A fantasy, a warrior, a castle, and dawn rising on some pretty good mountains

It's eons since I did anything with horses, so ...! Call this one "Hold the Gate," or some such. "The City is Burning," that kind of fantasy scenario. You might even recognize the model: the Hyborian Age Calendar Boy, who's appeared a a couple of times, albeit not for years.

Lots of drama going on here, and one wonders if it has anything to do this this, below, which was actually the first picture I did today:

Bryce 7 Pro, obviously: the fantasy castle here is actually a lot less interesting than the landscape itself, with the sun touching the slopes. So I took out the castle, shifted the camera and changed the aspect ratio:

...you really do need to see this one, specifically, at full size, 1800 pixels wide (it was rendered at 2000, slightly resized for upload. Hmm. Is Bryce 7 Pro finally starting to make sense to me? I dunno,  but for the first time in weeks -- and just as I was about to give it up as a lost cause! -- I finally got a couple of pictures that are worth the pixels it takes to display them!

More tomorrow. I want to go back to the vampire and work on that face, and the hair, too.

The vampire is alive and well! Plus an 'Enchanted Pool' ...

If you have a memory like a heffalump, you might actually remember the vampire Amadeus ... you know, Tails from the Crypt -- yes, that Amadeus, and his smart-alecky bodyguard.

The last time I rendered these characters was 2012, at a time when I could juuuust about raytrace, if you didn't mind waiting till tomorrow for your picture. The thing of it is, a lot of my best ideas came up in that era, were explored and set aside ... then came the days of better technique and so forth, long after these good ideas had been spent.

So I'm looking back through the old files (I never throw anything away), and having a lot of fun playing with ancient concepts and characters, bringing them up to date with the best technique I've been able to learn, and everything I can squeeze out of the existing software and hardware (which I admit, lands me back in the wonderful world of artwork, because photorealism is a stretch I can't quite make! Which isn't to say the current generation of renders aren't very nice indeed: they are).

I'll be coming back to Amadeus ... I want to tweak the face a little bit. Let's see what I can do with him -- we'll revisit the vampire soon. Maybe pose him with the conjurer, the snake charmer, the mercenaries. Neat!

Also today --

Rather than shooting for a whole landscape, I thought, what the heck, frame something small in Bryce 7 Pro, see if you can do something like a rockpool. Not too bad, actually. Again, nowhere near photorealism, but as a piece of art, not so bad at all. So I thought, "If art is what we're doing, let's try for "storybook picture" ... let's ladle on the pixie dust, do a real enchanted pool in an enchanted forest. So I switched to DAZ and Photoshop for this:

Well worth having a look at that one full sized! See the glitter on the water and all. Storybook art, and at large size it looks very nice indeed! You expect to see the fairies fluttering around...

It's only money, I guess!

Nothing clever today ... just experiments with various modes of rendering, and playing with blend settings. I'm one of those people who learns best by doing, not reading or being shown. I have to be hands-on before anything sticks to my brain cells! Also, to be completely honest, I don't feel so good. You try being ultra-creative while you have a headache and a toothache. (Problem is, the teeth have already been fixed, ain't no more to be done with them. Take the question back to the dentist, and he'll grab a hypodermic in one fist and the dreaded pair of pliers in the other. Argh. So we suffer a while longer, see if it'll subside on its own ... *sigh* To quote Ned Kelly, "Such is life.")

Anyway --

Since I was experimenting, we might as well come up with something pretty while we figure out how stacked layers of blend modes affect each other, which is a big part of digital painting, and can make or break something you're trying to achieve. As I said, nothing clever, just learning-by-doing, making messes, figuring out the why and how. The character is the same as the one you saw in the Krita painting (left) a few weeks ago. Another of my faces and figures: I never use anything "stock" off the shelf --

Though I'll be honest, I've been tempted a few times, and more lately than in the past. Desktop artists and animators are doing amazing things these days. In fact, they're doing stuff on the desktop that would have been state of the art in  motion pictures  not very long ago! I'm on a couple of mailing lists, and this morning had a newsletter from Renderosity, one of the 3D markets where I used to buy a lot of props and materials (such as skinmaps: some of the best skinmaps in my library came from Renderosity...

They're announcing a new partnership with a company producing a powerful tool called CC3, or Character Creator 3. There was a link to their demo video, soooo...

...and there really is no answer to that. I mean, honestly. The only thing the hobbyist (like self) needs these days is veryveryvery deep pockerts. Say, $2500 to upgrade the hardware to run this stuff. About $900 for the CC3 itself. And while you're at it, you might as well add another A$75 for Render Studio for Iray, from DAZ (Iray is a new-ish render engine which might have the edge on LuxRender. Then, you'd want the Genesis 8 stuff, and bundles of new skins, wigs, costumes. Another grand, at least, maybe two. Hmm. Well, it's only money,  but ...! This is one expensive hobby.

