How good is Michael 4, even now? Takes a bit extra work, but --

 

I'm going to be honest. I enjoy working with Michael 4 a lot. Genesis makes everything easy, but the Generation 4 figures, especially M4, are so rewarding. Also, 80% of everything I own in terms of assets was designed for Gen 4, so even now the Genesis figures are somewhat restricted. Assets such as wardrobe and hair are expensive, and I don't have the bucks to buy everything all over again -- even if the really cool stuff that was designed for M4 had been re-jigged for G3 or G8, but it hasn't! The fact is, some really good shaders will get the oars back into the water with most of the old props; and these images, today, are shader-heavy. So --

How good is Michael 4, even now?! This one, above, I call "Last Stand," and this was a massive experiment in lighting. Genuine daylight was achieved with the environment lights but not with an IBL image. I used the Sun And Sky Only option, which lets you set the time of day, sun position and brightness. Now, this could be brighter and more contrasty --

-- which might be more in keeping with a photograph, but frankly, I prefer the richer, more colour saturated version. Either way, it's true daylight! I'll enjoy playing with this trick of Sun and Sky Only again! One more interesting thing --

I've reprocessed this as a movie still. That is so neat! I ought to do more in monochrome. It can produce some startling results. That's all from me for today ... my head is full of ideas, but tomorrow is a day off, so I'll be back in a couple of days!

Mister Versatility himself -- and a boat! Terragen, Iray, and more...

It's always tempting to see the 3D characters as actors, and if they're actors, they can walk out of one movie and right into another. Hmmm. So --

Yesterday's Conan is today's undercover cop, roughing it in some slum zone, busting the kind of people who sell firearms out of the trunk of a car. Neat! (Just a raytrace, set up to look like a flash photography shot. A closed set, and somene just popped a flash in the dimness. Very effective. Also, am very pleased with the bump mapping on those hands: they look realistically battered, as any adult's hands usually are! Garbage as set dressing is also interesting ... a wheelie bin, an abandoned chair and an old pallet! It was fun overdriving the bump and displacement maps on everything. Very pleased with the floor...)

Say, this is a still from a movie that hasn't been made -- which leads me back to remembering the b&w 8x10 movie stills we used to collect back in the days of yore:

It actually looks very good in monochrome. I might see what Iray can do with this tomorrow --

Speaking of which, I did feed yesterday's Conan into Iray, and came up with this:

The best thing about this render is that floor! IRay also did a great job on the Anubis statue and the ax blade ... but every bump and displacement map dropped out, and nothing, repeat nothing I could do, in this project, would get them back --

That's just the basic diffuse maps on everything; and adding whatever shaders were supplied along with DAZ Studio 4.10 didn't work or help ... and I do not intend to spend several hundred dollars on shaders, and work all day to get a single picture ... not when the shaders are free with Reality 4.0, and they're configures with a single click. Aarrggh. I blew a couple of hours on forums, following a Google search: "bump maps not working in IRay." Uh huh. So I'm not the only one to have this problem? And it turns out that overdriving the bump values is not the solution after all: I tried it on this guy, here, and it didn't work. Back to the drawing board. The forums, incidentally, were (to quote Jack Sparrow, enormously not helpful. Ten people made suggestions which didn't seem to work, then the thread petered out ... in 2016. Every single time, the bottom line with IRay seems to come back to buying shaders, which may or may not even exist (they don't for Michael 4), and if they do, they cost a packet! Ack.

Mind you, this is a fairly good render; it's not quite photographic, because (duh) no shaders are available for M4, and even if they were, I don't have them. But this picture is still trying very hard to be a photograph, which made me wonder...

Yep, a movie still from a film that doesn't actually exist! Nice one.

Also -- soooo pleased with this picture, in Terragen:

Elven Boat at sunset, in Terragen

In that past, I've rendered this boat prop a couple of times in Bryce 7 Pro, and never been very thrilled with the results. It just looked ... flat. Here's the best I was every able to squeeze out of the Bryce engine, with this model and its maps:

Same model, in Bryce 7 Pro. Hmm. 

You'll see what I mean if you take a look, full-size: flat as the proverbial bikkie. Bryce images so often look like tabletop dioramas. So imagine my pleasant surprise when the Elven Boat prop began to render in Terragen, and I saw this coming up...

