Shaders, Iray, Photoshop, and the Genesis 8 female

So -- the Genesis 8 female, with a character (face morph and skinmap) added. This is not Victoria 8; this is Georgia HD, on special the other day at about $11.50 or so, well worth the investment. This is the Bardot dress, which was free with Studio 4.15, but I changed the fabric for a shader acquired from Renderosity last lear -- Sveva's Shimmer and Shine Satin, I believe it is. This is the Shavonne Hair for Genesis 3 and 8. And this, I like.

I'd been trying to order the Body Morphs for Genesis 8 Female too, but DAZ's shopping cart was veru squirrelly. After five attempts and two rounds of emails from their5 Help Desk, I still couldn't order. Weird. I'll play around with what I have for a while, but from what I'm already seeing, I like it!

More experiments ... this is the old Reparation set, a cenotaph, wearing the Requiescat materials ... and I'd been wondering how (or even if)  it would render in Iray. Very nice indeed. I'm stumbling around in Studio and Iray, relearning a lot of what I seem to have forgotten in a year, and learning a great deal I never knew. Lots of questions remain to be answered, but I'm getting there. Slowly, LOL.

After spending weeks trying to find the tools in Affinity Photo to do things I used to do so easily in Photoshop Elements 9, back in 2010 -- and in Micrographx Picture Publisher, in 1997! -- I discovered that the tools are not actually there. (Boo, hiss, to Serif for taking the tools away that were in their early programs! Why would they do this?) The only solution to the problem was to shell out more cash and buy Photoshop Elements 2021, and then learn a new interface. Safe to say the oars are back in the water; if I had a single grumble with Elements 2021, it's that the interface seems to have been designed for children. It looks juvenile, tinker-toy, while the elements 2009 interface was adult, businesslike and professional. Go figure. I'll get used to it.  So --

-- again, piling in the experiments. Here's about forty things I used to use every day, all rolled into one, a digital abstract based on a picnic we took at Sellicks, on the clifftop, a week or two ago. The big questions were, Can I use my .abr brushes with this version? Yes? How do you install them? There's two or three ways; I might have done it the hard way, but it got done quickly. How to you access them, select them and paint with them? That was more of a challenge, and I only stumbled over the answer, with Dave's help. (If you're going through this, just ask, I'll go into this in detail). So --

This outtake from "First Snows of Winter" shows .abr brushwork (Ron's Magical Snow), and there's also a bunch of painting done on the mane ... and the mane is a CWRW addon, which needs to be manipulated ten different ways to work and look good -- meaning, you better know where the tools are, and how to use them! I think I'm just about caught up! Couple more questions to answer in Studio 4.15 ... how do you get soft(er) shadows on photometric lights??? ... and how do you use dForce for dynamic clothing, hair and props? With those questions asked, I do believe I'll be back where I was years ago, but using the Genesis 8 models and rendering at light speed. Am starting to smile now!

Elves, winter, misty rivers, Science Fiction heroes ... quite a grab bag!

A grab-bag of goodies today -- we're all over the spectrum. To begin: Beauty, for its own sake. Actually, there's an ulterior motive. I have an idea for a story, a huge story, and I can't resist designing the characters for it! I might write this one. (Yes, I do write. I just finished a movie, in fact. No, I haven't sold it it. Yes, I hope to. Duh. No, I'm not in negotiations with a studio. Yes, I'll blog it here, and on my personal blog, if/when it ever happens ... and it's a one a thousand shot, so...!) So right here is one of the characters from my story idea. Yep, an elf. It's a fantasy ... but not what you expect. Neat texture on the shirt ... made it myself, in Serif Page Plus!

Next ... an actual digital painting:

That one is actually quite neat, and it was unplanned. I set this up as a Bryce 7 Pro render, and waited over two hours for the program to give me an estimate of how long it wanted to render it. TWO DAYS. I said, nuts to that, and turned it off! Then I thought, hmm ... and set it to give me a regular preview image, without even any anti-aliasing. That gave me a very rough sketch, which I put into Photoshop and, uh, painted. (Understand, I can not draw to save my life. But I can composit anything you like. I like this a lot -- and it didn't take long, once I shut down Bryce...

