Sword masters, mages and -- cats!

Lucky I took a look at the DAZ House Cat this morning ... it's on sale right now, and so are several of the packs of poses. So I treated myself to a few items (inexpensive; the lot added together came to $27) and here's the result --

This is delicious! I'd have to call this picture "Irreverence." This is the Mage's study, with all his massive magic books. He's studying dragon-lore (if you could see the open book in CU, you'd see the pictures), and does his cat care? Not a jot! "Let's just roll in the sun on thid big leather book, and maybe I'll sharpen my claws on it!" It's actually a lovely figure:

Ooooh, the possibilities are endless! I'm going to enjoy this. I've just about caught up with images posted here. There's just a few more, the first of which is a set called The Guildhall, with special lighting set up -- Iray loves it.

So I'll have a pleasant afternoon, playing with my new kitty cat! So I'll sign out here, and --!

A new CPU -- and we're back in business here!

 

It's been an eventful anxious and expensive couple of weeks since the last time I posted. My computer entered a "infinite boot loop," which is exactly what it sounds like. It's been in the workshop twice, and four hundred dollars later, its home with a new CPU and ... fixed. The new CPU makes it astonishingly fast, so I'm far from unhappy; the four hundred bucks is another matter!

Now I'm trying to catch up with myself, and not let all those images slip out of my memory -- I had about twenty ideas while the computer was in the shop; now, of course, I can't remember most of them! Well, they'll come back to me eventually -- I hope. So --

-- I'll just start over, and enjoy being able to do this again. Not being able to for a couple of weeks made me realize how much I enjoy this, and how much I actually need art as a creative outlet. Fantasy is very much on my mind at the moment, probably because of the book I'm reading, so --

-- here's a number of V4 and G8F characters and scenes, and tomorrow I have a raft of G8M scenes, and a couple of M4 characters to catch up with. For now, though --

-- numerous experiments are going on here ... water, dForce, shaders, sun-sky lighting ... all kinds of good stuff that goes to "make" images, though props and characters are the last things being experimented with. I'll post in a day or two, with a raft of new stuff. And yes, I

m loving the new CPU!

Willow Creek -- now, this was a challenge!

 

Stonemason's Willow Creek set is enormous ... so huge, it gave me a major challenge. The first time I rendered it, I saw something I haven't seen yet on this PC. The GPU "choked" before the render was complete. Say, what?! That shouldn't happen. So I took the scene apart and figured out what was eating up the GPU space ... swapped out the water shader and changed the lighting model. Phew! With that done the set renders in something like a quarter of an hour. So it was time to get creative! 

The boat was a prop from Cornucopia, back in the days when I dabbled fleetingly in Vue; new shaders and so forth -- it renders nicely in Iray. Our elven hero is CC Foster, slightly tweaked as an elf; and having designed the character specifically for this scene --

Now, that's nice. I like this character a lot. The planes and angles of his face suit the role so well ... must come back to him again soon!

Something whimsical and "feel good"

I call the top picture "Listening at the Window," and the second "Rainy Days." These were such fun to do, and a huge departure from the usual stuff I do. They're also a lot more complex than they might seem! To begin with, I don't (yet) own either an owl or a cat (they're on the list!) so both of these had to be added in post, in Photoshop ... from transparent PNGs, which you can get for free from a remarkable site, which I assume is kosher. If it isn't ... ahem! Oh, while I'm in this neck of the woods, I should mention that HDRI Haven has changed its name and address to PolyHaven ... another godsend for resources. Fantastic place to get images to drive environment mapping for ambitious scenes like this:

Any chance I can get you to look at that one full size?! Thanks! That was such an ambitious project, in a HUGE set, with two spacecraft, two droids, and three armoured figures, plus an atmospheric plane. I'm just amazed that it only took 45mins in Iray -- and that's the magic of the low(er) poly figures of yesteryear. Then ...

We'll close on this one today, I think! The old DinoKonda, for which I did a new skinmap, and dug around till I found the DinoKonda Plus morphs to make it bigger and badder! This was a neat project too, so filled with shaders and props. Oh! One last image for today, before I sign out -- speaking of shaders, that is! This --

I treated myself to some new toys! Bohemian Candles by Sveva, from Renderosity, and ROG's Fantasy Home props from DAZ. I've also been installing scores and scores of older items from the 2010 - 2019 content ... am juuust starting to knock a dent in that work! The oars are definitely back in the water.