Another time, when I have the bucks going spare! In the meantime, we play with what we have and have fun, right? Right. Because I was only running experiments with blending modes,  the renders above are not even raytraces, much less Lux renders! Just old fashioned deep shadow maps, which I haven't used in many years. Will get back into Lux very soon. I do have the old version: basically, it's just slower. Its images were fine, it simply took time to get there. Reminds you of the garage mechanic in Mad Max: "Speed is just a question of money. How fast can you go?" LOL ... patience, Grasshopper!

CG fantasy, playing in Bryce, and a digital watercolor

CG fantasy: "A Vow of Vengeance."
Uploaded at 2000 wide: please see at full size!

An extremely complex render -- a two hour raytrace, before we headed into Photoshop to bring it to life ... and the background was done separately (duh) in Bryce 7 Pro:

Bryce 7 Pro landscape: Savannah sunrise. Please see at large size!

In fact, it was the Bryce render that suggested the CG character work. I did the landscape as a project -- trying to force Bryce to give me photorealistic results, which of course it absolutely refuses to do, no matter what tricks I pull, or whose tutorials I follow! So the question you're asking is --

How much of this one is Bryce, and how much is Photoshop? And well you may ask!

The raw Bryce 7 render is fine ... it gives the impression of being about a half hour before sunrise. No matter what I did, I couldn't get it to render brighter colors, so I gave up in disgust and took this, the best I could get, shoved it headfirst into Photoshop and painted it up! Ta-da! The sun rose.

Which of course makes the more savvy viewer ask, how much of the character study is DAZ Studio, and how much is Photoshop?! Well, okay...

You'll need to view this at full size to really see the dullness of the original raytrace. The painting is just ... better. It's all highlights and dawn sunlight and what-not. But the raytrace isn't bad. I did a lot of painting on the character, because DAZ gave me muddy shadows as soon as I turned on "soft shadows," so while I was in there I decided to give the dude freckles and tattoos good measure.

I like this one: a very satisfying, as well as complex, piece of work...

But I have to admit, Bryce is driving me nuts:

Top:  Atmospheric controls. Check. Got it. Middle: Fair enough ... but its another alien planet. Doesn't look like Earth to me! Bottom: "Reef at Low Tide." Not bad, but not great ... and this thing rendered all night. Ack.

In sheer frustration, I threw up my hands and went back to watercolors:

Digital watercolor: Woodland Path

Again, you need to see this at larger size to be able to see it, but for those who are interested, I'll include the rubbish image that was the source photo:

Isn't that awful? I almost threw it in the bin. I used to chuck out shots that came out like this ... there's a couple of faults in my camera: it no longer calculates exposures properly, and the auto-focus is off. Also, it's impossible to use the mode selector ring, which just spins around and never selects anything. Harrumph. Need new camera. These Fuji Finepix models cost so much to repair, it's cheaper to buy a new one. 

I was also interested to process some of these into B&W to see what they come up like ... as if they're stills from a movie made back in the 1970s:

...and that's not bad. I rather like monochrome. Very little is done with it these days, but it has a charm all its own.

Yes, I'm making the most of a cooler day today! The hot weather comes back almost at once, and I'll disappear on you again: can't work in this kind of heat:

That works out to 116 F degrees in the shade, and the best the a/c c an do is keep it down to about 98 F in the house, because it's around 150 F in the roof cavity right over your head. It's enough to cook your brain, and it will certainly cook your PC!  So ... lots of art today, while we're in the cool lull between the heat waves! Enjoy. 

Art! Where's the art?! Well --

Where's the art? Pictures, we want pictures! Well, not too much will be going on today, guys, because:

That's today, Thursday -- 45 C, which is around 113 F in the shade, with sun temperatures around 60 C, which is something like 140 F. That means it's 140 degrees on the roof, and in the roof cavity, one meter above your head ... and the a/c trunking runs through there. So the a/c is blasting,  but it isn't blowing cold. It's "blasting" at maybe 90 F, and that, friends, is hot enough to cook a computer if you set it to do a loooong render and leave it to roast. 

I caught myself doing this yesterday:

This is an enormously complex Bryce render which, after ninety minutes, was just 18% done. It was going to chug on and on for how long?! In this weather, that's a recipe from a dead computer. Bryce has a "pause render" control, so I hit it, and turned off the PC. Tomorrow, when it's cooler, I'll restart it, let it go again. (Also, the desktop is making some odd noises: means it needs to have its guts vacuumed out, which Dave has volunteered to do.)

On the plus side, I finally, finally, installed Amberlight on the new laptop, and it flies. This processor allows for up to 12 focus points, and the renders are unbelievably fast -- so fast, you have to hover over the stop!! button, grab them before they overcook:

Amberlight is amazing. Now I have it running properly, I'll be doing a lot more with it. Also, in the course of using it on the new laptop, I've discovered that this little HP is powerful enough to run programs with a requirement for "oomph," and this makes me wonder if it might generate simple Vue scenes. No, I'm not talking about something that looks like it's a outtake from Avatar, and took three days to render on a Renderbox --

This stuff is way beyond anything I have the hardware to run:

...that's the stuff of which fantasies are made. It's not the skill to run the software, it's the ten grand you need to throw at it before you can even start. Harrumph. No, no, there are much simpler Vue images that can be coaxed out of the software, which still dance rings around anything even the specialists can squeeze out of Bryce. And I'm interested to at least look at the possibilities...