I think the length of the renders is getting worse lately, as the desktop gets closer and closer to having to be upgraded before it becomes useless. I'm under 6GB of harddrive space now, and this means it's waaay short on "swap disk space," or thinking space. Can't go very much further without that upgrade, so -- wish me luck at the dentist, on Friday! If he doesn't take all my cash, the computer is next on my agenda.)

And then...

Figuring out the other day that I can load several trees on the same coordinates, duplicating the foliage to make a much more convincing tree -- well all that gave me an idea. How about deleting the foliage this time around, leaving the winter tree? And how about seeing if we can work out how to simulate snow ... without getting into Bryce, which is soooo slow now. Well, this is about the best I can do in DAZ Studio raytrace, but it's actually not too ad at all.

Rummaging around, I stumbled over this, which I did a couple of years ago and never uploaded here, though I believe I did put it on my personal blog:

And lastly for today ... am messing about with rebalancing techniques, Photoshop work which makes "more" of simpler, old images. Hmm. This is interesting, especially since (and I sob as I say this) I've lost a lot of the 2011 project files. They are just ... gone. I can't get them back, so you're stuck with whatever is online at the gallery etc., etc., and shots like this one, below, need to be reworked:

That's Richard Vaurien and Neil Travers from Hellgate, of course ... two of my all-time favorite characters (especially Vaurien). I would love to tell you I have the project file and was able to re-render this, but that file doesn't even seem to exist now. I'd have to recreate this stuff from scratch. I did this shot about seven years ago, and like so many of the old pictures, they were great ideas, but they could be so much better. The only thing I can do right now is rebalance them, take care of occasional artifacts that got through in the render, add Photoshop "post" work to make them more vivid and interesting. The rest of the work will have to wait ... soooo much other, new, stuff to do first! Including this enormous story idea of my own to pursue.

Virus 7, Jade 0 ... also, Spaceman Joe, and Screamin' SF -- again!

Okay, I was in the mood for art, but I was also in the mood for humor, because I just fought off a virus that ... well, a couple of times I honestly entertained the words "emergency room." But I didn't have the energy to pick up the phone. Bleck. 😵 So this is a great place to come back to creativity, and just about the last intelligent thing I said was,

"Let's put this guy on the cover of Screamin' Science Fiction, and see what he's like with a raygun in his hand! Turns out, he's pretty darned good!

I do love Screamin'. It gives me a chance to cut loose and be silly. Is this the fourth one I've done? LOL ... enjoy. And yes, this is the same character as "Desperado," and the barbarian, though you'd be forgiven for not realizing it. Here's the proof -- and I've uploaded it at some colossal size so that you can scroll all over it and compare, if you like:

(Sorry about the probable download time on this: it's 1800 high x 4800 wide -- which is great for folks who want to scroll all over it and see the details.)

The other thing I really love about this kind of project is the opportunity to play with layout, fonts, text ... and be seriously silly. The "font art" is all done in Serif Page Plus, of course. I do love Page lLus ... speaking of which, it's become a "legacy program" now ... the Serif company went as far as version X9 and then set PP aside to develop their new one, Affinity.

Uh huh. Affinity looks like it's going to be out there in another dimension. I'd be looking for Affinity Publisher, if course ... there's also Affinity Painter (but I already have Krita), Affinity Photo (but I run Photoshop Elements 9, which does everything I want or need), and so forth. Also, Affinity is still in the beta stage, so ... it's not even ready yet. But yes, I'll be keeping an eye on that ... for the future. It belongs in the same pile as DAZ Studio 4.9.whatever, and IRay, and tons of new models, and Genesis figures, skinmaps -- on and on and on. Not yet: too many bills to clear yet, before I throw wads of cash at what is, now, merely a hobby.

Okay! Aas versatile as he is, we're done with this character for now, I promise. I'm going to return to some of the others and produce some images that have been swimming in my mind since we were in Halls Gap. Back tomorrow, I hope. If not, the next day at latest.

Would you please retrieve your android --?