...whoa! Check out the texture in the wood, and the reflections of the lantern in the water. Now, that is impressive. This is the first time I've rendered something man-made in Terragen, and only the second time I've rendered an OBJ. The other one was a tree, a few days ago. This could get exciting! 😀

Anyway, that's been my day, art-wise. And so to bed, before I go to sleep here and my face hits the keyboard. More soon!

The tomb raider is out of luck this time!

As the post title says -- the "tomb raider" is out of luck this time. This one was guarded ... but someone as big as you are, armed with a Very Big Spear. A closer look --

Two hunks for the price of one, I guess! This is "The Man in the Hat," whom you've seen before. It's actually this guy, whom you saw in December (dang, is it really that long?!) ...

And that's the exact same Michael 4 character who becomes the Jones-like guy, when you put the hat on him, much less if you give him the whip and the revolver! Is there a story that goes with this? Not as such, unless it's that the tomb raider dude tried his luck here and found that this one is guarded! The hunk who began life a few days ago as Imhotep is on duty here ... he looks a heck of a lot better with hair, no?

And just for fun ... imagine that this is a scene from a move. Here's the movie still version:

I actually like monochrome a lot. There was also something called Sepiatone, a long, long time ago. Anyone old enough to remember that? I'm not, actually, but I'll confess to being something of a movie trivia devotee. Somewhere among my collection of stuff, I have some images that are so old, they were printed in Sepia. They're either worth a fortune or ought to be used to line budge cages, depending on whom you talk to. Ahem. So, this is what a Sepia movie still would look like:

Okay, that's all from me for today. I'd intended to do more, but it's been an OOTDD, One Of Those Damned Days, when you feel baaaad, and there ain't nothing for it but to scramble through and try again tomorrow. Going for tea now. Tomorrow's another day.

SF Heroes, a vampire, a butterfly and a mystery

Having just finished the last NARC trilogy, I find myself having terrible Jarrat and Stone withdrawal symptoms, so I've cycled right back to the beginning and am four chapters into Death's Head ... for about the twentieth time. Sorry. Can't help it. Blame Mel Keegan, it's all his fault. I could live in this universe. In fact, I think of it as my second home, keep running back there when Real Life gets so boring, shooting yourself starts to sound like a reasonable alternative. So --

Another Jarrat and Stone render, using every bit of skill and resource I have today. Must go back and re-do a lot of the 2011 shots. They were such good ideas, but these days I can do them sooo much better. Ack. Just for fun --

The 8x10 movie still version of this, as if NARC is a major motion picture series (golly, I wish it were) ...

Going back through the old, old files, I find myself fascinated by this character:

He's actually appeared in two guises: he was a vampire originally, and then he guest-starred in the unfinished (sorry!) Abraxas story, as Leon's cousin. Happy happy, joy joy, I just stumbled over the project files, so I can reopen them and return to this character. Let's make him a vampire again, and have some fun with this. How about ... Amadeus's arch nemesis, or rival?!

(On the subject of Abraxas: you may not believe this, but I have intended to get back to it, finish it out, every single day since it was suspended. It got away from me when Stuff Happened: in 2012 we had to move house from one massive place to another ... I "did my back" during that move, and it never came good. Going on seven years later, I still have spinal degeneration, it's one of the things contributing to my current disability. Then, Mom entered the very last phase of her life, and made her exit in 2017 after a couple of years that were ... beyond description. She lived the most amazing life, but the last few of her years almost put me in the ground. Eight months before she passed on, I began to suffer pancreatitis, and it took two surgeries to get through that (late 2017), then most of 2018 to recover. Then, it was disability, the inability to even walk ... and you know how depressed you can get about that?? Uh huh. Since I last wrote a chapter of Abraxas, you name it, it's happened to me. Now, so long has gone by, I'm not sure I could get back into it and actually write it; but what I can do is "tell you the story," the short version of What Happened Then. Let me get to this, and get it done, and illustrate it with some lovely art. Then we'll call Abraxas complete, one way and another.)

Searching through the old project folders, I also found this:

A terrific abstract piece done (!) in Bryce 7 Pro. The only thing is, I have no idea, none whatsoever, of how it was done. The only lucky thing is that I found the project file ... I can open it, reverse engineer it, work out what the [deleted expletive] I did to get this effect!

