A pirate hunk in 3D (thank you, DAZ Studio and Photoshop!), against the backdrop of an Elizabethan galley in the mist; and, staying with the Caribbean theme --
...another 3D hunk -- genuine poster boy for the Jamaican Tourist Association! Two more book covers today. Just a handful to go now, to get this assignment complete.
These are raytraces, not LuxRender projects, of course: it's a question of time. There just ain't enough hours in a day to scramble through so much work, if you want to put 4-8 hours into every final Lux render. Almost always, you need to do three or four (or more) test renders in Lux before you can set the piece to "go" and come back tomorrow. The results are gorgeous, but ... not this time.
However, I plan to come back to some of these pieces in a week or two, when I have the time, and see what LuxRender will make of them. I'll upload what I get, if it's rewarding enough to share around. (Not every project works in LuxRender. Very occasionally you do come up with a dud, where the raytrace is better. Shock, horror!) In the meantime, these are "superior" raytraces, in which all the technique available has been invested; so there's not a light year of difference between what you see here and the real unbiased renders...
In all seriousness, raytracing is becoming an abandoned art, with the wide availability of engines like Lux and SuperFly on the desktop. In a couple of years, it'll be forgotten -- and this is a pity, because if you know what you're doing you can get very good results. You also get very different results; the best unbiased renders are eerily photographic, whereas even the best raytrace possible is still, well, art. And what's wrong with art, pray tell?!
Speaking of art, I'm also extremely pleased with the background images appearing with all of this 3D hunk work. In virtually every instance, these are full-on digital paintings (just a couple defy this rule). I'm still in the learning curve with Photoshop. It's my pleasure, now, to tackle projects that would have scared me off a few years ago. So nice to be learning and developing, even now.