A little science fiction humor in DAZ and Photoshop: "Paging Mr, Amadeus De La Rocca. Will you please come and retrieve your android. Fees apply.

Technically it's too hot to be doing this, but I am so bored! The a/c is running around the clock, so it's probably okay to run the computers at high-throttle. Soooo...

The story behind the picture goes like this: First, you ought to recognize the immortal vampire, Amadeus. The only thing he's done as he ages 200 years into our future is dye his hair, because he'll stick out like the proverbial sore whatever in 2220, with white hair. He thought it was a brilliant idea to order an android personal assistant, to be delivered via the spaceport ... but they come in unprogrammed, and something in the spaceport tracking systems gets their systems going. His new PA turned itself on and wandered off, wreaking all kinds of havoc. Amadeus was trying to get parking (never easy) when he heard his name over the public address:

"Paging Mr. Amadeus de la Rocca, would you please come and retrieve your android. Fees apply." Uh huh ... and you should recognize the patrol officer from the scene a few days ago! This is the nightshift at the spaceport. Takes a hard-nosed cop with a lifetime of experience with people (not to mention androids and, uh, vampires) to sort out these situations! So here's poor Amadeus trying to explain his way out of this, thinking, "Oh, I'm getting to old for this crap," while the nice officer explains that it is his fault, even though he wasn't even there ... because he neglected to specify the proper EM shielding for his purchase before it was shipped ... snarfle.

The challenge was to make two versions of Michael 4 look real -- then make Victoria 4 look like a machine, a toaster, whatever. I think I succeeded. See its face in closeup! However, its name is Betsy, and when it's been programmed it'll be a lot more lifelike. I'll render that, too...

Didn't do Terragen today, because I stayed playing with the Dystopia City Blocks (in DAZ), and then on a whim sent them to Bryce (Why? Because you can, and I was bored). Boy, what a surprise. Here's the city skyline --

Dawn:

Noon:

Sundown:

And then came the huge surprise ... because although I bought the Dystopia City Blocks in a sale about nine years ago, I had no idea they did this in Bryce:

Night, after sundown:

This shot doesn't show the sky too well -- it's actually late twilight, the sun is well down. Here's the thing, though: the city lights came on automatically when I put the sun under the horizon! 😲

Now, that was a whopper of a surprise, and it got me inspired to do this, snarfle:

Couldn't resist. Rendered the whole thing in Bryce and shipped it into Serif to have the text overlays. I enjoyed this project enormously ... it only took an hour. (No, there is no such writer as "Phoebe Q. Dillbottle." But if that novel is as funny as it ought to be, I'd read it...)

As I said, that only blew off an hour, including the Bryce render! So instead of twiddling my thumbs I went back into Photoshop and played with false color experiments:

That was actually quite interesting, and I learned a lot. It's not art, really ... you throw in masses of overlays and underlays, filters and blends and ... on and on, and you get some weird results, and eventually it gels into something that's quite attractive. Not a photo, but not a painting.

If you want to muck about with this yourself, be my guest:

There's the source photo (from my phone) and the sketch, at full size, ready to go. Have fun! Now ... I gotta get these machines turned off. You could fry eggs on them, and it can't be good for them. It's 110 degrees right outside the back door -- beside which, it's also dinner time! 

Magic, pen and ink wash, and a segue into monochrome

Working with textures, surfaces, lights and shadow, around a wild variety of props that go together to suggest a story ... and of the whole lot (I call the picture "Dark Magic"), the element that pleases me the most is this:

Every texture you see on the mask is me, replacing the original materials shipped with the model with my own metal textures, and bump maps. That is so realistic, I'm thrilled to bits with the result! Ancient Greek, or a relic from Mycenae, or perhaps even Atlantic (whoo!) ... and then I thought, "Hang on, that's a vignette, fading out to black. We can do this:

The font looks like the letters were hammered out of gold. It's done with 2D bump mapping and 3D lights applied to the lettering (in Serif Page Plus X3). That's cool too!

Then I wanted a change. What I wanted was an ink sketch, but specifically a vignette, So...

Your eye actually convinces you it can see how the inks were laid down over a pen and ink sketch. It works! I knew it would, but there's nothing like running the experiment.

