A bit of this, a bit of that...

A classic case of Photoshop rescuing a looong render that I didn't have the time or patience to do over. You might not believe it, but three different things went wrong with this picture, and the rayrace took so long, I very nearly said "stuff it, bin it, do something else tomorrow." Fortunately, a little judicious painting saves the day!

In my imagination, this scene is outside the tavern we saw yesterday. These guys have almost got the situation worked out ... though Dimitri is hardly likely to "be good" for long, I think...

Then, some SF:

Bryce 7 Pro: evil weather in an SF city

Am really pleased with this one. The gold light is spilling from inside the building, out through the transparent windows, and that is just ... yeah. Neat. I'll give you a detail shot, in case you don't have to the time of ability to view it large (I know a lot of people are browsing on phones)...

I didn't actually expect it to work when I put a light inside the building, but it did! 😃 I believe the term is, "Yee-haw!" I have a fancy for doing SF stuff for a few days ... this will be fun.

And on that note, I'll close ... tired. Yaawwwnn. The pillow is calling loudly. Time for some soft music, a few pages of a book, and suddenly it'll be tomorrow...

Two vampires meet in the tavern at the Gateway, beyond which lie those Misty Mountains ...

Amadeus meets his cousin, the rogue Dimitri, who only knows how to get into all kinds of trouble. You can just see him saying, "But I didn't do anything! I just, well, you know, supped of a little blood here and there, as one does when one comes across ... appetizing peasants." Leaving Amadeus (yet again, presumably) to sort this one out.

They've met in a tavern by the gate beyond which likes the Misty Mountains (nudge, wink) ...

Bryce 7 Pro, of course...

Actually, I did this picture first. I was trying to jog my memory as to how to get a model (OBJ) into Bryce 7 Pro. Then I remembered: ah! You load it into DAZ Studio and click on "second to Bryce," and it opens Bryce and loads the model automatically. Yep, now I recall.

And I liked the landscape so much, I went back in, took out the gateway, put in a foregroud landscape and re-rendered it:

Bryce 7 Pro: Alpenglow

Okay, okay, it was finished in Photoshop, but 90% of it was done in Bryce, with proper lights and so forth. It's not quite right, not yet; but I'm getting there. Slowly. Give me strength. [rolls eyes]

Alpenglow is that half hour right after sunset in the Arctic, when the  mountains go ... pink. Seriously! I've seen it. I've photographed it ... standing right in the middle of Jewel Lake Road, Anchorage, AK, at 11:55 at night while the Chugach Mountains lit up a wondrous shade of rose. Fond memories. I need to run the scanner again, digitize some more of my Alaska pictures! You don't get the same effect before dawn...

Speaking of dawn: more of the 2017 Dawn Photography shots, as promised:

These were photographed from the backyard right here ... a fire in the sky, February two years ago.

And lastly for today, a couple more Amberlight images:

Tomorrow, I think I'll go back to the new Amadeus, and do at least one more scene with him before ... hmm. I don't know what, not yet. It'll come to me. One thing about being disabled: time is on your hands, which for me is something that hasn't happened in years! Might do some SF next.

The vampire's screen test ... Amberlight designs ... dawn shots ... and a digital watercolor

Screen test ... Amadeus, take two! Now, this, I can work with! The nips, tucks and tweaks are actually quite subtle, but the make the face more real:

Also, the lad's had a haircut: it was overdue. The old, old wigs just don't render up too well: now, when you're applying dark colors to them, it hardly matters because you don't see the OBJ model, just the color. (The last time I bought 3D models was 2014; I need to upgrade my desktop before I can back into acquisition.) But --

Amadeus's most astonishing characteristic was always his "Gandalf the White" hair. As he aged through a thousand years, as an immortal vampire, the only thing that changed about him was that his hair went white. So the hunt was on to find a 3D wig that would render up okay and be white! I was down to just two choices left by the time I changed to this one, the Aksaste Hair (which might have come from Renderosity or the DAZ marketplace, I honestly don't remember.

Okay: Amadeus is done! He looks great, and he can meet his cousin Dimitri, uh, tomorrow.

For now...

A digital watercolor: The Murray Mouth -- with textured art paper stripped in for effect...

Neat, eh? (If anyone is interested, let me know, and I'll tell you you to do this. It ain't rocket science. It's just so much Photoshop jiggery-pokery).

Also, been working some more in Amberlight...

...there's oodles more, but I'll just upload a few at a time, because you really do get your "goggle factor" burned out if you get hit with too many at once! So, let's have a change of pace.

Been sorting images, a long, long overdue task. Got the best of my 2017 Dawn Photography squared away, and I think of this as "art in the sky, by Mother Nature" so I'll include a few here now and then. Here we go:

...and again, there's oodles more. Just a few at a time, or to quote Bruce Lee, "You will miss all the heavenly glory" by having your "goggle circuits" burned out!

Tomorrow: Amadeus and Dimitri! (If anyone is wondering, yes, I'm doing a lot of art these days. Why? I'm disabled now. Temporarily, I hope, but there are no hard guarantees. I haven't walked properly in a year and don't expect to for another year at the minimum. It's very depressing, and artwork takes my mind of it. So -- yep, art by the carton ... enjoy!)

Meet Dimitri ... "making faces" for fun

CG character creation is fun. End of statement! Occasionally you come up with something (someone!) you're really, really pleased with -- and this is one of them. Call him Dimitri ...

I stumbled over this face and form when I was playing with the character of "the vampire Amadeus." I'd wanted to tweak the old face, make it a bit more unique, a bit less "idealized," but I guess I went too far with the tweaks, because by the time I was done, it was on its way to being a great face but it surely wasn't Amadeus anymore! Here's the work in progress:

From here, I changed the skin map and hair, did a few minor adjustments, and then put him into a sort of medieval setting. Turns out, Amadeus has a kind of "evil twin," the Loki of this family (a vast, ancient vampire clan) who causes nothing but trouble and everyone else has to sort out matters before it's war between the great vampire houses, over the last 2000 years, right? Neat idea, actually! A vampire with a sense of humor...

Same character, outside the tavern, with a "day for night" filter added in Photoshop to give you the impression it's night (same principle that's used in TV, when they shoot during the day with a filter on the camera). I like this character a lot.

The other experiment I ran today was in painting a displacement map to age a character by adding wrinkles to his face. Skin maps are usually imaged from very young models, meaning there isn't a mark on their juvenile faces, which may or may not suit the role you're casting. So...

If you have a look at this guy at large size, you will see lines in his face. Uh huh. This was done by painting lines (!) onto one of the facial skin maps, saving it back and applying it as a displacement map. It, uh, works. I need to go in and paint lines into the neck mapping too,  because this guy still has the smooth teenage neck of the original skin map. But the face worked well.

Too hot to do more today. This place is sizzling, and I'm going to shut down the computers before they cook.