However, I do know what I did to produce this:

That was wrangled in Photoshop, when I was tinkering around with all their filters and effects, still learning my way around the program. I'm pretty sure I never uploaded it, and it's actually rather charming, so ... here it is.

More soon, but not tomorrow: we're taking the day and heading south into the Fleurieu for a "grand tour" of the coasts and lunch at Sails, at Clayton Bay, to celebrate Mike's birthday. This will be fun.

Barbarians rock! (In fiction and art, at least...)

Couldn't resist taking the "Desperado" character from the other day and casting him in the part of the brooding barbarian --

That's actually a very versatile character. Wonder what he'd look like in a space suit, with a ray gun?! Why don't we try that next? Put him on the cover of "Screamin' Science Fiction," for instance -- remember this:

I know, I know, I've been looking at too many barbarians lately. Blame Mike. He treated himself to one of the biggest books I have ever seen in my entire life. A$250 (yep, you read that right!) for the new Marvel Savage Sword of Conan collection:

It's the size of a brick, 1250 pages, on clay-coated paper, so heavy, you need muscles like the barbarian to hold it! Lift the cover, and...

Is anybody out there old enough (or crazy enough...) to remember these comics when they were new? Ahem. Guilty. Every page is faithfully reproduced -- articles, color covers, the whole deal. It really is an amazing job they've done. The only legendary Conan artist not represented in these pages is Frank Frazetta himself ... turns out, Marvel didn't actually publish his concept of Conan. I thought they did, but ... ah, well.

Speaking of Conan, has anybody been keeping track of the mooted King Conan movie? Oooh, how I wish they would just get this done:

If they wait much bleeding longer, they'll have to do it digitally! We're burning through time here. It'll be 2020 before you know it. Conan the Barbarian was made in something like 1980 ... and yeees, I saw it at the cinema (repeatedly).

Looking at all the monochrome artwork made me remember 8x10 movie stills. Does anybody remember 8x10 movie stills? I used to collect them. I have a huge collection of movie memorabilia ... packed, like so much of my, of course. Need a bigger house. Haven't seen my stuff in six or seven years (sob). And remembering movie stills got me to wondering ...

Yep, that's what they used to look like! That's not half bad, if I do say so myself.

More soon, but right now I have a virus that is ripping through my whole body, from my sinuses to every extremity. 'Scuse me whilst I make away, get a cup of tea, and pick up the last volume in the NARC: Endgame trilogy. I'm enjoying it immensely -- third time I've read it, too. I utterly adore Jarrat and Stone ... must render/paint them again, very soon. New images, new visualizations, using current skills and techniques.

Last note for today: have just posted to the travel blog: Halls Gap: "Under the Mountain" ... well worth a look.

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:

Something old, something new, something surprising!

CG character design ... just a raytrace; Photoshop finishing.
Old fashioned DAZ Studio 3.

Not LuxRender: just a raytrace

If you have a long, long memory -- or a good eye! -- you'll recognize this character. I designed him in 2010 and couldn't resist him ... gave him a name: Leon. Lately, I've been going back through the early renders and thinking, "Dang, if only I'd been doing this stuff now, with the greater skills I have now." And then I thought, "Hang on, why not revisit the old characters and see how they render up when you really, REALLY know how to drive this software, instead of it taking you for a ride.

Here's a new render of the old subject:

Best deep dhadow map you can get. Interesting, no?

And to be perfectly fair, in the new render I used the old deep shadow map technique. Uh huh, this isn't even a raytrace. Just every trick in the book pulled with surfaces, lights, DOF, what have you. Compare the 2010 raytrace:

Flat as the proverbial tack. It's not a bad picture, but it's ... FLAT. Yet I swear on a stack of copies of Lord of the Rings, this, below, is "just" a deep shadow map render:

Also been playing in Bryce 7 Pro ... remembering a lot of stuff I've forgotten in the forty or so months since I've touched it -- but there is a LOT more to remember. Ain't quite got the hang of it back yet, but we're getting there (again):

And just for fun -- since the terrain I'm working with here is very, very unrealistic -- I took the first of these two try-outs and processed it through as a old b&w snapshot:

Now, that's ... interesting! Kind of has a King Kong feel about it. Anybody out there seen the original RKO Radio picture? Mmm, that. Next assignment to self: Remember how to make realistic terrains!!! I used to know how ... I just have to jog my own memory. Trying.