Couldn't resist coming back to the character I was playing with yesterday: the conjurer, the magician, what have you ... "Cassandro," with the touring magic show. Wanted to see how the character would render up with the "venous map" that makes him look like he's just being working out, and some tattoos added for texture, and a gypsy earring. Sooo nice! I changed the face very, very slightly, and did some painting:
...and you've got to like that. Someone is going to be asking, so ...
Nope, this is not Genesis anything. This is just good old Michael 4.2, wearing a face and body designed my me. That's the Aether hair, set to a kind of hazelnut brown and then painted red (Photoshop). The tattoos and magickal effects were also painted on/in in the painting stage. I also painted his eyes, and it took a lot of painting to get rid of the "artifacts" where the 3D mesh collapsed in the figure when I applied the venous map for extra realism. I've got DOF turned on ... and something like ten overlays of color painting to make the back/foreground visually interesting.
This is also not a Lux render. It's just a raytrace, while pulling every trick in the book to bring it up to a competitive level! And I reckon it worked. All the fabric textures and texture maps are also mine ... basically, photos of fabrics around the house.
And yes, I will be coming back to this character. I like him a lot, and there's a lot of potential in here. This sort of this, I can live with as a viable alternative to Lux and Genesis and all.