Lastly for today, an exercise in black and white "photography" --

What this needs is more surface detail in the walls (but no bump maps were supplied with the set, and by this time late in the afternoon I was waaay too tired to get stuck in and make them. Might do that tomorrow, if I can be bothered), and a bit of surface detail on the car -- like, road muck, perhaps. Again, I was too tired to do it today. Maybe tomorrow.

If you're interested to see it in color:

Cthulu Manifests! Also barbarians, SF heroes, and more...

Cthulu manifests! Do you know your H.P. Lovecraft?! This picture came out of an observation that one of the Amberlight images I did a week or so ago seems to have an alien face looking out of it...

Original Amberlight render

...so it was a case of spinning the image around, using custom numbers to get it upright, then painting it lavishly in Photoshop:

Photoshop painting over Amberlight render

Ouch! Then it occurred to me that this would make one heck of a great backdrop for a much deeper work, where a human bears witness to the manifestation which tore open a great rent in the cosmos as we know it, so -- back into DAZ Studio for the barbarian to be added.

One of the final experiments I run on any piece of artwork is to bucket-fill a color layer into a blank top layer created in whatever new piece of art I'm finishing, and run through the blend modes, just to see what magical weirdness might spontaneously happen -- and it did! This time I used an ickly shade of green, and this happened:

...and of course as soon as I saw that, I thought to myself, "Dang, I can see this was a magazine cover from the golden age!" Mike got involved at this point, and we had all kinds of fun making up the ludicrous story titles and witty bylines, and running the DTP software (Serif) to mock-up the cover. Cute!

And I was fiddling with characters and starship sets yesterday, and this happened:

Soon as I saw this, I said, "I know who you are!" Do you remember Tully Ingersol fro the Hellgate series? Yeah, the chief engineer on Rick Vaurien's incredible salvage Vessel, Wastrel. Whooo, I used to love that ship, that crew. I'd happily sit down and read another six books, if the author could be coerced to write them. Anyway, I saw this guy, and I thought: I know you! (Which is really, really inspiring me to get back into the Hellgate art. The fact is, all of that art goes back to 2012, and ... I could do it sooo much better now. Okay. Let's get into this.)

Lastly for today, am starting to hammer some sense out of Bryce 7 Pro:

Now, that one doesn't bear very close examination, but it's getting closer and closer to the photo realism that one knows, academically, Bryce will deliver, but emotionally, one begins to doubt it after the fiftieth crap render in a row! But yes, the penny is starting to drop now. We'll get there.

Happy Holidays ... and Peace on Earth

The "card" says it all ... Happy Holidays, folks. Merry "Whatever You're Celebrating," and Happy 2019 to all!

(If anyone is interested: I found a free stock shot of Stonehenge, at the moment when the sun crosses the horizon on the solstice of winter. Into Photoshop; make the canvas size about 2.5x the width of the original photo. Some creative painting to create a smooth fade-to-dark at the top; two Photoshop brushes: the biggest. brightest Christmas star (a bokeh light) right on the sunrise, and snow falling softly. Then, into Serif for typographic art: the font is Glastonbury Wide, in gold color, with 3D emboss and effects set, 3D lights on ... and I adjusted the lights to illuminate the golden message with the sunrise.)

Oh, yeah ... a kind of magic!

Yes -- an old render, but a good one ... and I've wanted to try compositing art with Amberlight images for weeks now. Here was my chance! The perfect concept: the magician, working energy magic. And the result was so neat, I zipped it into a show poster ... in fact I would love to see a story about this character. He just got a name: Cassandro. And the "for one night only" slogan on his show poster tells you, it's a traveling show. And thereby hangs a tale!

I think I'll go back into the old project files and do some more renders of this character. Searching through old materials, I discovered that I'd archived the lot, everything is right there for the rendering, so ... why not?

Also did another landscape, just for the fun of painting the ocean. This one is a study of Petrel Cove, which is 'round the other side of Rosetta Head (aka The Bluff) at Victor Harbour...