[EDIT: I went to E-on Software and looked. They no longer sell you the software; they hit you up for a US$20/month subscription, which is perpetual, and a whole lot more than I want to pay. Say you ran the software for five years, then run the conversion to Australian dollars ... and I'd have to get a new graphics card, and ... no, thanks. Bummer. Back to Bryce, I guess...]

Also bored enough to be playing with images for the same of playing with images:

You start with one of the Amerblight renders that turned into chaos (a lot do!) and then you put it through a lot of filters to make something amazing. Abstract art. This was done in Irfanview, not Photoshop ... it's too hot to be bothered even starting up the desktop to run Photoshop. Ack.

And on that note, I'll close. I'm turning into a puddle of goo, so it's time to get a cool drink and pick up a book. Let's try this again tomorrow, when the weather is playing  nice. Right now, it's not. Check out this snapshot of the thermometer right outside the backdoor. Yes, you're reading it right: 135.5 F, and it's not even the hottest part of the afternoon yet...

Snake Charmer ... and a thoroughly alien world

CG character design: Snake Charmer

The Conjurer becomes the Snake Charmer ... except it isn't a snake. It's a little creature that looks alien -- in fact, the same critter that was the size of a house in the render last week! One of the best things about working in CG is that you can change the dimensions of anything and everything. I guess what you have here is the hatchling version of the gigantic creature the magician was "charming" on stage in the other render. (I was looking at an image a few days ago: a baby dragon sitting in the palm of someone's hand, and I thought ... hey, I can do something like that, but not with a dragon! This little fellow is known as the Dinoconda. Lovely thing to work with.) 

Nice! The "plastic" appearance of Michael 4 is thoroughly gone; there's a lot of integrity in these renders now.

I've been working in super-saturated colors lately, because I love firelight, lamplight and so on: it paints surfaces in reds and golds, which my eye just adores. But the other night we were watching one of the new CG animated movies, Resident Evil: Vendetta. Have you seen it? This one has some of the best CG character creation, mocap, texturing and lighting I've ever seen. About 35% of the time you just can not tell that these aren't real human beings. (Sure, 65% of the time,  you can tell. The character that lets this one down the most is the girl: it's a Japanese movie, so they made a doll. It just doesn't look real, sorry dues. But two out of three of the main male characters look very real indeed.) How good is this:

The rendering in this one is superb. Better even than Final Fantasy II, which -- even though it was made almost 20 years ago -- is still the best of the FF movies (notice, I said movies: not talking about the game here). 

And looking at the understated color in the stills here got me to thinking about working with desaturated colors, so I stripped most of the color out of the Snake Charmer, and this is what you have:

...that has a charm all its own. But I still prefer the color saturated one. Could be just a trick of my eyesight, but I do love color.

Also been puttering in Bryce 7 Pro. Trying to get photorealism, and not managing it yet. Starting to wonder what in the world I'm doing, or not doing! Here's the best I've managed to date:

Bryce 7 Pro: highlands. Not too bad, but...

It's not bad, but it's far from what I'd call photorealistic! Am getting cross with myself for not being able to figure this out, because I know for absolute sure, Bryce will do this. Like...

I have no idea where this comes from (thank you, Pinterest ... a credit would help, now and then, guys!) but to my eye it has David Brinnen "stamped all over it." I'd give you odds, this is David Brinnen's work. I'd buy his tutorials, if I could afford them, but at A$50 a pop, they're out of my price bracket. Need to figure this out on my own. So ... keep going.

So, in a fit of pique about not being able to generate a really photographic picture (yet), I thought, ah, stuff it. Let's do SF instead. Alien landscape. Right:

Alien landscape in Bryce 7 Pro

So there we are, done for the day, I think ... it's hot and humid, and I need to get a cool drink, sit in front of the a/c and pick up my book. More soon. 

(I'd love to tell you I'm writing something, but I'm not. It's too hot lately to even think. I did sell another short story, though. That makes three short story sales so far, which is very neat. And I won an Honorable Mention in the SF Writers of the Future competition a few months ago, which was also very nice. But no, I'm not writing anything at the moment. Too hot. Maybe when the summer is over...)

A CG fantasy ...

CG fantasy: uploaded at 2000 pixels -- please see!

Going back to another of the old projects -- a great idea that could simply be done better these days. If you've been following the blog since 2013, you might remember this: La Vie en Rose. Better control over the image as a whole, and a lot more post work improves it enormously. The original is already a good picture, but it's hard and "plasticky." The differences are subtle, but they're well worth reimagining the project. Hand painted hair and eyes, and lots of subtle effects make the 2013 version of this work much superior to the old (which wasn't a bad picture in its own right):

Also, have been working with Bryce, jogging my memory some  more ... boy, do I have some catching up to do:

Bryce 7 Pro: Fairytale landspe

Please do have a look at that, at large size (1600 pixels wide). I call it "Fairytale Landscape." And yes, there's a lot of painting added to the raw render which was also massively rebalanced (gamma, contrast), before I got going in Photoshop.