Thanks, Nano.

Using Semidieu’s Advanced Render Setting script, I got the normal render, a depth cue render (alpha), and two alpha mats done in under 3 hours. …

Aha, I believe you mentioned Semidieu’s script in an earlier thread. Do you recommend getting the whole package or just the alpha’s? (They sell the alpha’s script separately as well and, given the March Madness, my budget is pretty much maxed.)

If you have the $20, I’d get the Advanced Render Settings, which gets you a whole slew of tools in one go. Tools you will use. Especially if you have Poser 7 Pro.

Or you can spend $10 and get passes and alphas (you’ll want both) and spend a lot more time fiddling with them. This don’t work *quite* as satisfactorily as the bigger kit, for me.

The motion blur was done and then composited so that it didn’t rub out the Oni’s details too much.

Also, I may be a bit thick this morning, but did you do the motion blur in postwork as well or in poser? If it is done in poser and I know it can be done, can somebody explain how? If it was done in postwork, then also, how?
I feel like such a tube/newbie. (Which in fairness I still am, have only really done this for a year now.)

Depth cue is from the Render Passes script.

Motion blur…in Poser, but again, not as easy to control, and things like depth cue and blur slow your render down dramatically if you have your render set for high/final quality. I have Photoshop and have used it for many years, so I’m quite comfortable with doing postwork…your experience my differ.

How I do motion blur in Photoshop varies. In this case, I recall this was about what I did:

1. Use alpha mat for the Oni figure to create a selection and copy of him out of the render layer.
2. Save that as new layer directly above.
3. Use motion blur filter on that new layer. Hmm, can’t see his face that well now, details too blurred.
4. With the blur layer still selected, used alpha mat to create a selection and this time feathered the selection some.
5. Deleted within that selection. Now I can see him better!
6. May have fiddled with blur layer opacity and blend mode after that.

Addendum about alphas masks:

These are black and white images that are put into the Channels palette below the usual R, G, B & composite channels. White is “show” and black is “hide”. The Alpha mask renders that you get out of Poser are about 1 pixel too large (you get ugly edges unless you contract them by 1 pixel), but they are far, far more accurate and time-saving than trying to make a selection yourself.

You click the selection icon in the Channels palette and the white parts become a selection. The beauty of this lies in the use of grayscale in these channels, and that you can paint or modify them the way you do layers to a large degree, thereby giving you a LOT of control over your selections and masks. Want soft edges? Apply a Gaussian blur. Need something to fade gently? Apply a gradient.

Thus, the depth cue image is grayscale…and if you go back to the layers palette, make a new layer of your render (saving the old one, just in case) and use the Lens Blur filter, you would identify that depth cue channel as your mask. Now you can adjust how much blur, how much noise and such in realtime. Awesome! It’s like fixing the F-stop on the fly. How good is that? That’s why I do that. No need to take forever re-rendering because the depth cue wasn’t what you wanted.

Earlier Discussions:

• Artistic Depth of Field
• Masks and Render Passes

Fox Demon: Chusont'rai Shen-ro

My revelation with regards to lighting in Poser (I use 7 pro) began with the purchase of Blackhearted’s BH Pro Studio, over at Rendo. The tutorial alone in that product is worth the price, as I’m sure we’ve said here a bunch over the past year. Smile But the main thing I took away was using an IBL as a bit of fill light, and a different use of point and spot lights than most people start out with.

Point Lights

I used to think “Point lights = candles” or some other such specific point source. Well, that’s still true, but what I discovered is that you can get your textures to really sing if you use point lights and set a falloff range, like DistEnd = 6 (feet). Or whatever. (At least I think that’s close to the name of the parameter.) Rolling Eyes The trick is to position a light so the figure is near the edge of its falloff zone. Not for every light in the scene–that depends on the logic of the scene itself. And how bright the scene is supposed to be. And if the falloff is right but the light too dark, set it to over 100%. I will often set falloffs to just past the distance between the light and the main figure, with 120% brightness.

