

Here's the same piece, recut as a bookcover:


And because we're having a birthday of sorts here ... I have an ebook for you...

Edit: the book needs to be recut, re-illustrated. It will be, early in 2024. It's just too old now ... the art is just too primitive to look good today. For the moment, it's retired -- which is a great shame, because although the art is, frankly, over the hill, the verse is timeless. Let me see what I can do with this.
 

MEL KEEGAN: Ballads and Verse, illustrated by Jade. Poet and artist collaborated on a work of beauty, an amalgam of verse and art. Part of the book was released before, for Christmas 2004 ... parts of it have never been seen before. It's a big download! Because of the weight of artwork, the file size is about 12MB -- and we can't compress it any further, guys, because the artwork suffers too mjuch. But it'll be well worth the download. All the verse from the 2004 issue is included, plus the sonnet from The Swordsman and the two long ballads, The Voice of the South Wind, and On the Full Moon of September (always leave 'em chuckling). Here are a couple of screencaptures:




In the meantime, this guy is well worth a look at full size:



Happy post 600!

Jade, 23 September

New leathers on a favorite old character

Here's a priceless opportunity to play with one of my favorite characters -- a face and body morph of my own, which I call Leon. If you've been following this blog for any length of time, you surely recognize him! Actually, I was experimenting with a new set of textures ... bought myself a few items on sale at Renderosity this morning, so had some renders processing through in the background while I worked on a paying job in the foreground.

So I persuaded Leon to put on Sickle Yield's Rogue Armory Pants and strut his stuff while I changed the textures over and over. It's the FS Leather 2 pack -- a couple of dozen very different leather textures, high rez and seamless, so they apply very nicely indeed.

The pants prop proves to be problematical when the figure moves into anything remotely like an extreme poses. These are some more poses from the Amazing Bodies set (plus one or two from elsewhere, and some fine tuning along the way). The more extreme the pose, the more the .OBJ tends to warp out of any kind of surface which will accept a texture, so you have to be very careful how you use the prop, and whatever textures. (It also has no morph to create a contour in the crotch ... one wishes it did. A somewhat heroic he-man like this ought to have at least a suggestion of the clan jewels! Yeah, yeah, I could achieve the same effect with the deformer tools, but it's too fiddly to do the job quickly, and I never have time to mess about.)

In fact, in the top picture, to get around the .OBJ warping problem I had to hand-paint the render to get the somewhat poor render characteristics ... but, having said that, zapping on a few strokes in Photoshop and calling it post work, is so easy, it's not really worth a grumble! And yes, I know that the warping is a problem of "conforming" costumes, whereas you can work with "dynamic" costumes and escape the issue ... but I haven't yet shelled out a ton of money for either DAZ Studio 4 Pro/Advanced, or Poser, with its Cloth Room, so the dynamic costuming options are out of reach right now. Eventually, I'll shell out the money -- but a MUCH more powerful computer comes first. I've heard that unless you're running DAZ Studio 4 on a 64 Bit System, it's the proverbial rough trot -- and of course to get into the new Genesis figures, Studio 4 is where it starts and ends. I do intend to come back and post about the new Genesis figures. I know alllll about 'em. I just don't have the hardware to run 'em.

By the time I was done experimenting with the leathers I was on a tea break -- so I took the opportunity to paint up a couple of these to nice effect with the candle glow and some smoke. And the signature piece was fully painted with some zaps and swirls and so forth, and the moon in the sky. Nice.

That's DAZ's Michael 4 wearing my Leon face and body morph, plus the M4 High Rez skinmap and the Midnight Prince hair, set to auburn. The costume is, as I said, Sickle Yield's Rogue Armory pants; the coat is the duster from the M4 Cowboy costume set. All the leather textures are drawn from the FS Leather 2 pack. The set is DM's Kerrick's Throne, with only the building and lamps loaded. The sky was a render I did in Bryce a loooong time ago (never throw anything away), and the trees are several iterations of Merlin's Silver Birch, from the Merlin's Trees pack. The brushes are Ron's Smoke, and Ron's Steam and Smoke.