...the way Blogger needs to shrink the images to fit them into this template (yes, I know -- my fault, not theirs!) means you don't get to see the real, juicy details, so ... please to click to see these larger. I'm proud of the detrails, and would love you to see them.

Nothing else going on here. Work is deader than the proverbial mackerel in the week before Christmas, and since the gifts are all wrapped and the groceries mostly stashed for the holidays, I have nothing to do but paint, read, watch movies ... what a horrible prospect, snarfle. 😜

Soooo, I think I'll go back to the magician, here, and do some more renders, combine them with Amberlight pictures (which is a Photoshop job), maybe chuck in some Krita painting, and see what happens! (Oh, the show poster was composited in Serif. All the arty typography effects are literally what Serif was designed for. Or, one of the things. Okay, I have a date with a magician, and on that theme, I think I'll go out with a little-known 1980s Queen video that I adore:

The cat and the Christmas tree

It's that time of year. Christmas tree goes up, Zolie decides it's just the greatest thing in the world to play with: ooooh, shiny! Which inspired a poem. But who could stay may with such a little cutie-pie?

Settling down to paint this afternoon. Or at least to doodle in color, in Krita. If something nice comes of it, I'll share later! Meanwhile, my good friend Aricia has been uploading a few of my pieces to Pinterest! This is so cool. She has a glorious collection of "boards" on Pinterest. If you want eye candy, spend five minutes and check this out: https://www.pinterest.com.au/ariciagavriel/ ... I haven't done anything with Pinterest yet, and I must. I'm actually very impressed.

Oh, if anyone is wondering: the graphic above was done in Serif, not Photoshop. Far easier that way. Photoshop will do it for you, but Serif Page Plus makes is faster, simpler. Easier to work on the fly.

Okay -- painting now.

A new book cover ... ' hell year' ... and what's new?

I know, I know, it's been a long time since I posted here ... and if I told you the story of 2018 it would be entitled "Hell Year." The year when I've spent most of the time trying to find a way to get back on my feet and stay out of the [insert your favorite expletive] hospital! But we're into mid-November now, and I'm still here. So ... here's a post to celebrate a book cover I just finished, and am very pleased with.

It's actually a digital painting, but it was based on a 3D model plus a drawing, and I designed this face from scratch, so ... 3D art? A cousin of 3D art at least. It's the cover for the new Mel Keegan novel, due out very soon -- a haunted house in the middle of a nasty winter, when you can't get out of the place. Very Gothic. (Very exciting, actually).

To give you an idea of how much painting is involved -- you'll have to see these at larger size to see the real work, but if you've an interest in this kind of thing, it might be well worth it:

The bald truth is, I haven't been able to do much art (or much of anything) in this last year. Right now, I have my eye on a new computer, new software, the works. Have you SEEN what DAZ has come up with lately? The new Genesis figures are out, and they are way beyond anything we could have imagined when this blog began. I'd love to get back into this, and go right to the pointy-end of the art, with the Genesis models, the newest Lux render engine ... and Corel Painter ... good golly, have a look at this, if you're interested in digital painting, even at the hobby level.

Meanwhile, I'm still muddling along with the ooold DAZ Studio 3 I feel most comfortable with, and the old Michael 4 model, and Photoshop Elements 9, because, frankly, that's what I have. And they still work. I haven't even bothered upgrading my Serif X3 yet! And speaking of Serif, which I use for all typography projects --

Serif Page Plus has become "legacy" software. Meaning, it's been discontinued. Serif is selling licenses, and you can get online help via forums and whatnot, but the company is devoted to developing something new which is tipped to blow everything else out of the water. LOL, here I am, still using X3! Again, it's what I have ... and it works.

This painting is one of a handful of formal pieces I've done in 2018, but as usual I'm hoping that next year will be a better year, and not merely for myself. (I'm not the only one "doing it the hard way" right now.) I did the cover for the ENDGAME OMNIBUS about five months ago, then to my surprise I found myself painting the cover for a new omnibus, FUTURE IMPERFECT. I'll upload that next time...