Set shadows to 0.77 to 0.88 or even lower, sometimes – not to 1.0. A 1.0 setting makes them not so much dark as just smudgy. They should be mysterious and transparent, not *black*–a sensibility I acquired as a painter. But I *always* use raytraced shadows on every light except IBLs (of course).

I do not put ambient occlusion on the lights–it tends to give you that X-files black-oil-eyes look with the effects of soot caught in the creases of everything. Yuck.

Spot Lights

I also discovered that you can do similar things with spot lights and get some wonderful looming-out-of-the-dark effects. Use a point light for the main light, set up an IBL (at about 40% brightness for starters), and then, if you need some more illumination with directionality, create a spot light with a very narrow End Angle, such as 20 to 45 degrees, and put it far away–like 20 poser-feet, so the light is spreading a lot by the time it hits your main figure, and use a falloff to just cover the back of the visible scene. Again, put shadows to 0.88.

Also, set all shadow biases to 0.333 or even 0.222. The default 0.888 comes out too grainy. I never use shadow maps.

I also use some helper scripts for lighting by SemiDieu over at RDNA to more easily create and delete lights. His IBL creation script will make what is called “Olivier’s IBL”, which lets you specify six colors for the IBL regions to match your scene! Very worthwhile. I generally love SemiDieu’s utility scripts.

And every time I add or adjust a light, I do a ray-traced test render at screen portal size and fairly low-quality settings, just to check things out. The thing that lets me know if the lights are doing their job, most specifically, is if the shadows give a proper feeling of shape, or “modeling” as it is used in painting. FYI, I will almost never, ever, have a main light straight face on, full face to the camera, either, for this reason–it comes out looking like a bad flash photograph and flat as hell, both in terms of modeling and texture response to the lights.

In the pic below, I used points, spot, and IBL as described. While it’s not the most compelling image in the world, the lighting works fairly well.

Clicky for larger…

Sorrows' Soldiers: Kerry

Mind you, I still do postwork. Poser lights may, even with a lot of effort, still not come out with a sufficient dynamic range of light and dark in the image, so some small adjustment in Photoshop may be required to get a more dramatic effect. I will also add a subtle color cast and pump up the saturation a little–not a whole lot, mind you–using Mystical Tone Tint & Color 2 filters, which have been worth every penny. The point of doing any of that is to hone in on the picture’s focal point and give unity to the image, using light, shadow, and overall tone.

(Oh…and please, please, do not get ultra-happy with the Photoshop filters. I swear, most of them should be tried out and forgotten. Forever. Or used very, very sparingly.)

The Captive Water Fae

I was writing to a younger friend who is trying to wrestle inspiration to the ground and get it to spit out a story that is hanging around. We’ve chatted about various issues over the year; amongst them is the on-again, off-again nature of her muse. Myself, I struggled through a ten-year dry spell, and did Julia Cameron’s course twice–lots of good tools there.
But this is what I figured out this morning about getting it jump-started, and I wanted to share:

I was thinking about your story-work this morning earlier and I thought perhaps you might like to take a different tack, one that lets you have more of a dialog with your Self (your muse, if you like).

Start with the thing that your heart goes to right off, the elf & the human together, yes? Then ask questions and wait for a reply (or a picture, which is a reply).

Example (not telling you what should happen, just trying to show what it might feel like):

Your muse: My elf and my human are sitting together in a sunny place.

You: What does it look like?

They’re on a stone bench in front of an old, old building, looking out over the overgrown ruins of high-tech city.

Why is it overgrown and in ruins?

They found it together while looking for something.

What were they looking for?

<muses dodges a bit> The human has a map in his hand.

Were they there because of the map?

Yes…

…and so forth.