Next post is #600, and it'll be something special!

Jade, September 20

Big story in a small space ... without words.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, this lot must be worth a whole novella. I don't think I need to add a syllable about the plot unfolding here, so ... add flesh to these bones yourself, right? It's the old, old story, told about a thousand times before, but never quite like this!

I think the last time I saw this story, it was a damsel on a pirate ship, and she ended up First Mate of the vessel, and then shoved the Skipper overboard when no one was looking and remarked on how rough the sea was that day.

What you have here is the "camera one" sequence. You're seeing one character, from one POV, while the scene plays out. There would also be a "camera two" on the characters with whom this young spacer is negotiating, while at gunpoint, and a wide camera on the whole group. These are virtually storyboards for a steamy little science fiction drama played out on a highly detailed, closed set.

And the tale turns out well for the spacer. Get held up and ripped off by space pirates, and, uh, "negotiate" your way out of it, and wind up as a pirate spacer yourself ... with an earring, no less, and the freedom of the ship. Neat. Now, there's a story for you.

One wonders if the skipper of this pirate crew will get shoved out of an airlock when no one's looking, and our young spacer remarks on how unreliable the airlocks on this ship can be at this time of year...

This is DAZ Michael 4 wearing the SAV-Eros skinmap, face morph and Sav-Eros short hair. The costume is Utilitize, lashed up with the SH Hadcore addon textures. The set is Sector 15 by Stonemason. The poses are all adapted from the Amazing Bodies set. The earring is from the Gypsy Hair prop, actually designed for V4, but as with most props, you can make anything fit anyone.

And I just noticed, it's the Equinox of Spring in a few days ... what happened to 2011? It's winding up to summer already, and I've been so busy this year, I've hardly noticed it passing by! Waaaah! I want it back! Not much chance of that, though, so we'll just look forward to 2012, firm in the faith that the Mayan calendar cycles to zero and (duh) resets itself, and starts over. Let's face it -- calendars usually do.

Jade, 16 September

CG hybrid art in Bryce and Photoshop

Touching base again with something pretty -- to let everyone know I'm still alive, basically. At least, I think I'm still alive. I was, the last time I looked in a mirror and an weird-looking, stressed-out face looked back at me. Life is being obnoxious, with a capital ob. Stuff is happening, and it just won't let up for long enough to let me get my life back together so --

Here is a real, genuine digital painting. The "canvas" was rendered in Bryce, and is simple to the point of looking like it as knocked up in plasticine. This "bottom layer" was shipped into Photoshop and ... painted. Then painted some more. Then finished off with some more painting. Looks like an island on Olympic Peninsula -- it's also uploaded at a good size, if you'd like to see it large.

I've been asked if I'll talk a little bit about how to do this work, and -- sure. It's not terribly difficult, but it's also not "intuitive" as such. It's a lot less clever than a whole lot of artists would like you to think it is, but on the other hand, your own artist's eye is very important, and you do need a few basic techniques that are basic to any kind of art, even crayons and pencils! The good news is, the techniques are also simple.

The other thing I've been asked is, would I render some of my best stuff as wallpapers ... and again, you bet. In fact, I've been asked this several times, so what I'll do, once a week, is go back through some of the old posts, take some of the best, render them up into wallpapers in the most popular or common sizes, and do a post in which a number of links are embedded. You can then download the wallpapers direct from a folder at DreamCraft, which is our own domain, so you know where they came from, and that they're "clean" of any nasty passengers, like viruses.

This is post #596, and ... what in the world am I going to put together, to mark #600?! You might recall, I went through this same searching when I was rolling up to #500. I've glimpsed a couple of ideas in my mind's eye, and I need to get my finger out and work them up, before we get there!

More soon.