But this one, here, is a beaut ... and I got to design a face. I'd forgotten how much I used to enjoy designing faces, and painting light effects. Must get back into this. Note to self: indulge in art for its own sake. It doesn't have to be work. In fact, if it's not work, it's actually more fun. The brain begins to revolve, imagining new projects ... anyway --

This here novel -- the haunted house on the moor, with the blizzard outside and all hell busting loose inside -- will be out fairly soon. Not quite sure of the date, but I can certainly keep you informed. You can also visit [2023 EDIT: the dot-com web address is defunct as of early this year. For some reason, the system utterly denied access to it, and it could not be renewed. Then some joker bought is as a zombie domain name, and MK would have to buy it back at significant cost. Not going to happen, but the web pages are all still there and still viable. Find MK online in the same place...] Mel Keegan Online and keep tabs on the author there. I spent several days working on a new mobile version of the site, so if you're viewing on a phone, you're in for a treat. Click that link, above, and see what happens! 😃

I'll leave you, today, with the whole, finished cover including typography: neat!

Interestingly, the book had a title change after this
was done and uploaded. It's now
FALCONSTONE...

Digital buried treasure, as promised

When I was desperately searching for workable art for the "rejacket half of Keegan" project last week, I stumbled over a cache of digital art going back to 2007-2009, with the most recent pieces being some of the last work I did right before discovering the world of 3D rendering.

Many of these pieces were produced for a kind of "value added" progam intended to make the Mel Keegan website "sticky" -- that is, to get people onto it, and make them stick around and/or return. And in fact, it worked. A couple of years running we actually did a digital desktop calendar ... basically, a set of (free) guycandy wallpapers, part of which was a calendar. You just set them as wallpaper, month by month ... and each month you revisited melkeegan.com, and got your new art. And this did actually work -- bumped the traffic to the site, gave book sales a nice little bump, too. At about the same time we also uploaded some stuff to Zazzle, which was interesting ... before Real Life became a right royal pain for everyone involved, and we ... drifted away from all this.

(Hmm. Gotta wonder about using the best new art for cards, prints, etc. I'm hesitant: the cost of Zazzle is so high. For example, mug blanks are US$20 before you add art and ask folks for $21, so ye artist gets a whole buck! Lemme think on it.)

So, this is what I was doing prior to 3D work, and even now it's rather attractive.

Interestingly, each of the models in the above images was sourced from photos ... but it took three images to make any one of our digital guys, and even then a whale of a lot of painting was done on them. The faces were completely painted, to begin with, to create a new face. A different body was used -- often reduced to line art and repainted, before "face replacement;" hair was entirely hand-painted (check out "Jungle Book," for instance, at full size); a third photograph was used to provide the color pallet for the model; the whole thing was recompiled into a new figure/face combination, then the fun began with a new background, new foreground, overpainting and photographic effects.

Say... check out the Poseidon image. That's a composite guy added over a photo of the ocean off Brighton Beach! (That's the Brighton in South Australia ... not the one in the UK, of course.) The horse was a color sketch, working from a couple of photo references. There's a HELL of a lot of work involved in this kind of art. It's very different from the current technique of adding Photoshop effects to an image bank picture --

In fact, the main reason I gravitated to 3D work so fast was that when you get the hang of it, it's soooo easy by comparison with the painting techniques you see above! Still ... the more you work in 3D, the more you come right back to painting. Like the broody, moody Home from the Sea cover. That's 75% painting, though it started life as a couple of renders. And this one:

The "figure in a garden" dates back about two-and-a-half years, but I can still remember the sheer volume of painting on this one! I painted the figure. the weeds. The bricks. The walls...!

All of the work done on the pure-digital-painting shots above was done in Micrographx Picture Publisher. I didn't get Photoshop until after I upgraded to a 64-big PC and discovered (to my horror) that Picture Publisher only worked on the 32-bit system, and GIMP only wanted to crash!! to the desktop, causing me to rip out my hair ... causing Dave to track down a third-party retailer for Photoshop that offered the product an attractive price. The rest is more or less history. (The matting and text-as-art effects in these shots is all done in Serif, incidentally.)

All I need to do now is start (!) posting here regularly, sharing some of the rafts and rafts of art that have been done in the last year and more!