It’s like playing interactive fiction with yourself. Just wait on the answers patiently. If the muse dodges, it’s because you’re supposed to follow it and go in a different direction. Eventually, it will get to telling you stories on its own, or showing you movies in your head—and then you have to write fast enough to keep up with them!

If you keep editing before you get the pictures or story out, you’re telling your muse that you don’t like what it’s saying and it will shut up.

If you consciously decide you want to go in a certain direction for…well, an ego reason, say (like wanting to be unique), and that’s not the story it has for you, it will shut up.

You have to trust it to tell you a story and let it have its head. Follow it. It won’t lead you astray, no matter how weird or mundane the stuff that comes out. What comes out is what you need to hear or be doing.

After all, your muse is not different from you. It’s still you, just a part that has learned to be quiet. Unfortunately, you have silenced the gatekeeper to your soul. You have to undo that in order to truly live.

And I gotta say, this is all related to the issues of trying to fit into a mold that isn’t yours, as opposed to seeing what kind of unique creature you really are. You won’t be all that weird or unsociable or unlovable if you let go and grow the way your supposed to. (If you were really *wrong* inside, you’d already be having major psychological problems and breaks—so I’m not worried.) In fact, you might be a little miffed that you’re really pretty normal, sane, and well-adjusted. Be glad for that!

The BPA Sent Help

Courtesy of Ed Averill of Austin, TX:

Frozen Zombie-Land (To the tune of “Winter Wonderland”)

Sirens blare, are you listening,
In a pool, blood is glistening
A horrible sight,
Surely a fright.
Screaming in a frozen zombie-land.

Gone away are the living
Lots of brains, they were giving
We’re shouting in fear
As they grow near
Screaming in a frozen zombie-land.

In the meadow we can stack the corpses,
Plenty of them all around the town
We’ll say: are they buried?
They’ll say: no man!
A zombies place just isn’t underground!

Later on, we’ll perspire
As we set them afire
We’re deathly afraid
Of the monsters we’ve made
Screaming in a frozen zombie-land.

http://www.daz3d.com/i/galleries/0?id=48082&sec=2&_m=d

Tickle-fight, close up

Art Charts.

And it’s fun to see images of paintings I remember being painted! In his basement in Alexandria.

I also remember a yellow sticky of cowboy curses (darn! shucks!) stuck to his big old oak easel. His youngest, Zara, was very small, and those were the nicer versions he was supposed to use instead of the usual variety. And a story about Frank Frazetta, who taught him that whatever paints you use, do not stint on good brushes. Things like that.

He was very kind about my awful first paintings. Bless you, Steve.

Go see his lovely web site: http://www.stephenhickman.com/

Thing is see…I dunno what my perfect is. I dunno what I have to reach to be able to look at what I do and go “Yea I really like that.”

I see perfection in so many other people and things that sometimes i defeat myself before I’ve begun….I just dunno how to break that away from my mind.

I see perfection everywhere…everywhere except from within myself….I’m not really sure why.

>_<

Oh, honey. You *knew* I was gonna see this, didn’t you? *Pats the sweetie pie*

Another poster in the forum said that flaws and imperfections were desirable attributes. Here’s the other thing: This is the sort of quest that turns into a spiritual journey, and you can learn some very interesting things along the way. But if you never start, you’ll never arrive.

There is a Japanese aesthetic that says that something *too* symmetrical, too even, too “perfect” is not perfect. Pretty much, something that *looks* natural is considered perfect–the little flaws are treasured. Unevenness and asymmetry are sought after.

Therefore, every little flower in a meadow is perfectly what it is supposed to be. AND…every little human being on the planet as well—the good, the bad, the suffering, and the happy. You are being exactly what you are supposed to be! Interesting deviations from exactitude are considered desirable!  Anything without those…is imperfect.

Now, finding out and bringing the “what I’m supposed to be” into consciousness and nurturing it, is called living dharmically (I may stretch the definition a bit here) in the yogic teachings.

The only thing you should want to be when you grow up—is yourself! That’s it! Nothing else.