Jade, September 15

Touching base with a barbarian. Let me rephrase that --

Touching base here, and "on the run" as usual ... but this one is well worth a look. CG art -- half 3D and half digital painting. What's painted? The whole backdrop was painted for this piece specifically, and shipped into DAZ. The character and props were posed, lit and rendered, then the finished render was shipped into Photoshop and a lot of painting was done on many parts of it.

Still trying to come up with something awesome for Post #600, which comes up in just five posts' time! I think I glimpse something in the mind's eye that might be up to the challenge ... fantasy art, gorgeous hunk, that kind of thing.

So what's involved in today's piece? That's DAZ's Michael 4 wearing the Yannis Rasta dreadlocks and the Jerome skinmap by Tosca, and a bit of the costume called The Hunter. He's wielding Merlin's Katana, and those are some pieces from a set called The Lost Path by H3D in the background. Lots of painting on everything, after the render ... plus Ron's Birds, and Ron's smoke. Result: very nice indeed! (You can get all these items from Renderosity, including the skinmap, incidentally.)

Sorry to be a bit brief today -- work is piled up on me as usual. But I have some more new 3D toys to play with, and I'll be back very soon with some goodies which will include a couple of male nudes I've been thinking about for at least a week now. Not that one obsesses about these things, you understand, but when a great idea for a digital painting gets into the back of your mind, it's hard to shake. Uh huh.

Also, I've been asked to talk a little bit about the new Genesis figure -- explain that the heck is going on with this ... lots of people are quite confused, and so was I at first. So this is what I'll be talking about tomorrow, and with a bit of luck it'll make sense, or more sense!

Jade, 12 September

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

New skinmap on an old morph ... what a difference!

In the last week I've been prepping the NARC books to go to Kindle, iBooks, B&N and so forth, and the urge to render Jarrat and Stone again was too much to resist. Here's a few of the most striking renders ... from which episode? None in particular; these are "generic," I guess -- they could be from any of the books. Right now I'm working on Aphelion, which is going through a kid of baptism of fire, being rescued from obsolete software, a process which involves fixing pagination across the entire document, due to a great deal of weirdness which gets in when you take a file that was written in one program, published in another, then opened in a third, and copy/pasted into a fourth! I guess this is one of the alligators you wrestle when you're breathing new life into books that haven't really been available in years, and technology has marched on.

So, yes, the NARC series is on its way to Kindle, iBooks, Barnes & Noble and so forth. You'll be able to curl up with Jarrat and Stone on your iPad, or iPhone, or whatever's your fancy. And part of the process is that I need to rejacket the whole series. Meaning, I need to redesign the "look" for five books. I have a few ideas, and am oscillating between two of them. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile...





I was doing a job for a client a few weeks ago, and was asked to change the skinmap on a Victoria 4.2 character whose face morphs had been created to specifications, and I warned ahead of time, "Changing the skinmap is going to change the face more than you think." It was difficult to describe how, or why, but the results speak for themselves...

How does changing the skinmap affect the underlying face morph? Well, see for yourself how the face changes...

Here's Neil Travers, from Hellgate, in two versions. On the left, he's wearing the Lee skinmap, which is an "elite" skinmap from DAZ. On the right, he's wearing the SAV-Eros skinmap, and the difference is amazing. The SAV-Eros version of Travers gives a much more realistic appearance, all in all. I bounced these test renders off Mel Keegan, wondering which he'd prefer --

It's not often I go blank when confronted by an observation or suggestion. Mel looked and looked and said, "I like them both a bit ... can you blend them?"

Ummm ... that's a very good question, to which I think the answer is actually no. If anyone out there knows some trick to get a blend of skinmaps, please tell me. I think what I'll do is play around with the lights a little to perhaps drop out some of the gold tones ... you're accustomed to seeing the character looking paler, which is just as Travers is described.

By the by, this is post #594 ... post #600 is coming up soon, and I'd love to do something gorgeous to mark it. Now -- what?!

Jade, 9 September

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)