This is why sometimes, after decades (I am over 50) of messing around, stopping, starting, screwing up, procrastinating, and occasionally working hard, when I sometimes find I’ve “nailed it,” by achieving a sought-after balance in a piece of art or design or writing, something that makes me and others pleased to behold it—well, it’s not “perfect.”  It’s just what it should be, no more or less.

I mean, hell, there’s always someone with more technical skill or imagination out there! I think the issue is to take in hand your definitions rather than to randomly going around measuring all sorts of things and people with widely varying backgrounds, skill, desires, and so forth against one standard of…well, what DO you mean by “perfect?”

I know what I like, anyhow: Poise in motion, composition, and execution; freshness in ideation. Artistic realism and naturalism.

Try using words other than perfect to describe what it is that makes the something desirable! You may get some clues that way.

Along the way, I decided that I really, really wanted to be able to see my figments, and took up working with Poser, which I had put down three years ago, having been worn out by working as a merchant in the Poser community, and due also to getting a job after being laid off for 8 months. I was most grateful for the job at Real Magnet in Bethesda, but it was a very intense one and pretty much ate my life, as I was so tired after work that I did nothing creative at all for a long time, except a bit of jewelry-making.

Leaving Real Magnet for Amtrak opened up a lot of head space, apparently. In January of 2007, I believe it was, inspiration finally exploded. This is the deep, dark secret—no longer! I was playing Sims2, and having a blast. This apparently caused the figments to awaken, and some of them walked off the screens of the Sims and became far, far different from their original paper-doll forms, assuming depth, breadth, and their own voices and lives. It was like having a movie running in my head 24/7.

I let it out. It was the best thing I ever did.

And I finished the very first draft of the very first book inside of three months, I believe, about 300 pages (it’s since expanded, necessarily). Each successive one has gone slower and slower. They have not stopped, but it’s reached a steady walking pace that does allow me to do visual as well as verbal art. So, midway through book number four, in August of 2008, I went back to Poser. This time, I had some money, some energy, and the drive to depict. Again, the figments leaped off the screen of my mind an onto the computer screen.

Yesterday I posted my 101st picture on this web site, over in the 3D gallery. I have done more than that, but that’s 101 Dalmatians—I mean, images that are keepers. Now I can see my figments when I want to! And I have met new ones along the way, who are keeping me busy with book five.

I have no idea if I will ever publish the books. I have been published as an illustrator, some minor stuff including a short-lived comic, a book cover, and some gaming materials—so it’s not like I’ve never been there. The books need tidying up and a good editor. My dear AJ Savill has had a major positive impact on the first book, and helped the others mature into better works. Thank you, thank you AJ. Ms. Karen Fox has also taken up the mantle of reader, but as with other volunteers, can only do what the rest of her life permits her to do.

I have, meantime, been quite driven to depict. My dear Kay will attest to this, since I all but chase her away when I’m working. I think the point of this particular bit of autobiography is that for once in my life (a) I let the muse run away with me, (b) I’ve had enough mileage as a designer, painter, and writer (of non-fiction) that I’m no longer as bedevilled by doubts as I was when I was young, and (c) I am persistent. I think the latter is key. It’s not rocket science: you practice anything daily, and you will improve, even if you have no talent for it. (God knows, I learned how to bowl properly, and I have absolutely zero talent for that. ) If you have both talent and a desire to do the whatever-it-is, then practice will improve your work, if you are willing to learn and try even a little bit.

In the Virile Noir thread(s) on the DAZ3D forums, which LT Roberts and I host (more or less), we have had the very special joy of watching others, encouraged and helped, improve significantly in the past eleven months. And we have improved ourselves, as we were just noting the other day. I owe LT a lot, for his friendship and encouragement. Thank you.

So: KEEP TRYING, you artists. I’m watching you.

There are also 9 new pairs of wallpaper downloads, because my aim is to decorate the Internet.